Fiona Veitch Smith

Why is it that anyone who can string a sentence together (and even those who can’t) feel they must subject other people to their writing?

Now I know I’m on thin ice here (being one who not only subjects people to her writing but expects to be paid for it too!) but bear with me. Through this article I hope to save some deluded people from the pain of rejection and encourage those with real talent to venture out from under their bushel.

I used to run a Christian music and theatre company with my husband. Every so often we would hold auditions. Sadly, 90% of the hopefuls were never asked back. Many of those were outraged at being rejected, telling us that ‘everyone at church thought they could sing’ or worse that ‘God had told them’. Perhaps He had, but surely a God of love would not force the rest of us to listen to a tuneless prima donna murdering Shine Jesus Shine for the sake of the Kingdom.

Of those 90%, a handful actually did have some talent, but hadn’t properly developed it. We were not an arts training college. We only took on people who were ready to perform. We would tell the promising hopefuls to go away and get guitar, singing or acting lessons and then try again next year. To my knowledge, none of them did.

Lack of Training

It’s the same with writing. Plain Truth’s managing editor Mary Hammond tells me that she receives about a dozen articles a month that are unsuitable for publication. Some are just badly written, others show some promise but illustrate a lack of training in how to write a proper article for a professional magazine.

There are many correspondence courses available that will teach you how to write for publication, so like those talented but untrained performers, I suggest you sign up for one. Yes, they cost money, but if you are serious about your writing, you need to invest in it. If God had called you to be a witness in the motor industry you would probably do a course in mechanics, so why can’t you do a course in writing if you believe you have been called to ‘witness’ in this way?

If you prefer a more unstructured approach, there is a lot of information freely available on the Web that can help you with various aspects of writing. Here’s some info on feature writing and writing for children from my other site, The Crafty Writer. Or use your favourite search engine as a starting point.

As a writing tutor I see two broad problems: either the writer has the right target audience in mind but is producing the wrong kind of writing, or they are producing good writing for the wrong audience. The key, of course, is to match the writing with the target audience. One of the first things I teach my students is how to do market research. This sounds very complicated, but is simply a matter of finding out what a magazine publishes before you send stuff off.

A Living Word

If you ask most people why they want to write they will say it’s because they have ‘something to share’. And it’s not surprising, because that’s how God made us. God himself had something to share when the Word became Flesh (John 1:1) in the form of Jesus. It’s no coincidence, I believe, that the Word in this case is a translation of the Greek word Logos that means ‘living word’. This is the ‘word’ that created all life when it was spoken by God in the beginning (Genesis 1:1).

So the use of words, whether spoken or written, is a creative force. Ideas are spread through them, relationships are forged with them and our personalities are manifest through them. The corollary is also true. Words can bring death so they need to be used wisely. And all the more so when those words are given permanence on the printed page. A spoken word may soon be forgotten, but a written word may be there forever, multiplied every time it is reprinted.

So you should ask yourself: who is this word to be shared with? I have kept a spiritual journal since I was 15. There are now probably hundreds of thousands of words scrawled in ballpoint. Most of those words will never leave the pages of the book. They are God’s words to me and my words to God.

Target audience

Sometimes I write something in my journal that I think may have relevance to a friend or relative. If so, I transcribe those words and share them. Sometimes the words may be relevant to my Bible study group, or my whole church. Only on the rarest occasion do I feel the words need to be shared with readers of magazines. And if I do, I never simply transcribe them. I use the words as a kernel to craft a professional article around. In that process the original words may be replaced with more appropriate words - words that suitably address the target audience.

That all sounds terribly complicated. Well the process can be complicated, but the product must always be simple. In the words of John Halford, editor of Plain Truth magazine: ‘We desperately need writers who can communicate at the ordinary person’s level - identifying with their fears and their needs. Not a holier than thou approach, but a just as unholy as thou approach.’

An arrogant person will be an arrogant writer. This is the type who refuses to be edited. A writer should never be above editing. I have been writing professionally for 16 years and still get edited. A wise editor will do it gently.

Now let’s move outside the covers of religious publications and ask: What is the role of the Christian writer in the world?

A few years ago I attended an Association of Christian Writers conference at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. One of the speakers was Brian Draper, a Christian writer and editor. He spoke of writers and artists as being positioned on the periphery of the church. Our role, he said, was to interpret the church to the world, and in turn, the world to the church. The danger of this positioning, of course, is that we may face rejection from both camps. I have not met a single Christian artist who is truly fulfilling his or her calling who has not been ‘misunderstood’ by others in the Church. It’s a hard place to be, but we must stay here at all costs.

Setting the agenda

In my last article on the media I outlined how our worldview is shaped by the written and broadcast word and argued that it was essential for Christians to begin ‘setting the agenda’. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean producing programmes about Christianity or even writing Christian novels (though both have a role to play) I’m talking about presenting a Christian worldview of ‘secular’ things.

None have said it better than CS Lewis, so I’ll shut up now, and let him talk for a while:

‘While we are on the subject of science, let me digress for a moment. I believe any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to a Christian point of view for half an hour or so, but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible.

‘We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects - with their Christianity latent. …. it is not the books written on Materialism that make the modern man a Materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian.’ (from God in the Dock)

A Christian writer?

This is perhaps a good point to say that I never describe myself as a Christian writer, rather as a writer who is a Christian. I write for the secular press as well. One of my clients is an international sporting magazine for whom I do interviews of expat sportsmen in the UK. Most of the articles I do for them never mention God, but this does not mean that my writing is no longer ‘Christian’.

Sportsmen, like most personalities are suspicious of the media. As a Christian I need to have integrity in the way I deal with these people and their private lives. I will never write something to deliberately humiliate them and always honour any requests that comments remain ‘off the record’. From my editor’s perspective, I present well-written, professional work on time. For me, it’s an issue of character, Christian character.

You may have noticed I said most of my articles never mention God. But some of them do. If I can mention God or Christians in a positive light without it sounding forced or preachy, I do. For example, I interviewed the captain of a premier league rugby club who is also a committed Christian. While interviewing him about his life in London, I asked him what he does on weekends when he’s not playing, knowing he goes to church. This gave him an opportunity to speak about his faith. I put his comments in the article and the editor left them in. And all this in a magazine with a bare-breasted babe and a strategically placed hockey stick on the cover!

Secular media

Another way to set the agenda is to give the Christian perspective on issues, whether it is the law, the economy, ecology or education. That is one of the roles of Plain Truth. John Halford agrees: ‘Those of us who can do it must use the media. It needs Christians to say “hey, there is another way of looking at this, and another way of thinking that leads to different decisions and opens up the door to other possibilities.”‘

Christians need to go into the secular media. I listen to Radio 2 and have been impressed at the opportunities given for Christians to give their viewpoint on the Jeremy Vine Show. I only recently discovered that he actually is a Christian. Vine has not attempted to hijack the show and gives equal time to all religions, but equal time is all we need when the truth can set people free.

Christian writing on the web

For some thought-provoking Christian writing check out Methodist minister, Dave Faulkner’s blog.

For more information on the Christian writing scene visit the comprehensive Christian Writer.

First appeared in Plain Truth as ‘Sit Down and Be Counted’, April 2006

Subscribe to my feed to receive automatic notification of new content (what's this all about?)