by Peter Leavell, @PeterLeavell

We want more from ourselves.

I mash the remote to watch someone make a chocolate cake with chocolate chunks, chocolate frosting, and chocolate candles.

I’m on the couch and reach for the Peanut M&Ms on the coffee table. I drop the remote. Argh. I lean over and pick it up and set it on the armrest. Thankfully, I didn’t have to drop the raised footrest.

I refocus on the food connoisseur, who is taking the time to choose chocolate either from Ecuador or Côte d’Ivoire. I admire the stock snapshots. The cook makes his decision.

When it comes to flour, Europe is worried about Brexit, so their grain may be stressed. Russia is currently outproducing the U.S. in grain exportation, but the cold war is heating up again, so best not buy Russian flour. U.S. flour is the staple, but the chef is feeling like a change. He goes with flour made from Canadian wheat. We’ll see.

He never changes where he procures the eggs. The Buff Orpington chicken gets moody during the summer and longs for human connections, so the farmers bathe, massage, and council every chicken in hopes it lays the highest quality eggs. The hens have a great 401k, four weeks paid vacation, and double chicken-feed-and-a-half for two eggs. 

Non-GMO, pesticide-free, classical music playing during harvest of rapeseed produces the highest quality canola oil. 

Mixed together and lovingly poured in a handmade Chinese stoneware dish, he bakes it in an equally handmade kiln to evenly heat.

There’s an admiration party at the end when they light the chocolate candle which turns out to be a ten-minute-long fireworks show. 

I admire the cook’s dedication. The unrelenting focus on perfection and quality. If I was a chef, I would give it that much effort. 

But no. I’m a writer. 

I slog through another draft. I ignore a section that could be heightened with more research. I don’t rewrite the section that needs it. And the first page is fine as it is. 

Meanwhile, somewhere, a mediocre chef turns on the TV and watches a show about the time it takes to write a book, admiring the effort of the author who recreates scenes at locations to get everything right and rewrites three drafts, and the chef thinks if she were a writer, she’d put that much effort in. 

Writers, here’s your permission. Go all in with your writing. You already admire the people who are obsessed. That admiration means it is inside you.

You admire greatness. That means you have greatness waiting inside of you!

Now, go be fanatical.

Dino Hunters: Discovery in the Desert

Siblings Josh and Abby Hunter don’t believe their parents’ death was an accident. After taking pictures of the most incredible find of the 1920’s—proof humans and dinosaurs lived together in the same time and place—desperate outlaws armed with tommy guns are on their tail! Only Josh and Abby know where the proof is hidden—in the canyons of Arizona’s desert. When an intruder searches Josh and Abby’s bags inside their new home, the two convince their uncle Dr. David Hunter to return to the canyon and find the pictures they’d hidden. But the outlaws are just as eager to find the proof before Josh and Abby. Can Josh use his super-smart brain to outfox the villains in time? Will Abby’s incredible physical abilities stop full-grown men? And will their uncle believe them?
Dino Hunters is an apologetics-adventure series aimed at the middle reader to help them trust the Bible from the very first verse.