Day 33 - Writing

The Bible doesn’t have much to say about writing, but fun fact: every book in the Bible was written by a writer! This may seem like a stupid point to make, but I feel like there’s something in it. True, writing wasn’t always their main occupation: Paul made tents, Luke was a doctor, and much of Psalms and Ecclesiastes are attributed to David and Solomon, a shepherd, a king and a king. Peter caught fish, though I always have the impression his epistles were written long after he moved on from his day-job.

Some people question the authorship of 1 and 2 Peter, saying they’re too refined and literary for the common fisherman we see in the gospels, but even in the text, in Acts, at the first Pentecost, people are amazed that these working-class northerners, can suddenly speak as they do: in

When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? (Acts 2:6‭-‬8)

If Peter can speak Welsh now, he can certainly write with delicacy in Greek. Some suggest that the gospel of Mark may be written by Peter’s scribe, so writing wasn’t necessarily a solitary activity back then. People can work together.

Besides, people’s writing gets better. I think of myself as a writer, and always wanted it to be my job, whether in prose or on the screen. I studied creative writing at university, and often feel a failure for not having done the work to so much as finish a novel or submit a script anywhere. During my university years I was exceedingly confident in my future success. I was arrogant, but I thought commissions and finished great works would fall into my lap without any effort or, you know, actual writing involved. I have a lot of regret about that, over the seventeen years since graduation.

One of our lecturers, Garry Lyons, described my final project as ‘sub-Stoppardian nonsense’. I took any comparison to Stoppard as praise. Another lecturer, Harriet Tarlo, said I would go far, but she didn’t know what I’d be doing when I did. I took that as encouragement for my mind, if not my writing.

I did self-publish an ebook on Amazon. I don’t recommend it, as on a sentence-by-sentence level it is nearly unreadable. Not bad, but excessively wordy, with a lot of adverbs, fanciful vocab and a big old dollop of passive voice. If I read it aloud it could work, but for most it would be a struggle. I’ve often thought about writing another, but these things really don’t sell themselves. Started but unfinished works in my drafts folder include: Genesis of the Boat-Trains, The MacGyver Inheritance, Admire All Admirals, The Big Book of Pope Stories, Trajectory, School-A-School! Repentzel the Penitent Princess, Feltburger, and How Would I Poo: Questions Raised by Internet Fetish Art. Purely in terms of prose style, the last of those most closely resembled Ben-Them. Plus myriad short stories, poems and sketches for radio submissions. None were finished!

To my surprise, it’s other arts where I’ve had success. In the past year I’ve struck up a side-hustle as a song-writer and video maker on Fiverr. In the past month I’ve been commissioned to write six short songs and record two very short videos while dressed as a wizard. (Don’t worry, dear listener, I undersell myself). I also made a computer game about a sheep going to a human university, which was built on my own mixed feelings about my university life as a friend tome and a learning environment. It’s free, and won the Bronze Medal at the 2022 Queer Games Festival in Melbourne, which isn’t bad actually. A lot of dialogue writing went into that, and into Ben-Them 1 and 2. I think my writing got better when I stopped trying to succeed and started to be slightly more honest and personal. It turns out you can do that without losing your voice.

To circle back, I think most of this is quite a different sort of writing to the Biblical writers. They weren’t looking for success at the BBC, and those who were writing adventures were doing so because they were writing historical records. They were prophets, they were given things to write about, though they certainly all had their own styles. I like how Paul makes it clear that one point he makes is his personal perspective (1 Corinthians 7:6), and how Luke begins his gospel with an explanation, not that this is verbatim words of God’s mouth - but that he’s undertaken research to draw up the most comprehensive account he can, that this piece of writing is the result of good writing work:

‘Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. - Luke 1:1‭-‬4

He had something worth writing about and he wrote it well. On a much smaller scale, I think Ben-Them’s strengths, in comparison to other things I’ve served up, is that there are some things I’m keen to talk about that are genuinely worth talking about, that a lot of these subjects matter. During Lent I’m glad to at least err in that direction.

However, outside of Lent I will still find time to write pure whimsy, and absurdist adventure. I have hopes for my second game, later this year - a feverish wid west fantasy entitled Trans Theft Horso. But that’s another story.