Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it.

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy! – Psalm 96, 1, 11 & 12

Yay… yahoo… woo-hoo… cool-beans…

Drum-roll, please! My new manuscript is now complete, printed off, and on its way by priority mail to my publisher in Nashville. Time to take a deep breath and get back into my “normal” flow of writing activity.

It is – to be honest – always a bittersweet moment whenever an intense project such as writing a new book is completed. I enjoy the process so much: the research, the praying, the sketching out of ideas, the sitting in my leather chair and thinking, the walking around and thinking, the drinking coffee and thinking, the bouncing-off of ideas with friends, the writing, the re-writing, the re-re-writing, the pulling things together and – finally – the break-neck surge of creativity and composition that pours forth during that last week of frantic assembly before finally letting go and dropping a new book in the mail slot at the Post Office….

This particular book has been different because of the “fast-track” schedule. It’s book # 5, but book #4 is still in the pipeline and waiting for next month’s release date. They have almost become tangled together in the process. I’ll talk more about the other book – Reaching Toward Easter – when it actually “hits the shelves”.

But for today it’s “Ten Life-Charged Words for Men” that has really captured my imagination, and – apart from the obvious – I think I know why:

It was writing the conclusion, Sunday evening, that forced me to consider the core message of the project, the “Why does this world need another book?” question. Well, the answer became clear when one of the saddest lines in 19th Century literature surfaced in my thinking.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” (Henry David Thoreau , 1854).

I realized that “Ten Life-Charged Words for Men” is all about putting an end to such a sad state of affairs! Instead of desperation, the ideas discussed represent a life defined by fullness. People who are “Life-charged” are people who let their song out. Or expressed in another way, the content of my new book is about the process of Letting Life Loose.

I like that, “The process of Letting Life Loose.”

So – and this is what this blog is all about too – Sing, people, sing. Let life loose. Let’s live like we mean it.

– DEREK