If There Is A God, Where Is He?

This post is part of conversation. I decided to include an edited version of that exchange to give some context for what will follow.

Anonymous: If there is a God, where is he? I want to believe. But it’s been 2000 years since God even made his alleged appearance. I mean, if he cares, where is he?
Me: I am getting ready to walk out the door, but I need to come back to this. I so hear you! I was asking the same thing not too long ago. 
Anonymous: I am glad to hear that you at one time felt the same way. Because it gives me hope. 

The easiest and probably smartest thing for me to do would be to stick to all the pretty church answers on this one. You know a few historical facts, a couple of clichés, and an encouragement to “just keep believing.” But let’s be honest, those things are often more of frustration than help. And to be even more honest, I really don’t know what else I have to offer other than to say you are not alone.

I had to smile when I read that your last message. The idea that knowing that about me gives any hope is one of the more amusing things I have ever encountered. I guess it is because you are on the outside looking in, and I am on the inside looking out. I actually had to step outside myself for a bit and try to imagine what I must look like to someone else. I know I am busy with the Scandalous stuff, I do posts here, and I talk a lot about God and what I think about him. I suppose that has to look like some pretty massive faith, but don’t let me fool you. Faith is tricky thing to find and to hold onto, and I don’t think the battle to keep our faith is ever really over – or if it is then I haven’t reached that place.

The first time I lost my faith was right after my divorce. I had prayed so hard for God to save my marriage, to help me be a better wife, or to fix my husband. When God didn’t answer any of those prayers, I prayed that one of us would die. I had bought into the lie that divorce was never an option, and I believed that I had stay in my abusive marriage if I was to be a good Christian girl. When that didn’t happen, and I knew that I had to leave, I believed that God had failed.

There were only two reasons, in my mind, why God would fail to fix my marriage:

1. He was not strong enough to do so.
2. He did not care enough to do so.

Now, if God was not strong enough to save my marriage then, obviously, he wasn’t worthy of being called God. And if he didn’t care enough to save my marriage then why should I care about him?

Over the next four years I would fought to rebuild my faith – not that I realized that was what I was doing. I just thought I was screaming my anger at the heavens with some sort of twisted death wish. I was so hurt and angry that I often didn’t have the words to express what I was feeling, so sometimes I just screamed. There was part of me that even hoped that I would make God mad, mad enough to take me out with bolt of lightning as punishment for my blasphemies and curses, because even his anger would have been better than being abandoned.

Now I know that there was a part of me that never stopped believing that God was real, but it was that part of me that made me so mad. If I truly believed that he was did not exist then my anger would have been foolish. It would have been pointless, and probably a good indicator that I really had lost my mind, because really? Who gets that furious with their imaginary friend?

And that was the first step to realizing that I still believed, that my faith wasn’t entirely lost. I knew he was there, my hurt, frustration, and anger with him was my first shred of evidence that he was real. Sure, I couldn’t see or touch him. I couldn’t hear his voice or introduce him to my friends. I just knew that somewhere in my rage there was someone to rage at.

Perhaps the biggest revelation in all of this was that for the first time I was taking God seriously. I mean really seriously. I wasn’t playing pretty church games with him or trying to buy him off with good Christian girl behavior. I was letting him see me – the real me. The me who was broken, bloody, and pissed off. The me I don’t show in public. The me I keep locked up and hidden away from the world lest someone decided that hauling me off in one of those fancy white jackets that tie in back needs to be done for my own good. The me that I only let to play when I am with people I trust. And I have to tell you, that me ain’t pretty or polite. Not many people can handle her.

But God did. He just waited for me to cool off, settle down, for the sting to leave some of the wounds. He didn’t run away or try to rush me through what I now know was a grief over so many failed dreams. He didn’t interrupt my ravings or tell me that I was being irrational. He just waited.
For four long years, he waited knowing that the only interaction I was willing to have with him was to dish out some more abuse in his direction.

Then one day when I was ready, he showed up – no, wait, that is wrong. He showed me how he had always been there. I just wasn’t ready to see him until that moment.

