Every now and then, when I’m leading Bible study at my congregation, I like to play a game I call “Stump the Pastor.” I throw open the floor to questions from the participants about anything or everything. And those are always interesting sessions, because I have to stay on my toes and think fast.

Well, I thought we’d play a version of that today. A little under a year ago, my debut novel, Failstate, was published by Marcher Lord Press. In a few weeks, the sequel, Failstate: Legends will be released (and have you seen the cover art yet? I’m still grinning from that!).

So if you want to ask a still relatively recently published author something or whatever, go ahead and leave your question in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Keep me on my toes, folks.

I’m writing this post after having just returned from the theater for a late night showing of Zero Dark Thirty. It’s a film that has attracted a lot of attention for its portrayal of the events surrounding what is arguably the greatest manhunt of all time – the search for Osama Bin Laden. And while this blog post is not intended to be a film review, there was something in the film that captured my attention so much I felt compelled to include it in my post today.

In a word, it was…Pursuit.

The narrative of the film focuses, for the most part, on a young CIA analyst named Maya who has committed her life to one thing and one thing alone – finding Bin Laden. To say the pursuit of Osama is Maya’s job would be a dire understatement. In fact, Maya’s investigative resolve hardens so much through the film that it eventually becomes a personal obsession. Months drag on to years marked with frustrations, dead-ends and life-threatening assignments around the globe. But she never gives up. Maya is dedicated to this task. Somewhere along the line she has made a sacred promise with herself and she will never stop no matter what happens – or how long it takes.

One of the things that struck me the most about this film is that it was not the polished and glamorized manhunt film we’ve come to expect from hollywood. It’s a far cry from a The Fugitive, Bourne Identity or even an episode of 24. No, this movie was much more about the monotony of research and the thankless and lonely life of an investigator than it was the thrill of the raid and the fulfillment of a dream. And I guess that’s what connected with me most as a writer.

Good writers are tenacious. It’s a necessity of the job. It’s not sexy or glamorous. At times its downright boring. But once we get ahold of a story, we must see it through to its end – no matter what the cost. We are, like Maya, investigators into the speculative “what if’s” of the case. It matters little if we are writing a fantasy, romance, adventure or thriller, the rules of the world must still be determined, the background and motive of every key character must be noted and sometimes we must be willing to backtrack, retrace our steps and question our own perceptions about the plot we have already written. It is in the trenches of writing, the daily grind of small word counts, backward progress and seemingly incoherent ideas, that a book will be forged and a victory will eventually be won. We must be tenacious, or we are doomed to fail.

Having successfully published four novels in the past five years, I’m often approached by others who have a desire to write a book someday, and they ask me what it is they can do to get published. The answer is never quite as simple as they’d like. The truth of the matter is that “getting published” is a route that looks different for every author and requires as much divine intervention as it does skill. Some of the most skilled writers I know still have unfinished or unpublished manuscripts in their file drawers. Why? The reasons for this are as diverse as the stories themselves, but one thing is certain – if you give up you’ll never succeed.

So, for those of you struggling with your writing (and I still count myself among you), allow me to offer this suggestion – be tenacious this year. Make a promise to yourself that you WILL finish that manuscript. Stick with it, no matter how long it takes. If you truly are a writer you will finish what you start. There is no stopping half way. Writing a book is not a sprint, it is a marathon. It will take everything out of you and leave you battered and bruised from the fight. But if you are committed, if you’ve set your eyes on the prize, you will find a way to finish strong.

But before you start pounding away at that novel – a word of warning.

In the final moments of the film, after Maya has accomplished all that she has set out to do, she is asked a question as she boards a plane alone. It is a simple question really, one that she should have asked herself years ago but never allowed herself time to ask it. The question was this: “Where do you want to go?” The question stops her dead in her tracks. She’s spent her entire career seeking this one man, that now, when she finally finishes what she set out to do, she has no clue who she is anymore. She doesn’t know where to go from here or what to do with her life. She cannot answer that question and it is a tragedy. In many ways, her pursuit had only just begun.

It was this moment that reminded me that it’s not enough to simply have a dream to write. You must know WHY you are writing. What is it that you hope to accomplish with your life. You must make your life about something bigger than yourself – something that will last long after you finish your novel or capture Bin Laden.

Why do you write? What are you really pursuing?

