Y o u r W r i t e r s G r o u p

Happy 4th!

We're up at the lake with the family for a few days, and I'm thinking about going into the other room to play Wii with everyone else, watch some baseball maybe, have a little more apple pie...

But a competing desire has me thinking about all the writing I haven't been getting done while I'm bounced out of my schedule and I'm wondering how to keep writing when I'm away, on vacation, just thrown off my regular game. Sure, there needs to be time to take a break from production and get away for a while, clear the head. But I don't want to break momentum in the middle of a chapter--I'm too far along to stop now and I'm wondering what happens next. You know when you're at a place where it's time to stop or time to keep going--and they just never seem to fall at the right times.

Is it a matter of planning better? If anyone has a thought about how I can manage this better, I'd love to hear it. I'm trying to stay close to my characters and how they're developing right now and I know I can't make life stop for it, so I suppose it's a matter of being as efficient as possible with the little time I do have. Capture what thoughts and developments I can and come back to it as I'm able.

Of course, being fully present and enjoying family time is necessary too. There's definitely a balance to consider here. You don't get these moments back.

What I'm thinking is probably best is to enjoy both writing and family time as I'm able and make the most of every bit I can. I can accept that I can't do it all, and I know that I'll get to finish that chapter eventually. I certainly don't want to miss the time to enjoy and make memories and get inspired by the hanging-out and just enjoying together....

Anyone else think about this? And if so, what do you think?

Happy 4th, everyone. Hope it's a fun and fruitful one.

Christian Products' Industry Future is "Bleak"

Demonstrating once again the failure to distinguish between Christian products and Christian books, Christian Retailing reports that former marketing exec for Nelson and Zondervan, Greg Stielstra, foresees a bleak future for the Christian "products industry" (CR):

"Brick-and-mortar operations haven't lost all their business, but they've lost the business that will allow them to stay in business, whether they know it or not," says Stielstra.

Interviewed for World Magazine’s annual books issue (ironically releasing Independence Day, and just one week before the International Christian Retail Show), Stielstra says: "There's a lot of lip service to online retailing and to e-books, but there's still too much allegiance to old ways of doing business. Surges in Christian fiction, or in sub-niches, are just disguising the fundamental problems."

Stielstra adds that the music industry showed the way ahead for the book business. "It's no accident that it took a computer company--Apple--to figure out the new music model. They had nothing invested in the old model, nothing to protect."

(Incidentally, in the same upcoming issue, a World report highlights self-publishing as "the bright spot in a gloomy book-selling environment.")

Many thoughts ricocheting around my head over this, but one question stands out: Could it be that some Christians don't consider books just another product among the "miscellaneous retail" taking over Christian stores? Okay, another: Could it be that the Christian retail channel has focused too narrowly on certain segments of their potential market?Or maybe it's just that Wal-Mart or Amazon is cheaper.

The International Christian Retail Show changed its name from the Christian Bookseller's Convention recently after many years of books losing floor space to other products. Now books are also losing to a retail industry that sees no connection between their recent downturn and the surge in popularity of the "spiritual-but-not-religious" description of faith.

We can ignore or decry the situation all we want. But I wonder, 

Is there a connection between current rejection of establishment restrictions (about which the established powers--religious, corporate, and governing--are typically very concerned), and these entities' declining health?

Because whether YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are creating or following this social revolution, it doesn't seem many in the established powers (save Obama, maybe) are really paying much attention. 

Well, I haven't read the article yet. Maybe that's part of what Stielstra is saying about Christian retail. His coauthored book, Faith-Based Marketing probably deserves a fair read.

Free the Christian Book!

In a guest editorial for Christian Retailing, Mark Kuyper, President & CEO of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, shares how according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, 76% of Americans identify as Christian (50.9% claim to be Protestant). Another study shows 75% of the population reads books. Two-thirds say they read the Bible and "other religious works." Yet, according to Pubtrack Consumer, Christian books are only 4.7% of the market. Kuyper says, "the potential for ... growth is staggering...."

His conclusion?