Sometimes the hardest part of faith is being okay with the fact that God is sovereign. It means that he gets to set the terms and limitations of everything, even when and how he is going to reveal himself in our lives. Of course, his timing is never what we would demand and how he chooses to appear in our lives is seldom what we think we want. The thing is that no matter when or how he decides to play out that moment, you will know that it could not have happened one second sooner and his way was so much better than you could have imagined.

I don’t have any formulas for how to make God appear, not even for myself. All I know is that if we keep chasing him, he will be found. It might take a while, and I pray that for you it won’t be four years, but if it is I promise you it is worth it. That is the only hope I have to offer, but if you could see it from the inside out like I do you would know that is one of the greatest hopes we can ever offer another.

Reader's Question - Where Exactly In The Bible Does It Say One Man And One Woman?

Reader's Question: Emily Dixon, since you're the scholar. . .where exactly in the Bible does it say one man and one woman?

I know there is the leave and cleave verse. I know there is the verse about when you have sex you become joined to that person. ( I can look up references if you'd like). Of course I am all about one woman for one man BUT I am reading in the OT right now and David was a man after God's own heart and in 2 Samuel 5:10-13 David gets blessed and the first thing he does is go out and marry more women.

So what's up with that? Is he just sinning? Or was it a cultural thing that made it okay then but not now? That can't be right either. Because God is the one who determines what sin is. . .

But anyway, I think that the Victorians are the ones who came up with some of our modern ideas like falling in love and soulmates. . .

Scratching my head over here and fuming at David for having multiple wives because I think it's wrong!

This is one of the things I love about the Bible – It tells us what did happen and not what should have happened! None of our spiritual greats were whitewashed or cleaned up. God presents them to us warts and all, and one of the reasons I find it to be so trustworthy. God could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had…oh, I don’t know? Lied. But he didn’t he chose the hard way, the honest way, and in doing so ran counter to every other known religion of man. It’s a pretty gutsy move if you think about it.

It also serves a purpose, in reading accounts like David and his multiple wives, we are reminded the Bible always points us back to God as the only source of salvation. He allowed humans to be a part of his divine plan, but in the end, he is the only one who is holy, righteous, and able to save us from ourselves.

But back to your question:

I might as well get the fun part over with, the part that rarely makes Christians happy – there is no Biblical, blanket prohibition against polygamy. You can look, but it is just not there.

This leads us to two questions:

1. Why wasn’t polygamy forbidden if it was wrong?
2. Where do we get the idea that marriage is between one man and one woman?

Let’s start with question one: We must remember that God works within time and cultures to bring about his will. This has meant that many times instead of simply declaring something wrong or sinful, he has lead by example. Planting the seeds, and then allowing them to flourish as his people learned more about him and his divine plan for humanity. We can see how this works with polygamy, and answer question two at the same time.

The question of marriage begins in Genesis 1 and 2, when God creates Adam and Eve. We are presented with an ideal world, and in this ideal world we find one man and one woman. Polygamy would not be introduced until Lamech, the son of Cain, in Genesis 4:19. Notice that two things here: 1. We are now in a fallen world. 2. Lamech is the son of Cain who would also be remembered for following in his father’s footsteps of murder, but added pride to his list of sins. (See Genesis 4:23, 24.) In these passages we are given a clear contrast between what God intended and what sinful men did.

But the patriarchs? Someone is asking. Yup, the patriarchs had multiple wives, but when you read their tales, Abraham and Jacob, is there any way that we can interpret this as a positive thing? When Abraham decided to take Hagar as his concubine/second wife (we can go into the distinction in a later post) it was not an act of faith or obedience. Instead, it was a desperate attempt to help God out. The consequences were disastrous and many trace the ongoing violence in the Middle East, even of today, back to this event. Jacob had four wives, or two wives and two concubines if you wish to be technical, and the rivalries between the women and their children ripped his house a part. The Bible is not offering these stories as endorsements, but rather as cautionary tales. This is also true of David’s multiple wives, we see how it led to nothing but grief for him and his children. We could go, but that would result in something a bit too long for a blog post.

So how did we go from polygamy being tolerated to being forbidden?

First of all, God introduced laws that made polygamy more and more impractical. The first of these laws were directed to the population as a whole. (See Exodus 21:9-11, Deuteronomy 21:15-17, and Deuteronomy 17:17.) However, he upped the ante for those who occupied a, for lack of a better word, more holy position such as the priests who were not allowed to have more than one wife. (Leviticus 21:13.)

