Lessons from Mozart

It's been years since I saw the movie Amadeus, but I have to remind myself of some lessons I learned from it at least once or twice a month.

If you haven't seen the movie, here's a brief synopsis. In the beginning, Salieri is an up-and-coming composer who thinks he is writing beautiful music all for the glory of God. Enter Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a vulgar young man with few morals or redeeming qualities--but with talent that Salieri knows he will never have. Streaming from Mozart, Salieri hears the kind of music that he wanted to write. But why would God give such talent and success to this horrible "creature," instead of to him, who wants to dedicate his music to the Lord?

That question eats at Salieri, until he eventually declares himself God's enemy. He manages to ruin his own life and Mozart's through his bitterness.

It's easy to condemn Salieri, but I have often felt the seeds of those same bitter thoughts starting to grow in me. Have you ever read a book or seen a movie that affected you so deeply that you were astounded by its beauty? That you went around thinking of it for days, feeling it resonating inside you, and yet--you knew it wasn't really worthy? You know the kind I'm talking about. The stories that leave you grabbing for the Kleenex and rooting for the man to "follow his heart" and leave his wife for his mistress. Or maybe the story is noble, but the writer is an appalling mess.

Sometimes I want to ask God--okay, sometimes I do ask God--why do you allow people with such harmful messages to have such talent? I would love to serve you with my gift, and yet it's so paltry by comparison. Why would you allow "them" such success?

And then I remind myself of Salieri. I have to wonder, if serving God had really been his desire, would he have reacted the way he did when he couldn't be the best? Did he really desire God's glory, or his own? And then comes the really tough question--are my motives any more pure than his?

Do you ever ask yourself these kinds of questions? How do we have the necessary drive and ambition to succeed in this writing business, and still keep our focus on God? Have you ever experienced something similar, when you felt that God was clearly choosing the wrong person to carry his message? (In other words, not you!) How do we respond if, even temporarily, God holds us back and chooses to gift someone else?

Speaking of Fires

Tiffany Colter recently shared this inspiring story on the ACFW writers email loop. It's exactly the kind of encouragement we writers need, so I asked her if I could pass it on to y'all. Here's Tiffany:

Last night God did an illustrated message for me right in my back yard. When I shared it with my husband he said I should tell some people we knew were discouraged. Writers get SO discouraged sometimes I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Those of you on the prayer loop, Naners, Cheryl, Pam and Amy know that lately I haven't been my usual bubbly self. LOL. Well, if you're going through a "why not me?" moment, month or decade keep reading.

Yesterday we had a rare beautiful day here in Michigan. It was in the 70s, sunny and beautiful. But since we live on a farm surrounded by half a mile in each direction of flat farm land it was, as usual, windy. One of our family's special treats is building a fire. Our fire pit is an old car wheel [the metal part] sunk down in the ground with bricks from our old chimney around it. It is situated in the 10 feet of grass between our ramp to our back door [built during Chris' cancer treatment] and the 'people' door to our garage.

Our six-year-old asked for a fire and Chris was on his way to a business meeting. I said I'd build a fire. It's been a rough month and this last week has been devastating but yesterday God gave us a day of refreshing and I wanted to celebrate with a fire. A time for mommy and her 4 girls to sit out back and smile and read board books and tell stories. [No this isn't back story, yes it is important.]

So I collected a chunk of pages from the old phone book, a toilet paper tube and sticks to create my "wick." [That is my own creation. You're welcome to steal it.] I put a bunch of twigs and branches down in the fire pit, put a couple of split logs around and stuck my wick in the middle. Usually the paper catches fire, carries it down in the wick through the TP tube and down to the brush on the bottom where the fire is protected from the wind. Yesterday the wind was not cooperating. Every time I got something to burn the wind blew it out.

For 15 minutes I tried various combinations of paper and sticks [I had no 'boy scout water' as my hubby calls it to start the fire]. Each time it would catch fire and the wind would blow it out. Once I got a little fire started so in desperation I grabbed some dried grass on the edge of the yard from when Chris mowed Friday but the weight snuffed out the fire.

Then I heard narration start in my head, just like when I'm writing. It was so clear. It said "This fire is like what you're doing in life." I looked in the pit and saw 4 corners smoldering with paper but nothing productive, nothing was burning to catch the logs. Then the narration continued in my head "The very thing that keeps blowing out your fire is what's going to cause it to ignite."
I kid you not at that moment I struck a match and a piece of paper burst in to flames. For some reason I started to run to our wood shack and grab sticks and throw them on the fire. I started jamming paper underneath. The fire ran down the paper underneath the sticks and out of the wind and ignited all the things I'd been trying to light. Something was stirring inside me. The fire jumped almost as high as me [I'm 5 feet tall]. I ran and grabbed a couple of big logs to hold down the twigs. The wind picked up suddenly and stirred the fire in to an all out tizzy. It was roaring and crackling and popping. I stood there and looked at the fire.

As writers we keep lighting fires with queries, magazine queries, editor/agent appointments, requested fulls and we get excited for that requested full until we get the form rejection letter.
But God said to me last night if we keep doing it eventually the right combination of sticks, paper, grass and matches will connect when the wind has slowed to a calm and it will catch fire. Then when that wind resumes, the thing that has been blowing out your dream will cause your dream to burn nearly out of control. At that moment you can throw everything you've got at it. All those dusty full MS sitting in a drawer, all those rejected articles aging on your hard drive, all those lessons from Writer's conference....You can start throwing them on the fire and it will burn.

