Rebecca Henderson

Last week I took an unexpected break from the blog, as some may have noticed. I have several topics lined up, several posts in various phases of almost-writtenness, but I have found myself caught up in the midst of other tasks. At times it’s easy for a self-employed writer to let the time during the day drift off into all sorts of good projects — volunteer work, small writing assignments to help out others, marketing and all the mundane aspects of trying to keep a freelance business (and life in general) afloat. All of these are good projects to be working on, yet they are not writing for my work-in-progress.

As this has happened in the last couple of weeks, I decided that the blog needed to pause for a week or so. I don’t make any income from this blog, and so there are times when I can’t justify spending a few hours a week working on it instead of working on things that will pay the bills or are directly related to my book projects. It makes me sad to pause, because I love the writing I get to do here, but I can’t work on it in good conscience when I should be sending out query letters or doing research instead.

Hopefully things will settle down in the next couple of days, and I will be able to start posting regularly again. I’m eager to flesh out a few topics I’ve been pondering, and I’m also eager to get this done before I begin traveling in mid-November. Look for posts over the next few weeks about giving and sharing, an update on what I’m learning through West Texas Interlude research, my reflections on Jane Eyre, a Quinault Community Garden update, and my plans for travel this fall to Texas for research and to China to visit friends (I’m going to China!!!!).

And now, back to work.

As a writer, I am daily involved in small acts of creation — words on paper, characters on a screen. My hands are involved, mostly by typing, sometimes by scrawling out pages long-hand on a yellow legal pad.

I delight in making things by hand. Most often these days, the things I have time to make are edible. My years of living in Yunnan were invaluable for learning to cook from scratch, and I find that I still prefer to make certain dishes with scratch ingredients rather than canned or boxed ones. To the side of my kitchen sit two plump pumpkins, ready to be pureed for my fall baking.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Laura from Cozy Tops invited a group of ladies to her house to crochet or knit baby hats for our local hospital’s awareness campaign for the “period of purple crying.” I haven’t crocheted in years, so this was a perfect opportunity for me to pick up a hook and yarn once again.

making purple baby hats (photo by Laura Solano)

In the past I’ve only made scarves or blankets, and the thought of a hat (i.e. something not flat) made me nervous. But it turned out to be easy enough in the end, and I love the thought that a baby somewhere in the Tri-Cities will be wearing my hat this winter.

hats for purple crying awareness (photo by Laura Solano)

The following weekend, we had our second work day at the Quinault Community Garden. Our goal was to build the raised garden boxes that we will plant in next spring. The call for volunteers said “no building experience necessary,” which was a good thing for me, though up until the time I arrived on the site I was still unconvinced that I could be of much help during the day.

Turns out, it’s not as hard as I thought to use a drill. The experienced carpenters did all the sawing and most of the assembly, but my friend Jane and I were able to contribute through putting together the end pieces of the boxes. We weren’t as fast at putting in the screws as others might have been, but we stuck with it and worked our way through the pile of lumber all morning.

a few of the box ends

At the end of the morning, the group had completed 15 boxes for the garden. Looking out over the finished boxes, I was amazed at what we’d been able to accomplish in just a few short hours.

15 garden boxes at the end of the morning

As God’s image bearers, one way we can worship Him is by working hard to create with our hands. Only God can create something from nothing, but He gives us a glimpse of His joy when He lets us make something whole from its pieces.

When I signed up to help for the week with a group from my home church in Texas on their yearly trip to Calgary, Alberta, I’m not sure what I thought I was signing up for. I signed up to “help,” but didn’t know what specific task that would involve. Turns out my main assignment on our skeleton crew of a team was leading the craft time for a kids’ program during the Canadian National Baptist Convention.

“I’m not very good at kids’ crafts. I don’t know that I’m the best person for that job,” I told my mom.

“Would you rather lead the music time? Teach them the hand motions for the songs?” she asked, sincerely.

“Ummm, no,” I said quickly and equally as sincere. I’m less gifted at kids’ songs with hand motions than I am at gluing pipe cleaners and googly eyes to jumbo pasta shells to make cute little crabs.

