I reckon I have 3 books to write.
I have them in my head and in my ‘heart’, but translating my reflections to actual writing is a little tricky at the moment.
Heavy physical work means I am often tired on my non-physical days and then I need to invest what creative and mental energy I have left in our community at QBC, often preparing for teaching or doing some planning and reflecting. So there isn’t a lot of mental space left to do something well.
I had hoped to write a novel while on our trip around Oz in 2009, but that was a bad miscalculation… Between driving, visiting beautiful places, surfing, hanging with friends and just generally relaxing I was never in the headspace to get beyond chapter 1. So while the concept I will be writing about still fires me (I won’t be saying what it is 🙂 ) I doubt I will get to it in the near future. Fiction feels a much harder task than non-fiction as it engages the creative juices more strenuously and right now I’m a little short on for them.
I did start writing a book on what I was learning about mission to the west while we were running Upstream and living in Butler. But I stopped halfway thru and I’m not sure I will pick this one up very soon. I found I was writing more about theory than actual experience and I felt something of a fraud as I did it. What the world does not need is one more book on mission by someone who hasn’t done a particularly sensational job of it. I don’t say that harshly as I think I learnt a lot in the time we spent at Upstream and I still hold to the same way of framing church and mission, but I felt I wasn’t able to help people on the journey of faith as well as I would have hoped. I’d like to write this book, but from a place of experiential learning rather than good theory. So I hope that one day it will happen…
The final one is about Jesus. Pretty simple. Having grown up around a very sterile Jesus I have always found my heart comes alive when I encounter the Jesus who would be terribly uncomfortable in the churches of my childhood – maybe because I always felt somewhat puzzled in those environments too. I’d like to just write a series of reflections on the ‘Jesus You Might Not Meet in Church’. Had I written this 30 years ago it would have the Jesus you would never meet in church, but thankfully he is now a bit more welcome as we have come to know a more earthy and human Jesus.
Right now I don’t see a break in the steady stream of work to be able to make a start on any one of these, but they sit there waiting for me to give them attention. I imagine they may be ‘hobbies’ that I attend to one day in my ‘retirement’. I put retirement in inverted commas because I don’t believe in the concept, but one day when I am not compelled to earn money I may be able to clear the headspace to indulge myself in a year or two of writing…
Having started and stopped writing a number of times over (I hate to say it) the last thirty years or so, the only thing I can say, is that there is never really a “good” time to write.
However, starting is the main thing, and then, even when you don’t really feel like it, doing a bit more, whether simply just re-reading or continuing your stream of thought, or chapter planning, or whatever it is that you do to write, is essential. You don’t have to write absolutely every day, but if you never start, you will never finish. Sounds rather self evident really, but getting down and doing it is really easy to avoid. Even just jotting ideas is better than nothing.
I finally stopped procrastinating. It was a good move. I wrote in between everything else (and still do) and finally finished the first one. It was well worth doing, even though I knew it wasn’t the final polished product. I’d encourage you to do what you can, when you can, and even if it takes years, at the very least, you won’t regret not beginning.