Speaking of Dialogue

Hello and welcome to you all! Sorry for the off-week there; but now I'm back! And I got a beta-reader's critique back. It was less generous than others I have received, but as with most feedback it did teach me a few things. Now, a couple notes on this beta reader before I get started, because I don't want to paint her in a horrible light (even though you'll never know who she is): first, her reading was required for a class she was taking. Yes, my academic adviser is sometimes awesome like that. So she might not have been reading it with the utmost care; it also might not really have been her genre. Second, I have an 85% accurate guess on who the reader was (my adviser didn't tell me outright, but I'm pretty sure he mentioned who was in the class, she was one of them, and it sounds like a review she would write) and she is a very strong, very opinionated, very confident person. I find her sometimes to be mean, but not malicious. That will be important later.

A Conversation in Absence

"He's been gone along time."

"A little while, I suppose."

"It's been an entire week; do you think he's coming back?"

"I'm sure he will. Maybe his finals required a little more work than he realized. And he's been picking up hours at the bike store, too. But he'll be back."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. In fact, I can tell you he got back a report from a beta-reader, and he's going to talk about a few points that came up in there. I overheard him talking to his fiancee about it; it might be interesting."

"What was he talking about?"

"Oh, just some strange assumptions people make about characters and dialogue; things like that."

"Is he any good at dialogue?"

"I guess we'll see. But I don't want to give away too much. He'll be back, and he can talk about it to you then. But you'll have to make sure you're here, okay?"

"Okay, I'll be here. I hope it's good."

"See you then."

The Work of Prayer

I don't know why this is on my mind today, but it is; ever faithful to the itinerant winds of my mind, I'm going to talk about it with you. The topic is prayer, and an interesting question that comes up frequently concerning prayer: does it actually work? This is a question that prompted a "scientific" study of prayer a few years ago. I wish I had stopped for a few moments to think about what such a study might reveal, and predict it before my friend revealed the results. I probably could have come quite close.

For the study, they took several groups of sick people. One group was prayed for, but not told they were being prayed for; a second was not prayed for, but told they were; and a third was prayed for as well as being told they were prayed for. And they judged the results in healing times and frequencies. They were determined, by this test, to see if prayer actually worked or not.  Before I tell you what happened (if you haven't already heard of this study) let's pause to examine prayer from a Scriptural stand-point, instead of a (popular) cultural one.

My Reasons for Hope

It's funny how things can work out; sometimes all your hard work is suddenly rendered nearly meaningless by the sudden appearance of an outside factor. Take, for instance, my independent study this year: Working to Land an Agent. Course description? Research, query, and try to land a literary agent for my novel. It took several weeks into the semester before my adviser took me down this road: I started in January with working on an anthology of short stories -- which I may take on next year, but we'll see. But what happened was something that began actually last semester, and is still ongoing but nearing a (successful?) conclusion.

Think Like A Man?

No, this isn't a review of a movie; and I apologize that this is turning into Faith & Politics Friday. I promise it'll stop soon; my political science class is over in a week and a half. But I've had a question on my mind for a long time that just floated in and out, and I could never seem to really investigate it more. Well, I could yesterday; and I don't know if my professor wondered why I got fidgety all of a sudden in class, but my mind was spinning. So I thought I'd present it to you all.

The question I have is, why do we think that wisdom always necessarily comes out of democracy? (I haven't yet gotten the question in a phrasing I like, either.) I mean, why do we assume that if we get 10,000 people together and ask them questions, the answer at which they arrive is better than the answer of one person with advanced knowledge of the subject? Well I think I have an answer, but some people may not like it. I know my boss wouldn't.

Review of "If They Keep Silent"

Woke up and found this on a friend's blog. This man is awesomely supportive, and a terrific and prolific writer himself. Check it out, and check out his poetry posted a couple times a week!

http://faithfictionfriends.blogspot.com/2012/04/daniel-dydeks-if-they-keep-silent.html

See you tomorrow.

The Pride of Vanity

Today is, indeed, the official Writing Wednesday, even though I talked about writing yesterday (sort of). But I can't pretend yesterday didn't happen either; lots of good things happened that I want to keep as having happened. So I'd like to build off of one theme and expand it a little: self-publishing.

For the duration of this post (and, really, until things change) I'd like to remember that I am not a high-and-mighty published author; I am not even an author with an agent; and I am someone with a self-published title (see sidebar -- and feel free to check out the book, too). But you can ask my fiancee (always-becoming.blogspot.com): I don't consider myself an author, still only a writer. I am not one who has "made it" and is trying to keep others away, or feeling some twisted kind of need to "keep the waters pure," or something like that. But I do have serious misgivings about self-publishing.