The answer will likely be different for everyone, but for me the only answer that makes the most sense comes from Matt 6:33

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

I love this verse, because it always helps me to focus my mind on what matters most. If I’m not intentional about pursuing God’s kingdom first, I may one day find myself like Maya – with no life to “go back to” when it’s over.

So, what are you pursuing? Are you pursuing your own glory or are you pursuing the kingdom of God? If writing is your gift, why not write in pursuit something that matters today. By knowing why you write, you will be empowered to continue writing when the going gets tough.

NOTE: Due to the nature of the subject of the film, Zero Dark Thirty contains obscene language and graphic violence. This post is not intended to be an endorsement or recommendation of the film.

Thanks so much to all of you who participated in both Phase 1 (posting entries) and Phase 2 (giving thumbs up to the ones you liked best) of the Winter Writing Challenge. We now have our three finalists. I’ve reposted their entries below, followed by the official poll to determine the 2013 winner. You will be able to vote only once for only one entry to determine who will receive the $25 gift card to either Amazon or Barnes and Noble. The poll closes at midnight (Pacific time), Sunday, January 20.

The entries are re-posted in alphabetical order by last name of the author. The poll will randomize the selections.

Selection A by David Alford

If the reports were true, Galen had reached the right spot. 2018. Winter Olympics. Westfield Investments. His finger paused an inch above the play button. Then descended sharply.

He remembered this one. That was the year he’d gotten that really bad flu and missed work for like 6 or 7 days. He’d rolled his eyes each time it had come on, muttering parodies of the advertizer under his breath. Now he couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. It was in here somewhere.

He punched the pause button. Bottom left corner. He wiped sweat from his forehead as he jotted down the ten digit number on his hand and rose. They were probably in the building already.

His hurried footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the Repository. One more glance behind and he reached the back stairwell. Call! He pushed the door closed behind him, breathed, and pulled his phone from his pocket.

2-0-4

He was taking the steps two at a time now.

3-8-5

Today, a bad flu didn’t seem so bad.

1-7-4-2.

He put the phone to his ear.

Selection B by Austin Gunderson

If the reports were true, Galen had reached the right spot.  If they were false, he’d likely never stumble upon a wronger spot at a wronger time.  And, if that neurotoxin hadn’t yet cleared from his brain stem, their veracity wouldn’t make much difference either way.

“Fitgers?” he whispered, blinking against the incessant drizzle and the blackness vignetting his vision, “Fitgers, where are you?  I told you to keep this channel open!”  His own voice warbled in his ears as if it’d bubbled up out of some viscous pool.  With effort he lowered his head, remembering to breathe.  The great black pit yawned patiently at his feet.

His earpiece stuttered to life.  “Sagacity to Away One.  Get out of there immediately!  Sir.”

“Can’t,” Galen warbled, “Shuttle’s gone.”  He glanced up at the red smoke bleeding all over the green sky.

“Are you mad?  You’re risking hundreds of lives for the sake of one—”

“I made a promise to his wife, Fitgers.  You’re acting captain now.  Start acting like it.”

A long pause.  Galen, not without amusement, imagined the man’s reddening face.  “Fine,” Fitgers bit out at last, “I’m instituting an emergency command reconstitution.  Captain Galen Kolbeth, you are hereby relieved—”

Galen smacked his wristplate with the heel of his hand, silencing the acting captain.  He’d never before thought of his aethercom power switch as a point of no return.  No, he corrected himself, you passed that point two weeks ago.  With a brief grimace and few rapid breaths, Galen launched himself out over the pit.

Selection C by Timothy Hicks

If the reports were true, Galen had reached the right spot. He glanced down at his chronoguage, then tapped the display with his index finger in frustration. A green LED pulsed a steady rhythm, illuminating the chrongauge faceplate and his jumpsuit’s silver sleeve.

“If this is it, where is my contact?”, Galen yelled. A cold wind howled in answer, stirring up little dust devils in the sandy desert floor. Galen folded his collar higher around his neck, and shoved both hands into his pockets. He stamped numb feet,turning in a slow circle.

Moonlight lit the sands a harsh white, and cactus shadows wrote long, capital letters in black. The wind stopped; replaced by total silence. The sound of small rocks and sand crunching beneath shoes drew near. Galen turned to watch a figure approach and stop a few feet away.

“Oh, you’re here already? Has it already begun, then?”, the figure said.

