Writing What You Believe

Anne Lamott says in her excellent book on writing and life, Bird by Bird, "If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately."

This has been my problem for--oh, about five years. I've blamed my lack of fiction output on the children, but this has been my real issue. How do you write about something you care about without making it one of those books which I, personally, hate to read: the kind that beats the reader over the head with its Great Truths about Life?

The General and the Particular
The problem with generalizing in fiction is that there are universal truths, each person's experience is as unique as that individual. And fiction writers tell stories about what happens to people (or robots, or whatever characters they're writing about). We can't just state the obvious, even in a clever way, and expect the reader to accept it. Lamott puts it this way: "the truth doesn't come out in bumper stickers."

If I were to write a story about a divorce, for example, I would want the reader to put the story down feeling the pain saturating the characters' relationship. I want the reader to identify with my characters enough to understand their emotions, even if they would never personally take those actions. I know enough to know that I can't just say, "Divorce is painful" and leave it at that. If you have a message, Samuel Goldwyn said, send a telegram.

Caring about Characters
I am beginning to think that one way around this problem is to create characters and spend time with them. (I mean write about them--don't have conversations with them, at least not in public.) Find out what drives them, because what drives them will be something that drives you. Let your obsessions be your characters' obsessions. Or if a character is an expert on something you don't know much about, but you are intrigued, learn something about it.

Then--and this is where I usually get stuck--let something happen to the character and see how they react (they must react, or you have no story). Or they do something, either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish, and see what happens. Go to extremes--you can always edit it later. We writers are often quiet observers rather than people of action, but it is much easier to write a story in which dramatic events actually occur. Don't be afraid to let your character care about what's happening to him or her, because that means you care, too. Then your writing will go deeper than the surface, and you will be writing something you believe in.

As Lamott says, "So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you."

Writing Faith “Realistically”

The Truth About Quotation Marks
Do you have writing pet peeves? We can’t help but develop them, I suppose. When I started as a technical writer, I immediately noticed that my supervisor had a quotation mark pet peeve. He refused to allow quotation marks for any reason. He claimed that in a technical environment, bold could be used for emphasis and italics for quoting text or naming conventions. His contention was that we’ve overused and misused quotation marks to the point that they imply a tone of skepticism or condescension whether intentional or not. For example, consider: Beth is wearing her “real” fur coat to the party. Our reader-writer contract has trained us to pick up that the writer is being snide about the authenticity of Beth’s coat.

A Snide Faith
I don’t agree that we need to nix quotes (a must in academia) but I wonder if we tend to put invisible quote marks around what we can’t genuinely or realistically express.

I’ve been reading entrance essays, and I find that as Apostolics we know when and how to assume our faith voice—to other Apostolics. We talk—in our members-only jargon—about praying through and having “good” church and following the will of God.

Two Problems:

1. When we assume our faith voice, it only works Apostolic-to-Apostolic. I don’t think anyone outside our ranks follows it.
   
2. I’m not sure it rings real. I’m not accusing us of being insincere. I’m saying that we have compartmentalized church life separately from “real” life (there are those quote marks again—this time to show that I think it’s silly to subtract our faith from our overall existence). So when I read someone’s article filled with church-speak, it doesn’t sound anything like anything a “real” person would say outside of the jargoned words on the page.

Developing a Faith Language
Now after my last post, the last thing I want to do is add a voice of criticism. But I believe it’s healthy to look at ourselves realistically, develop solutions to our issues, and work to improve what we find lacking. Given the two problems I’ve pointed out, I think the solution is developing a faith language that (1) anyone (Apostolic or not) can understand (2) in a tone that is both realistic and sincere.

Here’s the challenge: how do you write the supernatural realistically?

My whole idea is that we need to find a way to talk about our incredible experience with God in such a simple way that others would get it without fluffed-up rhetoric or insider jargon. But it’s hard to write our supernatural experience “in such a simple way.”

A Call to Action
At PWI, Kent challenged us to think of a way to write about joy or hope. Sounds simple, right? But for weeks I batted around different models to try to make the experiment work. What I found is that it’s so much easier to describe (1) tangible things and (2) bad things like pain and death. Honestly, it’s harder to write about good things because our tendency is take the easy road or sarcasm with something larger than life and hard to describe. Ever notice that most popular fiction that touches on religion does it with sarcasm or with a critique (the fallen preacher, hypocritical saints, etc.)? It’s as though they stick in those pesky quotation marks around anything faith-related. I think this trend is not just a result of anti-Christian writers with an axe to grind, but because it’s just easier to write something that tears down instead of builds up.