But the real death blow to polygamy were the words of the prophets who, in the eyes of the rabbis, equated polygamy with idolatry. Consider these verses:

“And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD. Hosea 2:16-20 

Israel Forsakes the LORD The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the LORD, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the LORD, the firstfruits of his harvest. All who ate of it incurred guilt; disaster came upon them, declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 2:1-3

I would also include Ezekiel 16, a chapter that really should be read in its entirety to be appreciated, and the last chapter of Proverbs. At first glance, it might seem that these verses had little to do with polygamy, but this is where one more piece of the puzzle will clarify the picture. The prophets did not merely speak a message, they lived their message. Their lives were to be a living, breathing example of God’s revelation of truth, and so while they are busy talking about the beauty of God’s marriage to Israel they are also embodying it. And how did they do that? Through monogamous marriages.

Now, if you go looking for a verse that states that you are not going to find it. We know this about their marriages two ways: 1. They never reference multiple wives in any of their writings. Instead, they talk of one wife. 2. This is the history preserved about them by the Jewish community in rabbinic writings in which multiple debates on this matter were recorded. And we should not overlook the fact that most of these ideas were already being solidified in Jesus time, so the definitions of marriage based on this reasoning was inherited by the Christian church. The Jewish understanding of what marriage was and how it functioned as symbol of God’s love for his chosen people served as the basis for our Christian understanding of what marriage should be.

When discussing marriage with the Rabbis of his day, Jesus refers back to the ideal of Genesis one. Paul places the restriction upon leaders in the church based on the Levitical command for the priests. Peter expands the idea, indirectly, in his affirmation that all believers are part of this new royal priesthood. And it makes perfect sense that we would adhere to this standard if we affirm that as Christians we are to emulate Jesus, the bridegroom of the Church, husband to one wife.

So do we have a single verse that definitively defines marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman? No, we definitely do not. The closest thing we have is the leave and cleave verse cited by my questioner (Matthew 19:4-6, Mark 10:6-9). And while I consider that definitive enough, I know that it is not as direct as many wish it would be. However, when we pull all the pieces of the puzzle together, we have a rather convincing case that monogamy is God’s design, and one that he has chosen for himself.

But not to forget the question of David – he was sinning.

And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. Deuteronomy 17:17 

David allowed the customs of his day to dictate his actions, and in doing so set the precedent for Solomon who would take his father’s behavior to extremes. Solomon’s heart was turned away, and the kings that would follow in his footsteps would seek to emulate his glory instead of seeking the heart of God. These pursuits would leave the nation spiritually bankrupt and led into exile for their sins.

It is hard for us to think of David entertaining sin and still being man after God’s own heart, but I think it is important for us to see the whole picture of who he was. He was a sinner. He was guilty of so much, sins so heinous that he would not be welcomed into most churches today, but God is bigger than our sin. God isn’t frightened by it, and he doesn’t miss who we really are beneath our stupid, prideful actions. He knows that in this world we are going to screw up, but he isn’t looking for perfection. He is looking for hearts that seek to know him even in the midst of our failings. Is this permission to do whatever we wish? No, it is encouragement not to give up, to keep chasing after God’s heart, and to seek him even when our sins so black that they are all the world can see in us. He is there declaring he sees more and celebrating any and all who will rely upon him to wash these sins from our hearts.

Reader's Question: Why Did Noah Curse His Son?

Reader's Question: Why did Noah curse his son for uncovering his nakedness? Was it such a sin to see your father naked or did he look just a little too long?

This is the part of Noah’s tale that Veggie Tales skipped and we don’t often include in the flannel graph presentations at Vacation Bible School. If you are unfamiliar with the tale, you can find it in Genesis 9:18-28, but it basically goes like this.

Noah and his family had survived the flood and were beginning to put their lives back together. For Noah, one of the first priorities was to plant a vineyard, and it wasn’t because he liked grapes and raisins all that much. No, Noah had a hankering for some wine which he promptly made and then proceeded to get smashed. (That’s drunk for all of you good Southern Baptists.) And he didn’t get just a little tipsy or buzzed. No, he was black out drunk.

