Is ‘The Miracle Morning for Writers’ just a time sink?

Some time ago I bought a book called ‘The Miracle Morning for Writers’. Yes, I own a book that tells me how to get up in the morning! ‘The Miracle Morning for Writers’ has you getting up earlier, and gives you a list of important items to do in your new, earlier morning.

These items are called the ‘Life S.A.V.E.R.S.’ Yes, it’s an acronym, and one which renames the six practices in odd ways so they fit the acronym. They are based, so it says, on the habits of the world’s most successful people.

Silence: the first one is just a weird retake on meditation. It also mentions ‘prayer’ as a possible way to do ‘silence’, but then continues on as if we are all doing Trancendental Meditation for our ‘silence’ step. So, in other words, ‘silence’ is denatured Eastern religious practices. Some of us Christians won’t do it on principle, and so we are just to sit there and wonder if our own Christian prayer and meditation routines are really ‘proven’ as a habit of the world’s most successful people.

Affirmations: yes, the good old-fashioned New Age technique of lying to yourself daily is part of the ‘Miracle Morning.’ But it claims that the most blatant lying-to-yourself doesn’t work. You shouldn’t use ‘I am a millionaire’ as a prosperity affirmation because your mind knows it’s not true.
The only thing that affirmations are good for, in my opinion, is to change your own negative thought patterns. Affirmations aren’t a magic spell to get you more success and prosperity from the obedient universe who grants us our wishes if we express them in the right New Age way. It’s just a way to turn your brain’s ‘I fail at everything’ mantra into a ‘Sometimes I succeed’ mantra.

Visualization: Supposedly it is actually proven to work when top atheletes do it. The book recommends visualizing the process of ‘getting there’ rather than the results. So instead of seeing your book at the top of the bestseller list, you see yourself working on writing the book, or doing the things you can actually do to promote that book. Visualization might actually help— I find sometimes when I think about, and ‘visualize’, doing a dreaded task it functions as a rehersal for actually doing the task.

Exercise: Yeah, they want you to do that, too. Artificial exercise, that is. Because if you lift 40 pound hay bales all morning to get your animals fed, you aren’t exercising. You’re just farming. You have to get on a treadmill or go to a gym for your exercise to count! And some exercise does stimulate your mind. But does doing a full workout in the morning help you, or exhaust your mental energy so you can’t use that energy for your writing?

Reading: It is a little horrifying that the authors of ‘Miracle Morning for Writers’ think that they even need to pursuade writers that reading is helpful. Even if you assume that the ‘Writers’ they are writing for are just get-rich-quick schemers who pump out self-published how-to books in order to separate fools from their money. Fiction writers are at least encouraged to read some how-to-write-fiction books as well as the New Agey ‘success’ books they recommend. It doesn’t really cover the importance of reading in your genre or genres, or even that a writer is someone who actually reads books for enjoyment.

Scribing: Since the word ‘writing’ doesn’t fit the acronym, they have to call it scribing. But it doesn’t mean writing the next chapter in your Work In Progress. No, this is about writing in your journal. Yeah, keeping a journal is another task that The Miracle Morning adds to your day.

Now, what does the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. actually add up to in terms of your day? A 60 minute practice, according to the schedule they give as an example. And at the end of it you still haven’t touched your writing for the day. And the amounts of the other activities may not be enough for you. The 10 minutes for ‘Silence’ aren’t enough to, say, pray the rosary. The 10 minutes of exercise don’t seem like much, either. And 20 minutes for reading? I’d want more than that, and I’d want to do it at a time of day when I don’t have to end quick in order to get my ‘Scribing’ and my actual writing done.

Would getting up earlier to do these 60 minutes of tasks help me get my daily writing stint done? Or would they end up being a substitute for getting my writing done? I don’t really know, but given the hard time I have getting my writing and other daily tasks done, I’m not sure if it would help.

What about you, the reader? Have you ever read ‘The Miracle Morning for Writers’ and tried out its recommendations? Did you ever try something similar? How did it work for you?

I don’t know exactly if I want to try the whole ‘Miracle Morning for Writers.’ But maybe I could add the recommended activities, one by one, to see what happens.

Murder over mushrooms — plants in Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding? Thinking about plants? Sometimes a plant can play an important role in a science fiction or fantasy novel. Remember the nightlock plant in The Hunger Games.