Apostolic writers, our job is to find a way to talk about faith in a way that rings true and genuine without encasing it in A/P-only rhetoric. I’m confident that there’s a way to express the incredible joy, hope, peace, and love we have from our faith with simple sincerity, minus the invisible quotation marks of sarcasm.

Currently Reading
The Church God Blesses by Jim Cymbala

Freelancing Reality, Adult Responsibilities

When I was at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing in April, 2008 Kathleen Norris held aloft the brand new proofs of her next book Acedia & Me. The book releases on September 16, 2008 & I just received a hardback reviewer's copy on August 15.

One of the most frustrating aspects of freelancing is the delay between acceptance and publication. A few personal examples:

• I interviewed Booker winner Yann Martel in April. I turned in an article on him May 28, 2008. Was paid in early June. The article will run in the October issue of Faith & Friends.

• On June 2 I submitted a short story to a national contest. Winners to be announce in October.

• Friday, August 15, 2008 I turned in a long article to a respected regional mag that will be published in December. Yes, December.

Often, by the time an article sees print, you're quite a different person than the one who wrote the article. Depending on how light or heavy the editor's hand, you're often better off not reading what displays your byline because you might not recognize it. That's just the freelancer's life.


Instant Internet
That's one major reason web publications and blogs are so exciting to writers--we reach an instant audience with an article that reflects who we are today. The tradeoff is we're often yesterday's news tomorrow (or later today).

While images provide immediacy and even awe (think of the best parts of our current Olympics), they rarely provide context or depth. We may see the spectacular opening ceremonies and gasp, but learning that the main singer was lip synching for an ugly girl w/a spectacular voice tells us much about the real China; that they're willing to lie about the age of their female gymnasts for a few gold medals (while NBC only allows Bela to bellow for a few seconds about it as they can't afford to upset their hosts) reveals much about a government built on lies. That NBC created animated fireworks to supplement the real fireworks to make them more spectacular (w/only oblique references to the subterfuge), proves you just can't believe your eyes.

The Turtle vs. the Hare?
We rely on print (paper or internet) to give us the necessary facts to make adult decisions. The reason it frustrates us - it's slow pace - is often backed up w/safeguards and investigation, before careful word choices give us the truth. Perhaps we read less because we hide from making tough choices? After all, the major visual media almost all glorify ignorance in the name of entertainment, yes?

As a freelancer, I don't like the delays, but I suspect that print will remain irresistible to curious minds who want to understand their world instead of just observing it.

Appendix A: New Atlantic Fiction

The annual Atlantic Summer Fiction Issue is out. As has been discussed in previous posts, this is one of the two most prestigious publications for short fiction (the New Yorker being the other, natch!) and has a history of including overtly faith-based stories. This year is no exception, as Wendell Berry is included.

Meanwhile, Quinn Dalton wonders if the short story has a place in magazines today.

Also of Interest: Peter Robins makes the case that the 2nd sentence of a novel is more telling than the highly publicized firsts (Anna Karenina, Moby Dick). (Link tip from Maud Newton.)

Reedikyoolis

Ahem. Sorry my post is late.

I could give excuses and say how my life has been a whirlwind since my return from the Iberian Peninsula, but I'll spare you.

Revisitation
I'd like to revisit for a minute a previous post that I wrote entitled "Non-Grammar Lovers Anonymous." I posited that a more effective way to teach grammar is in context and to focus on "big picture" elements like content and coherence when children are learning to write instead of redlining every grammar mistake and staking their grades on them. Note that I did not say finicky things like grammar and spelling mistakes don't matter at all, and note that I did not say these mistakes shouldn't be corrected. I just don't think they should factor in as heavily as they traditionally are when grading papers. Also note that this approach applies to children who are still learning to express themselves through writing.

Extremities
However, there is an extreme to this type of approach that I wholeheartedly do not endorse. Read this article. It's flabbergasting. Basically, a British professor has gotten so fed up with reading his students' atrociously written papers due to spelling mistakes that he suggests accepting the mistakes as "variant spellings," to make them therefore legitimate:

"Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea," Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

"University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."

To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach" and "twelth" (it should be "twelfth").

My (Correctly Spelled) Rant
I protested against the cranky curmudgeon image of the English major in my previous post because my inner English major is usually conciliatory, ameliorating. Just let them express themselves and we'll worry about the mistakes later. Plus, it's just annoying when everyone assumes you take glee in jumping all over everyone's grammar mistakes. But reading that article awakened my dormant inner curmudgeon. Sorry, but what this professor is proposing is ridiculous. Number one, he isn't talking about children still learning to write, he's talking about supposed adults in college. Didn't they have to write a statement of purpose or some such essay to get in? Secondly, he's not complaining about their inability to write coherent papers, he's complaining about their awful spelling—which is one of the easiest things to remedy for anyone not too lazy to hit spell check. Just because you get tired of reading your students' awful spelling doesn't mean it's okay for you to have the audacity to suggest that everyone accept their ignorance as legitimate.

