For Your Christmas Reading

Writers tend to rewrite well-known songs and poems, especially at Christmas time. So I'm posting a few links today for your holiday enjoyment.

First, my friend Ane Mulligan wrote a "wish list" based on "The Twelve Days of Christmas." You can find it here.

Two posts at Novel Journey will interest you. The first in this year's interview with the author of the poem, "'Twas the Night before Christmas." The second is last year's interview with Charles Dickens. You can find that here.

Finally, from one of my online critique partners, friend, and treasurer of HIS Writers, my local ACFW chapter, Donna Schlachter. She wrote the following with her face-to-face crit partners:

'Twas the Night before Deadline"

Twas the Night Before Deadline.
Twas the night before deadline And all through the town
Every writer was writing, their heads were bent down
O'er the keyboard, the ARC's, over every notepad
How could they have missed it? Could it be all that bad?
The editors were snoozing, all snug in their beds
Not thinking of writers who were losing their heads
And agents were dreaming of spending their dough
As off to the bank with their checks they would go.
But up in the attics and down in the dens
Authors were shaking their heads and their pens
Not sleeping, not eating, their bodies would waste
Away to a skeleton, as they wrote in haste.
And still on they labored, refusing to sway
Resisting the impulse to just throw away
The words carefully crafted, the plot so inspired
Wondering, really, were three subplots required?
Yet knowing this isn't all about a book
A tome of their making, if that's what it took
They could write in their sleep, dash off in a dash
And laugh all the way to the bank with their cash.
But this was about God's will, His plan for each one
To come to know Jesus, His firstborn, His son.
And how each life changed is a life that's reborn
And that's why they write through the night, to the morn.
Now, Mary, now Jerry, now Paula and Sal
Here, Connie, and Cathy, and Debbie, and Val
On Steven, and Randy, and Stuart and Bill
Relinquish this book to your Father's Will
To the top of the slush pile,
To the top of the stack
This book is a winner
There's no turning back!
So write till it's written, and toil til it's done
The story that God wants, in praise of His Son
No matter the hour, no matter the cost
Any labor of Love for your Lord is not lost.
Then send it to others to rip it apart
And give it back to you, though broken in heart
With comments and red ink and strike throughs within
And know that it's better than it's ever been.
And when someone asks you if you wrote this book
You have my permission to give them the Look
And tell them with straight face and conscience intact
"It's the book that God wrote through me, and that is a fact."
If they should question your solemn intent
If they require a further statement
Just tell them it's better than you could have writ
Because it's endorsed by the Holy Spirit.
Know if it's never on a book store shelf
That this book is not about you or yourself.
This book is about your heed to the call
Of the Lord on your life, of the Lord on your all.
Twas the night before deadline, and all through the town
Tired writers were able to lay their heads down.
They'd done all their work, they'd done all they could
They slept soundly knowing God called it "good".