Tuesday Tidbit: Writing as worship

Here's this week's Tuesday Tidbit,

your 15 seconds of inspiration:

If you missed last Thursday's post,

click on Your stories: An act of worship.

Your stories: An act of worship

Have you read 1 Chronicles 16 lately? If not, take a few minutes to read it below—you’ll be glad you did!

Notice how you can almost hear trumpets sounding and bells ringing and angels singing.

In this chapter, David gave Asaph and his fellow Levites a song of thanksgiving to God. He said:

Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name;

make known…what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts….

Remember the wonders he has done….

Declare his glory...his marvelous deeds….

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise….

Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and joy in his dwelling place.

Ascribe to the Lord...the glory due his name.

Bring an offering before him;

worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness....

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

his love endures forever.

                                                                          

And when David finished, “Then all the people shouted ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the Lord.’” What a worship service! I wish I could have stood among that congregation.

And as if that’s not enough—what’s even more exciting

is that we are doing the same things in our memoirs! 

In our stories,

we are telling others the wonders God has done

and his marvelous deeds on our behalf.

In our memoir stories, we are declaring his glory.

In the process, we are “singing” praise to him,

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise!”

One sentence grabbed hold of my heart: “Bring an offering before him; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.”

I encourage you to lift up to God (1) your process of writing and (2) your finished stories—lift them up to God as your offering to him.

And hand your stories to your readers as an offering to the Lord, too. Do it as an act of worshiping him in the splendor of his holiness. What a privilege we have to honor God in this way.

And we, the writers, together with our readers, 

shout, Amen! And Praise the Lord!

Tuesday Tidbit – “Let writing be another way to worship the Lord”

 Here's your 15 seconds of inspiration for this week,

your Tuesday Tidbit:

How do you start? Where do you start?

.

Are you a beginning memoir-writer? Are you puzzled about how to start? Where to start?

Lisa Tener recently interviewed Richard Hoffman, award-winning author and professor at Emerson College.

She asked Richard’s advice for beginning memoir-writers, specifically how and where to start.

His reply:

“Wherever you can! Think of a spiderweb. You can hook that first thread anywhere it will hold. The important thing is to not think in linear terms at all when you’re writing. Write scenes. Write pages of reflection. Write what’s available to you to write today. Memory’s mercurial; if something offers itself to be explored, explore it while it’s ‘live’. If you shoo it away because you’re convinced that today you’re going to work on, say, Chapter 7, it might not come back!

“Write modularly in the order that presents itself to you.… A book is read from the upper left-hand corner of page one to the lower right-hand corner of the last page — but that is not how it is written! At least not in my experience. Composition happens only later, when you’ve turned over every rock and shaken every tree. The next stage, fashioning a story, a narrative, from the parts comes pretty late in the process.” (Richard Hoffman, from Lisa Tener’s Writing Blog at http://www.lisatener.com/2011/05/writing-memoir-an-interview-with-richard-hoffman)

Many thanks, Lisa and Richard, for your helpful words.

Like I said last May in One little step at a time,* please be underwhelmed at the task of writing a book. In fact, avoid thinking “book.” Instead, concentrate on individual short stories.

For the next several months, take easy little steps: I suggest you review the definition of memoir* and write a few accounts, three to six pages each. That’s do-able, right? These rough drafts will eventually be chapters in your finished memoir.

Start with easy topics. Remember: You’ll learn the craft of memoir more easily if you begin with straightforward events.

I’ve seen too many beginners tackle a traumatic story, only to have their still-raw emotions sidetrack them. Inevitably, discouragement leads them to abandon that story and give up on writing their other stories, too. Don’t let that happen to you! 

Instead, start with less painful events—how God showed His love by bringing just the right doctor into your life, for example. Perhaps you saw God’s power demonstrated when He kept you from serious injury in a car accident. Maybe He gave you a glimpse of His beauty through a sunset or snowcapped mountain or butterfly.

Write your stories—not because of who you are,

but because of who God is.*

Write your stories as an act of worship.*

If a particular vignette is refusing to come to life, set it aside and work on something else. That thorny story might blossom another day.

Embrace what Richard said: Write what you can today.

Happy writing! 

Richard Hoffman authored the celebrated memoir Half the House; the short story collection Interference and Other Stories; and three poetry collections: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road; he’s the winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; and most recently, Emblem. He teaches at Emerson College and currently serves as chair of PEN New England.

*Related posts:

Your memoir: one little step at a time

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/your-memoir-one-little-step-at-time.html

What is a memoir

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-is-memoir.html

Not because of who you are, but because of who God is http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/07/your-stories-not-because-of-who-you-are.html

Your stories: an act of worship

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/08/your-stories-act-of-worship.html

 

Your stories: an act of worship

.

Have you read 1 Chronicles 16 lately?

I can almost hear trumpets sounding and bells ringing and angels singing.

In this chapter, David gave Asaph and his fellow Levites a song of thanksgiving to God. He said,

“Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

Glory in his holy name;

let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

Look to the Lord and his strength;

seek his face always.

Remember the wonders he has done ….

Sing to the Lord, all the earth;

proclaim his salvation day after day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise….

Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and joy in his dwelling place.

Ascribe to the Lord … the glory due his name.

Bring an offering before him;

worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness….

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

his love endures forever.”

And when David finished, “Then all the people shouted ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the Lord.’”

What a worship service! I wish I could have stood among that congregation.

And as if that’s not enough—what’s even more exciting—is that we are doing those same things in our memoirs!

In our stories, we are telling others the wonders God has done and his marvelous deeds among us. We are declaring his glory. In the process, we are “singing” praise to him, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise!”

This sentence grabbed hold of my heart: “Bring an offering before him; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” I encourage you to lift up to God (1) your process of writing and (2) your finished stories—lift them up to God as your offering to him.

And hand your stories to your readers as an offering to the Lord, too. Do it as an act of worshiping him in the splendor of his holiness.

What a privilege we have to honor God in this way.

And we the writers, together with our readers, shout, Amen! And Praise the Lord!

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