I like to sew and have been fashioning cushions for my living room out of old clothes bought in Thailand (don’t laugh, they look cute). I used to crochet a lot, both with yarn and with thread. But I don’t particularly enjoy crafts that will be thrown away five minutes after they make it home. And I knew I would be frustrated if we ran out of time in class. Or had too much time in class. Or what if the crafts were too difficult for the kids and they rioted against me? Kids can riot, you know.

“It’s not about what the craft looks like when they’re finished,” my mom said. “It’s about keeping them entertained and letting them just try to make something.”

So, in preparation, I (and a few devoted friends in the Tri-Cities, thank you so much!) cut out about 5,700 pieces of foam to make key chains in the shape of goldfish, jellyfish, and a flip-flop. Maybe it was only enough for 60 key chains, but it seemed like 5,700. And I survived craft time when it came. I also survived face painting, which is the station I ended up helping with at a kids’ fun day event in a Calgary community where my friend from home is planting a church. Me, face painting — funny thought.

pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and jumbo pasta shells

But the thing is, kids don’t know if you’re good at something or not. If you act like you’re an expert, they think you’re the best in the whole world. And if I’ve learned anything from trying my hand at freelance writing and book publishing, it’s how to act like an expert. So I had kids lined up to let me paint butterflies and flowers on their cheeks. And I had one little girl tell me at the end of craft time, before her mother took her home, “Your name-tag shouldn’t say Ms. Rebecca. It should say Ms. Rebecca — the best art teacher.”

That’s the kind of attitude I should have when I’m serving God, no matter the task. It’s easy for me to enjoy serving with my giftings, when it’s easy for me to excel. But when I’m doing a job that doesn’t come so naturally, I need to approach it with the same gusto, letting God work in me to do what I can’t do. I don’t mean that I should always sign up to do children’s crafts — but if I am assigned to do it again, I want to have the attitude that I will be the best art teacher I can be, just for the week.

As I said in my summer reading post, I’ve picked back up on reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I’m remembering now why I put it down in the first place. She has some really thoughtful essays on writing and creativity that I enjoy and find to be motivating, but she also gets a little too Zen a little too much of the time, at least for my preferences. Anyway, I love this quote from the book and feel that it sums up my life right now:

“Now, let’s understand — writers do like money; artists, contrary to popular belief, do like to eat. It’s only that money isn’t the driving force. I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work. Think of it. Employers pay salaries for time. That is the basic commodity that human beings have that is valuable. We exchange our time in life for money. Writers stay with the first step — their time — and feel it is valuable even before they get money for it.”

In general, I love libraries. But since moving to Kennewick, I’ve come to love my branch of the Mid-Columbia Libraries in particular. It is my office away from my home office, the place I most enjoy taking my laptop for a quiet morning or afternoon or evening of writing or research (I’m typing this at the library now). In complete abandonment of my once proclaimed determination not to post blogs that are bulleted lists, here are the main reasons for my library love:

* The Kennewick branch has multiple places to sit, depending on my mood. If I need to focus, I head for the cubicles in the back. If I just want to read or brainstorm or do something light, I sit in an area where I can people watch or stare out the window.

* Next to the periodicals section is a free-standing gas fireplace with seating 360 degrees around it. This is my absolute favorite place to work or read during winter. It’s a writer/reader’s dream come true — coziness, surrounded by books.

* Back to staring out the window — one set of windows looks out on a demonstration garden. I love that the community has a green place that encourages people to learn about planting flowers and vegetables.

* The library is within walking/running distance of my apartment. My favorite quick-break run (not my favorite long run, that would be at Howard Amon Park on the Columbia River) starts at my front door, goes up the road to the library, loops around a walking path, garden, and park, then heads home. I can adjust this loop for 25-35 minutes of running.

* I can reserve books online, have the librarian hunt them down for me on the shelves or find them at other branches, and then I just come in, look for my name on the reserve shelf, check out my books, and go. This is old news for most library patrons, but I haven’t been able to regularly use libraries since the late 90s. It’s new to me, and I love doing it. (It would take another blog post to talk about whether all the modern changes in libraries are completely good, about how you don’t have to do your own searching of the shelves and experience the rows of books, about how you never have to talk to a librarian to check out a book, but…that’s another blog post, not this one.)

