#writing

The Ever-Growing Mountain of Words

A few days ago I reflected on the human brain, God’s masterpiece. Those reflections came as I read the popular book Moonwalking With Einstein, a book that deals with the art and science of remembering everything (or anything, for that). The first lesson is the one I shared in “God’s Masterpiece”–that the human brain is a remarkable creation that screams the existence of God. The second lesson is a very simple one: there are no foolproof shortcuts to memorizing. There …

The Joy of Rejection

Marco Ament’s The Magazine is a new iPad-only magazine that publishes four or five medium-length articles every two weeks. The articles cover a wide variety of subjects targeted largely at geeks and curious people. I think I probably qualify under both headings. It’s a unique publication and one I’ve generally enjoyed, though, as with every magazine, there are both hits and misses. The November 7 issue featured a hit by Harry Marks, an aspiring novelist, who wrote about “The Problem …

Become a Patron

How to Start a Blog

It was not too long ago that blogging was all the rage. Everyone was beginning a blog and everyone was talking about this exciting new medium. Today you are more likely to hear declarations that blogs are defunct, passe, a vestige of an era that has already come and gone. I say “Stuff and nonsense!” Blogs continue to flourish. The very popularity of blogs is proof that there is a lot of room for more of them; we are a …

Words Stamped on a Page

Earlier this week I read the book The Shallows by Nicholas Carr–the guy who wrote the infamous article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” It’s a fantastic book and addresses many of the kinds of questions I’ve been asked and (hopefully) answering in my own book. Seriously, you should consider reading it. Carr looks primarily to what the internet is doing to our brains, to the way we think and even to the way we perceive ourselves. And inevitably he spends …

The Writer’s Life

So here I sit at 8:09 AM on a Thursday morning wondering what I am going to say today. There are times when I find writing this blog a great joy and there are times where I find it a heavy burden. Those tough times are blessedly few. Today I feel neither; I suppose I’m somewhere between. Sometimes I think well ahead and very occasionally even write posts a day or two in advance. Usually I sit down in the …

Making Progress by Writing

A question I am asked quite often goes something like this: “Do you ever have a day where you just do not want to write anything?” Are there ever days when the absolute last thing I want to do is to sit down and write? I can answer, quite honestly I think, that this happens only very rarely. There are definitely times where I don’t feel like I have much to say (and some would argue more than others, I …

Living it and Writing it

I graduated from college in 1995 (Or so. To be honest, I don’t even remember exactly what year it was), having earned a degree in history. That degree did not open up the world of possibilities I had obviously thought it might when I first chose history as my major three years before. With few options available to me, and suffering from a lack of motivation, I decided I had better find some kind of employment, even if it did …

More Tips for Better Blog Writing

At this rate no one is ever going to take the blogosphere seriously. And it’s all Justin Taylor and Abraham Piper’s fault.* Well, I guess it’s not really their fault, but I think they’ve got some things wrong. Yesterday Abraham, guest-posting on Justin’s site, wrote an article entitled “Tips for Better Blog Writing.” Earlier this year Abraham was thrust into the role of being Desiring God’s primary blogger and in this post he reflects on the things he has learned. …

“Of Making Many Books…”

As you may know, I am in the midst of writing my first book. I am now four months into what I hope will be a six-month writing period. This will be followed many many months of editing, proofing and whatever else happens between the time a manuscript is submitted and a book arrives in the mail. If you have read this site for any length of time, you’ll know that I am a lover of books and that I …