www.andrewmackay.net:

Todd Anderson is a good friend. He’s also a good writer. A couple of days ago, Todd posted about a couple of things that he felt were necessary to being a successful writer.

I loved his opening paragraph:

There is a kind of intention that suffers continually from practical set-backs. A full heart and determined jaw is no match for a crying baby, or worse yet, a lazy mind.

I hate how dead on that is… but, Todd hit the nail right on the head. Thankfully, he’s got answers too.

As a bonus, I’ll add another one to Todd’s list… in addition to friends who are writing and the right stance, I’m going to add unabashed fans.

Egotistical? Perhaps. Ego-maniacal? Most likely. The thing is, when I most want to give up, having one of my dependable fans read what I’m working on gives me additional get-up-and-go. My number one fan? Undoubtedly my wife, who I can count on for solid support. She’s always honest, but she’s also always a fan. Without her, there are days where I’d probably give up the project I’m working on at the time.

Now, scoot… go over to Todd’s and read about how to lean.

I’m beginning to think that you guys would be better served if I simply hooked my blog up to an RSS feed of Michael Hyatt’s blog.

If you haven’t bumped into Mr. Hyatt before, he’s the CEO of Thomas Nelson and he is a blogger. He takes it seriously, too. The other day, he blogged about blogging — 5 points centered around the idea that content must come before traffic. He’s SO right!

It reminds me of a line from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The managing editor shoots down a story idea from the protagonist, saying “Andy, once you make your column a must read, you can write whatever you want. Until then, you’ll write whatever I want.” We’re meant to not be crazy about that character, even though within the business she’s attempting to run, she’s entirely right.

I think the most important point on Michael’s list is number 1. You think he did that intentionally? Perhaps.

Commit to a specific number of posts per week. Frequency is more important than you think. In fact, it is second only to the quality of your content. If you are writing good stuff, most people want to hear from you. My goal is five posts per week.

It’s like a commitment to your readers: if you come here at x interval, you will always find new material. It’s what I love about Challies.com — I know Tim will have something new up every day. I get home from work, and there’s something to read.

So, I’d encourage you — think about your blog. Think about your writing as a long term part of your life. Think about content first. If you build it… they will come. And throw a baseball around.

A special Monday Motivator for writers: for goodness sakes, go find some people to write with. Find real people, find internet people (most likely a 48-year-old man named Carl masquerading as a 22-year-old emo writer named Claire), find people at random in the phone book: find people you can encourage to write, find people that will encourage you to write.

A little tidbit from my own life: I had the privilege of sitting down with a couple of friends of mine who are writers struggling for structure and discipline, much like yours truly. The discussion was spirited — as they often are when all participants are excited about the topic — and resulted in some good goals being set. Will they be met? I sure hope so. In fact, I need to go work on that now.

My point, though, is that I haven’t been this excited about writing in several months. It’s good to have goals and accountability. If you’d endeavor to be a writer, go find some people who can help!

There’s an article posted here about what 30 top websites looked like 10 years ago. It’s interesting (and funny) because we’ve come a long way — for example, you can tell that clutter is no longer acceptable, clean design is king. Look at the BBC particularly. Wow. Talk about overkill.

Anyway, fun little look back… enjoy.

I recently finished reading Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl by N. D. Wilson. My previous exposure to Mr. Wilson came through one of his children’s books, Leepike Ridge. Leepike Ridge was a good book.

Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl was a great book. In fact, Notes… was the smartest book I’ve read in a while. It was like Blue Like Jazz, but with a point. (Can I say that without disparaging Mr. Miller, whose book I enjoyed? I hope I can.) In Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, Wilson presents an apologetic of art in motion. He walks us through the seasons of a year, showing us the art in both the good and the bad of each season. Rather than denying the difficult things that we encounter as we live in the world God has created, Wilson hits them head on, appealing to scripture and to art to help us understand the way things are. Whether dealing with the existence of God, matter, or good and evil, Wilson points back to the art underlying the world.