"Going through difficult times encourages us to innovate. Publishers and retailers all over our industry are rethinking how to do their work. Now is the time to actively and creatively develop new ideas and strategies to reach beyond our current customer base..."

Amen. A standing ovation for the thought. So what might these "new ideas and strategies" be? 

This week, I'd like to honor Mark's wonderful suggestion and ask for your ideas and strategies. The ECPA, the Christian Booksellers Association, even Christian Retailing, which according to their slogan, "serves the $4.6 billion Christian products industry" is eager to hear what we think we should do to grow the market for Christian books. So far, these new ideas are pretty scarce (one new suggestion comes from the CBA chairman: downsizing stores). And to be clear, Kuyper's article isn't necessarily agreeing with the original assumption that the Christian book is only intended for Christians. Yet though he does believe that The Purpose-Driven Life sold to more than just Christians, there's no denying that this simplistic Bible study broke out of CBA--the association of Christian book stores--to reach those who didn't need a safe shopping experience or assurance that their values were shared by the store-owner. Those who bought it at warehouse stores or online could have been nonChristians, but according to the data, if one in four American Christians bought the book, all copies would be accounted for. And given the number of churches who ran 40-Days-of-Purpose campaigns, I think that may be pretty close to accurate (Barna says over half the US population attends church at least once a month).

I'm happy Mark's joined me in what I've been saying for a while now: we need a new strategy. The Christian book industry has taken up the challenge too, so where should we start? I'd like to suggest we start at the beginning--at our guiding principles. I believe our problem comes down to this: not enough of us really believe what we say we do. And that's nothing new. How many of us really practice the Great Commission every day? How many of us break the first and second commandment often? But what about the Golden Rule? Most of us at least do to others what we'd like done to us, right?

Not when it comes to Christian book buyers (I mean buyers of Christian books). Would you like others to treat you as an outsider and say what kind of books you should be allowed to read and where you can get them? No! That's why CBA was initially formed in the 50s, when Christian books were being denied shelf space at secular bookstores. But what about today--with the largest segment of the Christian book industry owned by secular houses and Amazon carrying everything as cheap as it can get? Now the tables are turned and some Christian book buyers find their "seeker" books banned in Christian stores, and by association, themselves untolerated. The challenge to think up new ideas and strategies for expanding the customer base is all well and good when we're talking about reaching Christian buyers of Christian books. But everyone else? They're just not who we serve.

Of course, I'm not necessarily saying there's a problem with this. I suppose it might fly: "Sorry, Lord. I tried to do what you asked, as long as it didn't offend my existing customer base. Christian books just don't reach anyone but Christians."

Guilt-trips aside, since tough times are ripe times, I'd like to offer up the first admittedly-simple-minded suggestion for one of these new strategies: stop thinking of books or stores or customers as Christian vs. non. After all, we're all just reaching out of the same gutter. And in place of those categories, think of how your next act will share love and reach someone God misses. Sure it might not be as nice and neatly compartmentalized, and make it harder to thin-slice the market into subcategories. But if we really have a higher organizing principle, let's apply it to deconstructing this idea of insiders and outsiders and replace it with the idea of all of us looking to get out of the same old dirty box.

And maybe, when we're all unworthy-yet-adored, and O-thank-you-God reachable, we'll just happen to find that transcendent books can in fact sell, for the very reason that they also transcend bariers.

Free Yourself

 

It's strange blogging. I've said before it's like taking your shirt off in front of the class. It feels sort of wrong to do it. Which is probably why so many people like it.

But other people do it for traffic. I've done that before, but I don't really care about that anymore. I actually like not being anyone special. Can you believe that? What's wrong with me? The whole WORLD wants to be famous and special and they kill themselves for 15 minutes of fame. But I've had a little taste of popularity and while it's fun in a way, it comes with a lot of responsibility. And I'm not necessarily against responsibility--it's just when it's really heavy and for things you'd rather not be responsible for. Like the responsibility not to offend all the other people trying to get famous.

When I was young, it was being the pastor's kid and performing at piano recitals that brought unwanted attention. Now it's the almighty book deal people seek at writers conferences. And I don't enjoy that part. It makes me feel weird and I get worn out by it and afterwards I have to go be with normal people for a while and talk about normal things.