Galen straightened, and slid his hands from his pockets. “Are you my contact?”

The figure laughed and stepped closer. “You might say that. We’ve met before.”

“No, I don’t remember you.”

“You will.” Galen’s face stared back from the figure. “Hurry now to your future, and my past”

Since our launch in 2008, my small publishing house, Marcher Lord Press , has billed itself as “the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction.” We were premier in the sense of “first,” and also, I hoped, in the sense that we would remain at the forefront even when other small presses eventually joined our ranks.

Our niche is that segment of Christians who love fantasy, science fiction, time travel, superhero, and all the rest of the wonderfully weird genres. We target Christians who love Big Bang Theory, Christians who shop at ThinkGeek.com, and Christians who would go to Comic-CON if given half a chance.

Since 2008, we’ve racked up three Christy Award finalist nominations and two wins, something like ten ACFW Carol Award finalist nominations and three straight wins, a number of EPIC and Indie and Inspie nominations and wins, and several positive reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and USA Today Online, including a coveted “starred review” in Publishers Weekly.

One of the advantages of running your own publishing company, especially one that doesn’t try to get its wares into brick and mortar bookstores, is that you can publish anything you jolly well please. It used to be that Christian bookstores (and, sometimes, the very conservative patrons of those bookstores) controlled what could and couldn’t be published by Christian publishers. One complaint from these folks, and a book could die. Multiple complaints, and there was big trouble. But with a small press selling online, this is not an issue.

That’s both good and bad. The good is that you can publish any book you want to publish. The bad is that…you can publish any book you want to publish. It used to be that those folks at bookstores were drawing the line in the sand about what could and couldn’t be published. Now, there is no line. Now it’s up to the individual publisher as to what will be published. The mantle of censorship, so to speak, has now been placed on my shoulders and on the shoulders of any indie publisher.

In late 2011, one of my MLP authors came to me with an idea. He was disappointed with the latest volume in George R. R. Martin’s hugely popular secular epic fantasy series that began with Game of Thrones. My author wanted to produce “the Christian answer to Martin.” He wanted to write an epic not only in scope but in actual size—he wanted a book as big as Martin’s. A typical novel runs around 100,000 words. A typical MLP novel runs around 125,000 words. This one was set to be more than 200,000 words (and ended up being even larger, as you’ll see).

But the story idea was going to push the boundaries of Christian fiction. It was to be a warfare book, so there would be lots of violent content—but that wasn’t a problem for me. I often laugh that traditional Christian fiction is allowed to have so much violence. You can have a body count as high as the sky…but you can’t say dang or have a couple French kiss. Anyway, I wasn’t bothered by the prospect of violence in the book.

What threw me was that the author felt very strongly that the book needed to have vulgarity (which, he informed me, is different from profanity), nudity, and even sex. He had one scene in mind especially, the reunion between a husband and wife when the man comes home from war. He wanted his book to be a corrective to secular fantasy fiction, which almost never shows sexual conduct between married people but seems rather to glorify adultery.

Indeed, much of his novel was imagined as a corrective to secular fantasy. He wanted to show the Christian faith as a positive influence, for instance. He wanted to show Christian clergy as real people—some good, some bad—instead of as the uniformly sinister and corrupt hypocrites that secular fantasy shows them.

In many ways, this epic fantasy was designed to be the fiction equivalent of a Christian standing up in the middle of, say, Comic-CON and saying, “I love all the things you guys love and are doing, but you’re missing the most crucial aspect, the aspect that matters for eternity. Come over to my booth, and I’ll explain what I mean.” It was, in a sense, a work of apologetics (which has nothing to do with apologizing, btw).

So then the decision fell to me. Of course I wanted to create the Christian answer to Martin, not just for the large audience we’d be sure to attract-slash-irritate, but also because of the author’s noble intent.

But could I publish a book with vulgarity, nudity, and sex? That was the real question. What would my mom think, you know? What would all the awesome homeschooling moms who love MLP think? What would my other authors think? I tell you, this decision drove me to my knees. I spoke to my wife, my advisors, and my stable of authors.

I ultimately felt that God was allowing me to go forward with it, so we did.

In terms of the mature content, about the only thing I changed in editing was to scale back that husband/wife reunion sex scene. The author wrote it out explicitly, leaving it to me to decide where to draw the line. Ack. I scaled it back a couple of times until I could read it without freaking out.

