Reading Update

So, I’ve read The Great Gatsby. Um, it was good – short, well-written. There may be several reasons why I don’t understand why it’s considered the greatest American novel – and probably all of them are true. First, I’m not well-versed in American novels; Victorian English is more my speed, for reasons unknown. Second, as I mentioned in an earlier post about music, I like books for different reasons, and I can’t really see myself saying: “This one is the only best book out there.” I can’t see comparing Jane Eyre and Red Storm Rising for instance, two of my favorite books. They’re completely different, and serve completely different purposes. Third, I may have shot myself in the foot – or at least grazed it – by surrounding my reading of Gatsby with fantasy novels. I was kind of in that mode, you know? To then go suddenly to realistic fiction….it’s all about context, you know.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I decided to go back to Paksenarrion after Gatsby. There are several things to note, after 150 pages of Divided Allegiance: First, it reads much more like a genre fantasy novel – lots more spells and magic and random beastie encounters. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the publisher, or Miss Moon herself. There is still, thankfully, a sense of days-in-the-life, which I really enjoyed about Sheepfarmer’s Daughter. There is, however, a greatly added sense of adventure, which kind of works both ways. It does add to the D&D feel, but it also captures a part of Sheepfarmer’s that I really liked, where Paks and some friends are trying to escape to go warn the Duke. There is still no real sense of where the plot is heading as a whole, which is interesting and well done, I think.

But what struck me the most, and what I’d like to spend the remainder of the time discussing, is that there is not the typical rehash that you see in almost all sequels. What Elizabeth Moon does give you in the way of reminding you what has gone before, and what everyone looks like, is so subtly interwoven that you don’t even realize it’s happening.

(You do know what I’m talking about, right? The most blatant example is The Hardy Boys mysteries, where you find out in the opening pages of every story that Frank is black-haired, the brains, and 18, and Joe is blond, the brawn, and 17.)

As I realized she wasn’t doing that, I began wondering: “Why does that happen so often? Do people really pick up a book in the bookstore/library, and say: ‘Hmm. Book Two. I think I’ll start reading here.’?”

And I can see, perhaps, for the first generation readers, after two years they might need to be refreshed; but aren't the proceeding generations probably the larger audience? And is it that difficult to refresh yourself – if it’s been that long – by going back over some of book one? It’s annoying, sometimes! It’s really annoying, especially as one of the proceeding generations, who are reading the books back-to-back.

(As a pseudo-interesting side-note, I’ve never come in on a series before it’s finished. I could’ve with Eragon, but I didn’t like it that much…)

So, I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again as a way of recommendation: I’ve found that Paks’ world doesn't end with The Deed of Paksenarrion, and there’s even a book about Gird, a holy Saint in Deed, showing what he actually accomplished in his life. I will be reading those later on. These are by far the best books I’ve read in a long time.

Emotion du jour: Curiosity

Unfortunately, I have to be a little critical right off the bat. I don’t generally like doing that, because it sets a bad tone sometimes for the rest of time – but today’s emotion is a perfect example of where Mrs. Hood misses the mark, in my estimation. In her book, she intro’s the emotion and discusses some of the pitfalls – today, specifically talking about how curiosity can bleed over into nosiness and other “curiosity gone bad” scenarios. Then she’ll give some bad examples and discuss why; finally, she gives good examples. Only, sometimes it seems the good examples aren’t that good. Today, for example, there were slight allusions to perhaps past curiosity; but the examples themselves displayed no curiosity whatsoever. I’m not trying to slam the book; in fact, I recommend it. But, as with any book you read (even mine), it’s not necessarily true just 

because it’s in print.

And I say this before I even attempt to show curiosity. But I have a special treat for you: instead of writing something totally new, I’ve decided to pull something from my book. I hope you enjoy it.

The party stood atop the hill, gazing speechlessly at the village below. But then, as time passed, they realized that though the flames towered over many of the buildings, still they did not burn down. Slowly, as questions overcame their shock, they made their way down the hill toward the nearest building.

Corith approached one, his sword drawn. Though the rush of the flames almost deafened them, there was no crackling of wood; and even up close, no heat emanated from the fire. Corith poked at the flames, but his blade stopped a hand-width from the fire. He stepped forward and pressed his palm against something solid, but invisible.

“I think someone else discovered your wind-trick, Sarah,” he said, still pushing with his hand. Sarah stepped forward, gingerly reaching out with a finger; when it struck the same invisible wall Corith encountered, she pulled it back.

“So it would seem,” she agreed.

“Let’s see what we can find, if anything,” Haydren said, drawing his sword. “Spread out, but be wary.”

See you tomorrow. Thursday’s prompt is Desire.

Doing New

Crazy times. Sorry for missing you guys Thursday and Friday last week. Holidays, and all: Candlelight services, cookie-baking, and visiting relatives and all. Should have seen it coming.

But here we are, the last week of December – the last week of 2011. Funny: so many people are thinking about new plans for the new year, new resolutions – yet, by all rights, March should be the new year, if December was the tenth month of the year. We’re funny creatures, setting “appropriate” times to do something new: today is a new day, January 1^st is a new year – time to turn over a new leaf. It works so rarely, trying to “drive our stake” at some auspicious time, as if doing so will make that stake more secure. It won’t. Mental stakes are tenuous things, and no “time” in the world makes them more secure. No one says: “I’ll start living when someone close to me dies;” but how many times does it take just such an event? “I’ll start doing the right thing, when the wrong thing so clearly leads me to chaos.” “I’ll start driving responsibly when my irresponsibility causes me to kill someone.” Those kinds of events have a way of securing that stake – but it’s still a mental move.

Or maybe: “With this diet/exercise plan, you’ll see the weight melt away!” Do you know what exercise plan works the absolute best, and has a 100% guarantee? The one you commit to. It’s funny to see all these different work-outs claiming to be more effective than others. The only thing that makes them remotely close to effective is if their uniqueness lends to your actually doing it. Exercise half an hour to an hour a day, and don’t consume more. Your body will want to, but don’t let it. Do the hip-hop based workout, or the martial arts based workout, or the muscle confusion based workout – it really isn’t going to matter. The only difference is cardio versus muscle building. Everything else is about your commitment and effort.

The same with everything else. Want to pursue God in the new year? Pursue Him now. Want to run away from Him? You probably already are. Want to pursue a career? Life begins in the next second. Don’t wait. Live now. You’re breathing now; your mind is functioning now; you can decide now, and you can live now. Waiting for New Year’s Day isn’t going to do anything magical, to make you do something you wish you could.

For me, I’m starting one last revision process on my book. I have a checklist of 18 pieces I need to fix. Some constitute changing one line; others are a process of inserting a couple scenes across several chapters. Some are concrete; others are incredibly nebulous. My goal is to finish this week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m also finishing The Great Gatsby today, and starting probably on East of Eden – then perhaps I’ll get back to Paksenarrion, which is proving itself to be a fantastic read. I’ll let you know how that progresses as well.

See you tomorrow.

This Is Why I Read

I mentioned somewhere some time ago that there are musicians whose entire discography I want to own, yet there are no authors whose entire bibliography I greatly desire to own. I realized yesterday, after pulling away from Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion, why exactly that is. And it may seem obvious.

I don’t approach both mediums the same way.

See, I can usually give a hoot about the lyrics of a song. Honestly. I listen to music for the sound – which is probably also why I have quite a number of video game soundtracks and Celtic instrumental CDs. Even when I sing along with them – and this is absolutely true – I often can sing the entire song, and not know what it’s about. And I don’t mean I don’t understand the artistic language; I mean I don’t actually know what the words are saying. This stumped me for a while, till I realized I wasn’t memorizing the words. See, it also takes me forever to learn the lyrics to a song. Because what my mind is actually doing is memorizing the sound of the words, and mimicking that sound back. Often that happens without me really paying attention to the words. Now, it’s not as pure as I’m making it sound; there is of course recognition of words, or I would never actually learn the lyrics. But my mind is engaging it at any deeper level than sound.

So when I “like” an artist, I like their sound. I like the melody and the flow of the lyrics – and it stops dead right there. One exception might be Casting Crowns, because their message resonates so clearly with me. But overall, I just don’t pay attention to the words.

