Stepping it Up a Notch
Sunday, July 5th, 2009One of my long-time dreams is to write. Not sure if I will ever actually publish anything, but I have thought for most of my 51 years that I would like to at least try.
But I haven’t had the nerve to really take the risk of really giving it a shot. As I have been working on my own Soul writing about writing, I have been trying to figure out what is blocking me from even trying it out. There is a fear of rejection, yet that reason is not the greatest one, and that surprised me. Instead of being afraid of rejection, my biggest fear has been of being ignored. The idea is that I would invest my energy and time only to find what I write about being dismissed as irrelevant.
One of the purposes of my blog is to try to get past that fear. The fear is still present, because so far my blog posts only get a few readers. Part of the reason I’ve decided is that I haven’t followed through on the commitment to write regularly. So I am trying to step up the regularity of my posting. Not sure if I will get to the daily post rhythm anytime soon, but I am going to try to write something everyday even if I don’t publish it every day.
Which leads me to my second conclusion about my marginal readership: the quality of my writing. So far, I have intentionally seen my blog posts as raw. In order to not get stuck in my fear of how my writings will be received, I have just written and not dwelt on them very long. Some minimal editing to make sure I don’t sound like a complete fool, but so far, what you see are the first drafts of the ideas as they come. While some will continue to be that way (like this one), I want to step up the quality of my posts. So while I want to write something everyday, there will be some posts that I will work on for a few days before publishing. My hope is that as the quality increases I can gain more confidence in my attempts.
But what will I write about? I have two major themes and sets of ideas that keep recurring in my life.
One theme is church renewal. That is a wide ranging realm of thought, yet lately the Rethink Church marketing program has given me some hooks for the thoughts that have been deepening in my heart for the 20+ years of my ministry. In May, I offered a preaching series on Rethink Church that has been tying together my thoughts on church renewal and the place of spirituality in that endeavor. So that will be one area that will see some edited posts.
The other theme is a combination of themes. I have already ventured into that realm. Part of it is the enneagram and that powerful view of how we operate as persons of God. The other part of that combination is using the ancient elements of the western world as a map for spiritual growth and development.
I guess, I write about this as a public declaration of what my hope is for this blog as well as for diving into this old dream of mine.
I welcome any encouragement you might give. Thanks.
