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Each day this week I’m going to post a quote from a book on writing and then a few questions. If you have any thoughts regarding the quote or the questions, leave them in the comments. On Saturday I’ll highlight some of my favorite responses made throughout the week.

“My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.” Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird

Is this just a stereotype, or are artists generally melancholy, dissatisfied people? If so, why?

The other day I was weeding the garden and I found two $1 bills stirring in the breeze, caught under the potato plants like fidgety birds. Immediately I knew whose they were: our youngest daughter, 3-year-old Abra, had been carrying those things around with her all morning. She must have left them in the garden when she had been banished there with her older siblings to remove potato bugs from our potato plants.

I shook my head and smiled. $2. No big deal. But I certainly wouldn’t be giving her a $50 bill to tote around anytime soon.

Then I wondered, Is that why God doesn’t give me money? Is it because I would be irresponsible with it? Continue reading “The Problem With Prayer Requests”

I once read in a business book that the main reason people aren’t able to save money is that they pay themselves last. By the time they pay their bills, their mortgage, put money into their vehicles and spend a little here or there on whatever else they spend money on, there’s nothing left to save.

On the other hand, the writer of the book said, if you put money into savings first, then you still figure out how to cover the payments you have to cover. It’s a matter of priority.
Continue reading “Pay Yourself First”

Remember when fourteen years ago this fall a college boy stopped walking and bent over to tie his shoe? Remember how the girl slowed down so she wouldn’t overtake him, even though the whole reason he stopped was to meet the beautiful girl and walk beside her?

Remember how even car exhaust and subway grates smelled like love when they went to New York City in the spring?
Continue reading “The Importance of Tying Your Shoes”

After six weeks, I’m glad we finished up our book discussion on Rob Bell’s Love Wins (mostly because I’m getting tired of the early Sunday mornings). Here are five final thoughts and then I’ll never mention this book or author again (something that is very unlikely):
Continue reading “Five Final Thoughts on “Love Wins” (and then I’m finished)”

There are books like A Prayer For Owen Meany and The River Why that make it impossible to stop reading, books like Lord of the Rings that pick me up and drop me in the middle of places like Mordor and Lothlorien.

But there are other types of books: the kind that I can’t read more than a few paragraphs without wanting to write. Here are my favorite five books on writing:
Continue reading “The Five Best Books Ever Written About Writing”