And He sent them out two by two. And He added to the church those who were being saved. It is not good for man to be alone. And a lot of scriptures like that.
Sometimes when I look back–hey, it’s what you do when you get as many years behind you as some of us have accumulated!–I think of several instances when I suffered or my work was weak because I insisted on being a lone ranger.
People would have been glad to help me. But I didn’t ask.
I’m reading the most amazing book. I Wanted To Write is the autobiography, of a sort, from Pulitzer-Prize winning author Kenneth Roberts. Whom you never heard of. Pam Stewart of Colorado Springs was visiting with us over the Thanksgiving holidays and introduced me to him. I am so hooked. (He lived 1885 to 1957.) The book’s subtitle is: An Intimate, Entertaining Account of How An Author Lives and Works. Every would-be novelist, of which I’m not one, would benefit from reading it.
When Roberts was deep in the throes of trying to write his historical novels–not the potboilers, bodice-ripping fake histories, but genuine history with fleshed-out stories of the actual persons–he struggled mightily. That’s when a friend stepped in. Novelist Booth Tarkington was some 20 years older than Roberts and a neighbor in Kennebunkport, Maine (later the home of President George Bush the first). Tarkington would come over and say, “Read me a few chapters of your book.”
Now, what makes that special is that Booth Tarkington, remembered by few today, was as popular as Mark Twain in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. His book The Magnificent Ambersons was made into a movie and is considered one of the best all-time by people who rate these things. Anyway…