But there's a trick here you can learn whether you're popular or not: how to be yourself. I've written articles and stories about this--being who God made you, how to find it and how to hold on to it--and I believe it's what we all really want. And yet for some people it's so ellusive. It's what most editors are looking for when they sit down to be pitched to, and it's what we look for in our favorite actors and actresses who are basically the same people no matter what role they're in. It's the annoyingly trite answer to the unanswerable question of how to "break out." We love people who are authentically themselves, and those who talk with understanding about this truth--people like Holden Caufield, the poster boy for this sacred principle of youth, against all the phonies and the subscribers to artifice and duplicity.

But the thing is, everything is artificial. And this is what drives Holden crazy in the end of The Catcher in the Rye (Oh, there I just spoiled it for all you 8th graders. Sorry). Culture is artifice. Most relationships involve some form of artifice. A novel is the height of artifice, no matter what kind you're talking about. Which doesn't seem a positive sign for novelists. These are constructs built by human ingenuity. Industry, publishing included, is a culture of artifice. Writers are pressured to adopt certain identities and assimilate them, to be contributors to this "society." "I'm sorry," they say to all you Holdens out there, "you must assimilate." So what is the chief difference between publishing and say, a cult? I'm sure there's a good punchline to that, but actually, there's very little difference. So maybe we should take a lesson from our inner teens and not become phonies just to belong to the club. Don't fit your culture, don't impress people. Tell them to blow their book contract out their butt.

I'm being deliberately antagonistic here and I know it. But for me, not wanting to be famous, it can be difficult to see how many people do. I consider many of these people as hopelessly searching for an identity to latch on to. Why can't they be authentically themselves and just write what they want rather than what they think others want them to? What are they afraid of? Rejection? Why can't more wanna-be authors just write about crazy things happening to crazy people and if that happens to reveal some theological truths, great! But no. Even if there's one in a hundred doing that, the 99 will say he's being duplicitous and artificial trying to deceive everyone that what he does is simple, that he's actually striving very hard to come off the right way and fit just the right niche. 

Well I don't think so. I've seen people break out and it isn't because they're trying to. Sooner or later, the act slips (see Bakker, Swaggart, Haggard, et al). There's no art to real.

And I can't accept the rules to breaking out because I'm this person. And you're that person! So don't try to fit what you think someone's looking for. Just being YOU is what people are looking for. And even if they aren't looking for you currently, being you will make them beat down your door. It sucks, but it's true! Believe it or don't. Think it's too simple or naive or whatever. Maybe it's childish to place such a high premium on being yourself. But remember Jesus with the children and think about what kind of artifice a kid knows about. Nothing. And why must the kingdom have no business with anything other than innocence and genuineness?

Childlikeness is actually a spiritual value. And actually one of the bigger ones.

I'll promptly take back this claim if someone can produce an author who "broke out" who was trying to fit a mold. There could be a special author attitude that works like a magic contract-printing machine. But if it did, it wouldn't be worth the effort to figure it out.

In the end, those who are their true selves without apology continue to make us smile and scury to read their genius. And all you publishing gurus with your nine steps to fame and fortune can put that in your pipes and smoke it.

It's strange blogging. I've said before it's like taking your shirt off in front of the class. It feels sort of wrong to do it. Which is probably why so many people like it.

But other people do it for traffic. I've done that before, but I don't really care about that anymore. I actually like not being anyone special. Can you believe that? What's wrong with me? The whole WORLD wants to be famous and special and they kill themselves for 15 minutes of fame. But I've had a little taste of popularity and while it's fun in a way, it comes with a lot of responsibility. And I'm not necessarily against responsibility--it's just when it's really heavy and for things you'd rather not be responsible for. Like the responsibility not to offend all the other people trying to get famous.

When I was young, it was being the pastor's kid and performing at piano recitals that brought unwanted attention. Now it's the almighty book deal people seek at writers conferences. And I don't enjoy that part. It makes me feel weird and I get worn out by it and afterwards I have to go be with normal people for a while and talk about normal things.

