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@hope-ann You miss the point of our affectionate outburst! We have achieved an admirable balance between logic and emotion, such that we can revel in the depths of a conversation that stimulates the intellect, and then express our appreciation of that stimulation by way of a warm and congenial expression of our feelings! It’s really the best of both worlds!

Because the conversation was “logic and such”, we took delight in it! Sue me for enjoying a stimulating conversation, and then expressing said enjoyment.

😛

Now. That’s almost entirely in jest. I understand where you are coming from and for the majority of my life, I was also on the non-hugging side of humanity. Then a young woman came into my life who showed me the value and importance of emotions, and I’ve been a much more balanced, whole person since. Even now that she is no longer in my life, I’ve retained the lessons God taught me through her and have a healthy respect for emotion that I didn’t have a few years ago. It’s a part of me, and it’s a beautiful thing to learn how to express healthily.

Good grief. XD I didn’t intend to lecture so seriously.

And for the record, I’m not sappy, I just cry in sad movies, okay? There’s a difference.

I think.

@kate @daeus-lamb @raemarie @wordsmith

To all now: Any conversation that ends in some kind of paradox, cycle, or balance between two extremes is one that I feel has been successful and edifying to all involved. This is one of those conversations.

We all fall on different spots on the spectrum or cycle, and yet we all have the same goal of achieving balance and effectiveness in our journey as Christian individuals and writers. We are not our stories, and our stories are not us; but we are very much in our stories, and our stories reflect us.

Put another way, you cannot divorce a sincere author from their works. There is a certain level of interaction between the two that make it nearly impossible, in that sense, to write only for money (to bring us back to the original question), or to write purely for fun (to bring us to the secondary question).

Another element that I like about this conversation is something that Hope brought out in one of her replies – that even though we will write better in the future, we have to do the best we can now. I like this because it brought a parallel in my mind to our lives as Christians. At the end of our lives, we will be more sanctified than we are now. We will obey Christ more consistently and love Him more fully.

Compared to the promise we have of a more sanctified future, our present failing can be discouraging. But it does not excuse us from living our lives for His glory to the best of our ability now! Our future growth is predicated upon our present failures. You cannot get to the peak of a mountain without being not on the peak at first.

I’m not trying to paint a dismal picture of the Christian walk. It is a joyous thing, growing brighter and brighter until noonday. But what I am trying to express appreciation for is the integration that I see between the three aspects of us growing as writers, Christians, and individuals. In each area, we are constantly growing, and if we believe the promises of God, we will be better in the future than we are now.

And yet there’s a paradoxical impulse that resolves itself with our present state and pushes us to be the best that we can be in the moment.

If we are approaching life and writing with all of these aspects (self, Christianity, writerness) wrapped up inseparably into one, then I think we will be much more authentic and sincere – in each of those areas.

 

Concerning what Daeus said about books/writing being a legitimate part of life – I absolutely agree. Simply because we came to a realization through our own writing (like Hope did) or through the writing of another, does not make it any less legitimate or impactful than if we had come across the same realization in ‘real’ life.

There is a sense in which we can say that if we experience something, it is real. Not to say that our experience creates truth or reality, but that our experience of truths, in whatever format we encounter them, are real and valid experiences of the truth.