Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.

You fainted,' Tom said. Reg coughed. No, I didn't,' he said. 'Women faint. People afraid of needles faint. Men black out.

Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles

Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain - they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter.

Do not slip into writing for the mind and the mind alone. In other words, do not play merely upon our ability to reason. And do not focus only on visuals. Write for the whole person.

Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.

Stealing ideas from contemporaries is rude and tasteless. Stealing from the long dead is considered literary and admirable. The same is true of grave-robbing. Loot your local cemetery and find yourself mired in social awkwardness. But unearth the tomb of an ancient king and you can feel free to pop off his toe rings. You'll probably end up on a book tour, or bagging an honorary degree or two.