Writing is Hard Work

If you want to be a great writer and you have the choice between being brilliant and lazy or being a little clueless but motivated, choose the latter. You stand a far better chance. Sure, such intangibles as creativity, talent and inspiration play a role, but work is where the real action is.

Alexander Steele

If you had followed me around the last few months you would know how true the preceding quote is. But all the hard work is beginning to pay off. Part of that work and yet pleasure has been revisiting past novels such as The Cure. Here is a short excerpt from the afterword that will appear in its coming re-release.

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When Saint Paul tells us he was given a thorn in his flesh he doesn’t tell us what it is. He omits that information intentionally, so we can all relate to his circumstances. Paul asks God three times to remove his thorn, but God explains that Paul is better off with it in place. The thorn—whatever it may be—is a constant reminder that Paul is powerless without God. It reminds him to stay humble, to admit his own willpower isn’t strong enough to overcome his affliction, and to focus instead on help from a Power greater than himself. So as much as it hurts, Paul accepts his thorn. In fact, he boasts about it. It is this very event that leads him to write those famous words: “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

I was thinking about Paul’s thorn when the idea for The Cure came to me. I asked myself, “If someone had offered an instant cure for Paul’s problem, would he have taken it in spite of what God said? And if he did, what would have happened next?”

I decided such a “cure” would have made life even more miserable for Paul. I decided I would rather live with the humiliating weakness of my own addiction to immorality, than suffer from the lonely delusion that I had no need for God. I decided to write about a man who came to that same conclusion.

Athol Dickson, Laguna Niguel, California, May 3, 2012.