Weekly Links: podcasts, writing the hard stuff, and more!

SOME INTERESTING LINKS FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, FAMILY, AND FICTION.

Faith 

-"I Used to Suppress the Truth in Unrighteousness":

We experience this particular kind of self-deception in daily life when we do things like tell ourselves we can absolutely make it through a yellow traffic light, and we keep on believing it until we see the light turn red above us, or even a few yards ahead of us. The moment when we were saying “I know I can make it” is when we were suppressing the truth. The moment when we see the light turn red while our car is still in the middle of the intersection is when we admit, “I knew I couldn’t make.” That’s when we know we were fooling ourselves.

-"Home Row: A Podcast on Writing with Writers": A new podcast find for me. This could have gone under the "fiction" heading too, but as the host is a Christian who has (so far) been interviewing Christian writers, I thought I'd put it here. I've really been enjoying this one!

-"Trump: An Icon of the Western Soul": Anne Kennedy, being brilliant again:

Is this where we wanted to be? Embarrassed by someone’s sexual chatter? No, but we wanted everything leading up to it. And God, in his justice, said have what you want. It seems kind of flat doesn’t it? Sorry, sad, boring, ridiculous. There isn’t anything scintillating or provocative about the way that Trump was talking. There isn’t anything shocking about it either. There should be, but there isn’t.

Family 

-"The Art of Condolence"

-"Spiced Quinoa": a simple vegetarian recipe that our family enjoyed this week.

Fiction

-"The Book Monster: When Writing Gets Hard":

I was pushed to finish this book because of a contract and a deadline. If I’d been on my own, I might have put it away. We’ve all heard writers everywhere say, “Sometimes you have to accept that this book isn’t your book to write, right now.” Like there’s magic in that, somehow. Whenever I hear this, I want to throw my hands in the air because how do you know?

-Brandon Sanderson, "The Business of Writing": I'm slowly listening through Sanderson's writing class (free on YouTube), and I'm sharing this one because it's a particularly good explanation of how fiction publishing works--well worth listening to if you're an aspiring (or newish) author.


I hope you have a lovely Sunday evening!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell