Tim Baker

Years ago I did an interview for an author info site. One of the questions was “Describe the process of writing…” I remember quoting from Louis Sachar, the author of Holes who (I think) said that writing was like pushing words off a table.

That’s how I feel right now. I’ve been working this week to get the first few chapters of my next book in shape for the publisher. Holy cow…what a drag. I feel like I’m finding one good word every five minutes, and one good thought every two hours. With each good word I shove off my table, I rethink it ten minutes later, examine it, change it three times, then reexamine it. It’s frustrating. I think I’ve spent much of the entire day on two pages. Well, it was four, but I deleted a ton of stuff.

So, there’s a picture of my next book. Right now it feels like a black hole…sucking words out of me and ending up in a jumbled mess. This is the frustration with writing they don’t teach you in school, and it’s the agony that no book about writing effectively captures.

When it’s done, it’ll be marvelous (we hope!). Right now it feels a lot like torture.

So, this is the second day that all three of my kids are in school all day long. About the middle/late of the summer, I thought I’d love the peace and quiet of them being in school all day. Truth is, I miss my kids. The pool is quiet…I’m not used to a quiet pool. My home office (aka, the kids hang out room) is quiet…I’m not comfortable with my quiet office.

Don’t get me wrong…it’s also incredible. There’s room to spread out my class notes. I can actually have a thought and then write it down…flesh it out, or draw it, or brainstorm it, or bounce it off my wife. I can more freely lunch with a student.

I guess that freedom is good, but I still miss them.

Focus on the Family has a new edition of their Weekend Magazine available. You can search and search to find a broadcast station in your area, or, you can just download it to your Mp3 player and listen. A portion of my interview about divorce is in there somewhere. Their page (along with information about downloading the show) is here. Downloads for the current show are available beginning tomorrow morning.

I had a few different people in a few different situations today tell me they either owned a book I wrote or saw my book somewhere and looked it over, or read a book I wrote and thought what they read was pretty good.

I’m not real good at accepting compliments. Still, it was good to hear some peoples reactions to my books, and it was neat to hear that people read stuff I’ve written. Very encouraging.

My son read two words of this book tonight. Two words from Chapter 7. I was thinking as he read them…you know, it starts with two words, then a sentence and a paragraph and then a page, a chapter, a few chapters. If he just digests and lives just a tenth of the meat of this book he’ll be an amazing man.

Not that I think human language comes close to describing God. And, not that I believe everything about God is knowable in our human form. I thought this was interesting.

As Ben was speaking on Sunday, he referenced the passage in Exodus 33 & 34 where Moses is back up the mountain getting the 10 commandments again. It’s not a passage I find myself reading a lot. Well, I do read it at least twice a semester in my classes at the university. Other than that, not a whole lot.

Anyway, I was reading the passage and was struck by how God describes himself as his glory is passing in front of Moses. Here’s what God says about himself…

“The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” (Ex 34:6b-7)

God can say anything he wants about himself to Moses. He chooses to say this. What an interesting snapshot of what God wants Moses to know about him.

I’ll be thinking about this passage a lot this week.

Focus on the Family is airing an interview I did with them way back in March. Segments of the interview began airing in July, and they’ll air various segments on different weekends ending sometime early September, I think. Early on we made the choise to travel to Focus and do the interview in person. I’m glad I did. There’s a link back at my website to the Focus Weekend Magazine page.

Anyway, I got word today that they’re also releasing the interview on a parenting CD. Actually, on three different parenting CD’s. It’ll be released sometime from November ‘07 - January ‘08, I think. You can read more about their stuff and that CD here.

I feel really honored to get to work with these folks. And, it’s been neat to talk about the Broken book with kids and adults. I wrote that book hoping to reach kids broken by their parents divorce. It’s good to know that the word is getting out!

What I ate…

it was good too (ok, it might not look so good here, but…wow!) Mom taught me how to make potato soup a few years ago. We make / freeze this often. It’s wonderful.

This just in…

My daughter sold her first ebay thing today.Yeah…it was a book. Uh-huh…it was Treasure Island. Youbetcha…you missed it. She’s thrilled. You missed a bargain.

In other news….ew…boring day. Just sitting here, staring at the laptop and wondering how to translate my great thoughts into good words on the page.

Funniest thing in the world…

Watching CNN (why? have no idea!) and catching a bit of the Republican / Democrat debate on earmarking money for defense spending. It might have been the most boring thing I’ve seen on TV in a long time (and so…again, why was I watching it?).

I’m not the only person who thought the whole budget exchange was boring. Just to the right of the Republican podium, a few rows back was someone’s aid who was texting stuff. Had to be funny texts too because she’d text, then look around and laugh and then look down and text again. It was funny to watch.