But books? Books are different. Books I read for the story. I don’t really care how the writer writes – to a point, unless they write badly. What matters to me is what the story is about. Which means, faithful followers, an author might write really well, but I won’t like the story. If I don’t like the story, I’m not going to own the book, and thus I will not own the entire bibliography of an author.

Then we get to Elizabeth Moon. I’m always skeptical of how much I like a book depending on the circumstances surrounding my reading of it. I read Lord of the Rings when I was in Iraq, after several months of never reading a printed word – I drank Tolkien’s words like spiked lemonade on a Pennsylvania summer day. Now, I’ve just come off two admittedly bad fantasy books to Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, book one of The Deed of Paksenarrion. It is incredible. I’m already thinking about reading it again, and I’m not even done with it yet. Her descriptions are amazingly tight, it isn’t genre fantasy, and it doesn’t even have a terribly overt plot-line. There’s something coming together now, two hundred pages into a 315 page book. But even so, Moon isn’t rushing ahead to the climax. This is a days-in-the-life book, and every important moment is savored – even ones that don’t seem (to someone coming off two bad fantasy books) that important. It took me a while to get into it, because it was so radically off of what I anticipated. Now, I’m looking forward to a re-read, so I can read it right.

But don’t worry, I’m still plugging away through my reading list. Finishing Sheepfarmer’s today, then picking 

up The Great Gatsby, a book, I admit, I should have read a long time ago.

See you tomorrow.

Emotion du jour: Contentment

Serving up another helping of fictional emotion, today we look at contentment. Peace. Satisfaction. Completeness. Not so much joy or exuberance or excitement – those are sharper feelings. Contentment is a more general placidity. The Pacific Ocean smacking a rocky cove is exuberance: Crater Lake in the fall is contentment.

But contentment is personal, isn’t it – especially the contentment that is 100% synonymous with completeness. As such, it is contextual. In a novel, contentment for a character should depend on the thing they’re about to lose, or the thing they want to gain. When you watch a movie, see how many start out with scenes of contentment: Eragon – and probably myriad other fantasy stories – are prime examples. Eragon begins at the farm, playfully rough-housing with his cousin Roran. We don’t even need to be told that this will soon end, and life will irrevocably change for Eragon. Other stories end with contentment: “They lived happily ever after” is not clichéd by under-use, after all. But good stories with happy endings, I would argue, give us glimpses of contentment along the way, foreshadowing the resolution of the story. Because, you see, it is difficult to know the protagonist is content at the end of the story unless we know what contentment looks like to the protagonist before the end of the story. However, since I’m only doing a snippet of fiction here, I’ll do the best I can. 

Enjoy.

His had been a long life. Not that he was old – well, a twenty-something kid might call him old. But his had been a life full of long days. Winters in Buffalo, New York meant waking up early to dig out the sidewalk and car, and summers meant working first shift at the factory. He lost a son to war twenty years ago, and a wife to cancer five years after that. His mother and father were long gone, of course, and the rest of his family had never been close.

But he’d put in his time. He’d made it. Five years ago he met Aggie, and they soon married. They sat now, hand in hand, on a porch swing in Colorado; his front yard extended across rolling hills to the Rocky Mountains, and hired landscapers kept the verdant lawn between the house and the driveway at a pleasant height. Pale shadows from shimmering, billowing clouds slid across the green ranges to the west, and a mild, cooling breeze ruffled the grasses. Wind chimes on the far corner of the house lent deep, sauntering tones to the evening, blending time into insignificance.

As the sun lowered, and another day of his life was closing, he drew a deep breath. “What do you think heaven is like?” he asked quietly.

Aggie smiled and squeezed his hand. “We’ll be a lot younger,” she replied.

See you tomorrow.

Channeling Ann Swinfen

As in, In Defense of Fantasy. Great book.

Well things are progressing nicely, over here. The tree is up and abundantly festooned, clearing much of the living room floor of decorations; I finished book two of six of my reading list this morning, and the next book should be done by Wednesday; and my friend/mentor has completed the first pass through my novel, and given excellent feedback in a number of areas.

So the first two books I’ve read this break – fantasy books, too – have gone, I suppose, as well as could be expected. One was a Christian fantasy, the other a genre fantasy. Interesting divergence; both were marked by bad romances – the Christian because of how clichéd and unrealistic it was, and the genre because of how much suggested sex there was – and both had their moments of unashamed fantastic elements. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just is. Dragons of Chiril by Donita K. Paul, a Christian fantasy, had dragons whose sole and primary purpose was to make traveling faster. They were, in essence, fantasy aircraft. I don’t know if the fear was in making it too fantasy, and appearing escapist and deceitful. Then there was Wulder, Chiril’s version of God – also rather transparent, possibly probably again to avoid appearing deceitful. There is, too, the good chance the book is intended for younger crowds, and the author and publisher don’t want to confuse the poor tykes further.

Dragons of Winter Night by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is a D&D novel. Need I say more. Okay, it has the kender who thieves, loves adventures, is horribly inquisitive, and – to be absurdly blunt – is a bit Peregrin Tookish. There are the reclusive elves who hate humans, the human men who appear weak and yet have a certain strength – it’s Lord of the Rings, okay? Different names, different places, but LotR through and through, in a D&D environment.

It reminds me of the woman’s struggle, against which Ursula K. Le Guin spoke at Mills College, back in the 80’s I think. Whether women submit to men or stand in opposition to them, they are still defining themselves by them. Le Guin argued women need to define themselves by themselves.

It seems like fantasy has taken a similar route, only it defines itself by Tolkien – whether in submission to it, or in opposition to it. Fantasy books so often are trying to duplicate LotR, or refute it, instead of defining itself by itself. Or, like Paul, are trying to use fantasy to reach people just because it’s popular.

I would like to see respect for fantasy as a genre. I understand I’m biased, since it’s the genre I write. But we do books a disservice first by noting it only in how it relates to Tolkien, or by noting only its popularity – and not on its own terms. There is a fine yet distinct line between fantasy and allegory, and while I agree fantasy is a perfect realm within which to discuss concepts that may be unapproachable in “reality,” I do not argue that fantasy should be allegorical. In fact, I vehemently oppose it. The elements within a fantasy novel should be there to support the framework of the fantastic world, not to support the framework of some outside world – and yet, the fantastic framework can be used to suggest an outside, real framework for “hypothetical” consideration. For instance, R.A. Salvatore suggests – firmly within the framework of his own D&D-based works – that the “god” a person chooses is based on their own characteristics: a war-like god for warriors, a benevolent god for healers, et cetera. Fine idea, and somewhat true – those with high intelligence are likely to make reason their “god,” that is, the thing that will “save mankind” from the evil we see in the world. (The American public school system is somewhat predicated on that notion as well – that, with enough knowledge – boys and girls will grow up into well-functioning adults.)

But that’s an aside. The point is, fantasy in today’s skeptical society is a perfect avenue to open the possibility of something outside the world which we can put an instrument on and test. If you think that’s ludicrous that anything exists outside scientific study, take a look at psychology and social psychology for a couple minutes: measurable electronic impulses only tell us so much; there are yet parts of human psyche and emotion that cannot be accounted or predicted for. Just ask Lieutenant Commander Data.

See you tomorrow.

Back, and Forward

So, I’ve been away for a while. Some of you might have noticed odd silences on Facebook of Twitter. See, it’s Finals Week – or, it was. It’s over now. And I’ve survived seven Finals Weeks thus far – less than some, but more than others – and I’m getting a handle on what it takes to get through them. This year, with five papers and two tests due within three days, it meant putting my head down and not letting myself get distracted. Even by this blog. Or my fiancée.

That went well.

But now, though not entirely out of the woods, I can step back and breathe a little. My reading list for 

Christmas break is now up to six books: Dragons of Chiril by Donita K. Paul; Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman; Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; East of Eden by John Steinbeck; and The Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

I’m still getting advice and comments on my book from my friend, so the official revision won’t begin till probably the first or second week of January. But, sensing that I probably won’t be able to last that long, I may start tinkering in the next week here or so. Then it’ll be time to start agent-hunting again.