Meanwhile, during the editing of the book, word was getting out that we were heading toward the launch of this book. One woman wrote me to say that we were no longer a Christian company and when I came back to God I could drop her a note and she’d think about supporting us again. I expected that sort of thing.

What I hadn’t expected was the support I received. I had a number of authors—some were my own authors and some were folks who had despaired of ever finding a publishing outlet for their mature Christian novels—privately tell me how much an answer to prayer this new development was to them.

Things were going along pretty well until two days before the book was to release. I got a note from the folks at a prominent Christian fiction writers group in America saying that if we released this book, they would take MLP off their list of approved publishers. That meant that all MLP books would not be eligible for their annual award.

As much as I believed in this book and its author and our goals, I was not prepared to let one book sabotage the chances of all my other authors receiving an award I think has value.

Oh, the drama. Was I going to cancel the book? Was I going to go through and remove everything this organization found objectionable? Was I going to hurt all my other authors? Was I going to succumb to what some folks said amounted to blackmail? (I didn’t think it was blackmail, by the way. I saw it as them adhering to their guidelines.) Remember, this was all happening 36 hours before the book was set to release.

I finally asked the organization if it would change anything if I created a new imprint and released the book under that imprint. They said, “Oh, yeah. If you did that, the problem would go away.”

“Really?” sez I. “All my other books would still be eligible for the award?”

“Sure.”

And thus, Marcher Lord Hinterlands was born, a brand new imprint for one book (so far).

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day released on December 1, 2012. It weighed in at just under 300,000 words and over 850 pages in hardcover. It is currently our overwhelming bestseller both in hardcover and in e-book.

Now I’m looking to release more titles in the Hinterlands imprint. I’ve got some good prospects, but nothing solid yet, except further books in Day’s series.

What came to us like a crisis—the sudden need to form a separate imprint—has resulted in nothing but good. Instead of trying to re-imagine all of MLP with this book in it, we can keep these “mature” books separate. People had suggested the imprint idea to me previously, but it wasn’t until this came up that I was willing to do it.

What does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean to not smoke, not drink, not cuss, not play cards, not dance, not have tattoos or piercings, not watch R-rated movies, and not do a hundred other things? Does it mean to do certain things, like always tithing and always being in church whenever the doors are open or wearing the right clothes and hairstyles or listening to the right radio stations or voting the right way?

I contend that Christianity is not about the do’s and don’ts (including the do’s and don’ts of what a Christian publishing company might release) but about what Christ has done for us.

My pastor has been on a journey of discovery of grace these last eight months, and it has been an amazing thing to travel it with him. His most recent sermon talked about how well-meaning Christians like to raise the standards for who can “get in” to Christianity, but only after they’re already in. Most of us wouldn’t be allowed in if the standards we want to apply to others had been applied to us. But Christ was all about lowering the bar, about welcoming to Him anyone who would come. He didn’t even cast away people who came for the wrong reasons.

Does Christianity consist of the thou-shalt-nots we can think of? Or does it consist of loving Him right in the middle of our imperfections and sins and bad habits? Do we have to become purified before He will take us? And after He takes us, do we have to purify ourselves or He won’t keep us?

I know it sounds like I’m saying that sin doesn’t matter. I’m not. But what I’m saying is that Christianity is more than rules. It’s about grace.

That’s all been helpful to me as I’ve contemplated Marcher Lord Hinterlands. Yes, it’s an effort to be evangelistic, to get those without Christ to be exposed to the gospel through science fiction and fantasy. But that’s not all Hinterlands is. It’s also a desire to publish what I like.

Many Christians need to avoid R-rated movies, but some Christians can watch such movies and not stumble. That doesn’t mean anything about who has more or less worth to Christ, because that’s the same for both. It just means that there are Christians who can handle, and even desire to explore, stories with this sort of content. They can be grittier and, in some senses, more realistic.

I know this is a lightning rod. (That’s probably part of why I like it.) I’m under no illusion that all Christians will approve of what we’re doing here. That’s okay, because it’s not before them that I’ll stand in judgment. But I’ve been pleased that Hinterlands is giving encouragement to so many who have heard of it.

I think it might just be touching on a need that some of us, myself included, didn’t even know was there waiting to be filled.

