Just Like Killing Dragons

A sound, too, began to throb in his ears, a sort of bubbling like the noise of a large pot galloping on the fire, mixed with the rumble as of a gigantic tom-cat purring.  This grew to the unmistakable sound of some vast animal snoring in its sleep down there in the red glow in front of him.
It was at this point that Bilbo stopped.  Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did.  The tremendous things that happened afterwards were nothing compared to it.  He fought the real battle in that tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Everyone is surrounded by dragons.  Not the brilliant, awesome, friendly kind: the kind with hissing voices that love to hoard every square inch of your life that they possibly can.

It’s not an accident that there are stories of dragons in every culture.

Beautiful People – August 2013 – Double Feature

Cowriting can be a pretty darn awesome experience.  In fact, pretty much all of my ventures into cowriting have been very darn awesome.  Probably because my cowriters are awesome.  And the co-creator of this story is definitely awesome.  You can tell because of the repetition for emphasis in the logical syllogism.  *cough*

The story started when my friend Mark went, “Hey, there’s this superhero story on Holy Worlds, you should see about it,” and then kept poking me nicely because I like things but I also forget about them.   It’s a symptom of cookie deficiency.  Anyway.  Eventually he brilliantly wondered aloud in chat if our superheroes knew each other, and…well…a story started poking less nicely.  Because this story is the sort of story that makes authors cry.  And laugh.

Hopefully, readers will feel the same too.  Eventually.  As part of the development, we enrolled two characters into the questionnaire called “Beautiful People.”  Mark answered the questions for The Dreamer, and I for Lance – who are currently from the same overall story, but different books.  Currently.  All of this is experimental science, so expect data fluctuations/variations in the final product.

Also of interest – neither of us picked ‘good guys’ this time around.  Manipulating people’s mind’s and–well, you’ll see.

Enjoy.

Art Bewilders

Art, if it can be ascribed value, is most valuable when its beauty (and the beauty of the truth it tells) bewilders, confounds, defies evil itself; it does so by making what has been unmade; it subverts the spirit of the age; it mends the heart by whispering mysteries the mind alone can’t fathom; it fulfills its highest calling when into all the clamor of Hell it tells the unbearable, beautiful, truth that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. None of these songs and stories matter if the beauty they’re adding to isn’t the kind of beauty that redeems and reclaims.

– Andrew Peterson

Uncoordinated

I am not coordinated.

My Mom taught me when I was little that Navy and Black don’t match, and that’s the most I know.  I’ve never been able to pick colors – maybe because I find them all too pretty to leave behind.  I guess it isn’t so bad, but it sort of makes me a little wistful sometimes while I listen to conversations about sparkles and watch people coordinate beautiful things.

What amazes me …

What amazes me is that most days I feel useless. I don’t seem to accomplish anything – just a few pages, most of which don’t seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I’m very proud.

– Louis Sachar

Stories you read…

Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

– Neil Gaiman, M is for Magic

Art, if it can …

Art, if it can be ascribed value, is most valuable when its beauty (and the beauty of the truth it tells) bewilders, confounds, defies evil itself; it does so by making what has been unmade; it subverts the spirit of the age; it mends the heart by whispering mysteries the mind alone can’t fathom; it fulfills its highest calling when into all the clamor of Hell it tells the unbearable, beautiful, truth that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. None of these songs and stories matter if the beauty they’re adding to isn’t the kind of beauty that redeems and reclaims.

– Andrew Peterson

Poets are toddlers

I am convinced that poets are toddlers in a cathedral, slobbering on wooden blocks and piling them up in the light of the stained glass. We can hardly make anything beautiful that wasn’t beautiful in the first place. We aren’t writers, but gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. That means there’s no end to the discovery. We may crawl around the cathedral floor for ages before we grow up enough to reach the doorknob and walk outside into a garden of delights. Beyond that, the city, then the rolling hills, then the sea. And when the world of every cell has been limned and painted and sung, we lie back on the grass, satisfied that our work is done. Then, of course, the sun sets and we see above us the dark dome of glittering stars.

On and on it goes, all the way to the lightless borderlands of time and space, which we come to discover in some future age are but the beginnings or endings of a single word spoken from the mouth of God. Some nights, while I traipse down the hill, I imagine that word isn’t a word at all, but a burst of laughter.

– Andrew Peterson

One reason that…

One reason that people have artist’s block is that they do not respect the law of dormancy in nature. Trees don’t produce fruit all year long, constantly. They have a point where they go dormant. And when you are in a dormant period creatively, if you can arrange your life to do the technical tasks that don’t take creativity, you are essentially preparing for the spring when it will all blossom again.

– Marshall Vandruff

A writer who wa…

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

– E. B. White, “The Art of the Essay No. 1”