I spoke with my adviser on Wednesday about him reading my book, and about looking for agents. We did a quick search on agentquery.com for agents looking for Christian and Fantasy, accepted email queries, was a member of AAR, and who are actively seeking new clients. My adviser said we might get fifteen hits, if we were lucky. We got two; and one of them wasn’t working as an agent anymore.

Fortunately, (or unfortunately…) getting rid of the “Christian” modifier expands the search to a whopping 35.

So, that’s how I’m moving forward. Let’s all have a good Christmas, or whatever holiday you and yours celebrate this winter solstice.

See you Monday (promise).

What to Write When Nothing's Left

Writer’s block: we all get it, and there are probably hundreds of books that talk about how to beat it. Maybe I’m trying to be a prophet: just inside the front edge of five final papers, I’m perhaps anticipating a little writer’s block coming my way by week’s end. What I’m not trying to give you here is a comprehensive list that will reach all writers for how to get rid of their block. Sometimes, quietude is necessary; I don’t know how many times I’ve stopped trying to push my writing and went for a ride – only to find my muse again. She doesn’t like being pent up in the house all day either, I’ve found. And you need to leave to find her.

Oftentimes, though, she’s hiding in the roots of my desire to write. Just as many times, I’m sure, when I take a step back to remind myself what my book (and series) is trying to do, I find my voice and desire once more. One peer critic in my creative writing class noted that my story was an example of writing a story around a theme instead of pulling the theme from the story – and said it in a bad way. Now, they just didn’t quite understand what was going on in the plot so they didn’t see a story. Others did, and this warmed my heart; but I think it’s a very post-modern thing to write a story and hope it has a theme – or perhaps just a purely wrong thing to do so. A writer can usually never tell whether the theme will speak to the zeitgeist, and that’s where they may say: “I just hope this strikes a chord in people” or some such statement. But the books that last are ones that aren’t just randomly a story – that’s why there are great writers, the majority of whose professional works are all good, not just random books. They have a point beyond telling a good story – they last through time because the basic human condition lasts through time, and their work can speak to successive generations.

There is another way to go, though, as I’m discovering through a work I’m reading now. It happens to be a Christian book, but any book is prone to this: and that is to push past trying to promote a theme and outright preaching. And yes, evolutionary atheists can preach too. I am with Tolkien who “cordially disliked allegory,” except I may more than cordially dislike it. For one thing, it insults the reader’s intelligence by assuming you can’t talk about your topic in straightforward terms.

And yet, I am promoting my ideas through my writing, and at times I need to squelch it a little from a desire not to blow my reader’s ears off. But when I take time to remember what cultural ill I am trying to address, and more importantly remember my passion in addressing it – that’s when the writing comes.

See you tomorrow.

Emotion du jour: Confusion

Confusion – but to show it without confusing the reader. According to Mrs. Hood, relying on sensory overload of the character is cheap, and bad, and rarely realistic. What she doesn’t discuss, but what I see in real life, are the different levels of confusion. I see the sharp, disorienting kind that hits you when you’re trying to understand a difficult concept, and someone’s “helpful” suggestion is not so helpful and just makes you more confused; and a more overwhelming “state” of confusion, usually attending life decisions. The “state of confusion” is more diffuse, less sharp, and ebbs and flows along with uncertainty – but is still different from pure uncertainty. My character spends time in both kinds of confusion, so it’d be good for me to get these right. For the sake of space, we’ll stick with a sharp, momentary confusion: and let’s see what we can do.

Thank you so much for the wonderful time, that night. You reached down when I was at my lowest point, and you pulled me up. I didn’t want to move to Oregon without you knowing that.

Brad flipped the card over; was this for real? For Christmas? Merry Christmas; your wife cheated on you. The address was correct: Brad and Stephanie Pelmont, 325 Circle Drive. He had never given someone a wonderful night, had he? Brad shook his head violently: not Dave Paulos. What the heck?

He read the card again: Merry Christmas, thanks for the wonderful night. The last time they had seen Dave was six months ago, at Chris’ birthday bash at Backdoor Tavern. He and Steph had gotten a little tipsy, sure – but she had never left his elbow, had she? Not long enough to….

Brad glanced over the card one more time, and then it caught his eye, way in the corner: Jenny.

A grin split Brad’s face. Whoops.

Tuesday’s prompt, so far, is Contentment. See you tomorrow.

Emotion du jour: Anxiety

Anxiety. We all have it, at one point or another; chances are, however, we’re not really paying attention to how it manifests itself. Wouldn’t that make it so much easier for writers to portray it, or any other of a host of emotions? If anyone needed out-of-body experiences, it would be writers, at least once for each emotional episode they have. That would be cool.

But, perhaps the best any of us can do – at least to start practicing – is to recall a time we were anxious, and try to recreate the feeling – not so much the event itself – of what it was to be anxious. As I have a somewhat morbid attraction to anxiety, let me dip into my personal experience once again.

He never should have had coffee; it always sat like a ball of aluminum foil in his stomach, distracting him. This was not the day to be distracted, or the week, even. He sat back from his computer, trying to recall what was coming up. Three classes tomorrow, each with a reading due; but that was easy, he read through books like a chimp swings through trees. There was, however, a seven-page paper due by next week; and as much as he loved writing – and loved History of the English Language and its attendant professor, Dr. Wault – seven pages were a lot. Especially after a mid-term: that had been yesterday.

Some tests were easy, and he felt good about them when he was done. There might be one or two answers he wasn’t sure of, and a few he was only fairly certain of; but most he felt confident about. Not yesterday’s mid-term. Not to say the majority of them were a guess; but there were so many good answers, and no “all-of-the-above”s to make him feel good.

That was it. Personal, Intentional, Effectual Revelation of Reality. PIE-ROR. Well that was one he missed. Who structured an entire class around two papers and two tests? What other questions did he miss? That was the problem; he could have missed any of them. He could have even missed all of them.

He leaned forward again, trying to get the mid-term out of his mind. It was over now, wasn’t it?

He shouldn’t have had coffee. But wait; he hadn’t had any today.

See you tomorrow.

Genre or Literary

In my last post, I mentioned the fiction with “genre-“ in the vanguard, and I thought I’d dive a little deeper into that today. It’s an interest of mine, because “fantasy” is a kind of fiction often arbitrarily attached to “genre-.”

Now, don’t get me wrong: I know that “genre-fantasy” is real, it’s alive, and it’s rampant in America today. My academic advisor has intimated – well, in truth, he has outright said this; I’m not sure that’s a holistic definition for him or not. But he has indicated a belief that all fantasy is genre fantasy. I don’t think truly discerning critics will see no difference between Dragonlance and Lord of the Rings. And there are books out there trying to firmly divide asunder the difference between literary fantasy and genre fantasy. Let me try to briefly give my own views, and one goal I am working personally toward with my book(s).

Genre fantasy is fantasy in which the author and reader live firmly in the knowledge that they are reading a fantasy world. A great example is Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I have both the book and the movie, and both are good in their own ways. But the characters’ worldview is one in which heroes are “Chosen” and go on quests and adventures, and defeat great evil. And to an extent, even the characters in Lord of the Rings acknowledge this – but its more from a sense that they are living in a great and terrible time, and great deeds must meet great evil in order for everyone – or even anyone – to survive. The characters’ hesitancy is not: “I’m not a hero,” as it is in Dragonlance. Rather, their hesitancy is simply in their feeling of inadequacy to meet the challenges before them. No real human being is ever going to say, in the midst of a real-life circumstance or struggle, “I’m not a hero.” They may very well say: “I don’t think I can do this,” which is in Lord of the Rings.

That, I believe, is the key to literary fantasy – and constitutes my goal when writing my book. I want my readers to reach the end and think something along the lines of: “I understand this has dragons and magic in it; but why is this labeled fantasy? It seems like real life to me.” In different words, I don’t want my characters to live in the knowledge that they are in a fantasy world. It’s fantasy to us, because the creatures and some of the rules in it are fanciful, and don’t actually exist in reality. By definition alone, the world in the book is fantasy; the characters, however, should be real. I want the book to say: “You will never fight a Cerberus; but you will encounter a circumstance that seems to overwhelm you, that you feel completely unequipped to fight, and may paralyze you with terror; and this is how you may feel. But with strength and friends, you can overcome it.”

