I was listening to a podcast (The Habit) where the host, Jonathan Rodgers, was interviewing Tish Harrison Warren and Doug McElvey about their writing on the ordinary. We can see that word as "boring, mundane, no impact" or as "daily, particular, real." Life is so daily; life is so ordinary. Doug McElvey said that he was raised in a "tradition" that had no tradition and that emphasized doing something big and influential and dramatic on the world stage for God. He seemed to say he had a personal crisis where he realized he didn't love--God or people. And that became his goal. I like that testimony. I am facing it now a bit. "I Came to Love You Late" would be my spiritual biography's title. It's actually the title of book from the '70s about Martha. I can relate.
The Idea #27 is tongue in cheek. But these are some ideas about writing fiction, which I have done in ten novels (and counting), a dozen short stories, and two produced plays (I know, not exactly the same). Background: In 2015 a colleague and I wrote an open educational resource public speaking textbook for a grant provided by our University System. We didn't realize at the time that it would go viral and be used all over the world within a few years. There are two reasons for that: it is good (as good as anything on the market) and it is free, although only in digital form. Check out www.exploringpublicspeaking.com for it. We also didn't know at the time that my co-author would die at 39 in 2016. I still miss him. Back to the point, I receive requests for the test banks every other day, and this morning I received one from Pennsylvania. The writer had a signature line: "Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in t...
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