* I can also request books to be ordered. As in, the library buys what I want and lets me read it. A couple of weeks back, I searched at the library for a young adult novel that was published this April. It wasn’t in the catalog, so I suggested the title to the librarian. A few days ago I checked online to find that the book is being held under my name — the system will email me when the ordered book arrives. AND the librarian apparently thought it was a good enough suggestion that they ordered a second copy for the Pasco branch. Nice.

* The quiet, the stillness, and the atmosphere of books are good inspiration for a reader/writer like me, who survives on daily work inspiration. If I need to look at a magazine for an article, I go find it. If I need a book, I go find it. If I need to remember why I even want to write, I look at the shelves and think, “Maybe one day my stuff will be there.”

For years — no, decades — I knew on some level that I wanted to be a writer. I’ve always written, have stacks of filled journals to prove it. I have distinct memories of being outside for recess in the fourth grade and forming sentences in my mind, narrating my own experience as I played with my friends.

If I hadn’t been too chicken, I would have taken writing classes in college and gone straight into publishing afterwards. But I was terrified of a lot of things at that point in my life, and having my writing judged by others was the least of those things. It took 15 years’ worth of transformation by God to bring me to the point of not being scared any more. And so, I get up each morning and write. For a living.

Some days I’m still trying to figure out what exactly I want to write. This blog has been a good way for me to work through some of those issues. I can experiment a bit here, and I can talk through ways that I’m learning and growing. I’ve blogged about the nuances involved in being an artist who follows Jesus, and I’ve felt such encouragement from readers as I’ve worked on my first book (just the fact that I have readers is an encouragement!).

Since I’ve been doing freelance work to earn money for bills the last several months, I’ve encountered a new set of issues with trying to figure out who I am as a writer. I know better who I am as a book writer now, but what kind of freelance work is best for me? Grant writing? Web content? Newspaper? Magazine? Technical? Academic?

A few weeks back I was given some great advice by a potential client. We were communicating about my possibly working on the content for her photography website, and I knew that I was really trying to force the issue on the job. I really wanted it. But it wasn’t for me. In the end, after a few emails back and forth, she said that she thought I was a good writer and that there were clients out there who needed my skills — but our styles just didn’t match. She said that she had been working as a freelance photographer for many years now and that it had been a process for her, as well, to find her niche. But she found it. And now she doesn’t try to go outside of it. For one thing, she doesn’t do weddings — that’s not her type of gig. She advised me to find my style, my tone, my niche, not try to force it, and then set limits to what I seek to do professionally, what I will do professionally for those who want to hire me.

It was truly the nicest rejection I’ve ever received. I’ve thought about her words several times in the last few weeks, and I feel a great deal of freedom as I look at jobs now.

I wrote a while back about the lessons in faith that God is teaching me as I build a freelance business. I’m convinced now that, in addition to providing jobs for me that will pay my bills, God also really cares about the types of jobs I do. He is providing jobs (slowly, but it’s happening) that are interesting to me, that I get excited about. Jobs that I can sit down to work on and become so engrossed in that I don’t realize three hours have gone by. I enjoy my work.

Right now I have two main projects that I’m working on (besides the ongoing work of my book). The first is a fitness and nutrition newsletter for a website that will be launched later this summer. I get to make up recipes, cook, take photos of my dinner, and write about my experience as a runner. And I get paid for it. Seriously.

The second is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity that came up a couple of weeks ago. I’m writing for a group of local home builders — a couple of them came up with this cool idea to start a magazine, something that would feature beautiful photography of local homes, and they did an online search for a writer and found…me. I love that I get to work with a group of people who just started with an idea, a dream, and then figured out a way to make it work. And I love that I get to interview people in the community, that I get to write profiles of local non-profits, that I get to be involved with a magazine in such detail.

One of the things they said to me in our first meeting was that they were looking for creative collaborators who have fun with their work, who have a passion for doing their work. Passion and fun. Our work really should involve those two things.