Be encouraged today. Normally I would have given up on that fire last night but something inside me said no, it became a game to figure out how to get it to light. Let your pursuit of the "publication dream" become fun--a challenge, not a life or death struggle. Then listen for God to speak because the moment will come when preparation meets divine destiny and God will grab hold of you.

Don't give up....and go start a fire.

Tiffany Colter
Writers Career Planning Services
greatcommission2@aol.com

Contest Winner--I Swear it's not Rigged!

The winner of the May drawing for the $50 amazon.com gift certificate is...Kathleen Morphy.



Yes, that's right. The same Kathleen who won the book last week. Double congratulations, Kathleen! And all I can say to everyone else is, if you can get this woman to go with you to Las Vegas right about now, you would do really well.



I want to start up a new contest. I need help with ideas. (One idea could be to disqualify Kathleen for at least a month. :)



You can make your suggestions simple or lavish, although I'd prefer to keep things within the bounds of reason. I myself, for example, will jump through almost any hoops to try to win an iPod. (I still haven't won one.) I'm not saying I could afford to give away an iPod, although if it brought about really incredible results, like a mob of new subscribers, might be worth it.



What do you like to win? Gift cards? Books? Do you like lots of little contests? One great big one?



Let me hear from you. I love giving stuff away and will do it as long as I can manage it. Thanks for playing along!

This and That

What discriminating cats are reading.

Just a few items of business today. First, for those of you wonderful people who have subscribed to this blog, I want you to know it just doesn't always work. I've contacted FeedBlitz a couple of times, but lately the email updates just don't go out to everyone consistently. So if you don't get an update for a couple of days, will you let me know? Or come here directly and check for an update? Meanwhile, I'll continue to try to figure out what the problem is.

I know that yesterday's post went out to hardly anyone. It wasn't particularly important or inspiring, but it had a really cute picture of One-Eyed Jack, the Pirate Dog. Be sure to take a look at him if you missed the original.

Last but not least, you have one more day to leave comments or subscribe to be eligible for the June 1 drawing for a $50 amazon.com gift certificate. Just remember, every time you comment, you get one entry in the drawing!

Pirates, Pirates Everywhere

Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend. Mine turned out to be pirate-themed.




This is One-Eyed Jack, the Pirate Dog. He helps host the animal adoption site put on by one of the local shelters (sorry, I'm not sure of the name!) at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. Jack is apparently pretty tolerant, but fortunately they only slip the full costume on him when someone wants a picture. He is genuinely one-eyed and used to wear a patch, but he put his foot down about that and refuses to wear it anymore.


I saw a couple of other pirates named Jack (human and monkey) when I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I am embarrassed to confess how much I was looking forward to this event. The movie itself left me with mixed feelings. It had a different feel from the first two light-hearted installments. This one felt heavy, and the ending was just heart-wrenching.

Most interesting to me as a writer were the reviews. I read several afterward, and although I had strong opinions and definite criticisms of the movie, none of the reviewers saw what I saw. They didn't even agree with each other. I think each one, though, called the writers talentless hacks. They didn't use those words, of course, but I think they would have liked to.

I had problems with the writing, too, and yet...I thought about that movie, especially the ending, all weekend. It had quite an effect on me. I wondered, is it really such bad writing if it has such a powerful effect?

I guess it's not just my poor little manuscript that draws wildly conflicting critiques and reviews. And I guess if those guys can write hugely popular films and still get called hacks, I shouldn't get too discouraged, either.

So, did anyone else go see Pirates? Or should I have preserved my dignity and not admitted it myself?

See, I Told You So

This is what encouragement looks like.

I said I was going to publish a guest blog today. But I'm going to postpone that until next week. I feel like offering some encouragement of my own today.

Here is a direct quote from yesterday's post: "So today, I vent! Tomorrow, I'm sure I'll be able to let you know how good God is, and what he has done to encourage me and keep me going. He always does."

I knew it, I knew it! Whenever I'm lagging like that, God always gives me just what I need to keep going one more time.

Last night, I received back my scoresheets and comments from the Genesis contest judges. Two were lukewarm and so-so. One, however, gave me a great score and was very enthusiastic about my work. In every category, her comments were positive. She ended with a comment, "Thanks for keeping the pages turning." She also signed her name, so I can tell that she's a successful, multi-published author in my genre.

As I said yesterday, I haven't had much enthusiasm over my work in awhile--not like I used to get. I don't have to be published or win contests, but every now and then, I need some indication that my writing is working. That someone finds it interesting and gets excited about it. As usual, God knew exactly what I needed to help me take one more step. That's what it's all about. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

A verse in the Bible says, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." I can't remember where I heard this--probably in a sermon at church. But someone compared this "lamp" to a flashlight. When it's really dark and you use a flashlight, it only lights up a little spot right in front of your feet. It does not light up the entire area for half a mile. You can't see to the end of the road. But you can see where to plant your foot next. One step at a time.

And that's what God always does for me.

Winner of Diva NashVegas, and a Couple of Other Business Items

Kathleen Morphy won the drawing for Rachel Hauck's new book, Diva NashVegas. Congrats, Kathleen, and enjoy! If you'll email me your snail mail address, I'll send it to you. You can contact me at robing8300 at gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Next week we'll have the drawing for the amazon.com gift certificate.

A few more items of business:


One, I'm going to be away from the computer for the next four days. No posts until next Tuesday. So you'll get a break from me! :) I hope you all enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, and I'll talk to you next week.

Second, while I was wallowing in self-pity yesterday, I forgot to send my congratulations to Sally Bradley, who DID final in the Genesis contest. Sally has been a faithful supporter of the Queen and I appreciate her very much. Best wishes for your work, and for the rest of the contest!