Look Inside, Not Around

So, I've been having this dilemma.
Fact: I am a Christian.
I believe Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man, and that he was crucified in my place, and after three days, he rose again. This is true.

Fact: I write books. I haven't finished most of them, but I will. And I'm gonna go ahead and be confident in saying they're good. No. I mean, they're hella good.

Dilemma: Do I write Christian books or are my books just books?
This is a dilemma because I can go either way, but I want to do what God wants me to do. Let me explain.

So, until the beginning of this year, I'd never even considered writing books that weren't Christian, but I've been doing some thinking. There's the publishing issue, which is basically a Christian publishing company probably won't want a lots of swearing and suggestive content and that, but a secular publishing company won't want to throw Christianity at it's audience. So I either have to whitewash it or leave out all the super Jesusy bits. And then there's the God's Will issue. If they're not Christian, am I doing it right? If they're not, is that okay? As I've been struggling with this, I've never been so lost. I always knew what I was supposed to do, and suddenly I didn't.

Today, I decided, finally, but it took me a lot to get here. However, the point of this post is not to inform you of my problem being solved. It's actually about how not to solve the problem. During the course of this internal debate, I went to several of my most trusted friends, laid out my thinking on all of this, and asked them what to do. I wanted my friends to tell me in the plainest terms, "yes," or, "no."

Two problems with this:
1) This isn't a yes or no question.
2) It's my question. (Kind of like Frodo and the task of the ring of power. "Mine. My own.")
No one can carry it for me, or in this case, answer it. I'm it. At the end of the day, I'm the one who decides what goes in the book and what doesn't. And after a long battle, I've learned this.

No one can make my decisions for me. Even when I wish they would. Especially when I wish they would. Honestly, I love my independence, but in this particular case, I didn't want it. After a lovely lunch with my best friend today, I realized I was just as conflicted after talking about this as before, even though she had good and useful things to say. She's not the only one who had a good response to my dilemma, but it didn't matter how many people I talked to, I was still stuck. Because I didn't want to be the one with this responsibility. But I am.

And so,
No one can write my books for me, solve my problems for me, or live my life for me. And, no one can live your life for you.

(As for the solution to the dilemma, I'm just going to write the books until they're written. And that's that.)

There's An Angel Looking Out For Me

A girl I knew died today.

It's weird to write those words. I feel like I'm putting on a show. Those words belong at the beginning of a poem or a novel. A sad one with some good bits, or one that starts off at this low point and goes somewhere good. Bittersweet. But real life doesn't work that way. Those words are here. This isn't a novel or a poem. They're not on a Tumblr post. They're not fiction in any way. They're not even fact on someone else's blog. In someone else's journal. Someone else's life. They're here. In mine. And they're true.

She was in several of my classes from the very beginning of my freshman year. Until last semester, she and I were in the same major. She sat behind me in Life Science Lab. I saw her a week ago. Her name was Shelby. She was nice. She was cute. She was friendly, and kind, and I liked her. We weren't best friends, but she was closer than I would've liked. (Not that I didn't want to be friends with her. Just because of this.) It's hard to explain and not sound rude.

They didn't tell us how it happened, just that it was unexpected. I'm sure Facebook is talking about it. I don't want to look. I'm not sad, even though I know I should be. I just don't get sad. My dog died on Friday. I should be sad about that. I'm not. I knew Angel wasn't long for our world, so I was pretty well prepared, but Shelby is different. Yet the feeling is the same. It happened. I can move forward. Never back.

I'm sorry for her family. Her friends. The people who are the same as me, but who feel things differently. Or show feelings at all. I have this great control or detachment over my emotions. I don't cry. Ever. Even when someone dies. Even Angel, who I loved. I'm good at accepting reality at face value. Once something is, it is. Death in this life is final, and I can't change it. But it's still weird.

I don't like grief. I stay away from social media when I know it'll be full of sadness and mourning. I know that makes me sound like a terrible person, but it's the truth. I know it's sad, the thing that happened. I know the people posting are sad. I don't need to make myself feel guilty because I don't feel such sadness. I don't feel the need to tell the world how well or not I knew that person or how close I was to that thing.

Artists take pain and internalize it before letting it flow out into some for of beauty for the world to see. Van Gogh. Shakespeare. Eric Clapton. Painters. Writers. Musicians. People live. People die. People create. People destroy. Each is a different action and reaction to the others. It depends on what kind of person you are. You're born. You live. You get old. You die. Simple. And complex.

I internalize everything. I feel everything the same. Good experiences. Bad ones. Ones that should be good or bad, like news. Like this news about Shelby. And I use all of it for my art.

It is research.
Rule # 11: Everything is research.
Research for what? Writing.
How can it be research if it happened to you?
It can. It is. The books I keep inside my head come from research that happens to me.

For example:

My friend, Elisabeth, wants me to kill someone. In a book. She wants to cry because the book is sad.
Reasons to not: 1) I don't feel sad.
                          2) The world is sad enough without my help.
However, if Elisabeth wants the book to be sad, then a sad book will make her happy (because she got what she wanted.) The inverse of which is: a happy book will make her sad. So, in conclusion, if I want to write something that makes Elisabeth happy, I need to kill someone. I need to make people like that someone. And I need to make it sad. I'm not John Green. I'm not George R. R. Martin. I don't kill people, but I might to make it sad. For me, my life is all experiences and people God has given me to write books.

And yet, a lot of the things that end up in books are experiences and emotions I've never had. (Rule # 18: There's always a boy. The girls in my books always find someone. Now, ask my friends how many boys I've dated.)

I'm off topic. This is about Shelby. And I don't mean to make it sound like I'm demeaning what happened. I just mean, I don't feel sad. Shelby was fun and alive. She was a beautiful person, and God used her. He still is. It's terrible for us, who are still here, that this happened. It's not terrible for her. I can't make myself cry or be sad for myself that someone I knew isn't here anymore. I don't want to fake sadness either. I would hate to be that person. What I feel about this will only be expressed in a book, if I express it. Here is the other place. On this blog.

She's gone. She's with Jesus, wherever He is. She won't get to do things, but she wouldn't want to come back to do them. Jesus is the best place to be, and I'm happy she made it there.