Lessons from “Adorning the Dark”

The Bookery’s Shannon Spivey shares a few thoughts about Andrew Peterson’s 2019 release

A few days ago, I had the privilege of showing some visiting family around the Columbia Town Square—a charming collection of shops, eateries, and offices located a mere eight minutes from my home. First and foremost, we stopped for coffee at Wolf and Scout then we made our way to another of Columbia’s gems, Duck River Books.

While exploring the aisles, I came across a book, Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson. As an avid music listener, I knew of him as a singer-songwriter; however, I wasn’t aware that he had written nonfiction. Immediately, I was intrigued. Though the title alone captured my interest, the subtitle sealed the deal: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making.

The first few sentences of the first chapter revealed this book focused on creativity, specifically the art of the written word. I couldn’t wait to get home and dive in further. As a writer and an educator of the craft, I’m always happy to find new writing guide. I’ve read a number of them in my tenure and they range from direct step-by-step instruction manuals to quick tip texts. Peterson’s book is the first one I could classify as an enchanting collection of insider observations. His humility, transparency, and insightful perspective on creating was not only refreshing but enlightening.

While I gleaned innumerable takeaways from his unique take and experiences in writing, the following were my top takeaways:

Persevere

Once an artist has started the creative process and has something to work with, the goal then becomes to see that process through to completion. Often, starting is the easy part; however, finishing can be a terrifying prospect. Investing countless hours and enormous amounts of effort into a project that may or may not be “successful” is daunting. To combat the paralysis of procrastination, Peterson quotes Anne Lamott, “Stop not writing.” In short, the solution to becoming a better writer is simply to write.

Also, Peterson recounts an instance of offering some tongue-in-cheek writing advice to an aspiring songwriter fan which was “don’t write bad songs.” He discovered later that a fellow songwriter friend’s advise to the same fan was “write the bad songs too.” Through this humbling recollection, he argues writing for the sake of writing is just as important as writing with a specific goal in mind. In fact, we often have to write through the bad content to get something good. Peterson even briefly discusses how he goes so far as to write, then immediately delete what he just composed. Practice is how we grow as artists.

Belong

While any art creation can feel like a task done in isolation, ideally, the end result is meant for community. Peterson urges the reader to find their tribe much like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien did with the Inklings. Sharing our work for the sake of critique, encouragement, and inspiration is a way of giving art an audience and a home should that work not meet any additional eyes.

A very real obstacle to attempting to belong is that it requires vulnerability. Sharing our work is a very real risk. How do we go about facing such risk? Peterson answers with my favorite quote of the book, “All you really have is your willingness to fail coupled with the mountain of evidence that the Maker has never left nor forsaken you.” Doing anything, especially creating art, requires an openness to a vital part of the process: failure. In fact, it should be expected. But God famously gravitates towards those who fail and restores their shortcomings as His own works of art.

Adorn

My final takeaway was from the title alone. I love when a writer doesn’t mention the meaning of the title in the work and allows the reader to interpret it how he/she will. The phrase, adorn the dark, is indicative of what artists do. We color the canvas, we weave words together, we capture light. All of this is a way of bringing order to the chaos or something of value from nothingness, much like the original Creator did and does.

Though this book is written with a songwriter audience in mind, the wisdom in the pages would undoubtably prove useful to any creative (which Peterson argues we are regardless of whether or not we consider ourselves such). I highly recommend this book!

What do you think? Tell us in the comments!

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