“Only worship music is good music.”
I grew up with this belief, or something like it. I have trouble responding with any measure of clear-headedness when someone brings it back up, though I have been and am being convinced that valuable art is a much broader category than just worship music.
This is from a document for my novel:
I just read this: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/02/22/henry-miller-on-writing/
Miller echoes much of what I’ve read elsewhere. Namely, don’t write according to “Do I want to write right now?” Write according to a schedule or system, what he calls a program. Professional writers don’t wait around for inspiration—they work, and all that.
To some degree, I have done this. I did it more so when I was working on my first draft, when I could set a daily goal (2000 words). It’s more difficult now. I suppose I could set time periods. But this is difficult given that I write only when there’s nothing else to do. Writing always takes second seat.
I’m frustrated because I did nothing “worthwhile,” but upon considering what is worthwhile, I find that even those things that I would do if I could do it over again do not have as their motive anything more wholesome than what led to my wasted day. And when I fear the waste of a day when I see it on the horizon, I wonder if I fear not that the Lord loses me but that I lose productivity or growth or whatever idol it is that I worship. If it’s what I think it is, I wonder how many days I have that aren’t wasted.
Of course, I have to qualify this with what Dr. Svigel said. We’re at all times both sinner and saint. When we sin, we don’t wholly sin. When we do good, we don’t wholly do good.
The thing about the tower of Babel is that they probably would have finished it. The issue wasn’t that God was stopping them from failure. He was stopping them from success, lest they succeed in what would have been a small thing, in reality, but that would have convinced them of their greatness. God stopped them and scattered them lest they convince themselves that they didn’t need him.
Connect this with my own towers. I may actually be able to do these things.
Schol! Whatever that means.
Is it a joy to write?
Joy joy joy joy.
Yoj.
Yooooj. Yojoy. Joyoj. Joyoi. Oi oi oi!
I have kept myself from internet access for my past few writing sessions, and I am finding that in my off time I am still thinking of writing. In fact, it doesn’t seem as difficult to get into the writing mindset at all—when I have sat down to write-or-else. I am wondering if there is a connection, and it seems like there might be. Dr. Glahn mentioned how letting our attentions be drawn to other things constantly keeps us from really delving into things. Before, I would go to Facebook or to Netflix or to YouTube, and sometimes these would just be short trips, but I wonder if even these little distractions had serious repercussions.