Waiting for Wisdom

Those are good words for me as I think about my week--the first full one with all of my kids back in school. I did spend a lot of time with my manuscript (oh, how I've missed it), making little changes, adding depth to scenes, trying to cut words.

I'm still stuck on the first three chapters. I've been stuck on them forever, it seems. These have been my most critiqued, with two Genesis, and one First Impressions entries, and the critique has been good. Worth the money, nerves, and false hope? I don't know yet. There is a learning curve with entering contests. It still creates a lot of unnecessary stress for me.

But I do know it has been good for my story to edit it with the voice of one of the judges in my brain: "Your character seems like she is just being carried along."

I was defensive about it at first. "That's kind of the point," I said out loud as I read the critique. But six months later, a freelancer who offered to edit a chapter for free made an almost identical comment. That's what it took for me to see the truth in it. That's how long I had to wait for wisdom.

Once I had that sweet nugget of wisdom, I got to work. Again. I revised the first three chapters for the umpteenth time (I literally have no idea how many times I've revised it). Instead of my character getting yanked around by oppressive forces without voicing her thoughts about any of it, I've revised those early pages to show how she longs to be loved. That's the driving force of the next 60,000 words. Now it's built into the beginning. Such an improvement! Why haven't I seen it until now?

Four years ago when I typed "Chapter One" my character was little more than a scared child, watching events unfold. Then she became a bumbling klutz, incompetent at household chores (some elements of that I have kept for the sake of the story). For a time she lacked maternal instincts, resenting her role as care-taker of young siblings, I but revised that too, making her joy and her consolation her presence in her siblings' lives.

When I think about who she was four years ago compared to who she is now, I realize that I have simply been getting to know her. She has revealed herself to me over these years, often through others' critique.


It was they who showed me she was flat, cliche, and unlikable. Now she's full-bodied and real. Her longings are clear and consistent. They make sense. It's not just about the story anymore. It's about this flesh and blood person who lives in the story. It has taken this long for me to get here.



I'm convinced it could not have come any quicker. I'm too slow to learn from critique. My imagination needs time to receive it, to think on it, meditate, make connections, and to build layer upon layer.

So for the rest of wisdom, I will wait, and I will continue to work, to revise, and to submit for critique. Because, like Calvin, I can ascribe nothing to myself.

Why I Write: Fiction

This is the second installment in my summer series: Why I Write. Today I'll tell you why I write made-up stories about made-up people with made-up problems.

I wrote about the Power of a Story for my other blog, Quills and Inkblotts. The purpose of this piece today isn't to argue the merits of fiction. Rather, to explain why I choose to write it, or more accurately, why I need to write it.

I love conversation. Not idle chit-chat. I hate that. If small-talk were a sport, I'd be the last one picked for the team. Give me an interesting topic (and an interested listener) and I'll win the Olympics of conversation. But, put me in a room with doughnut holes and coffee and five minutes until church starts, and I turn into Socially Awkward Penguin.

Then Facebook was invented. It's a blessing and a curse, isn't it? I've had some great conversations there. I can respond at my leisure, after thinking about what I want to say. I can read over my words a couple times to make sure my meaning is clear (and my typos are fixed). In this way, it's a great tool for the socially awkward to engage in meaningful conversation.

Until it isn't.

A few months ago I came across a wonderful, thought-provoking article on the Magna Carta in the Wall Street Journal. You can read it if you want to (please do!). Turns out, last summer was its 800th anniversary--who knew?

I thought about that article all day, the implication of the document on me as an American, as a descendant of Anglo-Europeans, who are so often thought of as the oppressors by modern...let's say "intellectuals," and how that thinking came about over the last hundred years or so.

I shared the link to the article on Facebook, but not until after carefully planning what I would say about it. I didn't want to come across as a snobbish know-it-all. I genuinely wanted my little Facebook community to be as intrigued as I was by it, to read it, to form their own thoughts, and to have a conversation about it. Of course, no one did. It turns out people have lives!

Having a constantly churning mind and no one to share its ruminations with can be lonely and stifling.

Enjolras had his men of the ABC Society.

William Wilberforce had the Claphamites.

Hannah More had her Bluestocking Group.