But there's a trick here you can learn whether you're popular or not: how to be yourself. I've written articles and stories about this--being who God made you, how to find it and how to hold on to it--and I believe it's what we all really want. And yet for some people it's so ellusive. It's what most editors are looking for when they sit down to be pitched to, and it's what we look for in our favorite actors and actresses who are basically the same people no matter what role they're in. It's the annoyingly trite answer to the unanswerable question of how to "break out." We love people who are authentically themselves, and those who talk with understanding about this truth--people like Holden Caufield, the poster boy for this sacred principle of youth, against all the phonies and the subscribers to artifice and duplicity.

But the thing is, everything is artificial. And this is what drives Holden crazy in the end of The Catcher in the Rye (Oh, there I just spoiled it for all you 8th graders. Sorry). Culture is artifice. Most relationships involve some form of artifice. A novel is the height of artifice, no matter what kind you're talking about. Which doesn't seem a positive sign for novelists. These are constructs built by human ingenuity. Industry, publishing included, is a culture of artifice. Writers are pressured to adopt certain identities and assimilate them, to be contributors to this "society." "I'm sorry," they say to all you Holdens out there, "you must assimilate." So what is the chief difference between publishing and say, a cult? I'm sure there's a good punchline to that, but actually, there's very little difference. So maybe we should take a lesson from our inner teens and not become phonies just to belong to the club. Don't fit your culture, don't impress people. Tell them to blow their book contract out their butt.

I'm being deliberately antagonistic here and I know it. But for me, not wanting to be famous, it can be difficult to see how many people do. I consider many of these people as hopelessly searching for an identity to latch on to. Why can't they be authentically themselves and just write what they want rather than what they think others want them to? What are they afraid of? Rejection? Why can't more wanna-be authors just write about crazy things happening to crazy people and if that happens to reveal some theological truths, great! But no. Even if there's one in a hundred doing that, the 99 will say he's being duplicitous and artificial trying to deceive everyone that what he does is simple, that he's actually striving very hard to come off the right way and fit just the right niche. 

Well I don't think so. I've seen people break out and it isn't because they're trying to. Sooner or later, the act slips (see Bakker, Swaggart, Haggard, et al). There's no art to real.

And I can't accept the rules to breaking out because I'm this person. And you're that person! So don't try to fit what you think someone's looking for. Just being YOU is what people are looking for. And even if they aren't looking for you currently, being you will make them beat down your door. It sucks, but it's true! Believe it or don't. Think it's too simple or naive or whatever. Maybe it's childish to place such a high premium on being yourself. But remember Jesus with the children and think about what kind of artifice a kid knows about. Nothing. And why must the kingdom have no business with anything other than innocence and genuineness?

Childlikeness is actually a spiritual value. And actually one of the bigger ones.

I'll promptly take back this claim if someone can produce an author who "broke out" who was trying to fit a mold. There could be a special author attitude that works like a magic contract-printing machine. But if it did, it wouldn't be worth the effort to figure it out.

In the end, those who are their true selves without apology continue to make us smile and scury to read their genius. And all you publishing gurus with your nine steps to fame and fortune can put that in your pipes and smoke it.

Mary DeMuth: "Should Christ-followers Read Fiction?"

Be sure to check out Mary DeMuth's Breakpoint article, "Should Christ-followers Read Fiction?" She gives a great round up of the multiple benefits, especially useful for anyone facing the age-old objections from well-meaning religious-types.

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=11853 

Let our minds be told all they need to know by the empathy of our hearts from the pictures you paint.

What Is a Publishable Author?

I get this question a lot. Especially at writer's conferences. At a writer’s conference, there’s always too much information. You need to purge it and sift through it afterwards. And some things need to be debunked, clarified, or given proper context. I hear things some of my colleagues say to new authors and I wonder what they’re smoking. Authors misunderstand some things, but some publishing folks talk out of their—out of turn. As I’ve told many an author, don’t believe everything you hear at a writer’s conference. When the fatigue catches up on some of us, it’s not our fault. We simply don’t know what we’re saying.