While he incapacitated, his youngest son Ham decided to take advantage of the situation and this is where the story gets a little murky. The Bible plainly says that Ham uncovered his father’s nakedness, but we don’t know precisely what that means. We do know that whatever went down was bad enough for Noah to curse, not his son, but his grandson. That’s right. Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan.
I, for one and along with many other Biblical scholars, highly doubt that this was a simple case of seeing his father naked. Remember the time frame we are dealing with, there are few houses and no indoor plumbing. And the houses that might have existed would have been small one room dwellings that have a way of creating a level of family togetherness that we just don’t experience all that often today. So if it as more than looking what, was it?

There are actually three options:

The first is that Ham sexually assaulted his father. That’s right, we are talking about homosexual, incestuous rape committed against his drunken father. (You can see why reenacting this with Bob and Larry might pose some difficulties.)  Typically when the Bible uses the phrase “uncover the nakedness of…” it is referring to a sexual act, check out Leviticus 18 to see this in action. However, this explanation does not explain why Noah would curse Ham’s son. I mean, sure maybe he was the one drinking with Noah, egging him on to the next glass, but the timing is all wrong. I just don’t see Noah whose first significant act upon leaving the ark is to plant a vineyard taking the time to age wine for well over a decade before sampling it.

Which brings us to the second option, supported by the following two verses:

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. Leviticus 18:7

If a man lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. Leviticus 20:11

The nakedness of the father is the nakedness of the father’s wife. In other words, Ham may have had sex with his mother while his father was to inebriated to defend her. Why Ham would do such a thing is a matter of debate. Was it lust? Who knows? It could have been that simple, but it also could have been part of a larger statement. In Biblical times having sex with another man’s wife or concubine was political move. We see this in 2 Samuel 16:22 when Absalom has sex with David’s concubines. In essence, Absalom was saying if, “I can take his place between these women’s legs, I can take his place as king.” This was also why Absalom did so publicly or, as the Bible says, “in the sight of all Israel.” He wanted everyone to know what he did, and he wanted everyone to see how powerless his father was to stop it.
Ham may have been doing the same thing. Notice verse 22:

Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside.

There was no cover up or attempt to hide what he did. He did not even bother to cover his “father’s nakedness”, which in this theory was his mother, but instead left the scene for his brothers to witness. He told them what they were going to find and where to find her. Which causes me to ask, why would he do that unless he was trying to make a statement? I think he was trying to claim his position of dominance. He wanted them to know that he was going to rule in this rebirth civilization. He was not going to be subservient or even respectful to his own parents or his older siblings. He wanted power and he was going to take it.

If this is correct, then it also answers why Noah would curse his own grandson and not the father responsible this act. For it is entirely possible that the Ham’s son was born to his mother, the product of incest and defiance. This may be why the author felt the need to identify Ham as Canaan’s father, not once but twice. It is possible he wanted there to be no doubt that the Canaan while born to Noah’s wife was not Noah’s son. Bloodlines are highly important within Jewish culture, to confirm this just wade through all the “begats” in Numbers, and the writer seems to be intent on making sure there was no mistakes or confusion about Canaan’s parentage.

The third option is equally disturbing as the other two. Midrash claims that Ham castrated his father to prevent Noah from having any more sons. This would have somehow made Ham greater than his father by him having four sons instead of three as Noah did. So Noah curses Ham’s fourth son. I think this is less likely, but I wanted throw it out there since it has been proposed.

I think which every option you find most convincing, it all comes down to one thing – this was far more than simply seeing is father naked. Ham took advantage of his father’s drunkenness to inflict damage upon Noah. The precise nature of that damage may always be in question, but the severity of Noah’s curse reveals that Ham’s actions were to have lingering consequences throughout time.

Readers' Question: "How Do You Do It?" The Short and Long Answer Of How I Write

“Okay, Em...I have a book that I need to write, and I have had many false starts, always scrapping nearly everything. How do you do it??”

“How would you feel about helping me tell my story? I've been in therapy and I'm ready to share. NOTICE: This pertains to your path of sex Ed.
This also pertains to things I never told you or anyone but it might help someone.”

“Hey you should write my life story. It’s better than syfi.”

