Throw Away Your Novel

Martin Lloyd-Jones, in his book Preaching and Preachers, writes that "The best way of checking any tendency to pride - pride in your preaching or in anything else you may do or may be - is to read on Sunday nights the biography of some great saint." It is reading that will humble us, remind us that there is a vast universe, that we are a small part of it, and we are both nothing special in particular and also not alone in our pride and joy and fear and sin. Reading gets us out of our own way, out of our own world, and into a much larger reality. Biography, as Lloyd Jones mentions, is an excellent source for this. Not only does biography humble, it also inspires.

Reading about John Steinbeck's life and work has that effect on me. In my last post I discussed one of the reasons I love Steinbeck's works so much, citing his willingness to try anything that interested him, try it with passion, regardless of whether or not he thought he'd be good at it. Tonight I look at his doggedness, his ability to grind, and the understanding that he couldn't become a great novelist in a day.

In one of the interviews I recently read about him, the interviewer wrote this about him:

"He wrote hard for almost fifteen years before he had his first success. He has always written more than he has published. Indeed, he destroyed two full-length novels before Cup of Gold, his first published novel, made its appearance in 1929."

He destroyed two full novels. They're gone. Years of work, thousands of words, pages and pages of thoughts and ideas and communication of his heart and mind, and he threw them away. Gone. I typically have to cut and throw away 20% of any sermon I write for the purposes of time and clarity, and I am breathlessly despondent with each click of the delete key. But I've never had to throw away a whole sermon, or even a blog post, let alone a novel.

It took Steinbeck fifteen years worth of grinding out pages that would never be read to get to his first success. Let that one sink in.

What are you doing now, that in fifteen years, might define you? Can you name anything you do that will matter in fifteen years? Not because it lasted, but because you threw it away, and threw some more away, and threw enough time and energy doing what nobody would see to reach a lasting contribution?

Yes, this is a call to put hours and commitment into something and stick with it. Of course it's that. But more so than that, this is a call to be doing something today that might matter in fifteen years - something big, something that you love, something that feeds you and the world. It doesn't have to feed the world today. But might it, down the road, after it's fed you and you've thrown it away, be your contribution?

Steinbeck was beginning a life's work, a great literary career, and he didn't know it. He had no assurances that he was headed anywhere of significance. But he wrote anyway.

Someone asked him in an interview was his personal philosophy was. His response: "Like everyone else in the world I want to be good and strong and virtuous and wise and loved." Writing, unnoticed for a really long time, allowed him to do that. And it reminds me today to get down some words, take in another book, work on another sermon, and feed good and true and loving words into my daughters and wife as often as possible. No one may notice or remember any of it. But in fifteen years, that work will have produced something that matters greatly to me.