I need an outlet too, a more reliable source of conversation than fickle Facebook. So I write fiction. I hold conversations with myself about the beauty of the Pilgrims, about their faith, about God's faithfulness to them, about what it's like to grow up with a father who doesn't easily show love, about being a girl in a patriarchal society, about love, about grief, about friendship, about having faith in a God who feels very far away.

And the voices in my head do answer. They have comebacks I would never have the guts to say. Sometimes they scream and cry. Sometimes they laugh and enjoy each other's company. Sometimes they fall in love.

Sometimes I don't know what I know, or how I feel until the voices have had their say. In some ways it's better than engaging real life people who grow bored, or get offended, or misbehave. The voices are enough. They do more than sustain me--they energize me. They keep me sharp, focused, interested in many things. They demand knowledge gained by research, and excellence gained by revision.

When no one in real life cares about the Magna Carta, or King James, or religious persecution in the 17th Century, or Reformation theology, or being a lovesick teenage girl, the voices do. They care because these things are their fictional lives.

These things are my life. Because I need to have these conversations. Because I write fiction.

"For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me. Behold my belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst. I must speak, that I may find relief."

Job 33:18-20

The Value of Keeping a Journal

Thinking today about the importance of telling my own story as it's happening, instead of retroactively. There's something useful about that, I think. Not knowing how the story will end, but telling it anyway.

I've been a nearly lifelong journaler, though not with any sort of rigorous discipline. I do it when I feel like it. Sometimes I write two days in a row. Sometimes a week goes by. Sometimes a year. Somehow I've managed to fill several volumes over the years. These are the ones I've managed to preserve.

In the green box at the top of the heap are my earliest scratchings when I was an angst-filled, love-starved teenager. I didn't have a fancy book with a built-in ribbon bookmark back then. It was simply lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook in which I also did homework, folded up, and tucked away some place where no one would find it.

I don't know how they survived intact and unread all these years, but I found them this morning, stuffed in a storage bin in my closet, the breathings of my 17 year old heart, and I read them for the first time in nearly 20 years. When I plucked a random folded paper from the box, unfolded it, read my old bubbly script, tried to recall my world, my circumstances, and my heart, I cringed, as you might imagine.

It was painful to see how confused I was about the world, how obsessed I was with trying to figure out what would make me happiest, and especially, how far I was from God.

I was headed down what, I am confident now in saying, was a path to destruction. I was dating a boy I had no business going out with, probably as an act of rebellion against my parents, who I was sure were disappointed in me, and who, I frequently admitted in my writing, had no reason to be proud of me. It was also a rebellion against my sister, who had been doing things right, and was about to be married to a wonderful man.

I suppose you could call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. A head-first dive into a whirlpool in which I would be sucked voluntarily into a downward spiral. My shame in my poor decisions was compounded by each deliberate step I took down that path. And when shame doesn't result in repentance, it turns into something altogether different: contempt, anger, haughtiness, and pride.

I wrote many rambling pages before and during my relationship with this boy, justifying, rationalizing, and explaining why it was okay. Despite the youthful bluster, there is a sadness in my writing. A reigning cluelessness, a desperation to avoid pain and regret.

I spent a lot of time thinking (I had forgotten this) about moving out of my parents' house before I graduated. I had a job, after all (in 1997 minimum wage was about $5.15 an hour). And the people I had been hanging around--the family of this boy--were my picture of what this life looked like, which, in a word, was poverty.

But I didn't care. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be away from my parents. I didn't see it at the time, but now I recognize that what I really desired was to be done feeling ashamed, which I felt every time they looked at me, or tried to talk to me.

That was a powerful longing, but there was a still more powerful being at work in me, and I didn't even know it.

I broke up with the boy before summer was over, though I feared he would probably never talk to me again (he didn't). I wrote on one of these folded up papers, "I don't know what changed. I just see things differently now."

That chapter ended--just like that. The page was turned and a new chapter began. Within a year I would be far away from that town and that life, studying for a teaching degree, and reconciled to my parents. I didn't pull myself out of that pit by my own maturity, wisdom, clarity, or strength. I had none of that. I was dragged out by my collar with a mighty hand, unwitting and unwilling, by a God who had already ordained my eventual salvation.

