Writing tips

The best writing tip I ever got was not William Zinsser's "Clutter is the disease of American writing," or "Simplify, simplify," or "Strip every sentence to its leanest components," or "Be grateful for everything you can throw away," or "Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there."

It isn't even Ann Lamott's tip about "short assignments," or to write only what fits in a "one-inch picture frame," or that "all writers write [expletive] first drafts," or that "almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram."

It isn't E.L Doctorow's analogy that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

The best writing tip I ever got was from my old professor John Frame, who told me that when he writes, he always keeps in mind the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

The more time you have to think about these nine, the more they expand and bleed into each other. And somewhere in that stew, I'm sure there is an exhortation for both readers and writers to receive one another's thoughts with a humble and teachable posture, rather than the posture of the critic. I'm sure that included in the fruit of love or kindness is the idea of entering into another person's position as far as you can go. Discernment is a good thing, but we tend to jump so quickly to finding fault or the fly in the ointment that if there were any benefit to be gleaned from the brother's or sister's insight, it is lost in the ether.

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