A feminist-fantasy stereotype is an herb that works exactly the way feminists wish birth control pills would work. To signal even more feminist virtue, it may be accompanied by an herbal version of the morning-after pill or RU-486— something that will do in an unborn child once its life has begun. There are of course no side effects, not even the normal depression that can come with the ending of a pregnancy in even the best circumstances.

Plants are a major food source, even for carnivores like me. And of course to get the eggs, cream and meat I need for my healthy low-carb diet, I have to feed chickens and sheep lots of good plants, such as stinging nettle. Stinging nettle may sting you when fresh, but if you cook stinging nettle plants they are like spinach. Only better tasting.

Dried stinging nettle plants are a good fodder for sheep, goats and other critters that eat grass and hay. My goats and some of my sheep are willing to eat any fresh stinging nettle I pick for them, but they ignore the stinging nettle plants growing in their pens unless I pluck it for them.

My chickens also eat fresh stinging nettle. Right now a big group of my chickens is in a non-movable pen with no access to fresh greens, so they get very excited when I bring them a fresh bunch of stinging nettle.

In my WIP Tiberius Base, plants are a major influence for the people in starships and star bases. Scientific studies show that people who have regular access to plant-rich environments are happier. And so it is customary to provide these plant rich environments.

A human-constructed forest is at the heart of all Terran-flagged starships. Ships’ crews brag about the size and intricacy of their ship’s forest. Star bases have even larger forests, and an actual space city usually has more than one.

Tiberius Base has a larger forest than any other constructed by Terrans so far. It contains a wide variety of trees and plants from both European and Asian environments. Mushrooms spores are well represented in the mix. And this leads to a problem.

Mushrooming is an amazingly popular activity among Terrans in space. The formal food-growing facilities on Terran ships and bases don’t traditionally grow mushrooms and so it is a highly sought-after food. Canned mushrooms are a staple in trading and many worlds without much interplanetary trade have a small facility in which to can mushrooms.

A forester is placed in charge of an artificial forest in a starship or base, but people hiking through the forest for recreation often come upon newly sprouted mushrooms before the forester is aware of them. People often have certain mushroom-rich areas of a forest that they look upon as their personal mushroom-hunting space. The problem arises when more than one person claims the same space.

Usually there are a few rules. Residents of a base or starship have a higher claim to a bit of the local forest than do transients or guests. Well-off people who have a garden area incorporated into their quarters must give way to the lower-income workers. But when 2 people of the same status claim the same mushroom ground, it can get difficult.

There was a famous case of murder over morel mushrooms on one of the older starbases. Since this base was owned by the Menders, an alien race, and Terrans were only using the base with permission, it was quite the scandal. It has since been established that murder over mushrooms, even morel mushrooms, is in no way considered justifiable homicide. It is also customary to grow some morel mushrooms in the cultivation rooms to render them less rare-and-hard-to-come-by.

Another way plants are important to star bases and starships is the provision of Schreber gardens. A Schreber garden is a custom which started in Germany. There are small garden plots provided to those who live in apartments or small houses with no gardening space.

In the spacegoing world, Schreber gardens are provided to anyone living on a space base who do not have a garden area as part of their living quarters. Gardening together with your Schreber garden neighbors is a popular pastime. Even in starships sometimes Schreber garden plots are provided to interested crew men, especially men who are drafted into the service.

Certain drug plants are forbidden crops on any space station or ship, as drug plants may be taboo in our world. Use of drugs for other than medical necessity is considered a sign of weakness, and drug users are likely to be identified and deprived of employment opportunities. However, the usual punishment for a convicted drug user is time spent in a locked-door rehab facility, so at least the convicted have a chance to shake their addictions.

Some plants may be mild spices for one species and deadly drugs for another. This creates conflict when the spice is a beloved one and the users of it don’t want to give it up to help aliens remain drug-free. Sesame seeds are a plant item of this class, but roasting the seeds denatures the drug effect.

Infinite patience & sweetness with our readers

What relationship should a writer have with his readers? I remember once looking at author Stephen King’s web site. He was at the time expressing a lot of contempt for those people who had ‘hatefully’ voted for the Republican man who was at that time President of the US.  He didn’t seem to be aware that many of his readers did not agree with his politics, and so he was insulting people he should have been wanting to sell books to.