It would be another 6 years, a college education, a husband, a teaching position, and a child, before I would be converted. But the work was begun during that awful time of rebellion. My journaling revealed that to me.

God saved me by his restraining grace and I didn't even want it at the time. He took me off that path of destruction and set me on a path that will ultimately culminate in righteousness, and I can take no credit for it.

How I thanked him this morning when I read those cringe-inducing words of my youth. How grateful I am that he prompted me to write them down, even while I was in the pit, with no desire to get out of it, so that I could, 20 years later, sit on the floor of my closet, with tears in my eyes, praising him for the good work he began in me so long ago.

That's why I spend my days writing and editing a fictional story for young adults. It's why my heroine is 17 years old, why her heart churns with the same dangerous concoction of pride and shame that mine did so many years ago. It's why she teeters on the edge of a family that expects more of her, and comes dangerously close to missing out on sharing their great destiny.

This story is my witness to the world, in the way I know best how to communicate. It's my testimony to the faithfulness of God, my response to his saving grace.

Where would I be if he hadn't pulled me from that path of destruction?

Where would any of us be?

What's your story?

How are you sharing it?

Writing Tip #1: Weeding out Adverbs

I read Stephen King's On Writing like every good aspiring author should. I remember the passage about adverbs: 

"They're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you have five the next day...fifty the day after that...and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, profligately, covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are."

When I took to the keyboard, eager to get my story out, an adverb popped up. "It looks pretty," I thought. It can stay. It's the only one.

I dropped another in.

And another.

And another.

There was a twinge of doubt every time. But it needs to be there! I convinced myself. How else will the reader know my character is anxious, willing, in a hurry, or that this is inevitable?

I typed on, comfortable with my rationalization.

Now the MS is complete and the revisions made. It's time to edit.

Microsoft Word has a tool in the upper right corner called, "Find." Click on the little binoculars and you can find any word, phrase, punctuation, or partial word. It will highlight it for you in dandelion yellow.

I nearly spit coffee on the screen when it showed me 764 uses of "ly" in my 65,500 word MS. Little yellow dots everywhere.

My beloved MS was totally, completely, profligately, covered with weeds.


How does a writer begin to tackle this?

Now that you know there's a problem, go to the experts before you try to fix anything. Pick up a classic, timeless piece of fiction you love. My go-to's right now are Les Miserables for the complexity, brilliance, and use of metaphors. And The Hobbit because it's delightful and conversational. I feel like I'm in Tolkien's home, and he's just pulled up a cushy chair, and begun to tell me a story. It's a good style to emulate.

Pick a page at random (you're not reading for the story) and take it in. Appreciate the work. Grow accustomed to the rhythm of the writing. Notice things about it. See any adverbs? Probably not. Figure out what you love about it. Take some time with this. Spend whole days away from the screen. Designate them as reading days. Sometimes just an hour is enough to give you a fresh perspective when you look at your own work again. Your taste in your own writing will have changed--like magic. You'll see problems you didn't before.

After you've done that, and you're ready to face the mountainous 764 words, don't be overwhelmed. Pour yourself a fresh cup of coffee, take a deep breath, and remind yourself that some of those words are "family" and "rely" and other non-"ly" adverbs.

Tackle the unnecessary words like "really" "only" and "nearly" first. You can eliminate them without much thought. Maybe a minor sentence adjustment. Get those things outta there. All of them.

The other ones, the ones you thought about and used intentionally are going to be a little tougher. You don't need to get rid of ALL of them. But I hope you'll begin to see that you don't need MOST of them. Don't automatically replace them with description. Sometimes a sentence or a paragraph needs to be tightened up. Maybe you need cut words to increase pacing, not slow it down by adding more words. You won't know that until you're reading whole passages and getting a feel for how fast it's moving.

When you come across the highlighted "ly" take some time to read the sentences around it. You'll find, probably....85% of the time, it's already preceded or followed by sufficient "showing" and you can just delete the adverb. For example, you may say she looked around nervously, and then describe her as fidgeting, and eyes darting. The reader "sees" that she's nervous! We don't need to be told. Get rid of that "ly."

Don't trust your gut. Your gut is the reason the adverb is there. Your subconscious wants to make sure the reader "gets" it. The reader is smarter than you're giving him/her credit for. Don't spoon feed the reader. That's lazy. Good, succinct writing is about subtraction.