I received these three messages in the past week, and far more just like them since I released Scandalous. Since I know that if three are asking, there are far more of you who are wondering the same thing, but just haven’t said the words out loud, so I decided to respond to all in one fell swoop.

Let’s begin with whether or not I will help someone else tell their story – the answer is yes and no.

Yes – I will be more than happy to be a support and encouragement. I will also be thrilled to share with you the tools I used to make my book happen. Depending on the demands on my time, I might even read over what you have written and offer some suggestions.

And this is where the “no” comes in – this is your story not mine, and I currently have twenty of my own books in various stages of completion. They were given to me and I need to honor that gift by taking care of them first. I am not trying to be mean here, but I only have so many hours in a day, and my life is demanding.

Secondly, it’s YOUR story. It was given to you and you need to honor it by investing your time and energy into making it into something that the world can know. Plus, no one, not even me can, can tell your story the way you can. It needs your words, not mine, or will not be your story any longer. If you are truly passionate about sharing it you will find the words because the story will not let you rest until you do.

This leads to the first question – how do you do it?

First off, know that I never thought I would be a writer. I always kinda thought of writing as one of those things that only truly lucky or blessed got to do, and I never envisioned myself as one of those people. It was not until I was twenty seven years old that a teacher approached me with an assignment and asked me, “What have you written?”

I was completely baffled and scared to death that I had botched the entire project. Flustered, I demanded to know what was wrong with the paper he was holding in his hand, but he assured me that I had not done anything wrong. He just wanted to know what I had written for publication because “it’s that good.” I was shocked! No one had ever said that to me before, and I have been writing consistently since I was twelve for my own pleasure and sanity.

It is important that you know this for two reasons:

            1. I have no formal training in writing other than a few composition classes, so my approach                   isn’t textbook. (For instance, I hate outlines and refuse to make one.)

            2. If I can write without formal training, you can too.

So, how do I do it?

The short answer is I write. Every day, I write. I write piles of garbage and stuff you will never see. I write things I burn and things I tear up, and I write some stuff that I am sufficiently unashamed enough to put out there for the world to read.

The long answer is a bit more complicated. (Imagine that.)

I work really hard at thinking like a writer. For me that means that I am always looking for the right words to describe something I see, hear, or experience. It doesn’t mean I always write it down, but I am always playing with the words – always. If I see a pile of leaves, I wonder how many different ways I can describe it so that you will want to find that particular pile and jump in. If I see deer picking her way through my front yard, I am trying to figure out how you can experience the delicate way she lifts those elegant but powerful legs. People in the mall? I am constantly “writing” back stories for them all.

See, the work at the keyboard is only a fraction of what I am doing. The words you read are what made it through the winnowing process. A process that happens a lot as I am driving down the road describing what I see to a very disinterested and patient dog.

And that is another huge part of what I do. I am always talking it out. My furniture knows more about Genesis 1:1, a favorite passage of mine to teach, than most seminary students. I want to know how the words sound out loud. I want to know if they feel right, not just to the eyes but to the ears.

I also have people in my life who are great listeners. I tell them about what I am working on, and they challenge me to defend my views or ask questions concerning points that I need to clarify. An added bonus, I get really excited about my writing projects and sometimes I will blurt out the right phrase in the middle of a conversation. More often than not, it is the surprising stuff that falls out of my mouth that serves as the catalyst from idea to written word.

The biggest obstacles to writing that I have found to be true in my life and confirmed by other would be writers is that obnoxious internal editor we are all born with. He won’t catch a typo or the misuse of a homonym, but he is quick to tell you that everything you have just written is junk. (Mine uses stronger language, but I am trying to be respectful of my audience here.) This means the most useful skill you can learn as a writer is to shut down that mean little guy and keep writing. All first drafts are awful, or at least, you should believe them to be.

Give yourself permission to write junk. Go on and just get it on paper. Are you going to scrap it? Sure, you are, but scrapping it means just that – scrap it, don’t delete it. I have a file on my computer called just that “Scraps” and I keep all those false starts and things that have to be cut often for the sake of brevity there. I have learned it is a gold mine for future ideas, because once you step away from an idea for a while, you often go back to it and find it wasn’t so terrible after all.

