Inspiration has struck!

Did you know that the Pilgrims spent nearly 10 years in Holland before coming to America?  They left England not with the original intent of laying the foundation of the greatest nation to ever grace this broken earth.  They just wanted to get out from under the corruption of the Church of England and escape the persecution they faced for resisting its authority.  Not very romantic, is it?

I'm not sure why they picked Holland.  Maybe the politics of the region led them to believe they'd be left alone there.  Maybe someone had family there.

I want to share a paragraph that I read in a book about the early days of American history that just fascinates me.  This came from a letter written by William Bradford, a man who, though not the pastor of the congregation, had been with them from the beginning and was always considered a leader among them.  These are his reasons for giving up on Holland by the time 1620 rolled around:

"1. Their life (though they never complained of it) was so hard that almost no others were coming from England to join them..., 2. Their life was aging them prematurely (everyone old enough to hold a job worked 12 to 15 hours a day), and was so debilitating them that, should the time come when they would have to move again, they might not physically be able to do so, 3. Their children were also being worn down, and many were being drawn away by the lures of the world around them, 4. They had cherished a 'great hope and inward zeal' of at least playing a part, if as only a stepping stone for others, in the carrying forth of the Light of Christ to remote parts of the world."

Can you guess which sentence in the paragraph above sparked an idea for a new story?  Ok, ok, I'll just tell you.  It's sentence number 3 about their children.  I read that and thought to myself, "Aha!  They were humans like us!  They had the same challenges in raising their kids to love God--just like us!" 

I forget this when my kids bring home worksheets every Thanksgiving with silly-looking Pilgrims donning huge black hats and shaking hands with Squanto.  They bury the fish with the corn kernels and the next thing you know, it's time to eat!  Happy Thanksg-er, uh, Happy Turkey Day!

The Pilgrims become cartoon characters to us, ceasing to be real. But if you dig around through history, you'll find that they were, in fact very real.  Both in their superhero-like abilities to deal with hardship, and in their weaknesses, of which they had in abundance too. 

This is what makes a story really great, I think.  I don't need my hero or heroine to be so pure and flawless that his/her perfection is completely unattainable and thereby unrelatable.  In the same way, I want my villain to have some redeeming qualities because we ALL have a little bit of darkness in us, right?   

To think of the Pilgrims, or any other historical figures as any less complex than that is to misunderstand history.  And to miss out on a great story.

So, inspiration has struck.  I'm living in the world of 17th Century Holland, at least in my mind.  And when you're a teenage girl who has lived a brutally challenging life and you finally get a taste of freedom, who is the villain?  Why it's your parents, of course, who want you to stay the course of a faithful life of servitude and sacrifice.  Or maybe...it's the hunky guy who calls himself a Christian but who only lives for himself and diminishes your parents and their crazy notion to go to the New World.

Will she she make the choice in the end that honors God?  Will she end up on the Mayflower with her family?  I can't even say for sure because the characters and the plot tend to take on a life of their own as they develop in my mind.  But one thing I DO know.  They will be human.  They will breath life into a group of people that seem plastic and cartoonish even to those of us today who know our American history.

As a Christian and an American who has benefited in so many ways from the toil and sacrifice of these 102 brave souls who left such a giant thumbprint on the world, it's the least I can do.

On Getting What You Want In This Life

Take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires.  Psalm 37:4

Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for....  For everyone who asks receives."  Matthew 7:7

And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.  1 John 5:15

Put a quarter into the slot and the mighty Zoltar will give you whatever you want. 

Er...oops.  Guess I got carried away.  But I could find more similar bible verses.  They're all over the place.  Old and New Testament.  Lots of little nuggets of gold in there that make even the most humble among us rub our palms together and dream of the possibilities.

Anything, God?  Really?  Ok...I'm going to be really mature here and not ask for money.  Lots of verses about money in there too and I'm past wishing--I mean praying--for more money. 

The desires of my heart, huh?  Then I want to write.  Not just put-put stuff on a free blog.  Real, meaty stuff that people read and are changed by.  And I want the things I do at church to go well instead of flop around like a dead fish until someone finally says, "Enough is enough.  Put it out of its misery."  And if it's not too much to ask, I'd like for something to go right for my husband for once.  I'm not asking for him to have his career back.  I just want a future we can look forward to.  One that doesn't involve other people's funerals, preferably.  Oh yeah.  Amen.

Tapping my foot....waiting....waiting....