For some omitted "ly"s, you may want to add description. You have to be judicious. That part is hard. You have to treat every one of them individually, and look at what's around it. No shortcuts. It's worth it. You used that "ly" because you were trying to convey something to the reader. Make sure you're doing it.

If deleting feels like ripping off a scab, you can copy the sentence and paste it in a file called "Deleted." That way, it's there, and if you find that you still don't like the sentence sans adverb, you can put it back. But at least *try* the sentence without it, and leave it that way for a while, and see if it doesn't grow on you, and strike you as better, stronger writing.

Lament of the Christian Artist

Overwhelmed today with the question--AGAIN--of what God has promised me. I'm studying the story of Balaam and his donkey, which I did not want to study this week. I put it off again and again. I even wrinkled my nose at it when I saw it sitting by my computer, and checked facebook instead. I finished it without putting forth too much effort and went to bible study not really understanding it, not sure what God was saying to Israel, or to me, with the exception of his steadfast promise: Blessed are you, my people; I am sovereign over every single thing. There was, I admit, a bit of a *yawn* response from me. It's the same word from God week after week, chapter after chapter.

But as I listened to my friends answer the same questions with such profound insight, I sat up a little straighter and reread some of those prophecies from Numbers

"The God who can predict outcomes is the God who is the author of history," my teaching leader said.

I believe this about my God. With all my heart, I believe this. But the old, persistent question came to me, like a dilapidated neon sign that blinks and splutters but never quite goes out.

What did you promise me? Am I to understand your words in light of eternal victory? Or in light of my small life, which only has purpose because you give me a job to fulfill? Do you promise to use me as a writer of stories that are worthy to be read? Do you promise that I will become a published author? Is that your promise to me?

When I got to the car with these questions in my mind, I groaned and asked God if he was tired of hearing me ask because, frankly, I was tired of asking. "If this is not your promise to me," I prayed, tearing up as I drove down Abercorn, "take from me this dream and set my heart on another task, another mission, another way I can be used." I am willing to do that. I trust him for that.

But if it is his promise...if it is his promise, I will strive toward that for a decade more. Two decades. A lifetime. But I cannot spend a lifetime chasing a fool's errand. I must know if my prayers are the prayers of a self-aggrandizing bag of hot air, or a (semi) talented writer who really may one day achieve publication.

It struck me on the drive home: what if I'm not the faithful donkey, with his eyes to see the Lord's angel, but I am really Balaam, who is so single-minded, so determined to go his own way that he will beat the gentle faithful one into submission? How do I know I am not a diviner, trying to create the path I want, and blind to the path God has actually set me on? How do I know the set backs and discouragements aren't the voice of the donkey, who sees more clearly than I, that God himself is blocking the way?

"The story of Balaam abounds in comic irony," my commentary says, and I suppose if I were a Jew, a recipient of the promise, on the other side of victory with Moab, I would see the humor in it. Though the promised Redeemer has come, and God's completed Word sits open in my lap, I don't know who I am in this story.

Have I kicked someone under me? Neglected them? Despised them for interrupting my course, for keeping me from my writing desk, and my pursuit of my own glory?

I want to say that I am not Balaam. Balaam sold his soul for riches from Moab and died by the sword because of it. Balaam was willing to take a bribe. Balaam exacted revenge through wicked means when he didn't get his way.

God knows my heart. He knows it beats for him. He doesn't really need me to tell him how desperate I am for a word from him, a hint of a promise, a glimmer that I have heretofore missed because I blinked.

In asking God for an answer, I am taking a risk. I did my best, most prolific writing when I was not concerned with agents and contests and contracts. For so long I have successfully pushed aside the fear that it would be wasted, that no one would ever read it. I have convinced myself to write something down, anything, even if it's terrible, knowing that I can go back and fix it later. It has been enough to keep my fingers on the keyboard through 4 1/2 manuscripts. All without knowing for certain if this was even God's plan for my life. Without the assurance that this is his promise to me.

I stubbornly hope despite the odds.

