Housekeeping

and apologies for my absence

Housekeeping

First off, for those of you who have been wondering, yes I did take some time away from writing here, I recently took on two newsletters for other organisations and I wanted to give them as much attention as I could. I hadn’t intended to take time away, that’s just what ended up happening. I also needed to take some time to read for reading’s sake, as a writer one of the most important practices to pin down is reading broadly. I’m thankful for the books that I’ve been sent to review, and I hope that continues, but the reality is that when you’re reading at least eight books a month just to review—including the ones which my conscience won’t allow to reach readers screens—it’s almost impossible to take the time necessary to read for the sake of one’s own upbuilding. Some of the books I’ve read since were Christian—some I’ll review, some I won’t—and others were fiction. I devoured Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne Mysteries last week, having not read anything from Horowitz since I was a child, and it was a welcome return to an old acquaintance. Horowitz discusses the writer’s life at length during the books and often I was struck by how he described the process.

"It's one of the paradoxes of being a writer that, physically, there's not a huge difference between the debut novelist and the international best-seller: they're each stuck in a room with a laptop, too many Jaffa Cakes and nobody to talk to."

This somewhat off-hand comment sums up the experience of most of the writers I know, both big-times and beginners, everyone’s the same. This presents a few issues:

1. Criticism is usually the only feedback you get as a writer

2. Most writers assume they are the only one who feels like this

3. Motivating oneself sometimes leads to burnout

There are other issues, these are just the ones which I feel most acutely. To that first point, unfortunately, this past month a particular piece of criticism was deafening. Circumstances out of my control meant that I had to have a difficult conversation with someone through work, which led to a couple of emails showing up in my inbox. The emails weren’t well-articulated, but they didn’t need to be, they’d had the desired effect, I found it hard to pick up the pen for a while after that.

I decided not to sit idle though, I knew I needed to keep at it, so I channelled what creativity I had into other projects. My wife and I host a podcast and we’re now getting started on Season 2, we knew for a while that we’d wanted to upload Season 1 to YouTube, but I’d been putting it off, it was a lot of work and I knew our wifi wouldn’t like it…

The Grace of God in a Fallen World - Tess of the D’Urbervilles with Karen Swallow Prior - S1 Ep 11

Thankfully it didn’t take as long as I’d thought and I learned a lot in the process. Another project was setting up a website to host all of the projects I run under one roof. My newsletter won’t be leaving Substack, but you’ll also be able to find all of my articles with the search feature on my website if you’re looking for something specific.

I’ve also been working on a couple of other secret projects, but as I’m not ready to share those, I’ll just say, watch this space.

My plan is to get back to regular posting this week, but I’d love to hear from you about what you want to see from the Raven’s Writing Desk. You can take part in this poll or leave a comment below, either way, thank you to all of you who read and take part in what I do here, I wouldn’t be doing any of it if it weren’t for you.

Grace and Peace,

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