Still In The Fire

The last line of my last entry said, “I never know what I think until I write about it”.

Wow! Am I in good company.

Last night I read Stephen King’s mystery novel The Colorado Kid and in his afterward, King said, “I write to find out what I think”.

Isn’t that cool!

Great minds follow the same thought pattern. So, if Stephen King and I arrive at the same conclusions independently of each other, that means my books ought to sell as well as Stephen King’s do. … Well, maybe not.

Yesterday’s mail brought me an unexpected check for $15.01 — Fifteen Dollars and One Penny — a surprise royalty check for the German translation of a book I wrote 20 years ago.

I'll bet that Stephen King never got a check for $15.01 for one of his books!

I’m on the road to riches.

My diary entries for every day this week all say the same thing — Worked on my fire history book.

I’m up to the year 2000 now.

Whoot!

The end is near.

A problem I confront daily is how to handle warts.

Yes, firefighters are strong, handsome, brave and pure-hearted, but they have a few warts too. Since my aim is to emphasize the strong, brave and pure-hearted aspects of their history, daily I’m tempted to gloss over the sleazy parts.

That wouldn’t be honest.

While I naturally want to put the best foot forward, as a Christian writer, I feel constrained to treat my subject with a modicum of integrity.

But, this is a secular subject; what does being a Christian have to do with it?

Well, anything a Christian writes is Christian writing. I should never divorce what I write about from what I am. Christ is at least prominent in my thinking even if He is not always preeminent. The writing approach is Christian even when the subject is not remotely religious.

Even my grocery list is Christian writing.

The way I’m handling this in my fire history is to say, for instance, at the start of recording each year’s events, “ On the downside of 1899, such and such happened” Then, in the next heading or paragraph I say, “On the upside of 1899, such and such happened”.

That writing technique helps keep me more or less honest.

I wish there weren’t any warts, but since there are, I can’t think of a better way to handle them.

I’d hoped to finish work on this book last month, but I drug my feet.

Now, thoughts of Christmas interrupt my thinking about the book.

Ginny and I spent an hour or so last night discussing the logistics of getting the whole family together at the same time.

Christmas stuff eats away my mind.

I love them all, but having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.

How can I combine thinking about my fire history with thinking about family Christmas plans? And what about the holy religious aspects of Christ’s Incarnation?

In my fire history research I ran across this cartoon. You may have to have heard us Southerners talk in our unique drawl to catch the joke, but I find this hilarious: