Mary DeMuth is blogging about mentoring, both spiritually and in the craft of writing.
For ten years I wrote in obscurity, nary a mentor in sight. I honed the craft, stumbled over my prose, read books, made my husband read my creations. By the time I met my first writing mentor, I’d been down a very long road of writing in the quiet margins of life. I don’t begrudge that time because I found my voice and learned how to write for the sheer joy of it.
Should female writers compose stories teased from their lives at home with family? Muriel Gray urges them to avoid that track:
Judging by the increasing lack of inventiveness and imagination amongst too many, though not all, women authors it would seem that we have either been persuaded to stay within a narrow experience in order to be “taken seriously”, or more worryingly we are cautiously self-censoring because we are afraid of the gathering forces that are threatening feminism both domestically and internationally. As a judge in this year’s Orange prize, it’s hard to ignore the sheer volume of thinly disguised autobiographical writing from women on small-scale domestic themes such as motherhood, boyfriend troubles and tiny family dramas. These writers appear to have forgotten the fundamental imperative of fiction writing. It’s called making stuff up.
It’s hard to be a first-time novelists these days. “Once upon a time, a first novel could afford to be a dress rehearsal, a proving ground. That is no longer true.”
Mike Silva offers some good, hard words about attending a writers conference, several dos and don’ts, including this:
On a panel at ACFW, I recommended The Time Traveler’s Wife as the best book I’d read in 2005. In a rare moment of foresight, I included a warning that it might be offensive to some, but for months after that, I still heard about grumbling: “I can’t believe a Christian editor would recommend that book.” Dear ones, you have a responsibility to know what’s being written in the market. Most CBA editors are ABA readers. If you aren’t, that’s a serious handicap. Yes, do skip the sex/language/violence, but don’t misunderstand: you need to find out why an editor is recommending a book. That’s your ticket into his stable.
Thanks to the Book Chronicle for long-listing BwB for its new Litty Awards, “the first annual award for litbloggers.” I hope we judged for our remarkable potential over our actual blogging. Yes, I’m speaking for myself.
If today’s weather were a meal, I wouldn’t be able to afford the restaurant where they serve it.
It’s 65° right now, and tomorrow’s supposed to be even nicer. When I took my evening walk, it seemed like everybody else in the community had the same idea. Pasty-faced Minnesotans were crawling out of their lairs, blinking in the sunlight, and stretching themselves like badgers (Gophers would be more appropriate, since the badger is Wisconsin’s animal, but badger sounds better).
Life felt good.
Which, of course, it isn’t.
I don’t do much politics here, with good reason, but I’d like to go on record with the opinion that the Islamists have now been notified that they can have anything in the world they want, including the full submission of the United States to Sharia law, if they remain ruthless enough for long enough.
I’m sure the American left will be perfectly content to watch their gay friends being stoned to death, just as long as we’re not at war. The important thing is not to be at war.
My big question is, once Islam has conquered the world, and the only war left is the one between Sunnis and Shiites, which side will the left support?
I’m a slave of mutabilitie, as Chaucer might have put it. One e-mail, and all of a sudden my attitude changes and the world looks brighter.
The e-mail to which I refer is one I got this afternoon, from a woman representing the local chapter of the Nordmanns Forbundet, a Norwegian-American friendship organization I once actually belonged to (though in Florida). They had a speaker cancellation for their April meeting, and she wondered if I could take the gig at short notice. She’d met me when I spoke to a Sons of Norway group in St. Paul last year.
Somebody needs me! I regard myself with scorn in my mind’s eye, saying, “You pathetic loser. Somebody shows you a little attention and you wag your tail like a dog.”
Yeah, I do. Having no self-esteem of my own, I depend entirely on outside reinforcement for my satisfaction.
I think my depression the last few days may have been a symptom of an unconscious feeling of closure. I’ve always considered my lecturing career a sort of dragging appendage of my novel writing, like a long tail. I’ve basically stopped advertising myself as a lecturer since I lost my publisher, so I’d figured the Owatonna gig on Monday was the final shot. The last gasp of the tail end of my life as an author.
But now it’s OK, at least until the middle of April. I’m not quite gone yet.
A second consideration is that it pays an honorarium, which will help with my ongoing financial crisis. It occurs to me that this is one of God’s methods of providing for me on a One Day At A Time basis, just like the Bible says.
I’m always hesitant to talk too loud about these manna deliveries. I don’t want to sound like one of those enthusiasts who gets a smile from a girl and decides it’s God’s will that he marry her, or has a cancer remission and loudly proclaims he’s been completely healed forever. Guh-lory!
So I sin in the opposite direction, denying God the praise He deserves.
But today I’m giving credit where credit is due.
Did I do good, God? Huh? Huh?
