Quotation of the Week

I just spent the last forty minutes meticulously copying three pages of quotations on writing into my Quotation Journal--nine years of favorite quotations thus far. As I just posted on Facebook, posting quotations about writing makes me feel more like a writer and less like a wily procrastinator. But blogging is definitely writing, right? So blogging in no way, shape, or form can possibly be construed as procrastination. Right? (Please agree with me!)

I should be working on upteen million things right now, but I think I'm going to rest body, mind, and spirit by dragging my low-slung beach chair under a Jeffrey Pine and absorb myself in my fun summer read, Me and Mr. Darcy. And I'll also post a new Quotation of the Week to encourage all of us writers as we bang on keyboards, wield pens, push pencils, or however the writing process works for us.

Tomorrow afternoon at Logos, the literary discussion group at Lake Murray Community Church, our church family for over seventeen years, we'll be discussing The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. So a Lewis quotation for this week seems the most appropriate choice. Plus, to me personally, it was definitely the most enlightening and encouraging of the quotations I jotted down this morning....

"Even in literature and art, no [wo]man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."


--C.S. Lewis (1893-1963)

I draw hope (and even a smidgen of courage) from this quotation. When I think about the nonfiction project that has been simmering in my brain for the past four years, one of my (many) concerns is that others have already written about this topic. So, with all the people with doctorates and credentials who write about the value of liturgy for an evangelical audience, why would anyone care about my experience, my perspective? I'm just a homeschooling mom who tripped and fell into liturgy. But Lewis' words ring true to me: tell your truth, and you will be original --"nine times out of ten," anyway.

And those are very, very good odds.

On the journey with you,