There was sweat, there were tears, thankfully there was no blood. 34 degrees and foggy when we started the race — technically, that’s not freezing, but I personally was freezing.

Two hours and four minutes later, when I finished the 15 kilometer (9.3 mile) race with a cumulative elevation gain of 1,900 feet on Badger Mountain in Richland, WA, my fingers were so numb I had to have help tearing the perforated paper to hand in the bottom tab of my race number at the finish line. My friend Erin had to peel my orange for me to eat, and 30 minutes later I still had trouble controlling my thumb enough to push the button to unlock my car door.

That evening at dinner, when my fingers had thawed out but I was walking rather stiffly, a friend asked, “Was it worth it?”

Definitely. And I will do it again.

This race, my first trail race, though the hardest of any run I’ve ever taken part in, was by far the most rewarding in the end. I ran a half marathon a couple of years back, and the feeling afterwards is similar. Rather than thinking, “Done! Check that activity off the to-do list,” I had a strong sense that this is only the beginning.

Part of the attraction is the feeling of accomplishment when it’s over, but part of it is the experience of working hard to get to that feeling of accomplishment. The knowledge that I put in a lot of long runs on cold, windy days, that I bundled up and went out to hike up that steep path on Badger in January and February when I would much rather have been sitting by the fire at the library with my coffee mug and a book — there is just something right about working hard. Some things in life are better, sweeter, richer because I earned them than they would be if they were handed to me.

Especially considering how lazy I truly am. My natural tendency is to not exert myself. I didn’t start running until about three years ago for this very reason. And here I am, three years later, still not running very fast. Not because I can’t, but because I just haven’t tried. Becoming faster requires more work, requires breathing hard enough that your lungs hurt, requires kicking into a higher gear when I’ve already run several miles. And like I said, I’m lazy, so none of those things sound appealing. Especially when hills are involved. Man, I’ve always hated hills. They totally ruin a nice run outside.

But Erin showed up a week before this race and made me do a bit of training for speed. In just a week’s time, I saw that I was able to run faster on the last mile on race day — usually I’m dragging in at the finish line, just happy to be done and not to have over-exerted myself. But this time, I was passing people in the last mile, people who I had been behind for miles. That never happens! And it was a wonderful feeling. Not because I wanted to beat those people, but because I had the energy and the desire to finish strong as I never had before.

Those are good life lessons that I need to learn, on and off the trail.

Now, when I say that this is just the beginning of trail running for me, I do not at all mean that I’m going to start running these 100 mile ultramarathons. The 15k at Badger Mountain was the short race for the event. As Erin and I were sitting in the grass after the race, eating oranges and attempting to stretch, we heard the crowd begin to cheer and cowbells begin to jangle. The 15k racers were still trickling down the mountain, but a guy carrying a CamelBak was blasting his way past them. The 100 mile racers began 24 hours before we did, and we got to see this guy come barreling into the finish line. It’s quite an impressive accomplishment, but one that I don’t have my eyes set on. The race website said that the cumulative elevation gain for this 100 miles would be 19,000+ feet. I did a little research (thank you, Wikipedia) and found that from base to summit, Mt. Everest has a vertical rise of 12,000 feet and Denali (a.k.a. Mt. McKinley) in Alaska has a rise of 18,000 feet. So these ultramarathoners at Badger Mountain, well, they did a lot of uphill running at this race.

On my last mile into the finish line, I thought about the fact that if I were going 100 miles, I would basically have to do what I just did 9 more times. No way. But then I also wonder, do the 100 mile runners feel 10 times as elated at the end of the race?

(The photo above is of Erin and me and the neighbor’s blurry dog, early in the morning before the race.)

Still thinking about the concept of work and faith and God’s grace, a few lines from one of Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poems in A Timbered Choir come to mind:

And yet no leaf or grain is filled

By work of ours; the field is tilled

And left to grace. That we may reap,

Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood

Rests on our day, and finds it good.

In the last post (Doing Work vs Having a Job), I said I would write the next blog entry about the negatives of doing freelance work. As I sat down to write about the negative side of the not-having-a-permanent-job coin, though, I realized that the main thing I originally perceived as a negative is turning out to be a positive.