Another major thing I do is to surrender to the words. This means that I often have an idea, sentence, or phrase that I cannot quit writing but have no idea where it is going. An example:

“Some stories are too painful to write, but you know that already, don’t you Charles?”

When I wrote that I had two major questions:

            1. What story is that painful?
         
            2. Who in the world is Charles?

So I kept writing just so I could answer those questions, and I am thrilled with where the story is going. Hopefully, you will get to read it soon.

However, just to be honest, Charles and Jaden (the characters of the book) have started becoming unruly and refusing to talk to me at this particular date. Instead of fighting with them, I have put them on hold and went to work on other projects. Sometimes you can’t force a story and you just have to set it aside for a bit. In a month or two, I will go back to what I have written and things will click. In the meantime, I am writing for the blog and bouncing between editing my first novel, writing two pop theology books, a revised edition of Scandalous, and seventeen fictional works.

Bouncing back and forth between tasks keeps me excited because I am always seeing progress, and I always have a reason to feel like I am accomplishing something. And it has the added benefit of letting me get some distance from the story for a better perspective. Not to mention, stories that I have set aside for a while tend to bubble up in my subconscious, often hitting me out of the blue with a great new plot twist or a revelation of something obvious I had missed that now needs to be addressed. I return to them with renewed energy and excitement that makes writing fun.

Nonfiction is a bit trickier. There are so many things you have to get right if you are going to remain true to the message you are trying to convey. These works go much slower for me and I don’t feel as “inspired” when working on them. Here is where that nasty internal editor plays havoc with my emotions and thoughts, but once again, it is a matter of writing in a steady, disciplined way. Don’t get caught up in trying to make it polished, just write and them after a few months break, go back and edit. Books aren’t typically written overnight, they can take years to hammer into shape and that is exactly what it feels like – hammering at an unyielding stone to get all extraneous stuff out while still maintaining the necessary points. But you can’t hammer on what you don’t have, so it is vital you give yourself something to hammer on and that means you keep writing.

Writing nonfiction is the closest I get to breaking my “no outline” rule, but instead of writing an outline (which I would just lose), I write my ideas on a mirror or sticky notes. I write out my sections in no particular order, print them off and then hang them on the wall. This way I can arrange and rearrange at random until I find the configuration that works. If I tried to stick to an outline, instead of writing what appealed to me in the moment, I would get so frustrated I would never finish what I started. Once I get the big chunks written and ordered, I then go back and fill in with my transition pieces so it doesn’t feel like it has been cut and pasted together – which it totally was.

Doing it this way keeps my big ideas in front of me, which I need because anything I can’t see doesn’t exist in my mind (just check my cabinets that need to be organized but I only remember that when I am digging for something for something I need to finish dinner and have no time). Also, it helps me to not be so repetitive, which I am horribly guilty of just check out Scandalous. I could have really cut some pieces of it for that reason, but oh well, too late now and I will fix it in the next edition. This was my first published book, so it was only practice, right?

I know this is starting to sound redundant, but that is what this whole process is – redundancy repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that all this is practice, this blog post, my rough drafts, the first editing, all of it practice, and you must give yourself permission to practice your art or you will never get better.

In the arts, there is a horrible myth that you are either born with it or you are not, and it has stopped so many people from even trying. When I was teaching oil painting classes almost everyday someone told me that “I wish I could paint, but I don’t have the skill.” As if they were supposed to wake up magically knowing how hold a palette knife, what reflected light was, or how to properly portray perspective, but with a little encouragement many of these people went on to paint pictures they now display in their homes with pride. Now, I hear the same thing from would-be writers as they fall prey to the same mentality.

The truth is writing takes practice just like any skill and if you are bad when you start, so what? I was, and I really hope Steinbeck was too, or I will just drown in depression because who doesn’t want to right like that? So stop trying to write a Nobel worthy piece, just write!

The good news is like any skill that is practiced writing gets easier with the repetition, and if you go at long enough there will be a day when someone asks you a question and writing out the answer isn’t work, it is like breathing.

If this is helpful, be sure to let me know. If you have further questions, ask those too and I will try to answer. If you have a great writing tip, please, share in the comments! Writers can always use another great idea.