Narrow My Choices, Please!

As 2012 begins, planning is on most everybody’s mind. It’s ironic but for creative people such as writers this “left brain” item is very important. 

I’ve had my share of moments of paralyzing anxiety before the blank page, and I’ve also experienced those moments of “flow,” when my narrative seemed to hum along as if it were a speedboat on a sea of glass--with me at the helm in complete control. In every case (far too few!) flow happened after I had turned my material every which way but loose. 

In other words, after I had planned . . . and worked my plan.

I learned a long time ago that planning functions as a kind of constraint on the creative process, and in the right context that is actually a good thing.

When a painter decides to use acrylics rather than oils, or to paint a landscape rather than a still life, he’s placing a constraint on his work. He’s narrowing the universe of possibilities, but more important, he’s reducing the fright he feels when he faces that blank canvas. 

Similarly, planning constrains the writer, reduces her anxiety, and frees her to create. Planning can be as simple as deciding when to write and where, or settling on a certain genre or character. 

Try it and see if this is true for you: the more structure you create for yourself— the more limits you impose—the more freely creative you’ll be. Of course, it’s possible to strait-jacket yourself. Should you do that, you’ll certainly know it.

It’s as if all that left brain stuff is a clutch that lets you smoothly shift into your creative gear. You can’t plan when that magic will happen, but you can plan for it to happen.

New Year, New Gear

When I began this blog a few years ago, my stated goal was to chronicle my progress through a writing course from the Institute for Children’s Literature. My unstated goal was to provide myself with an incentive and a platform to write. I quickly lost sight of those aims as I struggled with the demands of the course, my “day job,” and family life. Our youngest daughter graduated high school and entered college, two new grandchildren were born, a sister passed.  

All these things seemed unrelated to learning to write and too personal for the blog. They seemed separate and distracting.

May I now state the obvious? Every writer’s personal life influences his writing life, for better or worse. Some, like me, get bogged down and lose focus and motivation. We use our circumstances as an excuse to “not write,” to let ourselves off the hook. Writing is hard under the best of conditions. “Who can write at a time like this?” Right? 

Others keep going with extraordinary focus. Using their circumstances as fuel, they seldom stall.

So I’m here to confess that I have fallen short of the goal I set when I began this blog. I confess that the fault is entirely mine—it’s not due to circumstances, but solely due to my reaction to those circumstances.

I’m also here to say that I intend to broaden the subject matter of future posts, to make it more personal, to talk about things that affect me and my writing. Which is—well . . . everything! Otherwise, I won’t be motivated to write. 

And if I’m not motivated, either I won’t write at all or I won’t be very interested in what I do write. And if I’m not interested, you won’t be either. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Upstaged

My four-year-old grandson, Drew, is a fine boy. He’s just past that stage where he’s figured out how smart he is and how dumb his parents are. (Grandparents, of course, know this stage reemerges multiple times in a child’s development . . . or else it just continues in one long, uninterrupted stretch from age three until he has children of his own.)

Anyway, a couple of months ago, Drew began telling his mother she was wrong about everything. His mother, my first-born, wisely and patiently endured and ignored him until it became clear that his contradictions weren’t going away without her help. So she very firmly told him to be quiet. Which Drew did. For a few seconds.

And then he had an idea. He said he wanted to sing a song about a train. Not wishing to be unreasonable, Mom agreed. Then Drew began to sing his train song. It went, more or less, like this:

“You think you know, but you don’t!”

Drew's mom has also just passed through a stage, one that began at bewildered and, in a flash of insight at Mach 1, wound up at shrewd.

Stifling a laugh, she sent him to his room.

No Contest! Creation Wins!

A Review of

It Couldn’t Just Happen, by Lawrence O. Richards

(Tommy Nelson: A Division of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 2011)

In some ways this book is excellent: it is brimming with fantastic facts, gorgeous photography, and sound argumentation against the Theory of Evolution. It is organized and argued clearly so that the advanced ten-year-old or the average teenager would have little difficulty following or understanding. From Part One, which deals with the origins of the universe and Earth as the “Odd Planet,” right through Part Four, which deals with the special creation and status of human beings, the author weaves the Biblical view like a brilliant, red thread. Part Five, The Book That Didn’t Just Happen, deals with the historicity and believability of the Bible and Christian faith. More on that in a moment.

Young Christians and their parents will find affirmation and ammunition aplenty in this book. For instance, in Chapter 11, “The Wonders of Design,” the author points out that no one who examined a modern car would argue that the car had not been designed, that it had “just happened.” Not a chance that the air conditioning, radio, the Global Positioning System had come about by accident. All of its integrated features reveal a carefully planned design and suggest one or more designers. And a car is nowhere near as complicated or integrated as plant and animal life on Earth, let alone the vast, interrelated systems that operate all over the globe and throughout the cosmos.