What is the world? What is it for? It is art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite… Assess it like that. And when you’re done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe (Wilson, p. 82).

Start to finish, the depth of thought that Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl provoked provided me with the deepest reading experience I’ve had in a good, long while. I encourage you to pick up this book. When you do, set aside twice as much time as you normally would for a book of 204 pages. It’ll be well worth it. I came out of it with a renewed appreciation as a writer for the Creator/Artist who put this all together, whose great art we imitate as we “create” worlds for our readers.

Occasionally I get a link to an article on the Onion. When I do, I usually end up cracking up. Today was no different. I received a link to this story at the Onion about a Science Fiction writer.

In Fournier’s novel, the idea that particles of energy can appear suddenly out of nowhere is used to explain events that might otherwise seem random, such as how a starship achieves light speed despite the total destruction of its engines in battle, why a loyal first officer suddenly decides to spy on behalf of the aliens who murdered his family, and what became of the security captain whose Southern accent was getting annoying to work with.

As I read this, I found myself thinking “I’ve read this guy’s novel!” Or at least novels very much like it.

So, what crutch is your pet peeve? Do you find yourself doing things that you know aren’t reflective of good writing but are easy? I know I do!

Tonight, we were cooking and I popped this album into the CD player. It has legs. Seriously… this is like 10 years later? (Stop to check their website… yep, released in 1999.) This album is well worth picking up if you never heard it… or even if you did. It’s a solid, no skips listening experience.

A lot of times when I go back to albums I loved, I find that I loved them in spite of their quality, not because of it. This album doesn’t fit that mold. Lyrically, it’s gold. There’s depth, there is beauty, there are really great analogies, like 40 Acres of redemption to be found just along, down the way.

Seriously, go buy it… from a store, from itunes, from wherever. You won’t regret it.

I hate to rub it in, but… I’m on Vacation! The skyline I’m looking at is, admittedly, nothing at all like the one in the picture. That’s okay though… I’m in my home and native land, Canada. It’s good to be in the Great White North. I’m working on things like diction and accent to make sure I don’t stray too far away from my roots.

Vacation is a time to sit down and reflect on things that take place when the world is moving at it’s usual frantic pace. Work, family life, time wasters, time consumers that aren’t wastes… during this week of “chillin’ out”  (I felt so cool typing that), I’ll have time to think constructively about all those things. Plus, I get to enjoy my family, play with my little boy whenever I can, and drink too much coffee and eat too much ice cream.

Yeah, you gotta love vacation!

Michael Hyatt had a beautiful post the other day about not quitting. Using marriage as the example, he explains his emphasis on looking for reasons to keep on going. He’s very keen to the tricks our minds will play on us:

But notice: I’m not asking “Why should I quit?” because I will get answers to that question too. The mind is tricky that way. It will attempt to answer whatever question you ask it, so you must be very careful with how you frame the question. Instead, I focus on the positive. I am looking for reasons to keep going.

I thoroughly enjoyed the post for its message and its delivery. I hope you do too.

There’s a great post at Communicate Jesus that helps people to think about creative people who are Christians and whether or not they should provide their work to the church for free.

Paul bankrolled a bunch of very important creative enterprises. One was Christian television. I know that he backed Clifford Warne and his puppets and Bible stories and sent him to America so Clifford knew how to write and produce children’s television … One of the reasons he was so effective was that he paid the Christian creatives around him.

This is something I’ve put a little bit of thought into — I think it’s really a matter of scale. If a believer is contributing their talents to a side project without greatly detracting from their ability to make a living, that’s okay as “free work” goes. On the other hand, when the scale of the work is big enough to require the person forgo opportunities to make a living, I think it behooves the church to pay for the work.

It’s kinda like this: if we have a plumber in our congregation and he installs a new faucet for us and doesn’t want to bill us, I probably won’t quibble. On the other hand, if the plumber has to take a week to entirely re-plumb our facility, forgoing other jobs, I think we pay him for his work in 99.9% of the cases. Same goes for a designer or… pretty much anyone else.

What do you think?