– – – – –

Jeff Gerke trains novelists how to better do what it is they’re trying to do. He trains through his three books for Writers Digest: Plot Versus Character, The First 50 Pages, and How To Write a Novel in 30 Days—and What To Do with It Next. He trains through his online video training program called FictionAcademy.com, a part of BestsellerSociety.com. He trains through the many writers conferences he teaches at all over the country every year. And he trains through the freelance editing he does for his clients. Jeff is the founder of Marcher Lord Press, the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and three children. Contact him at www.marcherlordpress.com, www.FictionAcademy.com, www.BestsellerSociety.com, or on the Marcher Lord Press Facebook page.

If you love Star Wars, either casually or intensely, you have a favorite character especially from the prequel films, right? Surely that favorite would be Anakin Skywalker, eight years old, from Episode I: The Phantom Menace. That childlike innocence and free spirit just gets to you every time, doesn’t it? Powerful Darth Vader (as an adult) or roguish, shoot-first Han Solo? Pfshhh. You’ll take that blond-headed “now-this-is-pod-racing” waif any day.

Or switch Star universes. You think all those adults on the starship Enterprise, Captain Kirk, First Officer Spock — or Captain Picard, Cmdr. Data, First Officer Riker and the rest — can don red shirts and head off on away missions. On any stardate you’d much prefer hanging out with (or being) Wesley Crusher in that trim little gray shirt with the rainbow stripes.

Of course all that is sarcasm. More likely, you have no such inclinations.

Such desires do not belong to most readers from planet Earth.

In that case, why do so many (not all) Christian novels keep presenting only kid-Anakin or Wesley Crusher, instead of Han Solo or Captain Picard, and expect readers to like them?

Alas, this applies to some Christian speculative novels, including one that I read months ago. (No, I won’t give the title here. Anyway, this applies to more than one author or novel.)

In such novels, I keep wanting to meet and empathize with characters who are, for lack of a better adjective, heroic Christians. A Christian Han Solo or a Christian Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Or for that matter, someone of the robust personality, ambitions, and deep suffering of the Apostle Paul. Someone who despite his faults is committed to Christ and has been for years. Someone to whom I can look up, rather than looking down at or even across to him.

Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t desire only such “tough” good-guy characters. Any story needs to have a protégé, a trainee or newcomer. This is especially true in fantasy universes full of strangeness: you need someone who is “normal,” an audience access-point or avatar.

But I am referring to stories whose “Christian” access-point characters are only ever naïve, silly, simplistic, “folk theologians,” and/or dairy factories of spiritual milk (Heb. 5: 12-13).

And note that when I refer to “Christians” in this column, and throughout this new serial, I also cover any fantasy-universe equivalents. People of the Path, the king’s mages, Light-Bearers, White Knights, resistance movements, Forces of Truth, Greater Galactic Guilds, Followers of the Eternal Flame, whichever — I cover them all by the term “Christian.”

Do adults prefer kid-Anakin to Han Solo? Who do even children prefer?

In these novels, rather than an appealing ensemble cast of accomplished heroes along with newcomers, I meet only kid-Anakin or Wesley Crusher, without even the redemptive arc for Anakin in the original Wars films or the maturity and better storylines for Wesley in later TNG seasons. Rather than questers, I meet jesters. Instead of Jedi knights, I meet naïve little children — or worse, Jar Jar Binks — along for the mission mainly to cause difficulties.

Here’s what I mean. In one novel set in the real world, one character was a non-Christian. Of the Christian characters he meets on his journey, all are one or more of the following:

1. Reclusive,
2. Spiritual-milk generators or “folk theologians,”
3. Child-People.

Furthermore, it’s the non-Christian lead who is the most empathetic of the whole bunch. He’s more balanced, has a steady and professional job, and time enough for a long Jedi-like quest. Meanwhile, the Christians are simple farm boys who never leave the farm. And yet one of the novel’s themes is how he should become more like them. What’s all this?

Even Wesley Crusher became a more-complex, serious, and heroic figure in later Star Trek: The Next Generation seasons.

Here lies some legitimacy behind the (often-wrongly persistent) claim that Christian fiction is lame. These stories don’t introduce non-Christians to Christian heroes. Instead they’re asked to watch an Invasion of the Child-People. Then they’re told it’s best to be assimilated.

Meanwhile I, as a real-life Christian who would prefer meeting more people whose heroism and accomplishments I should want to imitate, instead meet dumbed-down folk “heroes.”

