One of the first classes I had to take for my Creative Writing degree was, oddly enough, "Intro to Creative Writing". It was a 100-level class that everyone with a Creative Writing major or minor had to take. Some of us would go on to have all our workshop classes together and several would either drop out or take poetry classes (not to disparage our poet sisteren). In that class, one extraordinarily mediocre writer was a girl right out of high school and a little on the heavyset side. She wrote a short story that was about someone killing themselves and made a point in class to mention how auto-biographical it was. I didn't say a word because what would have come out would not have been helpful to someone flirting with self-destruction and it was obvious she wasn't serious about it but was simply screaming out for attention by writing a "short story".

Our writing isn't therapy.

I realize that several of the greatest writers have had significant mental problems. They likely needed (or had) therapy. But you can't just unload your problems on your readers in a thinly-veiled attempt for validation and expect to call that "writing".

I mention this because I've been tossing this question around in my head. I've recently felt a tad grumpy about not having a soul in the world with which to have the kinds of theological discussions I have with myself. I read and listen to seminary classes on iTunesU and these new understandings pop up in front of me like a whack-a-mole and I just want to share them with someone because I'm excited to learn something new about the world or human nature or both. But people often find me tedious and roll their eyes when I start to speak and maybe harumph a "there he goes again." Then I think I'll just go off and write a short story about these things and that will be a sufficient outlet for me and I'll keep my big mouth shut in Sunday School because I just want to stay quiet and out-of-the-way and let someone else talk but I find I can't in the same way an alcoholic finds it nearly impossible to resist a shot of whiskey sitting on a table in front of him.

But people (and as a writer, our readers) don't really want to hear us think out loud. They want the distilled essence of what we've learned in the form of an allegory or a metaphor. They're not all that interested in listening to us develop our opinions in the same way you might if you were sitting in front of your therapist and she was wringing out of you things you didn't want wrung out but were wrung anyway and lo and behold you felt better afterward though it was like giving birth and then you realize what you actually think about things rather than either not knowing or deluding yourself into believing you think something else.

It's not a wonder, then, that my writing that's a result of this intent to "share" what I've learned feels wooden and didactic. I'm trying to use a bully pulpit as a counseling session and surprise, surprise it doesn't work that way.

Writers are necessarily doomed to trudge along burdened by the knowledge that they're curious about the world and want to learn new things and simply can't share that knowledge with anyone without being written off or talked about when they're not around because no one else but they are as interested in knowing what a writer desires to know. At some point we have to distill that understanding into something like a short story or a novel and maybe that will be sufficient to dig out the canker.

That's a pessimistic and somewhat narcissistic view of the world, I know, but writers are usually a morose lot, are we not?

I've been honored again with Editor's Choice for my short story "The Life and Times of a Modern-Day Humpty Dumpty", which will appear in the upcoming issue of Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression.

Please consider purchasing a copy of this fantastic literary magazine to support the great work they do. There's basically no one else like them in the Christian literary market.

Looking at some of the authors my story will be appearing with, I'm quite humbled.

Richard barked a scandalously creative expletive at the hand-held GPS unit. He shook his head, sighed, and tossed it up over his shoulder. He pulled a rain-smudged topographic map from inside his flame-red parka and snapped it open.

"Rick! That thing cost three-hundred dollars," his girlfriend Jamie scolded. She tromped and stumbled toward the unit across lichen-covered rocks the size of softballs.

Richard hoped to God it was broken.

Although this essay is several years old, it deserves a place here, where Google, et al, can make binary mince-meat out of it and other fans of H.P. Lovecraft can hear the pot-banging call of another fan. --J.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote his strange stories in the early twentieth century. He never had a real novel published in his lifetime since he wrote mainly essays, letters, and weird fiction set (mainly) in the Northeast. He died in 1936 (at age 46) of intestinal cancer and suffered both physically and mentally throughout his life. He is considered by many contemporary authors as the father of modern horror. I've read most of his published fiction but my two favorites are "The Dreamquest of Unkown Kaddath" and "The Lurking Fear".

This story has many of the classic elements you'd expect to find in any Lovecraft story. Although there aren't any worshippers of hideous, mythological creatures and there are no references to the Necronomicon (mainstays of almost all other Lovecraftian stories), it has his dark, brooding atmosphere, an almost embarrassing xenophobia of poor rural folk, and a vicious monster the main character is both repelled by and drawn to.

I'd like to think that writing is so powerful that the time-honored axiom "the pen is mightier than the sword" might hold true.

That's a load of crap, actually.

I got a strong conviction recently that I should get a couple of prison pen pals. It's not something I've ever done before and I really don't see myself as much of an encourager, but these things often come out of nowhere and God will throw things your way that make you scratch your head. They're serving life sentences (at least) and have been incarcerated for decades. I'm not entirely sure what to say to be encouraging because if I talk about the goings-on here in the Midwest (we talk about the weather a lot here) that might remind them they're in a big, gray building. If I talk about the kids, they might be reminded they've not had the chance of having a very good home life. If I talk about the future, they might think "don't remind me I've still got 20 years left".

To be honest, I'm not sure I know what to say to be an encouragement. The sword of justice, in these cases, seems to be a fair bit stronger (louder, at least) than the paltry words penned on a hand-written letter.

I finally managed to take an hour or two and re-install the theme. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I was dreading (isn't that usually the case?).

There's still a few quirks here and there (like in commenting and search). I'll iron those out over the next few weeks.

I'll have plenty of time because I didn't get the seed money for the start-up I was thinking about starting. I finally got the "thanks, but no thanks" rejection letter this week.

It's probably better this way anyway. Equal parts annoying and disappointing. But as they say in the Robinsons movie: "keep moving forward!"

It's not gone. Just...hiding.

I'm moving the domain off the current web host, so the site might not be available until I can get everything set up on the new server. I'm trying to keep the downtime to a minimum, but this has become necessary as my current web host's services give me no end of grief (and I lack the kind of control I want for the website).

At first, I thought this was a joke. Then I realized it wasn't.

Ingenious. Too bad this has never been tried before

I'm sure it'll work great.

A dash of Python and a smattering of HTML will make all the difference in how government by committee works.

Senatus Populusque Romanus!