Now Playing: Flook, "Haven", "Padraig's".

This last weekend, I drove all over everywhere, it seemed. Friday evening we had our first high school girls' Bible study. I had been concerned that we'd have trouble getting the girls to talk, but of course no such worries with this group. Anna had more trouble keeping the girls from giggling and interrupting each other than she did persuading them to answer the discussion questions. I found it very refreshing to see the girls' genuine eagerness to fellowship with each other and learn about the Christian life. This makes me sound like an old person already, but I really do wish I had been as open, confident, and eager as they seem to be.

After the Bible study, I spent the night with Anna and Ruth at their house since their family was away camping. More specifically, I spent the morning with them since we stayed up until about three o'clock in the morning watching Robin Hood and Merlin episodes, courtesy BBC TV.

On Saturday, I drove to Tulsa for the afternoon and evening. I had been grumbling to myself mentally about only being in Tulsa for a couple of hours and not being able to see many people, but I ended up being there until half ten at night and having some really good conversations. Watching Philip, Alyson, and one of their friends play Scrabble while keeping score on a spreadsheet (such engineers!) made me laugh.

Among the conversations I had with people in Tulsa, the topic of writing kept cropping up. A sense of disillusionment or defeat when it comes to writing. Whenever I hear people talk about their projects, though I enjoy listening to them and giving advice, I also feel hopeless. At the minute some of the people in Stillwater are working on/planning to work on their own personal novel projects. Oh, yes, I've had ideas kicking around in my head for settings, characters, and plots since before high school. Whenever I try to write them down, though, the result is abject failure.

Probably the problem is that I'm requiring too much of myself. Perfection is a pretty high goal to reach even for the best writers. So why ask it of my very first attempts at prose fiction? As someone else said this weekend, it's an issue of pride, of course. Here I could apply the Christian principles of grace: I don't have to be perfect because Christ has redeemed me; I use the abilities He has given me for His glory; He will love me no matter how good or bad the results are.

Those things are true, but they don't address the question in my mind as to why another piece of fiction should be added to the world's already-bulging libraries. Why bother? Everything that needs to be said has already been said a thousand times before, and a thousand times more skillfully than I could manage. That applies not only to my ideas for prose but also for poetic projects that occasionally sprout up. Reading the Norton Anthology--or even my friend's sonnets--is a daunting prospect because I know that as a result I will inevitably be paralyzed when it comes to writing.

Paradoxically, of course, reading other people's pieces, whether they come from the Norton or from a friend's blog, also makes me want to write more. Response, interplay, dialogue with what others have been or are producing has become an important ingredient in my own creative process. Films, music, painting, sculpture, and dance all drive me to respond in writing, to capture my perception of that creative event in a repetitive, reverberating event of my own.

Overshadowed by the Romantic and Modern ideals of art as completely new and original, though, I encounter that barrier of intimidation again and again. It seems so pretentious for me to try to put anything into words and then to demand that others read it, especially when many of those others have written perfectly good things themselves. That's one reason why I love journaling: no one has to read it, not even me. That text puts no expectations on the reader, no demands, no requirements. The books stack up on shelves and boxes, silently, useless except for whatever tiny random facts may be required in the future about flight details or medical appointments.

Yesterday after church, Katie asked me if I'd been writing anything recently. I love talking to Katie, but she invariably touches whatever sore spots I'm trying to hide from myself and everyone else. It was the second time last weekend someone had asked me what I'd been writing and had given me the "older sibling look" when they heard the answer.

So, circling again, the same factor that pushes me away from the keyboard also forces me toward it, the pressure (shame, if you like) from others.