That doesn’t help me as a reader. It doesn’t challenge me. It’s not even fun. I don’t feel at home. Such stories, even the contemporary ones with speculative elements, instead have bizarre, otherworldly glows. Their skies are green and purple even on planet Earth. And I don’t know these people. Even the actual “folk theologian” heroes I know in reality have profound depth. They’re not silly like Jar Jar Binks. They’re not annoying like kid-Anakin.

So I can only conclude one thing: such stories’ characters are not even from planet Earth. They are — queue echoic retro 1950s Republic Pictures sci-fi serial announcer — creatures from beyond reality! They are: Fiction Christians from Another Planet!

We must explore this alien culture and its odd beliefs. That’s what I hope to do in this serial.

We’re writers around here, most of us, and readers. As such, we might be a little more aware of words than others, but we aren’t the only ones who use them.

It’s easy to use the word word, but hard to define it with words. Wikipedia calls it “the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning). “

I call that techspeak. (Is techspeak a word?)(Do you know what it means?)(Okay, then; it’s a word.)

I prefer the definition given by my tattered, clunky unabridged Webster’s (circa 1970): “a speech sound or series of them, having meaning and used as a unit of language.”

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? A sound with meaning?

Not really. When we read silently, words make no sound. When I hear Chinese, the sounds are meaningless to me but are words nevertheless.

This is getting complicated. Let’s define the word words as used in this post to mean the sounds and symbols of written and spoken English.

As discoveries are made and technologies invented, terms must be found to describe these newfangled spangles. Sometimes it’s done by assigning new meaning to old words. The word computer, for instance, hails back to the 17^th century, when it meant a person, not a gizmo, who made computations. The original landline was a wire carrying telegraph signals over land rather than under water. And there was a time when Spam only came in a can.

Thanks to this phenomenon, sometimes dubbed semantic shift, it can be hard to know what word to use. No writer in this decade is likely to say a happy character is in a gay mood or use hussy to describe a respectable housewife. However, other terms are still up in the air.

Example: Is it still incorrect to say “Hopefully the Steelers will play better next year”? Not long ago, hopefully meant full of hope, as in “I look hopefully toward the Steelers’ next season” (though truthfully, I don’t; it’s a little depressing). But thanks to chronic misuse by all and sundry, I believe the first-cited usage is now kosher.

BTW, what’s sundry? And how long will it take for BTW to be OK?

Evolution is real, at least where language is concerned.

This seems particularly prevalent in the world of speculative fiction. SF writers are forever making up words to name those not-always-farfetched inventions that fuel their plots and their starships. Fantasy writers have also been known to coin the occasional term. (Have you ever heard of a hobbit?) Some end up slipping into the mainstream language. (Have you ever heard of a hobbit?) Oh, wait—I already said that. Okay, then, how about chortle or galumphing, both of which entered our flowing lexicon through the poetry of Lewis Carroll?

The trick, I’d say, in creating words is to make sure they’re a comfy fit. A hobbit by any other name may never have gone to the movies. Had Carroll switched galumphing with frabjous, “Callou Callay” just wouldn’t have the same ring to it.  And I hate to think what would have become of one of my favorite Narnia characters if C. S. Lewis had made Puddleglum a swampgiggle.

Words. They’re not just for Webster anymore.

Chances are if you are reading this post, you are sitting down. And if you are like most Americans (we writers are some of the worst) you’ll probably spend at least 12 hours of your waking day sitting on your rump. Assuming you get 8 hours of sleep every night, that leaves only 4 hours of daylight that you are upright each day. In fact, the average person will spend nearly 70% of their lifetime sitting. (Depressing thought, right?)

Why is this a big deal?

If you haven’t yet heard, this past year there has been an explosion of new data from countless health studies and articles that claim sitting for long periods of time is apparently one of the most harmful things we can do to our bodies. Go ahead, Google a few of them and you’ll quickly find that every single hour you sit (after the age of 25) reduces your life expectancy by 21.8 minutes. That may not seem like a lot at first until you do the math. 12 hours a day sitting (at work, at the dinner table, in the car, on the couch, at church, etc) adds up to a whopping 4.36 hours of life expectancy wasted each day. Consider that a single cigarette will carve 11 min off your life expectancy and you can see why sitting is a silent killer that few of us think about. Is sitting the new smoking?

