Knees & Buns

I am sitting here, on buns with crossed knees.  And thinking, yes, still thinking, about "Knees & Buns."

Now, unless your name is Bekah or Kate or anyone else that has an obsession with Shauna Niequist (you can google "Knees & Buns" and read the chapter online), you have no idea what I'm talking about.  But, if you are Bekah or Kate, or a writer of any means, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's about the war of writring.  About actually sitting and straining and pumping words through your fingers.  It's about battling the fear of starting, about couraging against fear of being wordless or wisdomless, and throwing arrows at doubts nailing them hard and fast for deliverance.

My friend Katherine posted a quote I captured grasped:  "An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail" quoted Edwin Land.

I am afraid to fail.  I am afraid to start.

Most of my life, I've been a writer.  From Young Authors Conference in third grade to my English teacher's reviews in eighth grade, to detecting and composing a research book in sixth grade writing to an 200+ page novel in eighth grade.  My mom, my teachers, my writing friends were my editors, and I wrote away.  I mailed letters to authors to ask about their journey as a writer, and shadowed authors in high school to glean from their world.

People used to ask when I would publish, and I never wanted to.  At school age I was interested in the joy of writing, in college and recently, the art of writing.  In times of hardship, the processing of writing.  And in random days, the fun of writing.  But publishing, thats whole different sphere... that's intimidating.

Over the last five years, I have thought more and more about writing, and its unique presense in my life, and what it means to me.  I've started thoughts for books, then wrote a chapter or two, then pushed it away.  I've said the words, "when I have time to write" so many times the words at this point seem still allusive, and I like them that way.  Because it demands nothing of me.

To write is to give my soul.  It's to ask for wisdom and put it into words.

I don't want to write to just write, or write to simply entertain.  I want to write because I feel I have something to say, called to gift and challenge it to others, and know there is wheat to glean in their hands.

But then I freeze again and stare at the wall.  Because now I have time to write.  Because it is time to write.  Because it is time to courage the demands of fear and discouragement, the ones that tell me I have nothing to say, or that I don't know how to say it.

So today I sit on my buns and cross my knees.  Still frozen, for it's easier to write about writing, than to write.  It's easier to talk about writing, than to write.  Its easier to think about writing, than to write.

Okay, so then I leap forward a distance and cross the mountains to dare to start.  But then the next Everest looms at me: what to write.  To write fiction?  Fact?  Life experiences?  Bible Stories? To write in blog form or novel form?  Bible study composition or inspirational literature?

My favorite authors are those who can write a novel with religion so delicate into it, that the poignancy of the Truth is so covered in fiction that you are entertained while challenged with such severity that reading for fun reacts to reading into your life.

Examples as such are: Lisa Sampson's A Quaker Summer and The Church Ladies.  And Charles Martin's novels with characters words I scribe into quotes.  Or Francine Rivers novels that begin with her theological questions and spin it into stories, woven with Truth.

I want to write.  It's time to write.  But it's a war to write.  It's a war for knees and buns, words and truth, and wisdom into word.  It's searching for the style of the language in my soul, and composing into an art form that pierces others.

For now, I am stuck in the war of writing, the discipline of buns and knees, and the will to brave the starting.