The other day I was reading a leaflet I got from the Legion of Mary, a Catholic organization I joined in my parish. It gives as a basic principle for people doing church work ‘Infinite patience and sweetness must be lavished on a priceless soul.’ I think that’s a good principle for writers, too. Each person that might (or might not) buy our books is an individual precious soul that God loves.  Each soul is far more precious than all of the books we might write in a lifetime. We shouldn’t see them as just fodder for our book salesmanship efforts.

What do those precious souls want? More important, what do they need? If we are Christians we would probably say they need Jesus in their lives. Is our writing a help to that goal or a hindrance? Is our work more than just cheesy fiction to pass a few hours, or is there something of spiritual value hidden in there?

An individual reader may not choose to buy YOUR book. But the way you interact with that precious soul may have an influence on his life, including his eternity. It is a sacred trust. And so therefore a Christian writer probably shouldn’t be putting people down for liking Star Wars more than Star Trek, or being a geek or not being a geek. They are precious souls and even if they are being annoying as heck right now— perhaps condemning your whole body of work because one of your novels contains the word ‘heck’— you in your interactions with that person can have a great effect.

My mother tends to have annoying friends, who call her at all hours even when she tells them not to call at certain times. They talk for a long time without giving my mother a chance to say anything. But they are emotionally damaged people who need someone who will just listen. They don’t have the social skills to be people other people WANT to talk to on the phone. So they need someone like my mom, who takes their calls anyway. It’s a gift of charity that she has.

The rest of us may not have these special spiritual gifts, but we may be called to be listeners anyway. I suppose if we could master a hard-sell approach to book marketing, we could turn these annoying or critical people into sales of our books. But that would be not treating them as individual people with precious souls. Unfortunately, our book sales have to come in second to the needs of real people.

The Devil’s in the Entertainment

The devil is in the entertainment. Sometimes literally, as in the television show ‘Lucifer’ where the devil, not Jesus Christ, is the son of God, and his ‘Dad’ is always being mean and spiteful.

Watching today’s devilish entertainment cannot help but corrupt us. On television, sexual gratification is something to be pursued, not delayed or denied. Even if the object of one’s sexual desires is married, of the same sex, or a Catholic priest.
On General Hospital recently, a Catholic priest who had not yet left the priesthood had sexual relations with Ava Jerome, a lady mob boss. Ava once had a sexual encounter with her worst enemy. In a crypt. At a funeral. The resulting baby was named Avery. Let’s hope Ava doesn’t give Avery a brother or sister in nine months!

Television was not always like that. In the early days television executives feared the power of angry Christian priests and pastors to turn Christian people away from this new form of entertainment. Television featured things like the Fulton J. Sheen television show, Life is Worth Living. There were wholesome entertainment shows for kids such as Romper Room and the Roy Rogers series. Even on Westerns featuring saloon girls there was no hint these girls were based on real-life Western prostitutes and madams.

Even by 1966 when Star Trek premiered, the liberal Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry could not show forth all of his extreme views on a show meant for general audiences. Roddenberry believed that in the future era where Star Trek was set, marriages would be temporary arrangements. But there was no hint of this in any of the series episodes, and married women were known by husband’s surnames.

Roddenberry wanted the Enterprise to have a chapel, in which Captain Kirk could conduct a wedding. But he wanted no chaplain. But again, the networks would not have allowed that situation to be made explicit. Both the networks and Roddenberry wanted Star Trek to be popular with a mass audience, even those audience members who were Christians.
That is one reason why there were so many Bible quotes on the Star Trek series. It was one thing even liberals like Gene Roddenberry knew how to do at the time.

But today’s televised entertainment has no place for Bible quotes or even for non-blasphemy. Christian characters are haters who usually turn out to be the real killer. Other ‘Christians’ support gay ‘marriage’, abortion ‘rights’ and casual sex, just like all good liberals do.

Christians are called to be in the world but not of the world. (John 17: 14-15) Since the world hates us, and the world is ruled by the Evil One, is there any reason to expect that the entertainment provided for the citizens of the Evil One’s kingdom is good enough for redeemed Christians?

There is the possibility of alternative entertainment. We may not be able to produce our own movies and television series. But we can entertain ourselves with books written by faithful Christians who share our values. This may not be as exciting as the latest action movie filled with expensive special effects and budget-level actors. But it’s possible to find books with Christian values that are exciting and action-packed. Perhaps Christian families should start having family reading hours to replace nights spent watching the worst of what is offered by television.