 

Yes, sometimes the confusion is entirely an author's fault. Many writer’s conference attendees are wasting money and time to attend their idea of "American Publishing Idol." These natural geniuses are the authors who have no pitch and sit down to read their plot synopsis, while glancing up every few seconds to see if the editor has fallen over themselves to offer up a contract on a silver platter. I imagine I'm Simon Cowell and I want to ask, “What do you think it tells me about you that you think I can make a decision to publish your book on the plot summary?” First, I don’t decide what my house publishes. Second, ten or fifteen minutes isn’t going to tell me your book’s potential appeal, especially from the plot synopsis. Third, and probably most importantly, if you think the plot is what best represents your merit, you’d better go home and do a little research before you come back. You aren’t ready to be pitching, let alone published.

 

I’d say it in the nicest way possible, of course. But some editors and agents add to the confusion by offering such helpful advice as “keep your eyes open” and “pay your dues.” My favorite is “do your homework.” What the @#$%! does that mean, doing your homework? Is this 3^rd grade?

 

So today, I offer, The Non-Essential “Essential” Quality of a Publishable Author:

 

Here it is, ready?: Know important people. Have you heard this one? You’re supposed to research authors, agents, publishing houses, editors, and comparable titles on Google, Amazon, and your local bookstore. They want you to find interviews, news reports, trade articles, and scuttlebutt about these people and use this info to impress them. They’ll say things like “books are for people and the industry is made up of people. Do you know them, know what they like, know what appeals to them?” They’ll ask if you read PW and NYT Books and know the bestseller lists. It’s all well-meaning. Editors are swamped, so they want you to follow protocol and formal queries and treat them like professionals with little time to spare for unprepared authors. You’re supposed to convey your advantage of experience, knowledge, and deep passion for your message. And most of all, position yourself as the author not overeager to get one book or one series published, but as someone with too much going on to waste time talking about their book. See, the book doesn’t matter. It’s the vehicle, the means to the end. You should talk about the end instead: the huge media attention and public interest you’re poised to exploit, and never-directly-but-always-covertly alluding to the chance for an editor to be the hero by finding this golden, untapped opportunity.

 

That is, in short, “doing your homework.” And those who have invested the time, the logic goes, will rise to the top. I’ve said this at conferences myself. You won’t be daunted by the sea of rookies surrounding you because you’ll be better prepared. You’ll know what’s expected. You’ll be able to answer an editor’s 4 questions: 1) Have you read the books like yours? 2) Have you researched your market and the conventions of your genre? 3) What proof have you found that your voice is needed? 4) Are you targeting me specifically because you know what I represent and what I want to publish?

 

Those are the questions I have asked. Those are the things a publishable author supposedly must have to get published by a top, royalty-paying, high-profile house.

 

The rest of this post will now debunk that load of crap.

 

This is what a publishable author should have.

 

Publishable authors should know what they’re about. They’ll need to know why they write what they write, and not be easily swayed from their purposes by comments from rookies or even pros (though if an editor with 25+ years’ experience tells you it’s not going to work, pay attention and get why). They need to have thought through the decisions about their writing and the reader’s journey through their book, and have good reasons for doing what they did. They should know what their passion is to write and not change to fit an expectation or prejudice about what the market wants or accepts without soliciting second and third opinions by qualified, experienced counterparts in the business. This is not about forming a theory about why the market needs what you’re writing, and then boldly going out to gather the requisite evidence before you attempt to test those theories, i.e. paying more dues. You could still crash and burn, and that would be the end of your publishing career. Better to know how to filter the info, the helpful from the damaging, the “conventional” from the untenable. Better to be willing to be a little unconventional and not market saavy, because you are unique and want to say something new (or at least in a new way).

 

Know this: the trick to being published is writing well. And the trick to writing well is simply learning what to give away when. Most books could be better (i.e. more satisfying) if the author had told us more, or told us less, at a particular place. There’s no quick way to learning how to read your ideal reader, but authors who study them and how to satisfy them, will find an audience.

 

That’s your only task in becoming publishable. The “seasoning” and “dues-paying” and “market-studying” will come. Or not. After all, that’s what agents and editors are for.