That is what genre-fantasy ignores: it says that this world and these characters are fantasy to you, and to the characters. It doesn’t acknowledge that the fantasy world is normal to the characters – there’s always some assumption at some level by the characters that things aren’t real. Not our real, anyway.

See you tomorrow.

I Think This Book Is Not A Home

I’m at an interesting place with writing my book. Like Professor Grady Tripp (from the movie version): “It’s done! Well, basically; I’ve still got a little tinkering I gotta do…” Now, of course, that will change if it ever finds its way into the rending claws of an editor; but for now, I’m finding places here and there where adding a line or a short scene, or extending a particular scene, or cutting some lines or a scene, all just tweaks the story a little bit, and brings in elements that I’m realizing I want/need.

And it’s fun; kinda like building a huge house, and all the plumbing and electrical work is done – now I’m just decorating and painting the walls. Maybe the walls are even painted. It’s ready to “live” in, it’s just not a “home” yet, filled with all my personal knick-knacks, and maybe some floral arrangements. I’m secure in my manhood, and some greenery brings life to what might be an otherwise dull home.

And I’m not saying my book is a dull home – I rather like it. But I’ve also been living in it longer than any of you, and I’ve gotten quite used to it. I know where everything is, and I like it there; and I think I have a few interesting gewgaws tucked away unobtrusively in the corners that some people touring might notice and think: “Wow, that’s really cool!”

But I have been living in it longer than any of you – even my fiancée, who has declared to me that she’s ready for me to move on; I mean, she has read probably five versions of chapter one. And I’m uncertain if anyone else might enjoy living in it, even for a few days. So I’m opening it to some select, discerning friends to take a tour of the house, see if it’s ready for the market.

That, at least, is one place where the metaphor flips: people looking for a nice house are looking for somewhere to stay. And, in a sense, with an entire series planned I do want them to be comfortable enough in my world to want to stay. But, really, the true measure might not be how long they stay, but how quickly they tour the house. “I just couldn’t put it down” is, after all, supremely higher praise than: “I just couldn’t pick it up.” I can’t say I’m looking for people to lose sleep over it – the best book I’ve ever read, Card’s Ender’s Game, was absolutely riveting; but it still took me two days to read it. At the same time, I hope they return for the knick-knacks and floral arrangements – those little tweaks I’m working in now that give the book its “replay value,” to mix in a gaming metaphor. Games with low replay-value are ones where the gamer catches everything the game offers in one play-through. Books with low re-read value are the same way – and generally have the suffix “genre-“ attached to them. Games with high replay-value, on the opposite hand, are games which are so expansive and so detailed in gaming and plot that there is no earthly way to get everything out of just one play-through.

I would suggest – not argue, just yet, but suggest – that books with high re-read values are the ones that are so “true” that a reader’s context will change their perception of the book. That a scene, read ten months after the first reading when the reader’s life and circumstances have changed, will carry new meaning that it could not carry – not for that individual reader – when it was first read ten months ago.

So that’s what I’m trying to do: add contexts, details, ideas and themes that will resonate differently at different times in a reader’s life. We’ll see how that goes.

See you Monday.

Emotion du jour: Anger

Even though I started with apathy, I realized this would be a lot easier to just go through the book alphabetically. And perhaps more fun, as I can let you know what the next emotion is.

Today, as you can see, is anger. Anger, as Hood writes, is a difficult emotion as well – though perhaps still not quite as difficult as apathy. A lot of writers can get anger across; but to get it across effectively and realistically, that’s the rub. Anger is one of those ones that rarely come alone – usually, it brings friends, or friends bring it: frustration, exhaustion, and sadness to name a few, are usually in close cohorts with anger. So to have characters suddenly yelling at one another, or punching one another, is not terribly effective or real. So let’s see what I can do to bring this emotion alive.

Jason sat with his head on the desk, trying to breathe as the sharp edge pressed harder against his chest. The world, it seemed, was intent on denying him sleep. A shadow framed the edges of his vision, and he looked up: Dr. Langer stood in front of him, looking sideways at another student as the paper dropped from his fingers.

“Thanks,” Jason mumbled. He didn’t feel it, and hadn’t for a long time, but still he said it. As Dr. Langer smiled and moved on, Jason picked up the paper and glanced over it. Dr. Langer was one of the few professors here who graded with a pencil. It was so non-confrontational, the soft lead scrawling notes of praise and condemnation equally. As he read, Jason was glad the notes were not in red, where everyone could see them – there was, in the margins, probably more essay than what he had written.

He continued to flip through the ten-page diatribe, skipping over the sparse exclamations of “nice!” and getting to what mattered – the parts where he fell short. There were a lot of those. Somewhere around page eight, Jason stopped and flipped back a few pages.

It can’t be this bad, he thought. He read an instruction, and looked at the paragraph it annotated. But I meant to do that! he thought. Dr. Langer really couldn’t see that? Of course it stuck out – so had the piece of Xenophon’s speech.

Jason flipped forward again. Another condemnation, falsely leveled at what was actually the more brilliant part of the paper, Jason thought; as was a note on the next page, and the next. By page eight, he was barely paying attention to what was written.

Whatever. This guy obviously just doesn’t get it. Jason flipped to the last page, and set his jaw. Add another C-plus to the stack, he snapped in his mind. He pushed the paper into his backpack, not caring that a folder snagged a few pages and bent them upward. He yanked the zipper closed, turned back to the desk, and put his head back down, feeling the edge of the desk crease his ribs once more.

Just some sleep. Can I just get some sleep?

Still feel free to leave a prompt in the comments, if you so desire. If I don’t get some other inspiration, Tuesday we’ll be looking at anxiety. See you tomorrow.

Pause to Reconsider

“This is the book that won’t let go/no it hangs on and on my friend….”

There are so many parts that I love about D:F, and only a few that I don’t – maybe letting it go is not as easy as I thought. Sure, ideas are coming for book two; but ideas are coming for book six, too. I’m sure I could pick any point in the series and start writing.

There may be recourse: my academic advisor has already assured me he would be thrilled to read my manuscript and give me advice (an advisor who advises? Where do you find such people?) on not only the book, but on crafting a query letter as well.

The problem, loyal followers (and those just passing by my street corner), is that book one is the start of the series. In case I get published, I can’t say much more than that. But there are some very important things in D:F that carry through, that’s rather important for the reader to have before moving on. Let me put it another way: I get the sense that, if one reads D:R first – and then D:F – D:F will sound like a prequel. And the plot of D:R doesn’t really, really allow me to move the info from D:F to D:R.

Another problem is, I’m just not cocky enough to think I got this thing right. I know people like that – and not the annoying people who are just loud and stupid, but people who actually are that good, know it, and have the chutzpah to move forward. Me? I’d rather get someone else who should know what they’re talking about tell me in a very objective manner: “yes, you are most likely on the right track.” Saying I’m definitely on the right track might seem a bit easy: “most likely” sounds more reasonable, especially where writing and publishing are concerned.

So, before Christmas/Winter Break, I’m going to be fixing up a few majorly problematic areas, printing the entire MS, and seeing if my advisor might read it over by spring semester. And maybe, on some levels, I might have been dreaming too big – like, maybe I can send this to some small independent presses. Not self-publishing: I will never, ever go that route. We’ll see what happens.

See you tomorrow.

Emotion du jour: Apathy

So here we are, once again on Fiction Tuesday (which, admittedly, is the same as Fiction Thursday in every way but the name), and I have not much to inspire me. But, never fear, I did get one bright point of inspiration.

In 1998, Story Press published a book by one Ann Hood titled: “Creating Character Emotions.” While I was hoping for a list of adjectives that I could append to speech tags, what the book does instead is give bad and good examples of 36 emotions, arranged by chapters alphabetically. So, on my fiction days, if no specific inspiration is coming (like today), I will delve into this book, pick an emotion, and give you my attempt at conveying it. You will easily recognize these by the one word titles. Today’s, you can see, is apathy. You’ll have to forgive me a little if I cheat on this one, and write something closer to fact than fiction. Apathy is difficult, as Mrs. Hood agrees. Anyway, here goes: I hope you enjoy it.

