I went to library last night to write. It was like pulling teeth. I probably should have stayed home and typed the story I finished into my computer, but I wanted to get myself into the habit of writing at a certain time every week.

I was there for 2.5 hours and I did everything but write.

I ended up reading a book called "The Time is Now" by Rabbi Daniel Wouk. It was like a self help book to get off our duff and get on with your life. The last chapter was kind of depressing because it was letters that dying people sent to the Rabbi about how much time they wasted in their life and how they wish they had done certain things. It made the point though, didn't it? Nothing like hearing from the dying about how not to waste your life.

Then as another time waster, I wrote up the intro to a christian based writing class which I might someday want to teach. I'm calling the class "Riffing on the Bible: Adventures in Christian Storytelling".

Here's the class advert to be posted in some church bulletin:

"In jazz, musicians improvised on a melody and created riffs to make great music. Using well known biblical texts of disciple interactions with Jesus as jumping off point, explore the art of storytelling to your stories of your own faith journey in in a non-judgmental environment. While you are required to write, sharing is optional but come with an open mind to see how the Holy Spirit and the bible can inspire your creative writing.

If we are all disciples of Christ, how much can we ourselves in actions of the original twelve disciples in the New Testament.

The class will be riffing on the following new testament texts: (of course, to waste more time, I had to go through the bible to find some relevant texts to riff from)

1. Matthew 4: 18-22, Jesus telling the first discples "Follow me and I will make you a fisher of people".

2. Matthew 14: 25-34, Jesus walking on the sea and saying "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid."

3. Peter's Denial of Christ three times (Matthew 26, etc)

4. Luke 9: 18-20, Jesus asks the disciples who he is and Peter says "you are the Messiah of God."

5. John 20-21, Doubting Thomas (my biblical favorite!)

6. Acts 9: Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus.

I wonder if I ever taught the class, if anyone would even be interested in showing up. Writing is such a private experience, and I wonder if writing about faith is just way too private to be talked about in a group.

It doesn't matter anyway because the exercise was just a way to distract myself from writing. I hate teaching classes from what little I've done of it. God did not give the "teaching is a good experience" gene.

I did manage to write up an outline for a new novel called "The Unsettler", but I'll discuss in another post.