How will they know?

Meditation

Psalm 139

 

“Even before there is a word on my tongue,

God, You know it all.”

 

Why don’t we know how beautiful we are to you?

You know our very thoughts.

Why don’t we know how beautiful we are?

You listen for our every sound.

Why don’t we know?

 

“You have enclosed me behind and before,

and laid your hand on me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

it is too high, I can’t attain it.”

 

What have you made in us?

What have you made?

We know such a small piece,

mostly hidden from us by pain,

by experiences that steal,

lost to us through negligence,

unintended neglect,

of our own and others’.

 

But “ …I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

…Your eyes saw my unformed substance

and in your book they were all written,

the days that were ordained for me,

when as yet there was not one of them.”

 

How I grasp to know the planning

to know the care that went into me,

and continually goes into me this day.

How I strive to know,

to put to words the truth of it,

the incontrovertible truth of what you wrought in me,

of what you fathomed and fashioned,

and left for me to fathom—

the intricacies, the organization, the complexity,

the grand infintessimal structures,

emotional expression, reception, and retention,

the gathering of characteristics, of capabilities, of soul,

of dust shaped differently than any other,

of the dust where 200 billion have trod.

 

“How precious are your thoughts to me, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.”

 

Your thoughts of us are like that.

Like the dust.

Your unquestioning love,

your inexhaustible forgiveness,

All you give is the dust,

as infinite as the light that falls from the stars.

 

I don’t know why you love us so much;

But I believe in your love.

I don’t know why you believe in us;

But I believe what you believe.

I don’t know why you made us;

But I believe in what you made.

I don’t know how you can know all you know of us—

what was, what is, and what someday is—

and keep loving, keep caring.

But I believe in what you know.

 

I see this

and believe

and know.

 

How will they see how beautiful they truly are?

How will they see?

How?

Balance for the Writer

I find the phrase, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” works for so many things.

When a woman is wearing earrings too big for her neck to reasonably hold up. When I feel like giving my snarkier answer. When my 3-year-old decides she needs to stand up on the swings: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I’m afraid it’s becoming a pet phrase that’s going to show up in my writing if I’m not careful, like too many “looks” or “likes.”

John Updike made this plea to publishers about digitizing books. We didn’t know enough about this man (I’m predicting many more people are about to find this out). From a recent PW article: “Publishing scarcely needs glamour,” he said, “when it has at its command something better, beauty—the beauty of the book.” And “Books are intrinsic to our human identity.” I’m inclined to agree. Not to mention that copyright is effectively unenforceable online. The web doesn’t care and neither do browsers. Words are no longer controlled, packaged, and protected. But now, more than ever, it’s vital we don’t lose the ability to attribute ideas to their origins.

We don’t need to dismiss physical books and ownership entirely. We need to rebalance them with emerging markets.

This idea of balance is essential for writers. We don’t live in the present. We live in the past, largely of our experiences. We live some in the future too, but never the present. We’re forced to ignore it completely. Tune it out. Work to overcome it, block it, restrict its influence by every possible means, going to extreme lengths to ensure the present doesn’t impinge.

How do we maintain this, living in another time and place? By strength of will. We reassure ourselves that destroying the present is the greatest thing we can accomplish in this moment. Stealing it for stolen words. Escaping it, transcending it and reaching beyond to the future by anchoring the past. “He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has.” --Johann Friedrich von Schille. Yet our forfeit of our present lives is another’s liberation, whether the book is high literature or genre fiction.

Spending your days writing changes not only the perception of time, but adds a dose of satisfaction to successfully neglecting it. Throwing away all we have can sound deliciously enticing. There’s something in here about killing ourselves in order to live…

Dick Cavett’s recently rereleased discussion with Updike and Cheever from 1981 brought another idea about balance to mind. What makes a book “literature” as opposed to genre fiction? Updike wrote penetrating social commentary that expanded my understanding of empirical truths. But as we move further and further toward a world bent on disconnecting and escaping, I'm finding more novels have less in them. Genre fiction is a simpler sketch of life, a diluted mixture drawn from the richer substance of the real world—"great taste, less filling." Escaping into these books is delightful, relaxing, something like a good day at the beach or watching an old Fred Astaire movie. These books are important for that reason—as detox from full-strength life.

