Sunday, August 1, 2010

Beginning of a Novel

He hid in the back of the church, looking up at the cross. The mass of people around him and the noise of hymns being sung faded. It was all too overwhelming--too much for his young mind to take in {at once}. So he focused on the cross.

This giant, wooden cross had always been there. It was there during the Easter pageant when the men put on makeup, the ladies waved palm branches and a plastic baby Jesus occupied center stage. It had been there when he was caught racing down the center aisle and took the beating of his life for it.

The boy had been there many times before--or at least he felt like he had.

Writing

It is time I started writing again. I need to write about life--to celebrate the mundane, the exciting, the happiness, the sadness, the good and bad. The point is that I am not getting any younger and my thoughts are not becoming any clearer. It is time I started writing again.

Although I recently heard there is enough content generated every day to fill the NYT for the next 19 years, I feel there is a significant lack in quality. There is more content, more words and thoughts are put into the world for consumption or just to exist unread by no one except the author.

Writing is an art form in my mind. It is to be approached with humility and with a dedication to the craft. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I think it is something too many people do without giving thorough thought to what they are attempting to communicate. I feel the same way about communication in general. Many words are spoken--very little is communicated, very little truth is presented and precious little understanding is gained.