Jerry B. Jenkins told me to — so I did.

Jerry B. Jenkins told me to — so I did.

Jenkins suggested that writers (yes, that's me) should read good writers — adding that he reads anything by Rick Bragg, former New York Times columnist and non-fiction writer of masterpieces like All Over But The Shoutin’. Jerry B. Jenkins, author of that little 70,000,000-selling Left Behind series and more that 175 books was the keynote speaker at the Indianapolis Christian Writers Conference last November.

I recently finished Bragg's two memoirs.

The following are a few of my favorite Rick Bragg writing jewels from his Shoutin' book:

It would have been artificial to grieve, like bending over plastic flowers laid at a gravesite, and expecting to smell their scent. (pg. 108)

I had always wanted to go to Haiti, the same way I'd wanted to touch my mother’s hot iron. (pg. 201)

It is not that it has turned them against God, only that it has hurt them in a place usually safe from hurt, like a bruise on the soul. (pg. 247)

…the washing machine danced back and forth in the closet like a mentally deranged great-aunt. (pg. 270)

I captured the stories of dead innocents and other great sadnesses in my notebook, like butterflies pressed between the pages of a science project. (pg. 275)

And my favorite gems from Rick Bragg’s Ava’s Man:

They understand anger and even hatred, but fury is one of those old words that have gone out of style. Jimmy Jim Bundrum understood it. It rode his shoulder like a parrot. (pg. 35)

Her mind was not built for worry, for being sad. It could not absorb it somehow, the way some ground can’t hold water. (pg. 88)

The things the boys remembered about their daddy were not always spoken things, which are just wind, really, but things he did. (pg. 109) 

“That woman,” he would say, “could nag paint off a wall.” (pg. 135)

...what they had discovered in those years was not the love people whisper about over candles, but the kind they need when their baby girls is coughing at three o’clock in the morning. (pg. 156)

…the sky was changing from blue to a deep and angry purple, like is it was bruised.” (pg. 201)

Some men are just blessed that way. Some men walk in the room, and babies laugh out loud. (pg. 215)

Bragg's writings show the power of words.

I have two writing challenges for you today:

(1)  I double-dog dare you to read Bragg's books.

(2) Write you own gems — now.

Blessed Writing!

 Janet

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