Rob Long has a piece on writers procrastinating by giving talks on writing.
“Writers, in general, love giving these talks, love giving advice, because it’s as close to writer-ish activity as you can get without actually having to write, which is something that all writers, or at least all honest writers, hate.” (via Prufrock)
Consumer warning: I’m about to do a think piece. The management assumes no responsibility for any mental damage that may be sustained by those who rashly read on…
Gene Edward Veith posted about “God as a poet” today on his Cranach blog (I’d link to it, but it’s behind a pay wall). I commented about my own theory, becoming a conviction (wisely or not), that God is a storyteller.
In my case, the idea goes back quite a long time, to when I was learning to tell stories (something I learned relatively late in life). How a story involves taking a (usually likeable) main character, giving him (or her. Or it) a problem, then having them try to solve it. Their attempt not only fails, but makes the problem worse. Repeat as needed, escalating at each stage, until they either a) succeed, or b) fail in a significant way.
And then I noticed that that is precisely how life works (something I haven’t actually learned yet, in practical terms). We face problems, we keep trying, learning what works and what doesn’t as we go, until we find something that works. Or else we die.
And I thought, “Hey, life is like a story. I’ll bet that’s why stories are such a universal human phenomenon.”
And then I got all metaphysical. “Maybe stories reflect reality because God is Himself a storyteller. Scripture certainly presents the history of salvation as a narrative. A narrative with a Hero and a plot.”
And then I thought, “Maybe that answers the ancient question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” If God has shaped all creation as a story, then bad things would have to happen to good people. Because that’s how stories work (see paragraph 3 above). Every writer knows the struggle of creating a character you like, and then subjecting them to torture – for the sake of the story.
Another commenter at Cranach suggested that this trivializes suffering. I can see how they might think that. I seem to be saying that God lets children die of cancer, or live in abuse, just to tell a story.
But that objection depends on two assumptions:
One is that stories are trivial things. If, as I am coming to believe, the creation itself is a story, then it’s the farthest thing from trivial. I’m not deprecating reality – I’m exalting Story.
Secondly, it all depends on what you think of the Storyteller. Whether He’s going to tie all the loose ends up in the end. Whether He created His characters in love, or just to amuse Himself.
I believe that the Storyteller began His story – “Let there be light” – with loving purpose. And He’ll wrap it up by fulfilling His loving promise: “Yes, I am coming quickly!” And then comes the Wedding Feast, and they live happily ever after.
The video above is quite old now, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared it here. Fits our topic, and it’s in my wheelhouse, too, as the language is Norwegian. It comes from the Norwegian national broadcast service. If you’ve never seen it before, it’s pretty clever.
Today was another of those clear, bright, bitter cold days in Minneapolis. I’ve mentioned the word “apricity” before – it means the warmth you feel when the sun shines on you, warming you a little on one of these polar days. This was an apricitous day.
I went to the gym (8 below) and then went to my tax preparer (about zero). Those two things are the sum of my achievements thus far, but I still felt worn out. Taxes will do that to you. My return is on hold, since it turned out a couple forms I need haven’t arrived in the mail yet. Next year I need to make a later appointment.
Now I’ll try to work on the novel. This thing is kicking my fundament. Every time I do a revision, I find more that needs fixing. I just discovered that in one story line, I put an effect ahead of a cause. This will have to be fixed.
I think it’s a good story, but it’s like a black hole. I like to think the book is smarter than I am, and I just need time to catch up with it.
A growing demand for celebrity books has created an increased demand for ghostwriters or collaborators.
Madeleine Morel, a literary agent for ghostwriters, tells Publishers Weekly this type of writing, while still going largely uncredited, has swelled naturally. “A number of writers … have, in the past five to 10 years, turned to ghostwriting as other avenues have dried up—former midlist authors, former long-form journalists whose newspapers or magazines have closed, and former editors who’ve lost jobs to consolidation.”
These collaborators rarely get named on the cover of their book. Perhaps publishers don’t want to break the magic with readers. Publishers want to you to believe you are holding the honest thoughts of one whose face is on the cover. Readers want to hear straight from Alan Cummings, Hayley Mills, Julianna Margulies, or Ron and Clint Howard, not their interpreter, but any of these movie people that I just picked off a list of recent memoirs may not have the skills or time to put together a full book. That’s no smirch on them.
More celebrities appear to be willing to acknowledge one way or another that they needed writing help. Maybe all of society is more willing to acknowledge the little people behind the stars.
