Posts Tagged coffee
Writing as Time-Travel: Three Tips
Posted by annaldavis in Coffee, Writing on March 8, 2012
I’m writing at Starbucks today, taking breaks in between thoughts to stare out the window as the rain splatters the sidewalks. There’s something timeless about it. Hot coffee, a spring thunderstom, the blank page – Hemingway himself knew these well (nevermind the free wifi and laptop power station). Busy professionals come and go, with their suits and totes and ears-to-the-cellphones. College students wrinkle their brows, poring over dense text and typing important details into their iPads.
And then there’s me. I look just like anyone else here, really. Clicking on my laptop, sipping my tall house blend. You would never suspect that just yesterday I traveled back in time, and despite the advice of Doc Brown, I changed something in the past that forever altered the space-time continuum. My poor characters didn’t see it coming, thank goodness. Who knows what kind of mischief they would have caused otherwise.
If you plan to board that modified DeLorean in your writing, keep these three things in mind.
For your characters, time is a straight line. Your antagonist absolutely cannot blow up the building until she has acquired the bomb. The strangers who are destined to fall in love must first meet each other. And if something in their timeline changes, adjustments in the details of their lives must follow.
For you, time is a circle. As the writer, you are omniscient and omnipresent. Should your hero get stuck somewhere in chapter 35 without any possible way out, you as the author are not bound by the character’s space-time continuum. You have the ability to write a perfect solution into the character’s past, that somehow is exactly what they need in chapter 35. I like to think of this as tapping into God’s creative energy. He “writes in” to our lives every day, preparing us for that future dilemma.
For the reader, time is short. Adventures in fictional time must get to the point quickly because real time nips at our heels like a hungry puppy. Real emails need answering, real kids need attention, real meals must be prepared. Times moves faster now than in the past… for all the conveniences modern life affords, time is not one of them and the reader’s attention is fleeting. Hemingway said it well: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”
Time, it seems, can only go on for so long.
Eyes Half Open
Posted by annaldavis in Coffee, Everything Else on November 17, 2009
I overheard the strangest conversation at Starbucks today. Two 50ish world-worn men sat with their coffee in the corner, in what at first appeared to be some kind of business meeting with folders and a binder sitting next to their cups. I heard snippets of conversation, something about calling CNN and investigations and trials. While waiting for my tall toffee-nut latte, my eavesdropping (if you could call it that, as they made no attempt to whisper) revealed that one of the men was trying to come to terms with his grandfather’s untimely and tragic murder some years ago.
I sat down with my latte and my Bible at the table farthest away, because I went to Starbucks to study God’s word about hope, not to listen to some personal story however compelling it may be. But strong words continued to drift my way — words like closure, random luck of the draw, wrong place at the wrong time. Gun shot wounds. Bullet fragments. The WHAT and WHEN and HOW questions of a family’s tragedy muddled up in the cold language of court reports, explosive wrenching pain of lives separated through death and sin. I listened with a curious, quiet empathy — all the while scanning Scripture for verses about hope.
Then the conversation turned somehow to personal exploits, and the same man who remained bewildered by his grandfather’s murder recounted with a chuckle the time he had a one-night stand with some hot woman from California and lied to his wife about it. When she found out, she confronted him and even punched him, but he continued to lie and she eventually believed his story. As the two men tossed their empty cups in the trash I heard him mutter something about even so, it was worth that one great evening. My empathy had long since been replaced by sadness.
I find it interesting that in a span of 30 minutes, this man recalled with near agony the pain caused to him by someone else’s sin and then tells the thrill of his own with no remorse for the pain he caused others. What is it about the human heart that so easily finds sin? But maybe I’m not so different. Try as I might, I still struggle with pride, arrogance, anger, bitterness, self-centeredness, fear, and the list goes on. The collateral damage of our lives piles up fairly quickly, don’t you think?
As humans we have no hope outside of Jesus. If you have been going through life as if sin doesn’t matter, your eyes are only half open.
“The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light… clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 13:11-12, 14.
A Cup of (Spiritual) Coffee
Posted by annaldavis in Coffee, Everything Else on February 4, 2009
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how we, as members of the general Christian population, are sleeping spiritually. Did you recognize any of your own habits in our list? I feel humbled and a little discouraged by this exercise, as I’ve been asleep for too long. But I fully believe that identifying the problem must precede a solution, because everything exposed by the light becomes visible. So I pray for The Light to expose those sleeping corners of our spirits today.
And once we know what we’re doing wrong, let’s seriously consider what we should be doing instead. How can we wake up? In the physical realm, I prefer three things to rouse me from sleep: a loud alarm clock, a strong cup of coffee, and natural light. So my morning routine goes something like this: hit the snooze button once, finally get out of bed, start the coffeemaker, have my quiet time with God over coffee, then open the blinds to let in the morning sun. After this sequence I usually feel alert and ready for whatever the day (or my children) may bring.
So what can we do to wake up spiritually? I’ve made a short list below — feel free to add on through comments.
1. Ask God to open our spiritual eyes. There’s a whole ‘nother world out there, and I think if we could see it from time to time we would never want to sleep again. But that kind of sight is His alone to give.
2. Study the Holy Spirit. I read through some of the New Testament the other day, choosing to focus on the Holy Spirit, rather than skimming over those parts like usual. All I can say is…. Wow. Go read it.
3. Question your motives. Why do you go to church? Why do you want a new TV? Why do you avoid the homeless on the corner by your office? Do you really believe in all this crazy supernatural stuff? Why don’t you live like you believe? These last two questions haunted me for the past year, and once I fully looked them in the face, I could sense my faith waking up.
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4. Ask God to fine tune our ears so that we can hear from Him.
5. Ask God to help us obey His still small voice and those nudges that He so often uses.
6. Do what God says to do. From James 1:22 – Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
Any others?
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 1 Corinthians 2:12-13
