Tag: Rob Bell

Dicky Lives

The Robcast Episode 100 with Rob and Elizabeth Gilbert is rather interesting and insightful on so many levels. 

One topic that they had a bit of a riff on was the idea of creating something, just because. Rob created a character with his kids called Dicky … 

He went all out, got some stories together, a bunch of illustrations and a pitch for publishers and was flat out rejected. So Dickie ended up in a file in the garage. 

Elizibeth had just been playing with poetry, which turned into lyrics, which turned into recording a song. For what? The fun of it basically.

Guess what, nobody died in the process. 

It is so liberating that these people who have quote made it quote, still have the freedom to play and experiment with ideas, and better yet, they don’t always turn out to be mega successful works, like their previous work.

I was recently at a meeting and a mother had to bring her daughters to it and they say in the corner on a small table made at children height and just created with pens and pencils and things for the hour. Why? Because it’s fun! Arrr to learn to get back to the point of doing stuff for the fun of it.

That reminds me, I really should get that new box of LEGO out and built it. 

It was like she stabbed me in the back & twisted the knife.

What great emotive and colourful language some authors are able to create. Rob Bell brought this up in his podcast this week. (Episode 93 – learning to lament pt 2).

I don’t add color and poetry to my writing. I’m more a historian who shares the sequence of ideas in a factual way, rather than a poetic word smith who naturally speaks with color.

So this brings me too two questions. Is it ok not to be colourful? and is it something that can be learnt? (If so, how?)

Maybe it begins with a small story and expanding on it.

  1. It was a wet day and I fell over.
  2. It was a wet morning, it had been raining through the night and I slipped over.
  3. It was a wet morning, it had been raining through the night and like a [insert object here that falls, and falls hard].
  4. The first really wet day for the season and as I hurried along the path I lost my footing and fell like humty dumpty fell off the wall. 
  5. The ground wet like a fish in water, I moved along the path, but Newton’s first law of motion took effect. An object stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. The force of the direction I had been traveling no longer matched the new direction and like an out of control car I fell and hit the ground hard, landing on my side. The pain, o the pain. It was like having my arm ripped from my body, but luckily it was still attached, but it just lay their limp. Motionless, I was unable to control it. Move I commanded and nothing happened. Similar to a disobedient dog, it just did nothing. Then the panic sets in, what just happened? Am I ok? Will I be ok?

This too will take some practice and workto get the hang of. Hopefully I can find some guidelines & principles to get started with.