Even more surprising is that the results hold true for those of us who exercise regularly as well. People who sit at work all day and then manage to sneak in the recommended 30 minutes of exercise everyday hardly make a dent in the amount of hours they spend sitting.

I’m not going to go into all the medical reasons why this happens. There are plenty of articles out there have already done this well. I’m not typically one to read too much into the latest health trends, and I certainly wasn’t in any mood to change my work habits based on a stupid article or two, or three…or twelve. But this information did get me thinking: Are writers doomed to live shorter, less healthy lives than the McDonalds floor-moppers? If not, what’s the alternative?

One solution could be a standing desk. That’s right, it seems the hip thing for desk jockeys to do these days is to purchase a standing desk and work diligently while standing. It’s okay – you can chuckle. I know I did when I first read about it too, but apparently it’s not as new as you think. It seems some of the most influential men of their times preferred to work standing up – men like Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson (or so the articles claim). I was intrigued by the concept, but it wasn’t until a friend of mine decided to take the challenge and purchased a standing desk of his own that I got to hear first hand how it was working.

After his initial discomfort from adjusting his lifestyle from one of sitting daily to standing upright regularly he discovered something interesting. He was more alert and focused at work and felt more productive. One by one,  his co-workers began switching over to the standing desks as well, having seen first hand the difference it made in their colleague’s work personality.

My new standing desk!

Convinced that I shouldn’t dismiss it until I tried it, I recently decided to give it a try for myself.

Here’s what I found:

I did a quick internet search for standing desk companies and discovered…ACK…those things cost $800 or more. I was shocked. It was enough to put me out of the running for sure. I’m a writer for Pete’s sake, not a millionaire. But a few searches later I discovered an adequate solution to get me on my feet for less than $22 thanks to IKEA and a little ingenuity.  $22 was definitely in the budget range I was looking for. You can read more about the $22 IKEA standing desk solution here if you’re interested in trying it out for yourself.

As for me, I’m writing at my standing desk as we speak and while I can say it has taken a bit of getting used to, I’m actually kinda digging it. Only time will tell, but I’m learning that it hasn’t been as big of a change as I first thought it would be.

Standing desks may seem silly to us now, but I bet the idea of sitting for 12 hours a day would likely seem as silly (if not downright sinful) to people a few hundred years ago. So, I’m taking a stand for writers everywhere. I’ll post periodic updates on twitter to let you know how it’s working out for me. In the end, if standing adds a few more years of productive writing to my life I’ll be glad I stood. Who knows, one of those books may even crack the best-seller list.

Today is the LAST opportunity to include your entry into the Spec Faith Winter Writing Challenge. After midnight tonight (Pacific time) the challenge is in the hands of readers.

In this phase two, visitors here at Spec Faith have one more week to read the one-hundred-to-two-hundred-word entries and give a thumbs up and/or comment to as many as they like. This is a type of voting, obviously, but without restricting how many a visitor may approve. However, to be counted, those thumbs up must be entered by midnight (Pacific time) Sunday, January 13 (that would be 1/13/13 – :-O ).

Come Monday, January 14, we’ll move to Phase 3–actually voting for the best entry from among the three entries receiving the most thumbs up in Phase 2.

Before we get to the finally voting, however, we need more readers. I know many of you have already made your selections, and I really appreciate it. A challenge like this doesn’t work if no one reads the entries. What I’d like to see is more readers–particularly people who haven’t entered and who have no vested interest in who wins.

The best way to do that, I think, is for you, our regular Spec Faith visitors, to invite readers. These can be your friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter. You might mention the challenge on Goodreads or wherever else you hang out on line. You might also email the info to people you know in the face-to-face world. The more input we have for Phase 2, the better:

• We don’t want good entries to languish because they came in today and most of our visitors voted by Wednesday of last week.

• We don’t want good entries to go unnoticed because an influx of voters came because of the recommendation of one or two or four contestants.

• We do what the challenge to be about good writing, not popularity.

So if everyone–writers and readers alike–invites others to come give their thumbs up, there’s a greater chance we will indeed have the best entries selected for our poll.

And I don’t know about you, but I think this is not going to be easy. There are some very good selections. Creative, intriguing, well-written, interesting characters, descriptive language. Quite frankly, I’m impressed.