It doesn't work that way, my beloved daughter.

What?!  Why not?!  That's what it SAYS!  In the BIBLE!  That's YOUR word, not mine.  I delight in you, I really do.  You can ask anyone I know.  They'll tell you.

I know.  I know all things.  And I love you too.  More than you can comprehend.  And that's why I can't give you all of the things you are asking for.

But these things are good things, Father.  Things that can bring you glory! 

And things that can bring YOU glory.

Aaaannnddd...that's a bad thing, why?

It's not bad, dear one.  But it's shortsighted.  You are only seeing the things of this world and you think you know best how to make things good.  Some of the things you are asking for, well, they're not good.  Not in the long run.  Please trust me.  I know things you don't--can't know.

Great.  Then, why bother asking for ANYTHING?!

Calm down.  Go ahead and ask.  Anything just to hear your voice.  Sometimes my answer will be yes.  Sometimes no.  But I'll tell you the secret to getting what you ask for.  Are you ready?

Yes.  For crying out loud.  Yes!

That book in your lap?  Look at those verses again.  Not the one about Zoltar.  The other ones.

Ok...says here in Psalms 37:5, "Commit everything you do to the Lord.  Trust him and he will help you." 
Matthew 7:9 says, "You parents--if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?" 
And 1 John 5:14 says, "...he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him."

Wait a minute...so, you're saying I have to give you the "whole pie," as Pastor Mike says, trust your judgment, and ask only for things that please you?  And THEN you'll give me what I ask for??

Pretty much.

How do I know what pleases you?

Do the first two things and you'll have it pretty well figured out.

Well, how do I do those first two things?

Ask me.  Those are things that PLEASE me.  I would be happy grant those requests for you.  Are you beginning to see how this works?

I think so.

It is finished...sort of

Tutto e compiuto.  That means "it is finished" in Italian.  I know this because I've had my google translator up almost constantly as I wrote my story, which takes place in medieval Italy.  It has been very handy for finding names, substituting swear words, and lending a bit of European flavor to the dialogue.  But, at last, tutto e compiuto. 

When the idea first struck to do something as crazy and time-consuming as writing a novel, my first course of action was to research literary agents and editors to see if it is even possible for an unpublished person to get anywhere in the "biz."  I was not met with any hope that it could happen.  Apparently, publishing houses don't take unsolicited material and agents don't take clients who have never been published.  Is it just me, or is that the most vicious cycle of hopelessness ever instituted by man? 

So, I thought...maybe I should just write the first chapter and send it in along with a query letter, and see if anyone bites on the concept of what I was wanting to do.  I mean, I don't want to spend all the time it would take to write the WHOLE THING for nothing!  It seemed so insurmountable when I was still struggling to figure out how to even begin.  Like it would take years to write it.  I just couldn't see how I could ever do it without a professional, real life person telling me it was worth doing, and maybe, you know, sending an advance check!  Ha!  Funny!  Naive and funny...in a hopeless kind of way.

But I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and started typing.  Then deleted and started again.  And I kept going.  Before long I had an 8-page chapter one.  It was...ok.  I knew parts of it were weak but I could go back and clean up the messy stuff.  So I kept going.  Chapter two ended and chapter three began.  After two solid days of marathon writing, I had four chapters and my two characters were on a roll.  Well, literally, on a journey.  And I couldn't stop.  The story had to come out.


Literary agents be damned, I was going to finish this story.


A surprisingly short two and a half months later, and a surprisingly long 298 Word doc double-spaced pages later, and......it is finished.


Already my mini HP has been closed for two days and I'm feeling a little lost without my friends, Sal and Fran. But they are big kids now. They have learned the lessons that I created for them.  Lessons about grace, and humility, and forgiveness.  They are now out in the great big world beyond my imagination doing the jobs that God called them to do.


What now?  Well, according to my creative writing "professors," Steven King and Sol Stein, I should let it sit for at least 4 to 6 weeks without looking at it.  That way, when I open it up to do revisions, or as Stein calls it, "triage," which evokes the image of a salpel slicing away big chunks of my story (shudder), I won't be so close to it and I will see the words in a fresh, more unbiased way.  After that I will have a second draft.  Then, I will go through the process again.

And the rest is up to God.


What to do while I wait?  Well, I tried to let my brain take a vacation but it is revolting against the idea and formulating ideas for the next story, against my will and better judgment.  A post-Reformation story.  Circa early 1600's.  There's this girl...she has a choice to make...  Argh!!!  Turn it off, turn it off!!!

