Step 1: Decide to be a writer (or an artist) with a blog.

Part two (Part one here) of a week-long series: How to Grow a Medium-Sized Blog for Writers and Creatives.

I used to blog about religion.

The Bible is a long, long book.  Chapter 19, shortly after “In the beginning,” there is a story about two sisters who get their father pass-out drunk so they can have sex with him in order to bear children.  Chapter 19.  Their father is technically one of the good guys.  It is in the Bible.

There are other long Christian books.  None that I’ve read involve incestuous drunkenness.  Books about the Book are dull and safe.  Three years ago I read a book by a well-known pastor; I suspected some confessions.  The word “confessions” was in the title.

He wrote about how he didn’t like some people.  His job was hard.  He cared about his image.  I mean, he did everything but make an actual confession.  I read the whole book because I hoped he’d confess something so that I could forgive him.  Whenever he came close to admitting a flaw, he patched it up for me.  In essence he said, “Here’s how I became better; and you can too!”  So I hate that guy now (forgive me, please), but he sold enough copies to warrant more non-confessional-type books about how to be awesomer.

The book made me want to confess things.  Things I didn’t even do.  So many people write books about being great.  Becoming better.

One can only put their best foot forward once.  After the good foot is extended, you have to drag along that worthless appendage on the end of your other leg.  That, or you could lop it off, but I recommend the former.  Think about your worst foot…

Admit to having a Worst Foot (and actually needing it).

Most likely your worst foot is as useful in matriculating from Point A to Point B as your best foot.  You probably won’t use it to kick field goals; but in daily operations our weaknesses are as much a part of us as our strengths.

The Worst Foot is the “balance” foot.

For the most part, balance is overrated.  I mean,

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According to rabbinic tradition and Acts 7, Moses tended sheep in the wilderness for forty years.  His first forty years were spent in a king’s palace.  His final forty years were spent leading a liberated, yet still grumpy people toward the Promised Land.  It’s the middle forty, the desert years, that seem pointless.  He got married, had some kids, and inhaled the smoke of a burning paote bush that led him to believe I AM WHO I AM was telling him to lead his people out of Egypt.  Forty years is a long time to listen to  sheep.  It is a long time to believe the words of a flaming bush.

What’s more is that God tells him the job he is preparing him to do will fail.  Exodus 4 paraphrased says, “You’re going to do all these miraculous things, but I’m going to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he won’t listen to you.  It’s not going to work.  It’s not you; it’s me.”  Encouragement like that probably made the octogenarian long to hear the bleating of sheep. 

If you hang around in Christian circles for about 5 minutes, inevitably someone will say something about “iron sharpening iron.”  Hey, it’s a great Proverb.  But what does it mean?  I don’t have chunks of iron lying around my study that I can brush up against one another as a visual example.  This is generally applied to matters like lust and swearing and heinous business practices.  Presumably it is my job to help you stop your evils, while you help me give up mine.  While these aren’t bad applications, I think it has a deeper theological connotation.