“What’s it like over there?”

It’s everyone’s favorite question, when I tell them I was in Iraq, ’05 to ’06. I always come up with something: “It was rough, at first, till we moved closer to Baghdad.” Or: “I was on the radio for most of my tour, so it was actually kind of boring.” Or: “It was....interesting.” I like that last one: it lets them fill in their own minds what “interesting” might imply.

What I can’t seem to tell them is the truth: it was like being here – hotter, and sandier, but it was like being here. What about bad guys? What about bombs? What about them? It’s not like you think about that all the time, you’d go nuts. Yeah, we had two trucks go up, lost five guys – and we still drove around after that. We had to. And I’m supposed to, every foot we roll, worry about something going off under me?

It hurt, losing those guys. I went to a football game with one of them, just before we left – had dinner out with four of them at another time, too. I knew some of them from when I came in. And yeah, I thought I was going to be killed – I worried about it until we went back out. But like I said, you can’t function with that worry. So you bury it. You do what you’re supposed to, whatever they tell you. You take what comes – they’d been drilling that into us, whether we realized it or not, for months. They’d been preparing us to die from day one – or to take death without worrying about it too much. We had a job to do, whether we died doing it or not.

I had started writing further, and realized what I was writing was not apathy, but just a healthy view of the temporariness of life. Which is a good pitfall to avoid, I would say – at least, when you’re striving for pure emotion. Or, non-emotion in this case. As Mrs. Hood explains, apathy – like all other emotions – shouldn’t happen in a vacuum, they should each be part of a spectrum of emotions. But the point here was to only convey apathy. You can judge whether or not I succeeded.

See you tomorrow.

Swift Update

It’s been an eventful month, whether anyone was curious or not. I’ve gotten hooked up with an alumnus from my college who has published one series of books, and is working on another series now; in the next few days I’ll be sending him some ideas and hoping to get feedback on where to go with my books.

See, the things is, I started looking at my series as a whole the other day. I wrote quick, one paragraph to half-page synopses of all 8 (it used to be nine, now it’s eight) books, and have begun to see tremendous inter-weaving of all plots. Which is good; I wanted that to happen: but now it becomes a little more critical in which order the books are published. It still won’t matter in what order they are read, at least for the first six books, and at least as far as understanding the series as a whole. But I believe the reader experience will be heightened by reading them in a particular order. The problem is, I don’t know what that order needs to be.

So that’s what will be happening this week, in between getting back to school-work and preparing for finals, and everything else I’ll have going on. It’s time to stop being short-sighted, and really look at this casserole that’s been stewing for about ten years now. I’ll still be posting little writing pieces twice a week, and blogs about Christianity and writing the other three days – and I’ll still be writing in general. What I will not be is stationary – that I guarantee.

So stay tuned, and let’s see where this adventure train takes us next. See you tomorrow!

Holidays

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving (at least those of you in America to whom that tradition actually means something – to the rest of you, I hope your Thursday was nice) and that none of you got trampled to death in Wal-Mart, and not only because that’s a crappy place to die, but because I don’t think I’m ready for my readership audience to extend into Heaven (or Hell – you know who you are).

Mine was a bit non-traditional for me: first, we had “dinner” at noon – and since I slept a little late, it ended up being the first meal of my day. I don’t know about the rest of you, but Kellogg’s Pops is generally good enough of a breakfast for me – I don’t need ham, turkey, macaroni and potato salad, Pillsbury Grands and Crescents, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with beef and chicken gravies, deviled eggs, beet-juiced eggs, home-made stuffing, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce. What am I, King of England here?

Secondly it was non-traditional because it soon turned into more of a “Dishes Day” than “Thanksgiving Day.” Granted, I did nothing to help prepare the meal, so it was only right that I do the clean-up afterward. But coming back to the apartment and proceeding to do general accumulated dishes there? I guess I can be thankful that I just twist a knob and get potable water at high pressure, and for the folks who invented Dawn dish liquid (and I am thankful, especially for the first part).

And now it’s Black Friday – though I see some stores just couldn’t wait. Is there any greater evidence of consumerism, commercialism, and instant gratification in our culture than Black Friday being pushed into Thanksgiving? It’s bad enough we try to cram thankfulness into only one out of 365 days (though it brings joy to my heart to see all the folks doing “30 days of thankfulness” for all of November); but now we don’t even want to take the entire day. Hurry up and stuff yourselves and get out there and shop! What is this, a struggling country? Did you plant, cultivate, and harvest what was on your table? Did you do anything more than drive a few miles to the grocery store, curse the lines, cook everything in a controlled (or not so controlled) frenzy, curse at the number of dishes and the contrary relatives, curse at the Detroit Lions, and finally fall asleep? Of course not! You have no excuse to be thankful; so go buy more stuff.

For me, and as much as it drives my fiancée nuts, I will not celebrate Consumermas until December 1^st, thank you very much. That part of the holiday should be thankful I give it the time of day, much less a month of my life. If you want to spend the month thankful for the birth of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we can talk.

But just so you know, money is kind of tight for me this month, so I probably won’t be able to get you any presents. But that’s okay, because that’s not what Christmas is about – right?

See you Monday.

Personal, Intentional, Effectual

I know this doesn’t have much to do with Thanksgiving (a topic seemingly quite popular this week among the other blogs I follow) but that will come, I promise. I’m going to step perhaps far out of the bounds of popular authors today, and more fully develop some thoughts I’ve discussed before. It has to do with author intention.

As I’ve sort of discussed before, there are two tracks I hear authors taking these days: 1, the “my characters usually end up telling me what the story is about” approach; and 2, the “I just write what I know I’d like to read” approach. Now, the second one might simply be a different way to couch the language I’m about to use; but I’ve never heard an author say: “I write so that my readers will understand what I’m trying to say.”

Now, there are some particulars that must be hashed out. What might the writer be trying to say, for instance? Are they just writing a story? Because, see, the first two approaches seem rather haphazard, like throwing darts blindfolded, or with precise aim at a covered target: “I know what I like; hopefully there’s some others who will like it too.”

But what makes great literature last so long? Is it because it’s just so well-written? Lovers of Dickens may say so; those with more modern tastes would disagree. Is there just a large enough contingent of Dickens lovers to keep him alive? Or is there something in his stories that does still speak to who we are as humans, even if his prose is difficult? I would argue the latter.

And how many Presidential speech writers, do you think, write the State of the Union, or any other address by the President, with the thought in mind: “Well, I know what I want to hear; hopefully the rest of America wants to hear it too”? I hope you answer none of them.

But should literature boil down to rhetoric? I hope you answer hesitantly “no.” And it shouldn’t; it’s literature. So it shouldn’t be as bold-faced as rhetoric. But I do believe the great writers had just as great an agenda as current rhetors, whether they admit it outright or not. They see something about human life wherever they are that they either agree or disagree with, and they write about it.

I can imagine this isn’t a popular notion – but I also believe most works today won’t survive past my generation. The ones that I believe will are the ones that also most clearly follow this thought-pattern. Twilight has certainly struck a chord in today’s society: do you think it’ll survive the test of time?

The Day They Came to America

This is going to be a bit of a stranger theme than before, but perhaps you will still enjoy it. The inspiration comes from the Circ song “Destroy She Said.” Not the whole thing, just the one line actually. Still, here it is.

It was Labor Day, the last day of summer – and what a gorgeous day it was. Dad was in the front yard, trimming the hedges; mom was in the kitchen, preparing hamburgers and salads of various kinds – I always went for the macaroni salad – and trying to keep Mallie entertained in her high-chair.

Mr. Sievers’ red Taurus drove by, and dad waved a gloved hand as he passed. Mr. Sievers lived just three houses down from us – in fact, it was his trimmers dad was using now. Mr. Sievers, I knew from Mr. Malkin, didn’t lend his tools to just anyone. But everyone in the neighborhood knew those trimmers would be returned before nightfall.

