The book is here!

Actually, it's been here for a while, but I kept forgetting to post something about it. The book is called "Psalmist's Cry: Scripts for Embracing Lament." We (The Work Of The People) pitched a wacky project to The House Studio, and this is the result.  A DVD with 5 interviews with Walter Brueggemann produced by TWOTP and a companion resource in the form of a book (written by yours truly) published by The House Studio.

Someone asked me "What was it like to work with a publisher?" In a word, wonderful. I'm keenly aware that all writers need an editor. Never more so than when I'm scribbling these babbling blog musinging all by my lonesome. That last sentence, unecessary. The self reflection in the last sentence reagarding the second to last sentence, even more unecessary. See, I told you.

It was wonderful working with Kristen Allen, editor at The House Studio. Apart from being a kind and gracious person, at the core she provided a different perspective that was outside of myself. Sounds kind self evident. Well, okay, it is self evident. But I think it's one of those "so simply true it's profound" things. I think we as humans need input in our lives that is both different from our perspective and outside of our perspective. We can imagine a different perspective (which is empathy, which is the gensis of compassion) but it's imagined from within our own perspective. Nothing is a substitute for the unassailable truth of the perspective of another human. As a writer, it's invaluable. The editor/writer metaphor is quite handy and extends to many aspects of life in general. Every writer needs an editor, every editor needs a writer.

I've told my friends Don, Stephen and Travis, that they're on every page of this book. Not just indirectly in that their friendship shapes me and shapes how I see the world, but in direct ways too. Their ideas, experiences, strenghts and foibles get cooked together with my ideas, experineces, strenghts and foibles in jambalaya brain stew. Our conversations (my words and their words) bring language to otherwise ethereal thoughts. That's a pretty important part of writing. Again, writers never write alone. Writing is a much more collaborative process than we hero worshipping Westerners might like to think it is. Yes, someone has to sit down and do the work of getting ideas into language. I'm not denying a writer has the critical role to play in brain mist becoming "a book." But the criticality of one role doesn't have to conflict with the intrinsically collaborative nature of the process.

It isn't like the writer is the only one with the thoughts captured in a book. Lots of people have similar thoughts, or related thoughts, or tangental thoughts. The writer just pulls them all together in way that's accesible and rememberable. [rememberable? editor!] No one reads a book they completely disagree with, or in no way understand. When you read a book you get confirmation on some of your thoughts, you stretch them, flesh them out, add to them, and then you discover a few completely new thoughts along the way. When you read a book, parts of the book are alreay in your head, a good book helps you get a hold of the bits and pieces already floating around in there, and, as an added bonus, gives you a few new bits and pieces.

So a writer isn't like this lone hero toiling away in the sequesterd bowels of creative frenzy in order to bestow upon the world his or her unique and startling perspective on things. Writing is like collaborating with the people around you, near and far, to make a book you'd all like to read.

With that in mind, I think I'm going to start using this blog, at least in part, as a collaborative platform for the manuscript I'm working on. Maybe it'll become "a book" that we'd all like to read. Yay books.

Posted via email from The Broken Wing