Interview with Lynda McKinney Lambert Part 2

Here is the second half of my fabulous chat with my special guest. To read Part 1, visit:

Interview with Lynda McKinney Lambert Part 1

Ann: What advice do you have for aspiring authors and new writers?

Lynda: Sign up for some English courses at a university or college. It will be worth the money, and worth the time and effort it may take. I put my education on hold so I could raise my 5 children so I was not able to return to school until I was forty-two years old. I returned with a passion.
I was on a mission and at this point I was on fire with enthusiasm for learning.
Nothing can take the place of getting yourself educated in the literary world by taking courses in a variety of genre. There, you will learn how to explicate a text, which is essential to know so that you can be informed and learn how to tear a text apart to find what is there. Always investigate the text itself in everything you read. It is not your opinion that is important because you really have no opinion unless you have learned how to explore a text deeply. Base your comments and your thoughts on what is in that text.

Ann: What are your reading habits and how have they influenced your writing career today?

Lynda: I read what I am deeply interested in – poetry and non-fiction.
Eventually you need to figure out who you are and what you need to be reading. Otherwise, you can be all over the place, and lost at sea. No one else can know what you need to read. Look inside yourself and figure it out. You will know what is best for you.

Ann: If you could have a conversation with, or be educated by anyone, past or present, who would it be and why?

Lynda: I would want to spend time with the most highly educated man who was born around 4 BCE, St. Paul the Apostle, once known as Saul of Tarsus in Cilicia. His birth city was located in present day Turkey. He died of decapitation in Rome, Italy around 64 BCE. Saul had the most violent and dramatic conversion to Jesus Christ.
The most memorable painting from my art history classes is “The Conversion of St. Paul,” by Caravaggio, painted around 1601. It was one of hundreds of paintings and art works I had to memorize while at the university. Fine Arts majors are required to study Art History and, in those courses, they must memorize all of the facts about hundreds of art works from many different time periods and cultures. This way of looking at things and memorizing them is what I carry to this day – I carry images into my writing – because I intentionally memorize them for that purpose.
It has been said of my writing that a reader feels like she is in a dream. That dream is a real world that I have memorized for many years.
Link to see this painting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversion_of_Saint_Paul_(Caravaggio)#/media/File:The_Conversion_of_Saint_Paul-Caravaggio_(c._1600-1).jpg
Examples of this way of close inspection of things is how I write my poems and essays. As I walk through a wood, I am surveying every detail of the plants and trees. I try to memorize the time of day, the lighting, the atmospheric effects on the plants, and the feeling and smells of this experience. I think this is one of the things that sets my writing apart – I literally am a keeper of memories for everything I can take into my mind at any given time. Art History taught me to view and explore everything this way. I concentrate on memorizing each of my senses as I view a thing.

Ann: If my readers are meeting you for the first time and want to follow you and learn about your work, where can they find you online?

Lynda: My official authors’ website:
http://www.lyndalambert.com

My Author’s website for book information:
http://www.dldbooks.com/lyndalambert/

My Author’s Page on Amazon:
www.amazon.com/lynda-McKinney-Lambert/

Ann: Do you have a favorite Bible verse you’d like to leave us with?

Lynda: you saved the best question until last.
I am delighted to tell you what my favorite Bible verse is and why it is my new favorite verse.
Just this week I received a short teaching on a Bible verse which really made me consider what it means to be saved and who we really are after we have that encounter with Jesus. We are not the same, we are changed. Bob and I were transformed one night in October 1973 when we asked Jesus to come into our life. He did! Christianity is all about the indwelling of the Lord God Almighty. He is not “out there somewhere,” and we don’t have to go through any sort of ritual to locate him – he is inside of us and that is for all time. Our God lives inside of us in the form of the Holy Spirit.
At some point, I must ask, who am I, in Christ?
And here is my favorite verse to answer your question:
Ephesians 2:6 gives me a perspective and a world view from which everything I write is channeled.
I began to understand that we are already in heavenly places – it is not a dream for the future or a wish. We are IN Christ Jesus – already.
We ARE seated IN Jesus Christ at this very moment – …according to Paul, who wrote in Ephesians:

Ephesians 2:6 New International Version (NIV)
6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

I hope you have enjoyed this interview and I want to thank Lynda for being my special guest. If you have any further questions or comets you’d like to make, please do leave your thoughts in the comments below. Until next time, Happy reading and writing.
Blessings,
Ann