by Peter Leavell, @PeterLeavell
Creativity curls like steam in a shower. Because you are in the shower. And brilliant ideas flow from the showerhead, running through your mind like a movie montage with stirring music.
Dried and prepped, you sit down to write content. And the ideas you’d clung to dash away like mice in your garage when you turn on the light. You find yourself struggling to come up with anything, and you add simile after simile, like a child continuously asking why.
Now is the time to draw on a bag of tricks. Let me offer you a rhetorical suggestion.
Define. Define everything. And post your definitions.
Why?
Most of our day is about defining.
Let’s get controversial right away. Is an open-faced sandwich a sandwich? Is a hotdog a sandwich? What about a calzone?
Is breakfast cereal cold soup?
Definitions are ongoing fights. Less interesting are political definitions. Help the poor. What is poor? If the poor have a cell phone, can they be called poor? And who helps? Religious organizations? Governments? What is an organization?
What is a pandemic? What is a vaccine? Is it a mask if it is cloth? What is male, female? What is gender?
What is a Christian? What is an American?
In the courts, the lawyer who can best define the law and what happened in the case wins.
Brutal fights popped up over definitions. My definition of ‘clean’ your room and my kids’ definitions are different. The definition leads to lengthy discussions.
And that’s okay. Our discussions and debates keep us from doing anything rash, help us understand any issue from many points of view, and connect us as humans.
Politics and human behavior aside, here is how you can use our need to define all the things to your advantage.
How do you define writing? The peace of Christ? Beauty? Shy people? These are off the top of my head in just a minute and make for okay posts.
Writing is getting the last word without interruption.
Walking with the Lord is holding His hand, even when everything is okay.
Books collecting is not hoarding. It’s making friends.
Reading the Bible is a conversation with God.
Peace is leaning on the Lord and ignoring the news.
Definitions define debates.
If I wanted to expand these, I could write 500 words to turn them into a blog. Or even more ambitious, I might have a character live out learning the definition of chivalry, honesty, or love, and turn the story into a novel.
Enjoy seeing the world through definitions! And thanks for your contribution as we look to define everything!
Philip Anderson keeps his past close to the vest. Haunted by the murder of his parents as they traveled West in their covered wagon, his many unanswered questions about that night still torment him.
His only desire is to live quietly on his homestead and raise horses. He meets Anna, a beautiful young woman with secrets of her own. Falling in love was not part of his plan. Can Philip tell her how he feels before it’s too late?
With Anna a pawn in the corrupt schemes brewing in the nearby Dakota town, Philip is forced to become a reluctant gunslinger. Will Philip’s uncannily trained horses and unsurpassed sharpshooting skills help him free Anna and find out what really happened to his family in the wilderness?
Peter Leavell, a 2007/2020 graduate of Boise State University with a degree in history and a MA in English Literature, was the 2011 winner of Christian Writers Guild’s Operation First Novel contest, and 2013 Christian Retailing’s Best award for First-Time Author, along with multiple other awards. An author, blogger, teacher, ghostwriter, jogger, biker, husband and father, Peter and his family live in Boise, Idaho. Learn more about Peter’s books, research, and family adventures at www.peterleavell.com