It helps to have a sense of humour, I’ve discovered, when you’re an author. Being able to laugh at ourselves and the dilemmas we find ourselves in at times somehow helps to connect us to the ‘real world’ – at least for a moment. And it also helps us not to take ourselves too seriously.
Authors can have a unique, rather strange way of thinking. And an example of such thinking from my own life led to my first ‘author joke’ that I often tell others. One day quite early in my writing journey, my husband thought I needed a break from the computer and suggested we go out for coffee. I reluctantly agreed – after all, I had just reached an interesting part of the plot in my current work in progress. We duly had our coffee, but on our way home, I felt my husband was driving a little too slowly, for once.
‘Hurry up!’ I told him. ‘I want to get home and find out what my characters have been up to while I’ve been out!’
Needless to say, my husband shot me a slightly strange look. Was I really joking – or had I finally lost it altogether?
On another occasion, I was talking with a group of friends, when one of them shared something they had done recently. I opened my mouth to respond by saying ‘Oh, Jenna just did that too!’ but thankfully caught myself in time. You see, Jenna was – and is – a character in one of my novels! She’s not a real person at all – or is she?
My third ‘author’ joke is on a slightly different tack. Yesterday I was explaining to a friend how I need to mention a few books by other authors in the non-fiction book I am currently writing. I would like to quote some of their exact words, but understand I would need to get permission from the copyright owner.
“It’s a lot easier when I can quote things I’ve written myself,” I told my friend. “I’ve just included some thoughts of mine from a journal I kept years ago. … Maybe I should charge for the privilege!”
“Yes,” my friend replied. “You could write to yourself to ask permission and then send yourself the bill! Perhaps you could even write something about how to make money out of writing by paying yourself to quote yourself! At least that way you might make some money out of writing!”
We were talking nonsense, I agree. But later, our conversation set me thinking along much more sober lines. I would never pay to use something I myself had created – that is, if I still owned the copyright for it. I would never buy something I already own. But that’s what God did for us. God created us in the first place in his image, as Genesis 1:27 tells us. He certainly owns the copyright for us all. But we chose to walk away from God and run our own lives. Yet God loved us enough to do something about it – God bought us back.
It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. (1 Peter 1:18-20 – The Message)
We were God’s children once, created in our Father’s image. Now through faith in Jesus we can be God’s children again, part of God’s family – forever. Now that’s the greatest story ever told!
Jo-Anne Berthelsen's Blog 