The Curmudgeon's Last Word
Spelling, annoying as it can be, isn't just spelling. It takes on additional weight as one becomes an adult. It is an indicator of intelligence. For example, if I read a blog post, say, about a letter Kenneth Haney wrote, and then scroll through the comments to that post, I notice an interesting trend (and yes, I admit, perhaps it's somewhat subjective): There is a directly proportional relationship between spelling and rationality. The better the spelling of a particular comment, the more reasonable the argument. The worse the spelling, usually, the less rational the argument.

And the Moral of the Story Is . . .
Well, I was just reminded of complaints about the hot new site, Everyone's Apostolic. On a Collideoscope post describing the site, I thought it was interesting that a few of the comments addressed the site's presence of spelling and grammar mistakes. I don't want to ask this question for fear of sounding like the haughty grammar fiend that I never wanted to be, but is that cause for concern? That the supposed "it" site for connecting Apostolics is riddled with spelling and grammar errors?

Jesus told us to let our light shine. Paul says we are ambassadors for Christ. Would that include maintaining a gramatically correct front?

In Defense of Apostolic Writers

Our sister blog Notes recently debated the absence/presence of quality Apostolic music. Amid the growing debate, our Letters’ Editor took a moment to point out that there are Apostolic songwriters and producers among our ranks.

It’s funny because after 5 weeks on the road in 4 different districts this summer, I’ve noticed that (perhaps out of self-defense to others or maybe a fear of becoming too self-centered among ourselves) we tend to be quick to criticize our movement. Over the last few weeks I’ve heard everything from the “there’s no good Apostolic music” line to myths about Bible colleges to the misconception that Apostolics are an uneducated, ignorant lot and on and on. I don’t know if it’s because we’re echoing the rhetoric we’re scared the “more aware” in the world propagate, or if it’s just a matter of ignorance on our parts as to what our brothers and sisters across our fellowship are truly accomplishing.

However, after meeting hundreds of people the last few months, I can honestly say that I’m outrageously optimistic about the intelligence, talent, and anointing of our church family. There are so many exciting, creative things happening. Unfortunately, I find that those among us who’d like to criticize our lack of (fill in the blank with complaint du jour) only do so to feel somehow superior themselves. To circulate these near-sighted myths only shows me an ignorance on the critic’s part and a lack of getting “out there” and seeing what other Apostolics are creating. Those who lament how backwards the organization is on their myspace, but haven’t visited a church outside their area code in six months, may need to rethink their criticisms.

Why all that? Because like Kent mentioned, sometimes with the dialogue of this blog, it sounds as though no one is writing. That’s simply not true. How thrilled I was, as you can imagine, when I saw Kevin’s short story posted. We are writing. And we are getting published, even if not everyone in our fellowship knows it. And Kent is interviewing Pulitzer winners. And we have Apostolic librarians teaching at major universities. So, yes, we are being recognized in the greater literary world. And we are step by step carving a niche that fosters creativity and action in place of criticism.

My point, despite the 3 paragraph rabbit trail at the beginning of this post, is that there are good things happening in our movement, including writing advances. For some reason many among us turn to criticism, but I’m asking that we choose not to make ungrounded complaints. We are not blind to our imperfections, but there are also exciting accomplishments. Instead of throwing around inaccurate blanket statements such as “no Apostolics are writing music/literature,” we should acknowledge the artists among us and support them.

Won’t you join us in our efforts? Tell a young (or old) aspiring writer about this blog. Find a writing partner with whom you may share your work. Promote reading and writing among those with whom you have influence. We are making progress, and if we work together with positive attitudes, I have no doubt that our writing efforts, like the many other creative arts being developed by Apostolics, will blossom beyond our wildest expectations.

New Apostolic Fiction: The Introduction

So we talk a lot about writing and what an Apostolic take on fiction might look like.

Lots of talk. Sometimes you get the impression that that's all we're doing is talking. Not this guy.

He wrote a short short story and is willing to open himself up to some feedback. Be warned - it's in an unexpected genre and there are no Acts 2:38s at the end.

If you comment, make sure you share what you like before you share any dislikes. If all you have is dislikes, then we'd like you to submit your own story for public evaluation please.

Otherwise, enjoy!

-k