But that adds one more reason it’s important to invite more readers: the thumbs-up count is close! So please, pass along the link to the original Winter Writing Challenge post, and if you yourself haven’t given your feedback, please rectify the situation. 😀

Thank you!

I visit Speculative Faith a lot. Not only do we get to talk about books here, but about the mysterious things that make them up. Elves and centaurs, Hermione and Frodo, clones and robots and angels.

And then there’s Jesus. We all love Jesus.

Yes, I feel very at home here.

But I have a confession to make. I’ve been asked to guest post twice (thank you, Becky!) and both times, I’ve gotten all squirmy. See, I’m not as brainy as these guys and I’m far too intimidated to pretend. For a month now this question has haunted me:

What in Middle Earth should I write about?

I had a couple ideas, but the more I tried to be intellectual, the more God brought me back to this verse:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deut 6:5)

So instead of attempting to be profound, I’m going to tell you a little something about this verse and how it affected me, because it’s possible someone out there needs to hear it today.

For as long as I can remember I wanted to act. I grew up in a church that encouraged the creative arts. I was part of a team that traveled and did that sort of thing: drama, dance, mime, puppetry. I got a taste for it at an early age and assumed my life would always be full of stages.

But you know what they say about assuming, right?

After high school there was college and then work. I acted during those years as well—a little community theatre, a lot of church stuff. And then some very normal, very life kind of things happened for me. I got married. I moved. I got pregnant. And though I still yearned to be creative, I didn’t know how to do that with all these important milestones mowing me over.

I’d been married for about six years when I ran into the metaphoric wall. My husband and I were the youth pastors at our church and we’d just had our second child. We were busy about the Father’s business, but there was this vital part of me that wasn’t being used. Between work and church and children, the creative flame had been tucked away, less important somehow than the other things I had to do. But it was still there, still burning, still blistering.

My husband was very supportive, so I could have gone out on auditions. I could have tried to make that happen again. And for a time I did. But at the last minute, I’d bail out. On acting classes, on opportunities that presented themselves. Something in me had shifted. I was unwilling to give up family time to realize this life-long dream. And it made me feel like a failure.

One night, I was walking the floor with my fussy two month old and I realized that maybe I had misunderstood the passion inside of me. Maybe it wasn’t the stage I craved. Maybe it was the stories. Maybe it was the creative outlet. Maybe theatre was only a part of my life-passion. Maybe storytelling was the dream.

Second in the Angel Eyes trilogy

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Among the statements Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary makes about this passage, he says this, “We must love God above any creature whatever, and love nothing but what we love for him.” (emphasis mine)

I understand now that my frustration was rooted here. I no longer knew how to love God with the creative side of me. Life had changed. I was different, but part of my heart was dedicated to an old dream, a child’s dream. And I didn’t love it for God’s sake. I held onto it out of sentimentality. But in the frustration of it all, God was changing me. He was giving me another dream. A broader dream.

And while I’ll forever be enamored by performing arts, I can appreciate those years for what they were. They were a foundation. They laid the groundwork for the dream I’m living now.

If you’re reading this blog, odds are good that you’re a reader or a writer—maybe both. In either case, you’re probably a dreamer. It’s one of the things I love most about this community. But today, I wonder if any of you feel tied up by dreams or goals you established long ago. I wonder if, maybe, in your frustration, God’s been molding you, sculpting you to be used in a way only He could have imagined.

For a dreamer, perceived failure is heartbreaking. It can pack a punch that will leave us reeling and unable to create. But what happens when we get on our knees before the God who created everything? What happens when we lay our gifts down and let Him give us a new dream?

We’re able to love Him with every bit of our heart, aren’t we? If you find yourself frustrated in this way, desperate for a creative outlet, be encouraged. It’s possible the Creator of the universe is at work, molding you, crafting you. My guess is that in time, you will be used.

– – – – –

Shannon Dittemore has an overactive imagination and a passion for truth. Her lifelong journey to combine the two is responsible for a stint at Portland Bible College, performances with local theater companies, and a focus on youth and young adult ministry. The daughter of one preacher and the wife of another, she spends her days imagining things unseen and chasing her two children around their home in Northern California. Shannon is the author of the Angel Eyes trilogy. Her second book, Broken Wings, will be released on February 19, 2013. You may learn more about Shannon or follow her at her web site, Facebook page, Pinterest, Goodreads, and Twitter.