How would you feel if you’d been working on a book for six months or so, researching, reading, writing some chapters, structuring others, gathering quotes, planning interviews, when you discover that someone else has beaten you to it! Happened to me last week.
There I was grazing through my blog subscriptions on Google Reader when I came as usual to The Blazing Center blog. There’s my book! Even my title!! Talk about blazing mad.
Who is this? Stephen Altrogge. How did he get inside my laptop? Has he been bugging my phone? All my work sucked away for an eBook! An eBook!! Not even a real book!!!
Launch date, May 29. Well, still time to sabotage this. But how? After a weekend of plotting came up with nothing, I was reduced to nervous hovering over the “Buy now with one click” button early yesterday.
Only 45 pages? How did he manage to compress all my work into 45 pages? He’s obviously butchered it to pieces.
But as I started to read, my temperature started falling and my blood pressure eased. Hmm, he didn’t copy too much after all. Actually he’s taken quite a different tack to me. It’s a brief gospel-centered romp through the biblical call to be creative. And it’s pretty good. In fact, don’t tell him, but it’s very good – good teaching, good application, great writing. And I love it most of all because it means I can get my work back out of the trash can. That’s surely worth an Amazon review.
My top ten takeaways from the book:
- Our Creator has equipped every single person with creative gifts and called us to be creative in the little corner of the creation He’s given to us.
- By being creative we show the world what God is like
- Creativity is not confined to artists but extends even to accountants [Not sure creative accountancy is a terribly good thing]
- As a Creator who loves creativity, God loves to see his creatures creating
- Fear (of failing, of not finishing, of looking stupid) is the great creativity killer
- Assurance of our acceptance in Christ makes us more creative, because His approval is enough.
- Don’t wait until you have a totally original idea or totally perfect idea
- Creativity is a muscle that gets stronger with use
- Creative work requires faithfulness, diligence, and persistence.
- Create for the glory of God and the good of others and you’ll be personally rewarded too.
You can read more about the book here.
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