Apples of gold...

It came as a simple suggestion: “Have you thought about working on that novel you started a few years ago?” Frankly, I was surprised that Chuck Thompson even remembered such a thing. After all, it was almost 20 years ago that I had scratched the writer’s itch and typed a few pages of a story. I remember thinking at the time, How hard can it be? A plot here, a few characters there; throw in a twist, add a resolution and, voilà, a novel!

Well, let me tell you how hard it was: VERY! First off, the characters didn’t cooperate. They’d run off down any number of rabbit trails, and retrieving them and making them behave was beyond me. Then the plot veered off course, meaning that although it was fiction, what I was making up was supposed to make sense! Imagine that.

I never did get as far as the twist. What I did was give up. Seems that old itch cleared up really fast once I found out that serious writing required heaps and heaps of time and effort.

Back to Chuck’s suggestion. He didn’t know for sure, but I think that he had a pretty good idea that I was in a funk. What’s funny, though, is that I didn’t even realize I was in one. But, the minute after I had hung up the phone after our conversation, it was as though the sun suddenly shone after weeks of overcast and drizzle.

I pulled out the old manuscript (I just had a paper copy) and read it over. My, my, I thought, things have really changed in 20 years! What—no cell phones! This will never do. I busily began rewriting, adding, moving, deleting. Before I knew what was happening, I was totally immersed in the story. My creative juices were pumping, I was reenergized and, truthfully, I itched all over!

The Bible says that “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). Chuck didn’t know it, but he gave me a very valuable gift. Not that anything will come of my novel—that’s not the point. Chuck’s simple gift untied and set free the “me” that God intended me to be. That’s what a little encouragement can do. It doesn’t cost anything, but it can mean everything.