Another example is the argument from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that any physical system left to itself will decay. Yet (and especially if, as Evolutionists claim, the earth is millions of years old) the earth’s systems, such as the processes in the oceans and the atmosphere, aren’t decaying. On the contrary, says Dr. Richards, they constantly readjust themselves; they reorganize. Evolution can't explain that.

Even though I myself am a believing, professing Christian, I could have done with less of what you might call Biblical polemics, inserted and repeated in every chapter and every major division. Children and teens are smart enough to know when they are being “sold.” They want to discover things, to think things through for themselves, and this book doesn’t allow for much of that.

It Couldn't Just Happen has some faults, most of them minor—like far too many exclamation points!—and I have disagreements with Dr. Richards’s theology in places (recognizing that he has theological credentials and I don’t), but all in all, this book is a wonderful addition to the Christian soldier’s arsenal.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Long Delayed BookSneeze Review

A Review of

Winston Churchill by John Perry

(Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN, 2010)

This biography is an introduction to the life of Winston Churchill, painting it in broad, but not deep, strokes. The book takes us from Churchill’s sad childhood to the apex of his career as England’s Prime Minister during World War II and to his decline and death decades later. It also treats of lesser known episodes when Churchill served as foreign war correspondent in Cuba, India, and the Sudan.

Since the book is part of the “Christian Encounters” series, the author seems to have set out to find Christian influences in Churchill’s life. Finding a dearth of these and little evidence that his subject seriously believed or practiced Christianity, he is forced to conclude that Churchill’s Christian influences were mainly passive and “cultural,” part of the fabric of life in the times in which he lived. I find this the major flaw of the book.

What puzzles, even after reading this biography, is how the mostly neglected child of wealthy, leisured aristocrats became an oratorical genius and the political mouthpiece of England. It is difficult not to believe, as he did, that it was his destiny.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

364 Days Around the Sun . . .

. . . and 364 rotations from evening to morning and back again. I don't wonder at the shadows of turning, but that anything remains the same!

Small Wonder

We planted a row of heirloom English peas right after Thanksgiving, at the end of November, as Rodger the expert had directed. About ten days later, the peas sprouted, barely cracking the cold ground.

In mid-December it turned bitter cold: 11 degrees when I woke up one morning. The peas lay under a blanket of snow from late Christmas Eve, through Christmas Day, and the day after that.

A segment of our row of English peas today:

Like Little Children

One autumn Saturday when I was about 10, my father lit the signal fire, a huge pile of leaves he had raked off our still-green St. Augustine lawn. I can see him leaning on the rake, smiling, while black smoke spiraled skyward. Within minutes the neighborhood children had received the invitation in the smoke and had all gathered--some on bicycle and some on foot--around the signal fire in the corner of the alley.

Among them was a little boy about four years old we'd never seen before. His name was Gregory, but his speech was clumsy and Dad and I thought he said "Wagby." So Wagby he became. He was inquisitive. To any explanation Dad gave, he always had another question. It was: "WHY?"

"Mr. D., WHY did you light this fire?"

"To burn the leaves."

"WHY?"

"Because I didn't want them on the grass."

"WHY?"

"Well, because the yard looks neater without leaves everywhere."

"WHY?" . . .

And eventually the only answer Dad or anyone could give little Wagby was a frustrated BECAUSE!

I think of Wagby whenever I read Christ's words, "like little children." And I identify. I'm by no means a little child, but my middle-aged world is still so full of "WHY?"s.

WHY does an optical image go through a pinhole inverted?

Because light travels in a straight line.

But WHY?

Because it does. Just because.

There's so much room for wonder. So many questions. All of which science proposes to answer, and all which leave one remaining question:

WHY?

Chemistry & Physics

My favorite professor in college was a chemistry teacher who wore a big, fat cigar in the corner of his mouth like women wear jewelry. When he lectured, he drove me crazy putting that slobbered-over cigar in his mouth and taking it out again.

But he was so popular and my class so large that I never did make it up to the front of the auditorium after class to have a friendly chat with him about isomers of hydrocarbons before a long line of others with similar intentions had formed. I gave up trying about mid-semester.

But a story he told has stayed with me. Before he became a professor, he was a chemist in research and development for some large corporation. He concocted a product he thought would be a major breakthrough because it totally eliminated household dust.

It had only one problem, he said.

He took the cigar out of his mouth, and with his signature smirk and his eyes dancing over the auditorium, he said, "It was radioactive." Then he clamped his jaw back down over the cigar.

Bet you didn't know there was a physics lesson in chemistry. It's this: for every action to solve a problem, there is an equal and opposite reaction creating a problem that is twice as difficult to solve as the original.

You would think the U.S. government would have caught on to this one by now and left well enough alone!