Speaking of Mr. Malkin, I could hear him cutting his grass next door, and I could catch sight of him every time he rounded the corner near our driveway. I could close my eyes and hear the brrrrrr of the mower fade, warble a little, begin to grow louder, then open my eyes just as the noise exploded from behind our garage and Mr. Malkin would come into view. After ten summers, it was just one of those things you became accustomed to.

Faintly, far down the road, another customary noise cut through the noise of the lawn mower: Pop! Goes the Weasel was jangling, but only every couple notes – the really loud, high ones – would actually make it through the din of the mower. It didn’t matter: I could fill in the other notes by memory. I felt a little old now, to be chasing after ice cream trucks, but I could imagine every kid in the neighborhood scampering to their parents for a dollar or two.

Soon, the truck was supplying all the notes as it rounded the turn down the road. It came slowly, not wanting to run over any kid who was perhaps a little over-eager. Dad paused and looked up, then back at the house with a smile. I’m sure he was remembering the days I would burst out of the door and come running to him. I could certainly remember the days of him scooping me up, carrying me the last yards to the road, bouncing me on his shoulder as he asked what I wanted, and reminding me not to tell mom when he gave me his.

Then I saw the kids; they streamed from front doors almost simultaneously, tearing across front yards and ducking through hedges and pounding around the little low wooden gates some of our neighbors had put in their yards.

The truck stopped at an angle so that in my line of sight it was just beyond Mr. Malkin’s yard. I thought I saw the driver: but something was wrong. I knew it was supposed to be Stephanie. She complained to me last week that it was the only job she could find, even though summer was over and she might only make two or three trips. But the person I thought I saw was a man.

Just then, Mr. Malkin’s mower roared from behind the garage. He stopped, watching the crowd of kids flocking to the side window. Dad paused to watch too, and it seemed the entire neighborhood waited as their children clamored for ice cream.

The truck went up in smoke and flames, and little bodies were ripped and thrown back the way they came in lifeless acrobatics. Windows shattered; cars were flipped over; Mr. Malkin disappeared in the smoke of the blast. My dad was screaming in the front yard; the shears had taken off his arm.

I tried to gasp, but I couldn’t breathe. The window in front of me was gone. Mr. Malkin’s mower blade was in my chest. The room tipped over, and as I gazed at the ceiling fan I heard my mother scream.



Why, you ask? The opening of the song says: "Like towers falling down/Like a bomb blast in your town." My mind began thinking about the explosiveness, the suddenness of bomb blasts. Originally, my thinking was tending toward someone watching her town get bombed in a war-time situation. But when I woke up this morning, the scene had shifted in my head into something much more sudden and unexpected -- more like what I envisioned when the words of the song first hit me. I think it's the thing that makes terrorism appealing to the terrorist, because it is so shocking that we can't fathom living in a place where such things occur. In order to not live in such a place, we conform to the terrorists' ideal for life, so they stop bombing us. Hopefully that shock and suddenness came through in this story. See you tomorrow.

Who ARE These People?

An interesting thing occurred to me the other day – Saturday, I think it was, officially – concerning my book. My current book, D:R. I felt like, in chapter one, I’ve already introduced all the conflict there is to introduce, and all that’s left is to resolve it. Which is probably good, though not precisely true, except that I feel like I could resolve everything in about three chapters. Making it a very, very short novel – a non-novel, for how short it would be. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became why I felt this way.

First, the movement of the characters – the action part of the plot, that is – is really very basic. Not in a bad way, I don’t think; but it could really be told in a short story of about 15,000 to 25,000 words – if I was only concerned with the action part of the plot.

But then I began to think about a character I’m about to introduce – he’s not a foil, per se, but he’s the rasp that will sharpen the main character. Then I began to realize that this is the first piece I’m working on – and it happens to be a novel – in which character development is probably the heftier part of the story. The action drives the characters, to be sure; but the characters drive each other too – and really, a major point of this story is the depth of these characters. The theme is tied not just to what they do, but how they are. Similarly, the culture of the land is huge in advancing the theme, and much of the story will be spent on that as well.

So this is very new territory for me, and when I think in terms of moving the story forward I cannot simply think of physical foils to the character’s journey, but mental foils as well. I have begun this process, in working out what drives the traits of each character. But I had forgotten, for a time, how much I need to develop that not only for each character, conjuring situations which allows the reader to see how these characters tick, but also I need to develop situations in which the characters act and react off each other – and then spin all that toward the theme of the novel.

My fiancée recently advised me not to expect to write this story as swiftly as I revised my first attempt at a novel. Which is true on two fronts: in the revision, though it was essentially from scratch, I knew the plot intimately. I’d been with that plot for a number of years. But secondly, that story was – in its former state – much more about action and much less about characters. I’m convinced now, working on this book, that the focus will change to the characters by the time I get back to it. And I will be totally revising it again – but definitely for the better.

I still hope to finish a chapter a week, but it will take more effort than perhaps I first anticipated. We’ll see how it goes. See you tomorrow!

Choices and Context

So today I thought we’d take a somewhat oblique look at why I love the English language, and writing in particular. Now, obviously, everything I’m about to say can probably apply to many of the languages of the world, and perhaps some can even do it better. But regardless.

To this stated end, I want to take you on a journey from a basic, non-descript sentence, to one which reveals character. Finally, I’ll show you one common amateur mistake, or temptation.

“A man drank tea.”

It’s a better start than some – at least this is a complete sentence – but still rather bland. We are, after all, trying to give character. So, let’s start obviously and give our random man a name.

“Richard drank tea.”

We’re getting somewhere – but let’s pick some more colorful verbs.

“Richard (sipped, gulped, swallowed, slurped, drained) tea.”

In the name of expediency, let’s advance our sentence to: “Richard sipped his tea.”

We’re coming much closer. But let’s add an adverb just to spice things up a little.

“Richard sipped his tea (slowly, cautiously, bitterly, gingerly, calmly, indifferently).”

Let’s go with: “Richard sipped his tea calmly.”

Now, to really show character, let’s put it in some context:

“Steven laughed uproariously, pounding the arm of the leather chair in delight. Richard sipped his tea calmly.”

Now we have something pointing to Richard’s character; of course, we would need a little more context to see if he lacks a sense of humor generally, or just in this specific incident – suffice to say for now Richard doesn't find this particular incident amusing.

Now for the temptation, which ensnares a lot of aspiring writers in my Creative Writing class – that is, rather than showing more context, the writers tell it.

“Steven laughed uproariously, pounding the arm of the leather chair in delight. Richard sipped his tea calmly, unappreciative of Steven’s sense of humor in this incident.” (And that may be attributing more eloquence than they deserve.)

Please, please don’t do this; let the reader discover for themselves why Richard only sips his tea calmly while Steven’s outburst continues. Let them infer, and if they get it wrong, then you need to practice getting it right. It can be difficult to say “the reader misunderstood” and place all the blame on them – after all, they read it how they see it. There are individual, and even small-group exceptions: but if the general consensus is your protagonist has no sense of humor, then he has none whether you imagined him having it or not.

It’s all about word choice and context, after all. See you Monday.

Dialogue Blog

We had another writing exercise in class, this one strictly dialogue. My professor kept the papers, so hopefully I can recreate this wel enough. The prompt is this: an ad appears in a paper for six puppies needing a good home. A man calls inquiring about the puppies, and the woman who answers gives him directions to the house. When he arrives, though he bore no accent on the phone, it is clear to the woman he is of Chinese descent. He quickly makes it clear he wants all six puppies. Succumbing to the prejudice that dog is a dish in China, she suddenly fears for her adorable puppies. The dialogue ensues:

“All six?” she asks faintly.

“Of course,” he replies with a smile.

There is a pause. “That’s a lot of food. Uh, I mean a lot of dog food. A lot of food to have to feed the dogs, that is.”

“I’m sure they won’t grow that big,” he says with a chuckle.

“Six is a lot of dogs to have.”

“Well my family loves dogs; they’ll probably each want one. Maybe for Christmas.”

“Or Thanksgiving,” she mutters quietly.

“I’m sorry?” he asks.