I look at books from the library sitting on my bedside table. I see their paper, their ink, their cardboard spine, covered in that awful plastic film. I see the cover art and the dedication and I think, "This is impossible." I'm just a housewife. A nobody. Every author was at one time, I suppose. Every author wrote a terrible first draft and stuck with it until it got better...and then the clouds parted, and the heavenly chorus sounded from above, and God set them on their path to the promised book deal.

I realize now that I am still on the pendulum that swings wildly from total narcissism to crushing self-doubt, only now it has become unhinged and swings in a new direction that is a combination of both. Narcissism and doubt.

I'm sick of thinking about it. I'm sick of thinking about myself.

I won't quit. It's not a question of my quitting. It's a habit now, to turn my brain to story mode in the car, or the shower, or on a walk, or lying in bed. There is a drive to finish that will keep me at the computer every available minute of the day, even if the answer is no.

Until I am sure the answer is no.

The things that have gotten me to this point, the ways God has worked things out for me, kept me encouraged, spared my crooked little flash drive, protected my time and my health, put inspiring things in front of me, kept my computer from crashing, built me up, torn me town, taken my hand as I rebuilt again, shown me things that made my work better, given me a husband who allows me to indulge in what I have always tried to pass off as a glorified hobby, plucked me out of my old life and set me down in one of calm, and peace, and ease, so that I have an over-abundance of time to develop my craft, which I have grown to love so much--I have not imagined these things. They are not the outworking of my over-confidence, or my ambition, or my own feeble attempts.

Can I say that being a writer--an actual, legitimate, recognized, (dare I say it?) published author--is his promise to me? A promise that I should fight and claw and scratch and sweat to obtain?

God has brought me to this point and until he tells me, "No," I am powerless to stop trying.

The Prayer of a Christian Writer

You know how hard I've worked. You've been there, all those dark, lonely hours while I pinged away at a keyboard. You helped me tell the story, sustained me with time, a computer that didn't crash, a crooked little flashdrive that has never been lost. You watched me type the first word and the last word, and You knew when I changed the first word through 16 revisions.

You know how my ego has swelled with every compliment and You know how hard I have fought the battle against pride. You've seen me struggle to make myself less when my heart cries out for recognition, admiration, and fawning praise. You know how I yearn for that "someone" to notice me and make my dreams of success come true.

Don't give it to me. The same way You denied Moses when he asked to see Your face in Exodus 33:18, because You knew it would be too much for him.

If You don't go with me on the difficult road to publication, don't send me. Don't let my ears be tickled with compliments that will skew my view of myself. Don't let me hear encouragement that will push me farther than You want me to go. Don't let others whisper empty promises that deliver false hope.

Just go with me. That's what I ask. You and me. Knowing You are there and You are pleased is worth more to me than a contract, more than the pleasure of seeing my words in print.

To be published, respected, and influential--those are good things and You will guide me toward that in Your time, in Your way. I am not like the others. There are talented aspiring writers in the great big world who don't know You. They clamber for attention and due praise, and buy followers, and fight for room on a tiny stage. But I do not cross my fingers for luck when I query. I do not receive rejection bitterly. I do not blame. I do not pout. I do not lose hope as long as You are with me.

Your ways are different and your presence separates me from the pack.

Your presence is all I truly want. More than success, more than royalties, more even than sincere praise. Because those things don't guide my steps. Those things don't linger. Those things don't care about the souls of my potential audience.

So, with humility, I ask for Your presence so that Your presence will supply the boldness I need to move forward in this pursuit.

Choosing to read (and write) about things that matter

So, I had the sudden crazy thought a few weeks ago as I was contemplating my story, that it is really well-suited for the young adult reader.  That happens to be one of my favorite genres of literature.  Not because I'm too shallow for the grown-up stuff, but because I am fascinated by the process of self-discovery and life change that happens at that age. 

For some inexplicable reason, I have a heart to reach the young with the message of grace.  I find myself repeatedly telling my group of kids on Sunday mornings that we all have a choice to make.  "Oh, that you would choose life!" (Deuteronomy 30:19)  It seems simple, I tell them, when you are young, and your moms and dads bring you to church every week, and following directions is just...what you do when you're 7 or 8. 

But one day, I say, you are going to be a teenager and things are going to get really complicated.  Right and wrong will become blurred.  Your friends will go different ways and you will question the things that your parents have always taught you.  Truth will be elusive.  But, I always tell them, God will never EVER be surprised by anything you choose to do.  Even if you mess up really bad.  He'll always be waiting for you to come back to Him and that is something you can always count on.

