Ready Writers

As you may have gathered by now, I consider myself something of a writer.  I maintain a separate blog for my writing persona, David Seven. 

In fact, one of the regular series on this blog, and the other is one called Faith and Writing, wherein I explore the connection between my faith, and my writing.  For a more complete explanation of why I consider my faith to be tied-up with my writing, might I suggest this post.

Well, about a year ago I was attending a quite day, and doing some meditation on Psalm 45, when I came across verse 1.

My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

And that verse kind of stopped me. Am I being a ready writer?  I know in the context it is referring to reciting verses of praise, but it got me thinking about how I use my pen.

Am I a ready writer?  Am I ready to use my pen to praise my King?

So I decided to register a new blog, called Ready Writer.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it yet, but I decided to register it anyway. 

Except that I couldn’t.  The name was already taken. (By someone who isn’t even using it!!)  Then, while fiddling with other names, I found that Ready Writers was not taken yet.  So I registered that as a blog. 

And then I realised why I was supposed to set up a different blog; because it wasn’t going to be just mine.  I see it as a blog of some sort with many ready writers using their pens to glorify their King.

But I don’t know exactly how it is going to work. 
Am I going to use it like a Christian writing journal and ask for submissions? 
Am I going to do (daily/weekly) writing prompts and encourage writers to post on the blog? 
Am I going to do a combination of both?

Enquiring minds want to know.

What do you think?  Drop me a line, and tell me how you think I should do this thing.

Thank you.

Oh, yes.  The blog is on WordPress, and can be found here.

Celebration time!

So I see that according to my post log, this is my 100th post.

Woo Hoo and all that.

It is also my first post since finishing my latest novel. (I love that phrase.)
That's right, November National Novel Writing Month is over, and I am emerging victorious with my 50,000 word draft in hand. (A rather cramped hand I might add; did I mention I was writing the whole thing longhand?)

I am sorry I didn't get to pop in here as often as I would have liked, but the writing has been more intense than I imagined. I hope to try and catch up with all of you over the next few days, and see what has been going on behind my back.

Biblios Hokku

I love a good Haiku I do.

So I have decided that since my life is not hectic and complicated enough, I am going to stretch my poetic muscles a little by writing the bible in Haiku. That's going to be 66 seperate Haikus for each book of the bible. (Excluding the Apocryhpa)

And just because I felt that this task was not complicated enough already, I have decided to do them in order. So I will be starting at Genesis, and working my way through to Revelation. No pressure. I feel it will be an interesting exercise to try and capture the essence of each book in a few lines, while still retaining everything that makes Haikus so awesome.

I will be posting the entire set on my other blog and on fictionpress to keep them all together. Feel free to pop over from time to time and see how it is growing. I will also be publishing each new "book" here for your consideration and edification.

So far I have done the first three books, as well as an overview of the Bible as a whole. You try and do an overview of the entire message and spirit of the Bible in 5-7-5 and tell me how easy you find it!

Biblios Hokku

By faith, for service

our worth only in His eyes

we are saved for Him

GENESIS

In the beginning

Made for love, called for my own

Follow me, and live

EXODUS

God did not leave us

Fire by night, cloud by day

Our faith in our feet.

LEVITICUS

As I am holy

So must all my people be

Do this and draw near

Free Will

Why can’t you just

overwhelm me already.

You gave me free will

a wondrous gift to be sure.

But I don’t think I’m using it right.

Can’t you take it back please?

RDM #2 – Faith and Writing

In addition to pretending to be an orange fish, I also pretend to be a writer.  My pen name is David Seven.  No, it’s not my real name anymore than is Sharkbait, but it is a cool name.   I maintain a writing blog under this name called Seven’s Heaven.  The following is a post I did many months ago as part of a series called Faith and Writing.  Each post compares writing fiction with being a Christian, and looks for similarities.  I thought since I am publishing the 5th post in the series today, I would shamelessly self-promote the first one.  It’s not the best one, so you’ll have to read all the others to see how it improves.  (I recommend number 2.  It’s a doozy)

SO YOU CALL YOURSELF A WRITER?

The first point is this.  What gives me the right to call myself a writer?

While I was doing the insane NaNoWriMo thing, I used to refer to myself as a writer all the time.  To everyone.  In every conversation I had.  After all, why not?  Now many would dispute my right to call myself a writer: after all, I have never written anything professionally, much less profoundly.  So what makes me think I am a writer?

Because I write.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a writer as : a person who writes or has written something.

So I am a writer.  I am allowed to call myself a writer because I write, regardless of how bad I write, or whether my writing is of any benefit to anyone else.  I am a writer because I write, and because I have chosen to call myself a writer.  However because I choose to call myself a writer, I have to keep writing, otherwise I am just pretending.

Kind of like when we call ourselves Christians?

I call myself a Christian, although I may very well be the worst one ever.  Just as I call myself a writer because I write, I call myself a Christian because I follow Christ.  The word Christian does not imply that I am very good at it, just as the word writer implies nothing about the quality of the work I produce.  Because we live in a world that expect so much of us, we feel as if we can’t call ourselves Christians, because we are not good examples.  But that is not how it works.

John 1:12 says “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” – English Standard Version

Not, “to all who believed, and were really good at it“  So I guess there is hope for me yet.  I can call myself a writer, and a Christian… because I write, and follow Christ. 

For more information on Rainy Day Mondays, go to this post.  If you are also taking part, leave a link to your post in the comments below so we can check it out as well. 

Faith and Writing #1

Now many of you know that in addition to running the Reef, I also write under the name of David Seven. I have a blog over at wordpress where I blog about writing, books, and related topics.

Because many of the people who know me as David Seven are not Christians, and would not be interested in long mental meanderings about theology, I try to keep the Christian posts here, and the writing posts there.

However there is a certain series I have developed over there which might be of interest to some of you as well. I am examining the similarities between writing, and our daily walk with Christ. In essence, I am looking at basic lessons I learned about being a writer from being a Christian; and truths about being a Christian I had never realised, or adequately formulated, until I thought about them as a writer.

If this is of any interest to you I suggest you pop over to Seven's Heaven, where I talk about this and many other things. I will not be re-posting these thoughts here, because they might be a little too specific for many of you. (All three who actually read this blog) I will however give a link every time I do post there on this series, or you can watch the blogroll update on my sidebar.

The first post is entitled "So you call yourself a writer?" but it could just as easily be called "So you call yourself a Christian"

Enjoy!

Or not. The choice is yours.

Writing

This post is over at Seven's Heaven, where you can read more about writing. It is quite long, but I think it is the start of something interesting.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I don't think I need to add anything else.