INSPIRATION

I look for inspiration each month when it comes time to write the newsletter. It trickles down a little drop at a time. If it were water, I'd die from dehydration.

Each month, I pray before each attempt and most of the time, I end up playing a game on the computer while listening to the radio or a CD. I'll look at the calendar and count the days before it has to be done, accounting for mailing time and decide I have enough time and put it off to the next day.

Admittedly, I've been late from time to time. Sometimes I'm a victim of circumstances. I've had months with computer or printer problems or health problems and it gets mailed late. There have been times of severe weather when I couldn't get out of the house but usually, it's done on time to be emailed.

I marvel at freaks of nature like Stephen King that can write book after book with ease. My professors in college would scoff at him and call him a "formula" writer. I don't care if he has someone outline each chapter for him; he still has to come up with the words that make each page fresh. Whatever the professors meant by formula writing, I'm not sure, but if it were all that easy, they would be doing it instead.

However, when inspiration hits, it's exhilarating. I told the story of how this newsletter started on my website but I'll give a condensed version here to illustrate my point.

Late March, 2006, I was sitting on the couch scrolling through TV channels. I heard a voice yell out, "Independent Evangelist". I was shocked but I tried to ignore it each time it shouted out.

There was nobody around that could have been repeating those words and I had no idea why I was hearing it. I wanted to watch TV but my body was ejecting itself from the couch and I went to the computer.

When I sat down, I could see the entire issue in my head and I started typing. I needed help from my wife, Mary to format and edit it because I had never done such things. She knows her way around a computer and I've been grateful for her help many times.

When I write for pleasure, it's slow going because I can only use my left hand. When I was young, I learned to type in school so I didn't have to guess where the letters on the keyboard were but with one hand, I'm lucky to go 25 words per minute. That first night writing the newsletter, I was doing well over 35 words per minute with no mistakes.

It was weird because I didn't realize what I wrote until I read it back. I was really shocked that it was actually pretty good. Still, it would take a couple of months to decide exactly how it should look and how big it could be for a single postage stamp. By August, that year, things were becoming routine but ideas were fading.

I was wondering why I was writing this newsletter and would anyone read it. I decided to quit writing it and the next month, I was sitting at the computer, playing a game and suddenly, it was like someone else was moving my hands around. The game shut off and the Word program turned on and I was at it again.

When that happens, I call it a good kind of scary feeling. It's scary and fun at the same time and when I stop writing and read it back, I'm amazed that there is a coherent story on the page. Even more, if I need a half or three quarters page story, that's exactly what gets written. My editor only has to check for punctuation from time to time.

The remarkable thing is that I have received emails from people that I never sent it to, saying they liked it. Some replies were from celebrities and some were from troops in Iraq. Each reply only makes my faith in the Lord stronger.

I don't write this newsletter for pride or recognition and I refuse to take a cent from anyone because costs aren't worth worrying about. I just pray that each issue gets passed along somehow and judging by the replies, that prayer gets answered.

I don't understand how inspiration works for the really talented people in the world. Novelists, poets, song writers and anyone else who writes for a living have been given a gift from the Lord and if they don't recognize that fact, they are arrogant or just plain nuts.

I do know how inspiration works in my little corner of the world. God has taken a broken old cripple who would prefer to be left alone; I am basically lazy after all. I say, "I'm not writing the newsletter any more" and He says, "You wanna bet?"

Soon, this goofy old man finds himself pecking away with one hand at the computer keyboard and the Independent Evangelist survives, yet, another month. When the stories are really good, He worked through my weary old hands and when a story is just "okay", you can be sure I did it on my own.

That's all I know about inspiration; it's a gift from God, simple as that.

Happy New Year!

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
James 1:17