Weekly Love Letters
In Stephen King’s book On Writing, he pointed out that most people are able to write or tell a story to some degree. [1] He noted that their ability can be improved upon as well with practice. [2] As a teacher, I would say that this is certainly true of my students. Nearly all students can tell a story orally at some degree of proficiency, and need work in the area of putting their ideas on paper. All too often, however, students will give up on writing because it is difficult for them. King says this is a bad idea. “Sometimes you have to continue even when you don’t feel like it.” [3]
Personally, I really related with the idea that to be a writer you had to read a lot and write a lot. There are no shortcuts in this. [4] Stephen King stresses that we learn best by reading and writing a lot. [5] Our most valuable lessons are those that we teach ourselves. [6] This made me think of the program of study that we are currently in with Dr. Clark and at George Fox in general for our doctorate. We do a lot reading and a lot of writing and apply what we are learning to our lives as we go. I was fascinated by the connection.
In the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, the author wrote about resistance. It is what keeps us from sitting down and doing our best work, which is presumably writing. [7] It’s not the actual writing that is so hard. It’s the sitting down to write due to the force of resistance. [8] Pressfield went on to explain that if our project that we are working on meant nothing to us, there would be no resistance. [9] The more we love something, the more resistance that is felt. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it is indifference – or not caring. [10] The more resistance you experience when you are working on a project, then the more important your project is to you, and the more gratifying it will be when you finish it. [11]
These books make me think of myself as a writer. I realize that we are all writing blogs and papers all the time right now. Long before these days, while a missionary in Kenya, East Africa, I attempted to put into writing what my life was like for those back home. Email hadn’t really been around a long time at that point. And connections where I was living were hard to come by. Every week I would sit down at the computer and type a long letter to my friends and family about the week’s events. I called them my Weekly Love Letters. The weekly adventures were truly endless over the years, both positive and negative: camping with zebra, hiking the rim of a volcano, sharing the Jesus Film with thousands, dugout canoe adventures, storying the Gospel, so many illnesses, bandits, armed robberies, and so much more. Sitting down to write was always the most difficult part of the love letters. Well, that and getting a good phone connection to send it. My letters began as a weekly update that was just going to my mom and siblings, and grew to include over 500 email addresses when I came home five years later.
I was always told, and still am so, that I should write a book. Those news letters should be put together and published somehow. The sad truth of the matter is that I never kept a copy of any of them over the years. My mom kept every one of them, but she got Alzheimer’s disease, and they were lost with her. I don’t know of anyone else that kept them. So I learned a valuable lesson as a writer. Keep a copy of your work. No matter what it is.
Galatians 6:9 admonishes us “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
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[1] King, Stephen. 2020. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft : Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King. Twentieth-Anniversary edition. New York: Scribner.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Pressfield, Steven. 2002. The War of Art: Break through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. New York, NY, Los Angeles: Black Irish Entertainment LLC.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Crossway Bibles, ed. 2007. ESV: Study Bible: English Standard Version. ESV text ed. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles.
About the Author
Tonette Kellett
Missionary, teacher, Bible student, traveler ... Having lived in Kenya and Korea, I now live in Mississippi and work with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.11 responses to “Weekly Love Letters”
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Tonette,
What a treasure…your love letters! My heart sank upon hearing of them being lost with your mom. I hope you might be able to recover some of these wonderful emails from friends who received them!?
Letters are a wonderful way to communicate. This is how I began writing as a youth.
Idea….if you were to sit down and write (REWRITE) about your adventures as a missionary in Africa…what joy would you get from this? I hope you continue to share about your time in Africa in your blogs.
Kristy
Kristy,
I could definitely rewrite about many of my adventures, but there are so many of the day to day ones that the letters held that my memory has just lost to time, sadly. I do wish I still had them. They were treasures!
Hi Tonnett,
What you wrote here resonated with me:
“The more we love something, the more resistance that is felt. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it is indifference – or not caring. The more resistance you experience when you are working on a project, then the more important your project is to you, and the more gratifying it will be when you finish it.”
It made me wonder if I should implement the “eat the frog first” strategy and have the first task on my to do list be the one that is both most important and the source of the most resistance.
David,
Maybe so. For me personally, I usually try to do the most difficult first and save the most enjoyable for last, no matter what task I am tackling. So I guess I always tend to eat the frog first, just to get it out of the way.
Hi Tonette,
I enjoyed learning that Stephen King was a teacher for a time. It is certainly where he discovered that everyone has a story to tell. I loved reading that you felt the same way. There is something beautiful in that we all have a story. Thank you for sharing yours. I hope you write the book.
Thank you Chad – who knows… maybe someday after this doctorate is finished, I will sit down and write that book after all!
Tonette, I love how you launched from Pressfield and King into your story of sending your weekly Love Letters from Kenya. You did a lot of writing in those five years! Your updates to the people who received your letters must have been quite packed with information. I can only imagine how much they looked forward to receiving them. Were there ways in which the writing process benefited you during that five years?
Do you think you still might write the book someday? I would sure like to read it.
Jenny,
Writing the weekly love letters helped me to stay connected with friends and family back home for one thing. And it also was a way to capture the events of the week in a memorable way. I thought I was capturing the memories in a lasting way, but it turns out that I wasn’t.
Someday I might actually write the book. If I do, I’ll let you know for sure. Thank you!
Tonette, You have such a great ‘story-telling voice’, I would love to read about your stories from the past and even now.
You may have said this – but did you actually love the writing process itself?
Thank you Audrey. I did love writing the letters each week. It was something I certainly looked forward to at the time.
“Personally, I really related with the idea that to be a writer you had to read a lot and write a lot. There are no shortcuts in this.”
This is so true!!!! I have found that when I am reading more and writing more the component of school comes easier. The minute I pause I almost have to relearn and get back in the groove.