The Hurricane Series: Part 1 - Whispers in the Storm

Hurricane Gustav

On Saturday night, my wife and I left Lake Charles and drove six hours to Austin, TX as Hurricane Gustav set its sights on our Louisiana coast. At that point, I had no plan to write a column this week, much less invest the time necessary to come up with a topic which always takes me more time than the actual writing.

As it turns out, the inspiration came through the back door, so to speak. While vigilantly monitoring the storm, not even aggressively pursuing a column topic, it dawned on me how much a writer can learn from a hurricane and all the peripheral aspects of it, including the experts who forecast it. More on them and their predictions in the coming weeks.

Perhaps that is the first lesson learned from the storm—that inspiration often comes to writers when we least expect it, and that we have to be alert to those moments and follow their lead. Sometimes it’s not the assertive pursuit of an idea that gets your pen or keyboard in motion, but the patience and the alertness to see when even the tiniest moments in life whisper inspiration to you.

There is an Old Testament verse in the Book of Kings that reads:

“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” 1 Kings 19:11-14

Elijah “went out and stood at the mouth of the cave” because he was coming out of hiding, out of his place of frustration with God. Regardless of your religious beliefs or affiliation, this story and so many others in Scripture provide us with such stimulating models for our lives and the stories we write. Elijah’s frustration had made him temperamental, a man thirsting for a great sign from above to legitimize his faith. But that great sign did not come, not as he expected anyway. Once he moved out of the cave and into a position of vulnerability and patience with God, God spoke to him, quietly in a whisper so that his child could hear amongst the noise.

The same is often true in our writing. We read the Romantics of old and how great the Muse is, and we expect the same sweep up into the clouds. It’s part of the ego-centricity that a writer must have to even pursue this career or hobby, but sometimes we take ourselves a little too seriously. Much like Elijah. We have to come out of our caves and open ourselves up to the possibility that the next great scene may not be in our immediate grasp. Oftentimes the inspiration will not come in the obvious, but instead from those moments where perhaps writing is the furthest thing from our minds. That is why it is just as important to work on our habits and character away from the pen or keyboard as it is when we are actually there, seeing the words spray across the page. Doing so will form inside us the stable environment necessary to hear the whispers amongst the storm.

Even when the whisper is a storm itself, shattering rocks in its path.

The Hurricane Series: Part 2 - When Real Life Meets Fiction

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.