I’m really in a strange place right now. My friend Bunch pointed out to me that I have a tendency to take on more responsibility than most mere mortals can handle. I believe that’s what I’m doing right now. The thing is, I love everything I do. I feel passionately about every cause I involve myself with. The only problem is the limiting number of hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month…you get the idea. I simply haven’t the time to do everything I want to do.
I recently became involved in working with the youth group at my church again. Two weeks and two days in, I found myself taking the reins as the new youth coordinator while we are between official youth directors. I can’t be sure when I last felt this…whole. I love doing this job. I’d love to do it full time. As it is, I am using all of my free time to do it. As you may have noticed, I haven’t so much as submitted my long-ago-written haikus to the Website these past two Mondays. I hate to say it, but I think that my writing is the thing I have to back up from for the time being.
I enjoy my job at UPS. I do tire of boxes falling on my head and feeling exhausted at the end of every wok day to the point of collapse, but the job itself is fun. I enjoy the people that I work with. I like the atmosphere. Some people hate it, but it suits me just fine. You have to be tough to get through a year of working for UPS and still enjoy what you do. I think that’s what I like most about the job. I like the toughness that it requires.
You have to be tough to run a youth group as well. You have to have a thick skin and endless patience. It seems there are so many elements working against our youth, and I want to be there to protect them. I want to make sure no one ever judges them for who they are or discourages them from asking questions. I want to see them grow strong and brave. I’m willing to make any sacrifice and stand up to anyone who tries to beat them down. It takes a lot of energy.
When last I sat down to write, I was writing a scene in Nightfire. It was a scene that wasn’t in the outline, so I haven’t gone back to it, because I know scenes like that are important, and they require a lot of energy. I haven’t had the energy to spare. I don’t wish it any other way right now. I’m simply saying that I must rethink my priorities. You have to be tough to be a writer. You have to face rejection and criticism. You have to struggle with words and characters to get things just right. You have to challenge yourself with every page to be brave enough to say what must be said in the way that you know only you can say it. Writers are a contradiction if you think about it. At least all the ones I know. To seek publication is to be an exhibitionist. Yet writers must hole themselves away from the world in order to produce. We are the oxymoron of hermetic social butterflies. The catch is we can’t actually be both at the same time. Right now I’m being a social butterfly.
I have to be tough in order to succeed at any of these things. Yet, if I stretch myself out to try and do all three, I will be weak at every one. I have to stay with UPS, because it pays, and I have to eat. That leaves me with a choice: my writing or the youth. Right now, there just isn’t any question which path to choose. I’ve always seen my writing as a sort of ministry. I want for my readers the same thing I want for the youth group. I want them to be strong and realize that people are people, and God loves them regardless of what anybody else says. Working with the youth is a way of doing the same ministry face to face with the people I care about. It’s ironic that I wouldn’t want to let any of the youth to read my previous books. The situations are meant for older readers. I worry what would happen if a parent got the wrong idea about some of the things I’ve written—if they failed to see the symbolism in any given character or tale and thought I was endorsing behavior that I’m not. The message has always been: Individual people have their individual ways; don’t judge them for it; love them for it; God does. I have to acknowledge the fact that the cryptic nature of my allegories sometimes makes it unclear what I’m trying to say. Especially in Cry, Wolf. I think that’s the book I’m most concerned about. It’s so dark and tragic. Daniel’s story seems so hopeless. But it’s a story about choices. It’s a story about someone whose resolve crumbles at the instant his life veers from what he’d had in mind for it, and I tried to show, at the end, the alternative that the main character was ignoring. What if someone at my church reads it and misses the point? What if they decide I’m there to turn their teenagers away from God somehow? The bottom line is, I’ll just have to be tough. I believe in what I’ve written. I believe in the innate goodness of everyone I meet. I believe in a God who stands by us through every choice we make and forgives us for every mistake. I believe in a God who will look at these things, when we come to the end of our earthly road, and will laugh and say, “You were learning. That’s what life’s about.” I think that’s really the message I try to put into everything I write. To me, this is the most important thing to witness to people: You are as you were designed to be, and God loves you for it. So should we. So should everyone you meet. So don’t ever cower down to the people who tell you otherwise; no matter who they are or claim to be.
This is the message I want instilled in the hearts of everybody in the youth group, though my books are not the way to do it, as I said. So I’ll be backing off of my writing for a while, until they hire a new youth director, or until I find a way to make money without putting in all the hours at UPS. I’ll still write when time permits. I’m not retiring. I’d go mad. There will still be new things on the Website. I will still use this blog to keep you posted on new things I am working on. I’m just putting my primary efforts into something else for a while. If I come out a stronger person for it, then surely my writing will come back stronger as well. Good writing is fueled by experience after all.