Around the writer's block a time or two . . .

There is nothing new under the sun. That's another great line already written (by Solomon in Ecclesiastes). It would have been a lot easier to be original if I had been born earlier.

I like to read. But a few months ago I decided to embark on the discipline of writing daily, or almost daily, in an effort to hone that craft. I quit reading fun stuff. I read newspapers and newsblogs and statutes and cases. Mostly I made myself write this blog and the first chapters of several great American novels.

But I started reading fun stuff again a couple of months ago. Anne Lamott, Wendell Berry, Harper Lee; you can't read TKaM too many times.

Jim Wallis, Rob Bell, C.S. Lewis, Barbara Brown-Taylor, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Charles Dickens. . .

Darn them all, and all those thousands of other writers like them . . .talented. And greedy. Some days it seems like they have already written all the good stuff.

And today is one of those days. So I'll quit writing and pick up a book by Rob Bell, that selfish rapscallion.

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