I will never get tired of telling kids that.

So, thinking about my story, I began to wonder...what are teens reading these days?  What makes a marketable work of young adult fiction?

That's why I picked up a random book on the teen fiction counter at Barnes and Noble yesterday that had an interesting cover.  I won't give away the author because 1-I don't want to poke fun at him personally, and 2-I don't want to peak anyone's curiosity enough to actually pick it up and read it.

It's not that it wasn't good.  It was!  Well, save for the writer's voice which was clearly an adult trying to sound like a teen.  "'Hey, watch it, man,' my friend was like."  That's just a sample of the dialoge in the first couple of pages.  Yuck.  Other than that, it really was good.  Like all good writers, this one had an uncanny ability to take an ordinary experience, i.e. talking about things when you're depressed, and describing it in a way that is fresh and unusual, yet totally relatable.  "Your words come out like ice that's been ground up in the ice-crushing thing in the refrigerator."  (I'm paraphrasing here.) 

That's what writing fiction is, really, I think.  Taking a character who is extraordinary in some way: determined, brave, frightened or strengthened by what's happening around them, quirky, gifted, troubled, insane, etc. and making them seem human so that anyone can learn from their experience. 

But then I read a page further while I stood in the middle of the store and found out that this 16 year old boy is sitting in a bedroom with his friends who are passing a joint around.  Ummm....what?  This is young adult lit??  Shake it off and keep reading, Robin.  He passes the joint on without smoking.  Oh good.  Wait.  He's doing an experiment to see if his depression is brought on by the pot.  But sometimes he smokes a lot of it at once to see what happens to him then.  Great. 

What is this book about anyway?  I flip it over and read the plot summary on the back cover.  This boy eventually finds himself in the psych ward of a hospital.  This is a story of his time there and the friends he meets, inluding one transgender person who is addicted to sex.

I set the book down, thinking it was a little too adult even for me.  I'm struggling in my own story with whether or not to edit some of the kissing scenes--there are three, which are never gratuitous, by the way.  They are strategically included as tools to shape the character and reveal her motivations, her weakness, her self-doubts, her triumphs, and her joys, and to make her real, which all help to advance the story.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for truth being told in literature, movies, and other art forms.  I don't mind gritty, explicit subject matter as long as it's there to reveal a truth about something bigger.  As long as it is redeemed in the end. 

Maybe I'm just not giving this book I found at B and N enough of a chance but my instinct tells me that there will be no redemption in the end.  I think it will just be some writer, albeit a good one, telling a raunchy, sordid tale of teen angst where the "hero" (I use that term loosely) learns that life is all about him and whatever feels good in the moment.

What irritates me so much is that it really is good writing.  Which means that there is a thoughtful, intelligent, articulate, human being punching letters into a computer that tell a story in a skillful way.  I'm sure he's much more talented than I am.  But he's using his talent to perpetuate a lazy truth that popculture has already filled our minds with again and again and again.  Since the beginning time, really.

Maybe my story isn't marketable at all.  Maybe my writing isn't good enough to get within reach of a publisher.  It's alright, I'm not sitting here kidding myself.  I do think I have an appropriate amount of humility.  I mean, I'm trying, aren't I?  I just really, really wish that the more talented thinkers, creators, writers, and artists out there, whose work gets produced, published, watched, read, and beloved by audiences were telling a truth that matters.  A truth that we can always count on.

I actually pray that God would open my eyes and my mind to resources, and thoughts, and ideas that would make my writing better.  Not because I want to see my book on a B and N table (ok, that would nice, I admit).  But seriously, I'm not looking for any kind of accolades or praise, or anything like that.  Those are things people crave that don't matter in the grand scheme.  I just want my story to be heard by young girls who mistakenly think that one screw-up ruins everything.  Who mistakenly think that having comfort and security is the ultimate goal in life.  Who wonder why God made them and what they are supposed to do with their lives.  Girls who would be encouraged and uplifted by the story of a true heroine who learns these things for herself.

These are the things that matter.  Particulary to teens who are on the cusp of adulthood and figuring out life on their own terms.  Or am I just totally wrong?