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?

No time to blog! Too busy writing!!!

I know all my adoring fans are just dying to know how the old novel is coming along....wait, er, well, one person asked.  Soooo, I'm just going to treat you all to a little summary of my progress so far.

Before I tell you anything else, I have to say that this has been a strange and wonderful mixture of completely terrifying and supremely pleasurable.  I once read that a writer should force him/herself to write at least a little bit every single day, "come hell or high water."  Even on the holidays.  No days off.  Thou shalt not rest on Sundays.  Sounded like a chore when I read that.  But when I really got going on my own story, I found that I couldn't bear to let a day go by that I wasn't adding to it.  I think it's probably safe to say that I've had my computer on and click-clacked away at it every day since November 6.  Even Thanksgiving when I packed my computer and hauled it down to Mom's.  I'm not joking.

In the roughly six weeks that have passed I have written approximately 60,000 words and 18 chapters in what will probably be about a 24 chapter book.  How have I found the time you ask?  What with my three young children, my work at church, occassional babysitting, and my house to take care of (I even threw in a little girl's slumber party during that time!)? 

For one thing I haven't watched a television show in its entirety since I began writing.  Not even Bill O'Reilly.  If you know me, you know that he has such a presence in our house that we refer to him as Uncle Bill (not to be confused with my real Uncle Bill).  But he comes on in one of those precious hours when the girls are in bed and I can WRITE!  So no Bill for me. 

Second, there is no idle brain time.  That means, if I can't write, I'm thinking on purpose about my story.  I have a notebook that is bursting with sticky notes, grocery lists that I have dug out of my purse, junk mail envelopes that I have written on, etc.  No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I'm thinking about my story and when something pops into my head, I jot it down and tuck it away for later.  If I'm home but not able to write, I'm reading a book about writing.  Or reading another work of fiction so that I can study what the author does that I like or don't like.

And if I can't do that?  Well, there are simply some hours of the day when I need to be wife and mom. I block off sections of my morning and evening when cooking or babysitting combines with laundry and dusting.  Amazingly, hubby has only run out of clean underwear once in the last 6 weeks.

Also amazingly, he has not written me off as a total nut job for spending hours with my mini HP on something that may just prove to be a fruitless endeavor.  I think he's secretly hoping that it's good enough that a publisher will want to buy it.

Is it good enough?  Um, I'm not sure.  Truthfully, I'm not sure.  It's kind of in the style of a Deanne Gist, although written more for the young reader.  It's not as good as, say, a Francine Rivers.  But it's waaaay better than a Karen Kingsbury.  But that's just my opinion.  I read "The Help" while I was in the midst of writing and practically despaired because I knew it was light years ahead of my skill level.  But I'm not giving up because that's just not what I do.  I actually used that experience to make my story better.  I added a scene that provided conflict and developed an antagonist from the beginning that now makes appearances throughout the story because I so enjoyed the tension between Miss Skeeter and her nemisis, Hilly Hollbrook.

My story is one of those classic romances where girl meets guy, girl falls for guy, and then, uh-oh, something happens that pulls them apart...will they get together in the end?  It's got all the good stuff too,  ya know, hearts pounding, lips meeting.  But it doesn't go too far.  As Drew Barrymore says in "The Wedding Singer," it's church-tongue!  ;)

There is guilt, love, danger, fist-fighting, self-doubt, being negatively influenced by a shallow friend, a longing to hear God's voice, grace, forgiveness, misunderstanding, loss, and realizing one's calling in life.  Who hasn't experienced those things?  Better yet, who doesn't want to experience those things vicariously through a herione that you are rooting for?  But maybe that's just me.  I love a good story.

But it's also one of those "inspiriational" types where God is practically a main character.  So if you're not into spiritual things, there will probably be lots of eye-rolling.  I just can't spend all this time on a story if the character doesn't figure life out without looking through the lense of scripture.  It's how I make sense of the world.  I teach a room full of kids every single week how to make sense of the world by looking at scripture.  So naturally, a character that comes right out of my imagination would too.

That's all for now.  I've just thought of something I want to change in the last little bit of dialogue I wrote.  Ah, dialogue.  I could write an entire blog just on what I've learned about dialogue!  It's not what you might think! 

So, until I get another few minutes when I'm not writing, working, reading, cooking, teaching, or caring for the chillin's, wish  me luck!  Say a prayer!  I'll keep you posted.