Entries Tagged 'uncategorized' ↓

A million years ago when I wrote that pens should be mightier than toilet plungers, A Musing Mom commented, “Some truth stinks and we really don’t need to read the smelly stuff.”

That’s a comment that stuck with me. Because it’s such a tricky thing. See, I’m a big fan of Keats:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

If something is true, it will also be beautiful. Something that is true and stinky, still has a stinky kind of beauty. Sound crazy? Have you ever had limberger cheese? Or anchovies? They are truly delightful–and their stench is part of their beauty.

It is stench for its own sake that we need to be careful about.

For example, culling through my own Twitter comments this weekend, I found one that horrified me. Kevin Hendricks was bemoaning the fact that so many writers don’t follow the guidelines we editors send them. “Why?!” he asked.

I responded, “Because they are idiots.”

Ouch. What was I thinking? That isn’t the kind of stinky beauty that tastes good on crackers. In fact, there’s nothing beautiful about that comment at all.

But there is a kind of beauty in my ability to delete stupid, ugly twitter comments like that. So that’s what I did.

Which reminds me about something I just read on CultureSmith. More and more people are getting into the twitter thing, using services like twirl (the application that made Twitter work for me), facebook, twitpic, snurl or tinyurl, and twitterfeed.

Christians have to wonder what it looks like to be the church on twitter. In short, What Would Jesus Tweet? Or would he Twitter at all?

Personally, I think he would. Twitter may have a stinky kind of beauty. But it’s still a beauty that’s got lots of room for truth. As long as I can delete my own stupid comments from time to time.

And I’m leaving Texas for awhile thankyouverymuch.

I am taking a computer, but I may or may not giving live updates from the road. You shouldn’t count any.

On the other hand, there are two cool posts coming up about Greek tragedies and the sin of blog pride. So check back to find those.

And oh yeah. If you haven’t read my poems yet, take a look while I’m gone. Dude, they’re free. And it only takes a second to download them.

And, Eve, alas, I had to pull the grammar tips from the cue. They just aren’t ready yet. I’m such a perfectionist!

Several weeks ago, a reader asked me a serious of questions about how to break into editing. I would hardly say that I’ve “broken into” editing, except maybe as a thief in the night, rattling the windows of traditional publishing and occassionally finding one unlocked.

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Interesting site I just learned about from Josh Cody and ChurchMarketingSucks.com, a site run partially by my friend, Kevin Hendricks. (Kevin is a new writers for TheHighCalling.org, but his first article is still in the cue.)

The site is called TagCrowd, and it generates tag clouds automatically based on the text you are tagging.

For example, here is the auto-generated tag cloud for the entire text of my series on the blog tour (still in progress).

authority bloggers blogs comments data measure pagerank people post power site technorati thehighcalling tour traffic work

created at TagCrowd.com

So what do you think? Is this helpful? Interesting? Technology spinning its wheels?

Just after the dawn of blogs in 2002, a secret cooperative of techie pastors and Bible scholars went into hiding to produce a new translation for the twenty-first century.

It’s the Geek Standard Version.

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This is day two of the High Calling blog tour. During this tour, I’ve been talking about a side of editing most people don’t think about—an editor’s role in helping to unify the vision for a publication or a publisher.

Most often, that kind of work takes place on the level of sentences and paragraphs. I ask whether a particular idea or clause or phrase or word effectively communicates the vision I’ve been called to defend. But sometimes it happens at the philosophical level. Sometimes I get to step back and think about overall strategy. How do we teach people the value of…

Yesterday we had some great comments, observations, reviews, and even audacious questions. Like this one from Eve Nielsen.

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Before Ally’s post goes live, I wanted to offer a few quick links to important things I read this week. YOU MUST READ THESE.

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It’s Randy Ingermanson, and he’s the featured author this month for the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour. Specifically, the tour is focusing on his book Double Vision.

You can find more great links to this book by going to Bethany House directly. For now, I’m going to tease readers with his great first sentence:

Keryn Wills was in the shower when she figured out how to kill Josh Trenton.

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CSFF is exploring Jeff Gerke’s site, WhereTheMapEnds.com. So I thought I would spend the last day of the tour highlighting my five favorite parts of his site.

1. Interviews! I love interviews, and Jeff has some really good ones. A notable absence is Randy Ingermanson. Jeff, I hope that one’s on the way.
2. Publication Process Revealed! Not for the faint of heart. But an incredible tool, nonetheless.
3. Collaborative Fiction Project! In his newsletter (see the right side bar of Jeff’s site), he says, “Our premise: A medieval fantasy world–with its own problems, histories, cultures, and cast of characters–is suddenly invaded by technologically advanced beings from space–who themselves have their own problems, histories, cultures, and cast of characters . . . I hope you’ll join the fun. Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or just an intrigued bystander (who might BECOME a writer along the way), you’re heartily invited.” His inspiration for the premise is the movie Krull–boy, does that take me back.
4. The Random Story Generator! This is just fun. It’s based on Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method, and it isn’t half bad as a real tool.
5. Venusian Beauties! Ok, this Ed Wood style short isn’t actually on Jeff’s page, but he stars as a “Commander in the United States Space Invaders Agency who turns out to really be an evil spy from the planet Venus.” You won’t want to miss all the tin foil! (It’s about five minutes, and you’ll hear Jeff say things like, “Show me!” and “It was a big fat bird!” and “Captain Space Man!”

The best stop on the tour by the way is Jeff’s interview about the CBA. I’ll add that link later this morning. (My son is gagging right now, gotta run.)

As you all may have noticed, I’ve slowed a bit. Business travel, TheHighCalling.org redesign, and the HighCallingBlogs.com design have swept over me like flood waters.

Also, I’ll be moving this site to a new server later today (hopefully). There are a lot of background things like that going on.

I love you all, and I promise to resurface soon.