Paul Auster has written a biography on Stephen Crane and several other works without a word processor. He drafts by hand and types a paragraph with a typewriter (via Literary Saloon).
I have shelves of encyclopedias, foreign dictionaries, and all the reference books I use. And I must have five or six English dictionaries of various sizes and editions. I even have slang dictionaries. When I’m really stuck I look at a thesaurus, but it never helps me. I know all those words, but I always think, “Well, there’s one word I’m not remembering that would be better than the one I’m stuck on.”
City of Fear, by Alafair Burke, “a tight, pacy police procedural, in which three Indiana college girls hit New York for their spring break.” One of them doesn’t come back.
The Album of Dr. Moreau, by Daryl Gregory, “deliberately and imaginatively breaks every one of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Rules of Detective Fiction.'” It’s a crazy premise, a genetically engineered boy band who find their producer dead in his hotel room, that apparently works.
Martin Luther: How Luther helped my depression. “I somehow found myself holding a copy of a Luther biography written by Roland Bainton.”
Why should we fear the Lord when perfect love casts out fear?
Halloween meditation: Jesus defines hell as the place when everyone is “salted by fire.”
No matter what you call your church or church movement, I think you’ll go astray if you claim your side is the one breathing life into dead orthodoxy. The message of the Reformation is still needed.
Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash
Still got some reading to do before my next book review. Picked up yet another book about Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral. I don’t know why I keep reading these things. Officially, I’m a Wild Bill Hickok partisan, but there aren’t as many books being written about the Prince of Pistoleers (got to check if there’s anything new out there). But that OK Corral business just keeps fascinating people. The book I’m working on seems promising, in terms of fresh information.
That put me in the mood to watch “Tombstone” again. Like all Earp movies, it falsifies all sorts of stuff, but it works so well as a film – and they did make the effort to make it look authentic. Love those costumes.
And it has some great epic moments. I so love epic moments, where your heart soars a few yards, like Soti in The Year of the Warrior. Made me wish I could write some of my own.
And what do you know? I have some to write! A Work In Progress nearing completion, just needing a few more edits to steer it the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille. Or Sergio Leone. Or whoever directed “Tombstone.” (I forget.)
I finished another draft of King of Rogaland last night. Then this morning as I got up, I thought of a few lines I needed to add, to contribute to the general transcendence of the epic as a whole. Tonight, I start another read-through. I’m close now, I think. This book seems to have more moving, intersecting parts than anything I’ve written before. I think I’ve got most of my ravens in a row now – I’m only aware of one point I’m still not sure about.
Of course, you never know what self-inflicted follies, of my own creation, still lie in wait for me. That’s all part of the (epic) process.
Ever notice that some words with diverse meanings sound alike? There are called homophones and are the source of countless confusions and misspeakery. The curious may ask if two homophones have a common origin, if perhaps a single word split in the distance past to give us the two words we have now.
Something of an example of a single word would be content. When we say CON-tent, emphasizing the front of half of the word, we mean the reading material, images, videos, or objects that fill up a website, magazine, or other media container. What’s in a thing is its content. When we say con-TENT, we mean to be at peace with a situation. “Having the desires limited to that which one has; not disposed to repine or grumble.” That’s the definition from Webster’s New International (2nd ed., many years old), adding this Spencer quotation: “Content with any food that God doth send.”
This word is not actually a homophone. It’s the same word with two meanings, both from one Latin word continere, meaning “to hold together, enclose” or to contain. The content of this blog is the substance contained therein, and to be content with something is to contain one’s desires within the bounds of that thing. Your umbrella may be bent and a bit shabby, but you’re content with it because you don’t want a new one yet.
My old Webster’s makes a good point contrasting content and satisfy. You may be settled or undisturbed by what you have, even though all of your desires have not been met or satisfied. “When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travelers must be content,” Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It. The speaker could easily want more or different, but today he’ll remain as he is–not satisfied but content.
But I was talking about homophones, such as pray and prey.
Pray came into English in the 13th century as preien, shown in this old Anglican prayer, “Almyghti god, euerlastynge, we preien thee grant us to slaken the flawme of oure vicis, that grauntidist to seynt laurence thi martir to ouercome the brynnyng of his turmentis. Bi crist.” The word came through French from the Latin precari, meaning “ask earnestly, beg, entreat.” You can hear a close relationship to the word precarious, which we often use to mean “uncertain” or “doubtful.” It actually means “dependent on someone else,” which is rather close to what the prayerful saint intends.