“No, I’m sorry, Mr--?”

“Chen.”

“Mr. Chen; what is it you said you did again?”

“I’m in exports,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets.

“Oh? To where?”

“China, Vietnam…a few others.”

“Is there a lot of money in that?” she asks.

“Some. I’m sorry, is there a problem?”

“I just – I think my ad was unclear. I really only want to give one per family.”

“No, I’m pretty sure your ad was very clear; it said six puppies for a good home. I want to give them that. So what’s the problem?”

“It’s just, people don’t usually buy six of anything, unless they’re…”

“Unless they’re what?”

“Shopping,” she says quietly, her eyes dropping for an instant.

Mr. Chen stared at her for several moments, then burst into laughter. As his chuckles subsided, he wiped his eyes. “Mrs. Devlin,” he says, still smiling. “You don’t eat collies!”

See you tomorrow.

Inspiring A Plot

So we were discussing in class the most difficult part of writing. A general consensus was the plot – coming up with a plot that other people would be interested in, that was a story you liked, and that achieved everything that needs to be achieved for a story to “work.”

In response, then, the professor began to explain a way to come up with a story. For him, the story germinates in a commonplace story that the author then piles conflict upon. He suggested, too, that speaking it out loud was a good way to work the details out. He then proceeded, in class, to come up with an idea, complicate it, and produce the plot of a story. It wasn’t phenomenal, but could easily become so in the writing of it. (After all, “A Man Reading Othello in One Sitting” is a basic idea with no real inherent story – hopefully in the writing of it, I created something you guys enjoyed.)

This interested me, and I began realizing how story ideas come to me, because it was not in this way. I’m not sure what the general way of inspiration comes to authors, but I find myself generally starting with the theme. Now this may sound like a recipe for morality stories of yore; but I don’t transform it into an analogy, where each element is translated directly into a character, and that character does nothing more than illuminate his or her analogous theme. I do work out what kinds of characters portray a certain idea – perhaps one who professes something like Christian ideals, but acts as the hypocrite in not living them out. (Actually, this is the theme of many of my short stories, or is at least one element in them. A very good pastor-friend of mine says that pastors have one sermon, and 52 ways of telling it – I seem to have one theme, and myriad ways of portraying it.)

So, for instance, I have a story that began with the idea of God whispering to us in our “storm,” reassuring us he is there. It came from a line in a Casting Crowns song – and the song’s theme was embodied in that line, that even when we can’t see God at work, He is. In translating it into a story, I tweaked the theme, taking it in the direction of American culture today. I created a blind man whose girlfriend always does a phenomenal job of guiding him where he needs to go. So he should trust her; instead, he finds himself running off on his own. Then, when he gets in trouble, he calls out to her. It reflects, for me, the culture we live in where we kick God out of every social institution we can, then wonder where he is when tragedy strikes – even, sometimes, going so far as the say: “God bless America!” when we see ourselves overcoming something like 9/11. The girlfriend’s line near the end of the story encapsulates, for me, the deep incongruity of this attitude: “Right James; I’m all you think about – when you’re in trouble. But when everything’s fine you do quite well on your own, don’t you?”

Of course, the latter part of her speech is facetious – in the story, he is caught in a storm with a broken leg as she runs off to get help, and in constant pain and fear of his life. And he got there as a result of his “independent soul” as he describes it – in Christianity we might call it a rebellious nature.

Novels are, of course, much more complex of an inspirational journey, and I certainly don’t have the space here to discuss that. But often I find the process is much the same.

And it’s great fun. I haven’t yet received a prompt from you guys for tomorrow, so I may try to recreate a dialogue exercise we did in class last Thursday that was quite fun. See you then.

Prompted by Othello

Responding to Glynn’s comment of last Thursday, I present to you a man reading Othello in one sitting.

He had heard of black holes, of course, but never expected to find himself sitting with one held wearily between hands whose ligaments were failing. Yet here it was, and around the edges like a supernova halo were the distractions, fighting to keep their place: above, a stained glass window with multitudinous depictions of creation, fall, and redemption; to the right, a young girl – probably freshman – with a cute smile, curled in a ghastly Victorian armchair; below, thankfully, was only his jeaned lap – that provided no distraction, he had become quite used to it by now; and to the left a contingent of three students, busily yet quietly studying.

But before him, the great vacuum: page 185, line 220: “IAGO     O, ‘tis foul in her.”

It must have great significance, somehow, for he had read it now about thirty times. Involuntarily, yet maliciously on the part of the book, it drew itself to his mouth as he stifled a yawn. The girl with the cute smile flashed him a grin; the students did not break their studies; the window streamed in sunlight; his jeans were silent.

“IAGO     O, ‘tis foul in her.”

He shook his head, blinking the blear from his drying contact lenses. It really wasn’t fair; he had the tremendous privilege of holding in his hand the illimitable Shakespeare – and normally he would have drank it in like the girlfriend’s ear bent on stories of her boyfriend’s youth. Like Desdemona drank in Othello’s stories, actually. But now Othello was ninety, his stories one hundred and ten; and Desdemona was mostly deaf, and glad of it.

“IAGO     O, ‘tis foul in her.”

Even with the text on one page, and notes on the opposite page, 185 pages is a significant number to read all at once. He paused to glance up, ruminating on his accomplishment. Is that writing on the stained glass? It is! But a little too far away to read…could he get up and go closer?

“IAGO     O, ‘tis foul in her.”

A deep sigh is drawn, index finger to temple and thumb to jaw as his head bends back into the text. The cute girl unfolds herself and leaves – a lot of girls on campus wear those jeans, it seems, the stitching in the pocket reminding him of the Conrail logo, or maybe a bird on the wing. The pages turn, more rapidly now. It really is quite nice that the text is only ever other page. The halo of distractions disappear as Othello is drawn deeper and deeper in, Iago’s trap is too neatly laid, and properly for Othello’s pride. Then it comes to it – the bed – the pillow – muffled cries and murderous anguish—

The cute girl has returned. “Whatcha reading?” she asked, her smile of immense power swallowing the black hole – physically impossible, scientists would say, yet here it is. He glances down and blinks.

“Umm…”

Don’t forget to leave a comment for Thursday’s piece! See you tomorrow.

What's In A Book?

What happens when we critically analyze a novel? Can the average reader engage in such things? Or are they just supposed to be pawns of the author, enjoying the story while in the background their opinions and emotions are being manipulated? Hopefully that’s a rhetorical question to which the answer is emphatically “no.” But readers don’t also need a PhD in literature to truly engage a piece of fiction.

(Now there are several ways to interpret a text, at least in the literary critique circles; I have my own kind of blend, so what I say here is my own, and not necessarily the only way.)

First I look for the theme of the work; what is the author reacting to? Speaking against? Speaking for? Exhorting toward? They all do, to some extent; so what is it? Why does this story need to be told? Speaking as a writer, I know that there are a multitude of reasons why I feel compelled to write – and I know those show up in my stories whether I want them to or not.

Now, this probably doesn’t apply to genre fiction: pure fantasy, romance – stuff like that. Those take the form from their literary counterparts and reduce them to mere form. But I am speaking of literature – “news that stays news” as Ezra Pound once put it. It stays news because it speaks to the human condition – and the human condition – once you strip away time, culture, and ideology – has stayed very much the same for thousands of years. And that is why, dear friends, literature is so important, and critical analysis of it is just as important. True literature, regardless of genre, should be walked away from with a sense of “why is this fiction? It seems just like real life.”

Once the theme is determined, it must be found what all the supporting pieces are. Here is where it is critical to not just look at what exists in the novel, but how it is treated. Is wanton sex engaged in by the hero, or the villain? Or graphic violence? It is not enough to just say: “It exists; the author supports it.” The author must make claims on both sides of the fence, upholding some positions while condemning others. But he cannot simply say: “this is bad; this is good.” That’s what dissertations are for. Instead he or she must use the framework of the story itself; if one mode of thought leads the character toward destruction, that thought is condemned by the author. If another thought leads to restoration, that claim is upheld. Often it’s as simple as that – what survives is held to be true by the author, what fails is false.