It’s dark and rainy today, and it’s dark and rainy in my soul.
I went to bed early last night, really tired, and then couldn’t get to sleep. I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. These are things that haven’t happened much since I started the CPAP, and I don’t know what to think of it. Maybe my body’s still adjusting to the new sleep patterns. Maybe it’s an emotional reaction to having to pretend to be normal and talk with people at my lecture the other night. Maybe my suppressed psychosis is finally manifesting itself.
In any case, I’ve been low all day.
Found this site by way of Townhall.com. People list the odd things they believed when they were kids.
I’ve got some of those.
I believed a pack of nasty, winged dogs lived under my bed (but only at night). It was very important never to dangle my hand down over the edge where they could bite it. They couldn’t reach far out from their hiding place, though. Why a dog that lived under a bed would need wings, I never wondered.
I believed that there were other dangerous things after me in the night, beyond the winged dogs. But they couldn’t hurt me if I kept my sheets and blankets up right under my chin. If my neck got uncovered while I slept, though, I was in trouble.
I believed (or suspected) that all objects had personalities and feelings, like in the cartoons. To this day I feel guilty about throwing anything away. I know the objects are hurt by the rejection.
I used to wonder about that animal they always showed drawings of on weather reports. You know, that animal with the small head, thin front leg, and big hindquarters. My father eventually explained that it was a map of America.
When they did the Emergency Broadcast System tests on TV, I believed I was expected to hide under a table, like we did under our desks in school, during the bomb drills.
I believed that the Revolutionary War Battle of Concord had been fought in West Concord, Minnesota, a town near where we lived.
My mom told me that babies came from a seed that passed from a husband to a wife. So I figured the seed passed through their hands when they held hands during the wedding and the pastor pronounced them man and wife.
Brother Moloch and I had fun with our little brother Baal when he was scheduled for his first dentist visit. We told him they’d give him a shot with a big, square needle, and we made up a bunch of other harrowing stuff. This was standard family humor—we like ridiculous exaggeration. We thought he got the joke. He didn’t. They literally had to drag him into the office, screaming—and it was only a check-up.
It’s dark and rainy today, and it’s dark and rainy in my soul.
I went to bed early last night, really tired, and then couldn’t get to sleep. I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. These are things that haven’t happened much since I started the CPAP, and I don’t know what to think of it. Maybe my body’s still adjusting to the new sleep patterns. Maybe it’s an emotional reaction to having to pretend to be normal and talk with people at my lecture the other night. Maybe my suppressed psychosis is finally manifesting itself.
In any case, I’ve been low all day.
Found this site by way of Townhall.com. People list the odd things they believed when they were kids.
I’ve got some of those.
I believed a pack of nasty, winged dogs lived under my bed (but only at night). It was very important never to dangle my hand down over the edge where they could bite it. They couldn’t reach far out from their hiding place, though. Why a dog that lived under a bed would need wings, I never wondered.
I believed that there were other dangerous things after me in the night, beyond the winged dogs. But they couldn’t hurt me if I kept my sheets and blankets up right under my chin. If my neck got uncovered while I slept, though, I was in trouble.
I believed (or suspected) that all objects had personalities and feelings, like in the cartoons. To this day I feel guilty about throwing anything away. I know the objects are hurt by the rejection.
I used to wonder about that animal they always showed drawings of on weather reports. You know, that animal with the small head, thin front leg, and big hindquarters. My father eventually explained that it was a map of America.
When they did the Emergency Broadcast System tests on TV, I believed I was expected to hide under a table, like we did under our desks in school, during the bomb drills.
I believed that the Revolutionary War Battle of Concord had been fought in West Concord, Minnesota, a town near where we lived.
My mom told me that babies came from a seed that passed from a husband to a wife. So I figured the seed passed through their hands when they held hands during the wedding and the pastor pronounced them man and wife.
Brother Moloch and I had fun with our little brother Baal when he was scheduled for his first dentist visit. We told him they’d give him a shot with a big, square needle, and we made up a bunch of other harrowing stuff. This was standard family humor—we like ridiculous exaggeration. We thought he got the joke. He didn’t. They literally had to drag him into the office, screaming—and it was only a check-up.
Is reading overrated? I mean, do you have to read every page from cover to cover? There’s Frenchman who says don’t worry about reading a book for talking or even teaching about it. He may be full of hot air, but Lennard J. Davis says he may have a point or two:
Let’s remember that even one of the greatest readers of literature, Samuel Johnson, admitted that “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.” In fact, Johnson seemed to have made quite a career of not reading. He once lamented to his friend Mrs. Thrale, “Alas, Madam! How few books are there of which one can ever possibly arrive at the last page.” And reacting to advice that once started, a book should be read all the way through, he opined, “A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?”
I agree with the last comment and wish I could practice it better.