It has to do with money, you know. And where it all comes from. Sure, as a freelance writer I can take the afternoon off work to be outside in the sunshine if I feel like it, but I go without the assurance of a regular monthly paycheck.

I’m not very far into this whole freelance thing, so my experience with the financial side of it is still rather limited. But the obvious potential risk of starting a venture such as this, striking out on my own in business, is that it won’t be profitable. And eventually I won’t have money for rent or food.

Like I said, my experience is limited, so I suppose that’s all possible at some point down the road. But so far, what I have seen is that God provides for my needs. Which leads me to believe that somehow there will always be money for food and rent, or as has been the case with so many generous friends this past year, a spare bedroom will be provided.

When I say the negative is really a positive, I mean that the potential to not earn enough money and be in a desperate financial situation is real, but the opportunity I have at this point to trust God and to pray for His provision is greater than it has ever been in my life. And that is a good thing. I have missionary friends who raise their own support, and the thought of having to do that has always scared me to death. Funny that God took me out of the overseas missionary life to begin teaching me the lessons in faith that come from asking Him for my daily bread.

I’m still trying to figure it all out, how God’s grace and my faith and His provision and my work all come together. I’ll probably be trying to figure it out for the rest of my life. What I do know for now is that I pray daily for God to give me opportunities to write, for writing jobs that will earn me some money, and then I sit down and do my day’s work. And the stress that I had expected from not knowing for sure if I’ll have enough income two months from now, six months from now — honestly, that stress just isn’t there. I can’t explain it other than I’m learning to depend on God in a way I hadn’t before now.

The point that I want to convey here is not, “That’s cool, she prays and God gives her what she asks for” — because, friend, I have a whole list of things I’ve asked for and didn’t get, some of them quite important. What I really want to convey is that through seeing God’s direct provision in my work, I am coming to know God better. And knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent is ultimately what I want my life and work to be about.

When I went to Wyoming for raspberry harvest last fall, I got into a discussion with one of my coworkers about doing work versus having a job. She’s a rancher, a few years younger than me, runs her own place by herself, gets up at the crack of dawn to feed all her animals and do all the other chores that need to be done on a ranch. To supplement what she makes from her place, she does odd contract jobs, like sorting raspberries during harvest. I mentioned to her that one of my goals for the coming year was to find ways to earn money as a writer so that I wouldn’t have to get a job.

“Yeah, I know, having a job really cramps my style,” she said.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to work — her daily schedule at the ranch proves that she enjoys hard work. It’s that she wants a lifestyle where she doesn’t have to get a permanent 8-to-5 job.

Same here, in case anyone is wondering. And don’t pretend like you’re not wondering. I’ve had enough people ask me in recent months, “You’re a writer, and you don’t have a job — how exactly do you have money to live?” So I know people wonder.

Inevitably, when I tell people that I am writing full-time, or that I travel as much as I have over the last year, I also get comments like, “Oh, that must be so nice, I wish I could just quit my job and travel and write.”

I’ll admit, I am fortunate to be able to do what I’ve done. I’ve seen some amazing places, and I’ve spent a lot of my time visiting friends who I wouldn’t get to see if I had to be at work in an office everyday. I am thankful for that. And I’m thankful for the generosity of so many friends and family who have helped make this possible.

But at the same time, I want it on the record that I work. A lot. Sometimes more than people who have that 8-to-5 job. I am not on a semi-permanent vacation.

Every morning I keep a regular schedule of working on my novel in hopes that it will be ready to send out to agents or publishers this summer, and I spend the rest of my work time doing writing or marketing for my freelance business. Some days writing is a chore and other days it’s great fun, but either way, I love doing it. I love that I get to do work that oftentimes doesn’t really seem like work. (Also for the record, I felt the same way about my previous job.)

I also love getting to make my own schedule. If it’s sunny outside and I want to go for a run at 2pm, I go for a run at 2pm. Or if a friend calls me to go to coffee, I go. And then I come back and work an extra hour or two after dinner to make up for that time, and I’m happy for the break in my day.

I don’t have a job, but I work.

(Next post: the difficult side of not having a permanent job)