by Beth K. Vogt, @bethvogt
Despite being craft-challenged, I got hooked on the BBC reality show “The Great Pottery Throw Down.” Two of my daughters started watching the reruns of the first two seasons during the Christmas holidays and invited me to join them. Pretty soon we were cheering on amateur potters who made everything from egg cups to toilets – Yes, toilets! – as we learned phrases like “raku” and “Scraffito” and “throwing off the hump.”
With all my past failed attempts at other artistic crafts – I don’t knit or quilt or paint – I won’t go near a pottery wheel. But there are lessons from this creative art form that can be applied to the art of writing:
- Try something new despite not knowing what you’re doing. Each week, the potters were presented with challenges. One challenge they knew about and had a chance to plan for beforehand. The other was a surprise technical challenge they had to accomplish within a certain amount of time, generally five to 20 minutes. Oftentimes, the potters had never made any of the items requested. Or they hadn’t used the finishing techniques. Or they were pressured by the ticking clock. But they knew the competition was all about challenges, so they did they best they could. Sometimes they surprised themselves, as well as the judges, with what they produced.
- Pay attention to the clock. There’s a reason why a literal ticking time bomb is part of so many suspense novels: the tick-tick-tick adds tension. Every pottery challenge came with a specific time limit. Some potters worked well under pressure and some didn’t. Rushing to finish and get their artwork into the drying room – part of the pottery process – often spelled disaster, as pieces were dropped and ruined. Rushed work rarely received high scores.
- Help out your competitors. Despite being in the competition to win it, the potters helped one another. They loaned one another extra clay, helped put on final glazes, and carried items to the drying room. In one challenge, a contestant made two extra pieces just in case he needed them. He shared one of the extra pieces with another potter because one of his had exploded in the kiln. Even in the heat of competition, the potters didn’t forget to show one another kindness.
- Don’t quit just because your work isn’t your best. Any number of issues can come up in the creative process, disrupting the end product. At times, a contestant had to present inferior work to the judges. Sometimes the final glaze wasn’t as perfect as they’d hoped, or the pottery cracked, or pieces didn’t survive the firing process in the kiln. But they always presented their artwork and listened to the feedback from the judges. Sometimes they made it through to the next round. Sometimes they didn’t.
Which one of these lessons from “The Great Pottery Throw Down” is applicable to your writing right now?
How can you choose what is right for you when your decision will break the heart of someone you love? Having abandoned her childhood dream years ago, Johanna Thatcher knows what she wants from life. Discovering that her fiancé was cheating on her only convinces Johanna it’s best to maintain control and protect her heart.
Despite years of distance and friction, Johanna and her sisters, Jillian and Payton, have moved from a truce toward a fragile friendship. But then Johanna reveals she has the one thing Jillian wants most and may never have—and Johanna doesn’t want it. As Johanna wrestles with a choice that will change her life and her relationships with her sisters forever, the cracks in Jillian’s marriage and faith deepen. Through it all, the Thatcher sisters must decide once and for all what it means to be family.
Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author and editor who said she’d never write fiction. She’s the wife of an Air Force family physician (now in solo practice) who said she’d never marry a doctor—or anyone in the military. She’s a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Now Beth believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” The Best We’ve Been, the final book in Beth’s Thatcher Sisters Series with Tyndale House Publishers, releases May 2020. Other books in the series include Things I Never Told You, which one the 2019 AWSA Award for Contemporary Novel of the Year, and Moments We Forget.
Beth is a 2016 Christy Award winner, a 2016 ACFW Carol Award winner, and a 2015 RITA® finalist. Her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. A November Bride was part of the Year of Wedding Series by Zondervan. Having authored nine contemporary romance novels or novellas, Beth believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us.
An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Learn How to Write a Novel and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.