Prey in Middle English was preie, essentially the same spelling as the word intended as “pray.” Searching old prayer books, I see this spelling used repeatedly, such as this line from a tract by John Wyclif, “Christene men preie wiþout cessynge.” So, speaking as a layman, a novice, and a non-scholar (despite what they constantly told me in high school), perhaps both pray and prey were spelled the same in 13th century English.
But prey, a hunted animal, does not have the same root as pray. It comes from another French word (also preie) from the Latin praeda. These two words were used to mean “plunder and the spoils of conquest” as well as the rabbit in the falcon’s eye. And the verb form, to prey upon, is derived from the same Latin root.
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash
The co-founder of Snopes.com has been outed as plagiarist. David Mikkelson has been suspended from editing his own website, but I gather he has not been dismissed entirely, if that’s even possible since he owns half the company.
Buzzfeed News has the story today. A few years ago, a statement like that would have sounded like saying, “ClickHole reports this shocking bit of truth.” But Buzzfeed does real work now. Who would have thought?
The article quotes from a couple former Snopes staffers who say Mikkelson’s policy was to plagiarize first, rewrite into original wording later. “I remember explaining that we didn’t need to ‘rewrite’ because we’d always done this stuff quickly,” Kim LaCapria said, “He just didn’t seem to understand that some people didn’t plagiarize.”
Have you put much or any stock in Snopes recently? I haven’t looked at it for a long while, having become disenchanted with it after reading a couple articles that weren’t fact-checking at all. But most of my fact-checking for the last few years has been etymological.
In the spirit of transparency, I got distracted while writing this post by my need for a good turnip greens recipe. I thought you should know.
At last I found a lawn guy. I chose the guy who put up a flyer at my church, rather than any of the hard-sell sharks who went all feeding-frenzy on me after I waded into the Home Advisor waters. I may be sorry I made the choice one day, but at the moment I’m pleased with my sales resistance.
No word on the car yet, of course. I have a Viking event this weekend (the link to the Little Log House Antique Power Show is here, if you’re going to be near Hastings, Minnesota), and I’ve been forced to beg a ride from a fellow Viking who can accommodate all my stuff in his vehicle. I’ll owe him a favor now… heaven knows what might be asked of me one day. (I draw the line at felony-level violence.) I hope to have the new paper edition of The Year of the Warrior to sell at this event, and that kind of excites me.
I’m almost surprised to say it, but the new novel, King of Rogaland, is coming together, I think. Now that I’m starting to get the various plot threads tied up properly, I like what I’m seeing. I’ve got ongoing themes happening here; a uniformity of effect (I hope). One oddity of this book (for me) is that it includes more embedded stories than my previous books. By that I mean a character in my story sitting down and telling a story of his own. These interpolated tales, in general (I think), also advance the unified theme. Another oddity is that there are no major battles (hypocritical of me, I suppose, as I’ve criticized Stephen Lawhead for lacking the nerve to write battles). But the final confrontation is – I think – dramatic enough to have a similar artistic effect.
I read a quotation recently that impressed me. I don’t recall the source, or the exact words. But the gist of it was, “The better you get as a writer, the harder writing will be for you, because your critical standards will be raised.” So just go ahead and do it – if you’re having this problem, you’re probably a better writer than you think.
Yesterday and today have been quiet days for me, for reasons I won’t itemize. Suffice it to say I’ve been unwell, in a manner that makes leaving the house inadvisable. I think I’m beginning to recover now. No great distress, just… inconvenience.
And no, there’s no fresh news about my car. They told me the end of the month; kind of pointless to nag them until then. Maybe I’ll just keep the loaner and call it even.
But I’m working on my revisions to King of Rogaland. At this stage I’m working with red pen on a printed manuscript, rather on screen. There are two reasons for this. One is that ink on paper just reads differently for me. That’s an odd thing to say for someone who reads almost exclusively on Kindle. But I don’t feel I can “grasp” my manuscript until I’m literally grasping an inch or so of ream in my hands.
The second, more practical reason is that I often have to page back and forth to see if one passage about a character or subject matches things I’ve written about it elsewhere. Continuity, it’s called. I find that a whole lot easier to do with physical paper. Riffling through dead tree pages is different from scrolling through screen pages, and it feels less daunting.
What I’m doing at this stage is, I’m becoming a student of my own book. I wrote it all, but I wrote it in various moods and states of alertness. There are themes there I need to bring out, and rabbit trails I need eliminate. In a sense the book itself is telling me what it wants to be. I just have to listen to it.
Do I like what I’m reading?
As a matter of fact, I do. I even find it moving in spots.
