Writers-Wheel-Magazine-Issue-6-Midsummer-2015

Peter CresswellIt is 6.30 am and I’m gradually coming out of sleep.As so often happens, the problem that I was leftwith the night before is beginning to resolve in mymind. Perhaps it is the reordering and problemsolvingof my unconscious, dealing with the eventsof the previous day.But, in any case, I need to get it all down on paper(well, into the system) before I lose it. I am at mydesk half an hour later.I can now see how and why Peter’s ‘confession’came to be introduced at Mark 8, 29, as part of theprocess of introducing a new slant to the transfigurationtext. I can establish why it has to be a laterinterpolation.My new appreciation will also necessitate somemodifications to earlier parts of my book and somenew footnotes …It is now 3.30 pm. My wife comes in with coffee. Ihave had no breakfast and no lunch.It is time to get on with the rest of the day: walkthe dog, do some housework and gardening, helpwith the running of our joint business.I have spent probably over 1,000 hours on my newbook. It squeezes out time for recreation, leavesmy desk cluttered with unanswered correspondence.I don’t yet have a publishing deal.Why am I doing this?It is a good question.Well, one straight answer is, certainly not for themoney, even if I do end up selling lots of copies bymost standards.It is a question that all potential authors need toaddress. The number of new titles is rising almostexponentially, faster than any possible growth inpopulation and readership. For every one successfulfiction writer, there are many scores of others,with just as good or even better books that eitherdo not get published or successfully marketed. Forevery recreational, lifestyle or occupational niche,there’s already someone good out there who hascovered it.To get a foothold, you have to be better than them,and persistent and lucky. You have to have somethingnew to say, and be sure of it. It has to besomething that wakes you up in the morning,drives you on, and gives you the satisfaction ofknowing that you have got it (whatever it is) justright.So, what drives me? I am both lucky and unlucky inhaving stumbled on a field, biblical textual analysisor more specifically New Testament textual analysis,that offers the scope to make advances and reallysignificant discoveries. And I am, day by day,doing just that.There are a combination of reasons. It is the onefield of study that has successfully resisted the Enlightenment.Circumvented by scholars in otherdisciplines, it has been left to its own devices as acurious survival, run by a conservative, religiousestablishment. It runs all the journals, conferencesand the university departments, keeping at bay theworld outside and outsiders.It is not entirely their fault that they remain aclosed community, imprisoned by their own constructs.Not very many non-Christians are motivatedto spend three or four years studying theology,while also learning to read the original texts in ancientGreek, Aramaic and Hebrew. But the believersare for the most part held back by their own preconceptions,no matter how many years theystudy. So, they have, over a very long period, madelittle or no progress.This leaves me like someone from the 21st century38