Consider it the next time you read; you may be surprised by the experience.

See you Monday.

Calling All Prompts

It’s been an interesting few days, for me. I’ve been spending a lot more time actually on campus, talking to people, hanging out at the café…reading all of Othello at one sitting….

And I’m sensing more time on my hands. And I’m sensing that is a trend which I will force myself to continue as we go along.

So here’s an idea, stemming from my last fiction post: why don’t you guys leave a prompt in the comments, and I’ll write something like 500 to 1,000 words based on the prompt? It can be a concept, a first line, or even a full-blown scenario – whatever you feel like dreaming up. Depending on the response, those will be what I post on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in between my regular posts three times a week.

Sound like fun? Sounds like fun to me. See you tomorrow.

Wisdom Cries In The Streets

What to discuss today, hmm? Granted, something new will be up in twelve hours or so. Funny how the day can run away from you sometimes, isn’t it? It’s always good to set time aside, make it a priority. Like me: after this, I’m reworking a bit of scene from my novel – something I was inspired by a few days ago. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up writing for a few good hours – I got time, now.

I realized a bit, earlier today, how much the reader does bring to the interpretation of a text. I mean, you have to react to something – the text is still there, and you and everyone else reading it is reacting to the same text. But wisdom is a tricky thing; it’ll pop up just about anywhere, if you look for it. And it doesn’t always jump in your face, either. I was reading a fellow student’s poetry that she’d written from about 2006 till two days ago. Coming at it – unintentionally, but it happened – with certain things on my mind made me read a lot of them a lot differently than if my mind had been elsewhere. But again, I didn’t necessarily get straight-up answers from what she’d written; but it provoked some thoughts, and as I strung them out and chewed on them a little, answers came. Decisions came. It was weird, and really cool and helpful.

We’re so used to having things handed to us, you know? I need bananas; go buy some bananas. I need help: find a self-help book. I need entertainment: find something on TV or grab a movie. We don’t pause and reflect anymore. That’s why books have to be so sensational anymore; like my Shakespeare professor said, we don’t need our imaginations, and they’ve atrophied. Who needs an imagination when you have Avatar? Or Star Wars? You’ve got to get to the point quick, in books; and as my advisor says, stories have to be so much more poetic because they have to tell a lot in very little time.

But even when they do that, they do nothing if the reader doesn’t actually engage them. If all the reader gets its cool imagery and fancy wording, they may as well read the back of a cereal box. I can pour my heart into my book, but odds might be that only literary critics really understand what’s going on. I hope not; and I won’t sell many if that’s true.

Look for wisdom, it’s out there – and it may be anywhere you want to look, if you really think about it. I’ve had an amazing few days, being more attuned to looking for wisdom. Try it. Maybe find it in a book.

See you tomorrow.

A Brief Writing Exercise

For today, I realized that as much as I talk about writing and trying to be published, no one reading this blog has any idea what my fiction looks like – at least, most people reading this blog. For class today, we had to write a description-dialogue piece, responding to the prompt of a pastor, his wife, and the choir director. The wife suspects the pastor of cheating on her with the choir director; one day, on her way into town, she sees the two at a restaurant. She goes to her husband’s office at the church and overturns it. The wife returns home to wait for him; after dinner, the pastor goes to the office and discovers it in shambles. We were required to write a descriptive scene about the office, and the ensuing conversation when the pastor returned home. Since I have no plans of publishing this, you can read it here. Enjoy.

Coffee stained the doorway outside of Pastor Mike Jeffries’ office – that was from the dropped cup upon arriving, late at night. He had finished meeting with his church’s choir director, and had returned to the church to drop off a few things. Those were set outside the door, as well, for there was no room in the office itself.

Pastor Jeffries’ secretary, Janice Jones, stood outside the door way, the width of her eyes surpassed only by the width of her mouth.

“What happened?” she asked.

Mike knelt in the middle of the floor, spreading his arms helplessly at the chaos around him. “Not really sure,” he said with a shrug. “Tornado?”

It was not as bad as it could have been: one set of papers were in a stack, the ones Mike had managed to collect in the past few minutes. The rest, which came presumably from the over-turned filing cabinet, were now wall-to-wall carpeting. He kicked himself for not bolting the bookshelf to the wall; it had been pulled down, and an army of books like tents had bivouacked near his desk. Sprinkled across the white sheets of paper, like early fall when only the weakest trees have defoliated, were yellow legal-pad sheets. The trash can stood on its head beside his desk, though mercifully the contents of the bag had not been strewn. Pens were laid out in a fountain whose base sprung from the corner of the desk, where the mug once sat. It had been shattered, its broken bits like caltrops across the floor.

“I think you need to go home to your wife,” Ms. Jones said.

Pastor Mike glanced at her wearily, as her face showed shamed recognition. “What is it?” he asked.

“I noticed her driving away,” Ms. Jones said quietly, glancing at the door frame. “That’s why I came here.”

“You don’t think she did this?” he asked, grunting as he stood amidst the rubble.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ll work on this; go home, and we can get everything straightened out in the morning.”

Pastor Mike dropped a sheaf of papers, glanced around his ruined office, and raised an eyebrow. “I hope to get some of this cleared up tonight,” he said drily.

*

Rachel Jeffries stood before the stove, trying desperately to calm her unsteady arm as she heard her husband enter. She waited, quietly stirring pasta as he hung up his coat and put his briefcase near the coffee table.

“Where have you been?” she asked, fearing the tremor in her voice.

“Beirut,” her husband said simply.

Rachel’s hand spasmed on the ladle. She couldn’t help it, but a smile crept on her face; she tried quickly to calm it. “Where?”

“Have you been to my office recently, my love?”

“Have you been to Turello’s?” she returned, gazing into the pot as it struggled to boil.

“Yes, I met with Sharon,” Mike replied.

“Oh? Sharon?” Rachel echoed, ringing the ladle against the pot. “Is that her name? Sharon?” She struck the pot so forcefully that the head broke and clattered to the floor. She ignored it, trying halfheartedly to stir with the handle.

“Rachel, don’t tell me—“ Mike began.

She spun on him before he could finish. “Yes! I saw you,” she said. “I was on my way to get dinner, you should know! Then I see you sitting with her…”

“Yes, wife, I meet with people,” Mike countered. “I am a pastor; I meet with people, and sometimes I try to help them with problems.”

“Oh, you try to help them?” Rachel said with a laugh. “And how dare you call me ‘wife’ after tonight; how dare you ever call me ‘wife’.”

“Honey, you are being very foolish right now,” Mike began tiredly, gripping the back of a chair with both hands as he leaned forward.

“Let’s not get into the myriad times I’ve been made a fool by you, Michael,” Rachel said, stirring the air with the broken handle.

“I was there to help her with a problem,” Mike said.

“What problem? Is she not getting enough sex? Is that her problem that you wanted to ‘help’ her with Michael?” Rachel fists sat resolutely upon her hips, now.

Mike gazed at the table for a few moments. “I can’t discuss with you…” he tried.

“Oh I’m sure you can’t, Michael,” Rachel said, throwing the handle down hard onto the table.

Mike straightened, his cheeks hardening. “I will not discuss Sharon’s problem with you, of all people.”

Rachel’s shoulders sagged. “’Of all people’?” she moaned. “I am supposed to be your wife, Michael. Who can you discuss it with if not me?”

Mike only shook his head slowly.

“Because it’s an affair, Michael!” Rachel spat, once again in her fury. “Can’t you even say it now? You’re exposed! Admit it! Stop the lie, Michael; stop hiding; just let me know you lust after her!”

Mike continued shaking his head, blinking numbly. “Rachel, I can’t…”

“What have I done?” Rachel cried. “I cook every meal for you; I love you; I support you, and attend to you. Have I ever been absent? Have I ever been anything but open and honest with you? I know no one is perfect, Michael, and I might even forgive you. Why can’t you just admit this one thing? I see! I see it! Just admit your lust, Michael!”

“She lusts after you, Rachel!” Mike said suddenly, then wiped his hand down his face.

The air left Rachel’s body. Water splattered out of the pot behind her and hissed on the stove; it had boiled over while her back had been turned.