"He discovereth deep things out of darkness." Job 12

Hungerbitten,
we gulp the grace
that pours like rain into cisterns
that rises like sap, from root to tip.
Not doleful, desert creatures, we
dwell between wells,
high and deep.

Already Her Own Girl

Meet my 6-week old granddaughter Sophie. She is calm and deliberative, but she startles and smiles all googly-eyed when silly people (me) make funny noises in her face.

If I hadn't already believed in love at first sight, I would now.

"April is the cruellest month, breeding...

...Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

--T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

The Flavor of Hope

Two years ago in our somewhat barren back yard, we planted a slip of a peach tree. When it budded the very next day, we took that as a favorable omen. Sure enough, this March it bloomed glorious pink and set its first fruit--funny, pea-sized fuzzballs!

I grew up in the Black Belt, not far from Chilton County, the peach capitol of Alabama. The peach orchards there perch atop the last gasp of the Appalachian Plateau, a thin spur, cloud high, on a whisper breeze that overlooks the stifling plain of my childhood.

Eating peaches was like eating sweet April sunshine. The only thing I liked better in July was a rope swing over a creek.

How Do You Like Your Hard Drive?

Last week I fried my hard drive and lost all my writing files. Probably no great loss. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. Yes, I know that all those zeroes and ones are supposedly recoverable at some level of skill, trouble, and expense. But probably not at my level.

I'm accepting the loss without howling and throwing things. So far, anyway.

Plus, I happen to like this blank-slate feeling. I'll just make a new and better start.

But here's some friendly advice: if a blank slate won't do for you, go ahead and back up your hard drive. Like...right now!

A Little Child Shall Lead Them

From his car seat, my grandson sees me and yells, “Hi, Mimi!”

He's a month shy of three years old. When he was born--slightly early, slightly underweight--I was there with his mother and dad. Now he's big for his age. Big feet, big understanding, big heart. He hides the eggs in the back yard. Then he insists on finding them too. We indulge him and help him remember where he put the last two.

Later, as his mother and granddad talk, I stoop and whisper, “Will you give me a hug?” He backs up to me. I'd be satisfied with this, but then he changes his mind, turns around and wraps me up in a serious embrace. I nuzzle him and kiss his neck, his cheek, before he pulls away. And again he changes his mind and comes back, puckered, to kiss me on the lips.

I drown in gratitude for his innocent affection. Unexpected. Undeserved. A foretaste of the love divine.

Driving to My Country Church on Palm Sunday

Spring prompts lists as I drive:

the daffodil yellow sun

swaths of forsythia

wind in the greening willow

Lists to make sense:

of quince, of tulip tree,

of creekwater the color neither of stone nor sky.

Lists that won’t convey the soul

of matter:

the pith of peach

the stark of forests dark

without the dogwood tree

the daffodils broken riotous free from

a dooryard—the farmwife long dead

the farmhouse fallen away—

to bloom on the hillside

in the shape of a cross.

Maddening prideful lists,

begging:

to be rewritten

with verbs, drama, kindred

to be shredded, cast as confetti

to the funnel cloud

In lists, I limp

after the image of my Creator,

now and ever, the best that I can do.

The thunder subsides,

and I pass through a shower

of petals.

Spring Sunset

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." Proverbs: 4:7

Giving thanks this day to the God of all creation for the safe arrival of our first granddaughter, Sophia, whose name means wisdom.

Ah-Choo!

I've just signed up to read books and write reviews for BookSneeze. More later.

Update

My friend Steve, who was the subject of a previous post, Praise & Thanksgiving, has since had his follow-up tests. His PET scan showed no active cancer cells and he continues to do well!

Goals for 2010

A writer friend recently loaned me Writer's First Aid: Getting Organized, Getting Inspired, and Sticking to It by Kristi Holl. (Kristi has an excellent blog by the same name here.) While most of Writer's First Aid is helpful and down-to-earth, my favorite chapter is "Success: Horse Before the Cart." Thank goodness this chapter has helped me define success my own way before I've even come close to what most people call success.

Yes, I'd like to be published before 2010 ends, and yes, I'd love for people to pay me for books and stories. But even more than that, I'd like to enjoy every step of the way on the path to publication--in 2010 or 2012, or some other year before I die. I want the gratification that comes from hard work done well. I want to be a happy writer even as I dare to fail badly.

Because learning to write well takes time, the writer who postpones happiness until that time sets herself up for a miserable life. I made that mistake when I was younger, thinking I'd be happy once I'd landed a certain job, or made enough money, or did something-or-other-always-out-in-the-future. That's a sure-fire recipe for misery, if not for failure and misery.

My motto, then, for 2010 is "Despite..." I pledge to enjoy learning how to write, despite circumstances that might arise. That way, I can judge myself a success whether I sell my work or not.