I'm feeling rather noble, because I actually finished the first 100 pages of the new novel (for the title of which I'm still seeking inspiration) ahead of schedule. Now, December I'll devote to: research (including a couple days prowling around LA and groping my way through the LA library); revision of what I finished and rough outlining of the rest, so I can send it to my editor on schedule (end of the year); and catching up on all the stuff I didn't do while writing. Such is my life, fall behind, catch up (or almost catch up) and so on.

Since I'm not ready yet to put aside the topic of Olga, here's some rather heady stuff from my book Writing and the Spirit, which I hope will be available in paper within a few months but for now can be downloaded as a pdf from my website.

Consider Olga again:

Søren Kierkegaard contended that belief based on evidence isn’t faith at all, because faith is from a source other than our reasoning minds. Belief based on experienced is reason. And what God wants us to have is faith. In college, I changed my major from Philosophy to English because I found encountering new ideas more exciting than debating them. So I’ll take Kierkegaard’s words to heart because they feel true, and I’ll apply the idea of faith independent of experience to writing.

Consider Olga, while battling cancer, one Sunday in church explaining that faith is something we all have, but it often applies only to certain parts of our lives. We may have faith about our finances, that what we need will always arrive. We may have faith in our friends or family, that they’ll stick by us, no matter what.

Olga contended that we should recognize the faith we have, notice how it may run counter to the weight of our experience and observations, and consider the benefits of peace and security it gives us. God, she argued, wants us to extend that faith into other areas and to trust that he can and will heal us, even though evidence might run counter to such faith.

From which I’ll reason that God wants us writers to extend our faith into our vocations and trust that we have the necessary gifts and are on our way to becoming masterful writers no matter if every publisher on earth has insulted and rejected us, or though everyone in our critique group has said or implied we’re hopeless.

Such faith can be dangerous. If it seems to fail, say we pray for Olga and she doesn’t get healed, we may begin to doubt God or our own judgment. At these times it helps to return to Kierkegaard and remember that belief based on evidence isn’t faith at all, that faith comes from elsewhere, perhaps from the spirit. Even when it seems to fail, faith has enriched our experience.

And writing, like faith, should be judged by the value of the process, not by the results. So if we’ve worked on a novel for ten years, if the process has enriched us, who are we to gripe when no publisher wants it?

Faithful work is always going to enrich us, since exercising faith, even in one area such as writing, builds a stronger faith we can apply to other areas, such as public speaking. Or parenting, or healing. Because faith isn’t a mental quirk. Like Saint Paul tells us, it’s a substance.