The other kind is harder to read. These books heat different passions, hatch stranger ideas, crack icy hearts, and break through made-up minds. Many require a certain agreement from the reader to believe in the larger aim, that the reward will be great if we can get there. When you forfeit lighter entertainment to engage the mind and heart in exploring themes more fully, the mystery is often more what will happen to you as a result of reading it, as opposed to what will happen in the story.

The spectrum between pure entertainment and pure "education" novels is broad and neither can exist without something of the other. We laugh when something is so true and put so well. And we learn when we’re not even trying. Laughter teaches too. I believe the goal is balance. “Those who make a distinction between education and entertainment don’t know the first thing about either.” (Google tells me this quote comes from distinguished sociologist Marshall McLuhan, whose great book The Medium Is the Massage is essential reading).

It’s essential we writers find who we are—and write from that. Don’t write to a trend unless it’s one of your passions. And don’t force yourself to write what you aren’t naturally inclined toward already. We’ve got to understand that writing what we know means first being who we are. And when it comes to writing,

“Just because you can…

The Death of Better Writing

Inspired by Steven Levy’s recent article for Wired on “The Burden of Twitter,” I’m encouraged to agree with him. I often feel guilty too. I have a blog I haven't contributed to regularly for several months. I feel more than guilty—approaching inadequate--that all my pals on Facebook have so much time to post cool pictures and updates, while I’m still struggling to update from my Christmas pictures. And not only haven't I ever Dugg anything since, well, ever, I don’t really even know what Digging does.

I really do find social networking pretty cool—in some ways, I mean. Facebook has been incredible in linking me up with old people from my more embarrassing days. And posting short updates on there feels much more immediate and relevant than this old blog, not to mention the old novel sitting on my hard drive for nigh on 6 years now. And I love feeling like we’re at the start of something that could be really great for our writing community.

But there’s still that nagging sense that because I have limited time and/or desire to divulge every bit of info about myself to the world, I'm only skimming the surface of the formerly deep (or at least deeper) waters of our withering social construct. And even at that, I'm not making any really significant contribution. I feel like I’m more connected, and yet less really connecting, all the time.

And I have a feeling that not only have I felt that before--I'll feel it again and again.

So, as a result, I fight back. I work harder to provide something more meaningful than the rest of the emailers, bloggers, Facebookians, and tweeters, which in itself is a perpetual burden. How do you provide something more meaningful in a 140-character update?

This very question reveals more about me than I'm sure I'm comfortable revealing.

Which delivers us to the ultimate insult: as I strive to make more substantial deposits into the stretching info abyss, the more difficult and unnecessary it seems to preserve something good for the more substantial repositories—books, for instance. That’s right. Remember those? I wonder if one day we’ll look up and realize what fools we were to think we could keep heading so quickly into the future and still hold onto our quaint notion of continuing to invest in the antiquated analog of print publication. We get immediate response this way. And the words don't get nearly as polished. There's much less frustration. Why would anyone work at words the old, harder way anymore?

But I suppose just as the Internet is rewriting all our futures, it's revising this particular piece of common wisdom as well: best not to ask questions you don't want Google to answer.

Until then, I’ll keep working to calm myself by unplugging periodically and reassuring myself that there’s far more value in time spent writing for a book over a blog post.

And yes, I will now go mention this new post on Twitter and Facebook.

On Love

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." --The Gospel of Luke

"Truth is the highest expression of love. A lot of times I won't say something to folks because I don't want to hurt them and I want to be liked. Whenever I do that, I try to convince myself that I'm practicing love. But I delude myself. Love looks you straight in the eye and speaks truth. When we fail to do that, it's generally because we value personal comfort more that another's growth." --Philip Gulley, Hometown Reflections

"We are most alive when we're in love." --John Updike

Being in love isn't the same anymore. We've remade love, having made love into something it isn't. Making love, isn't. Being in love, isn't. We've lost ourselves accordingly. And if God is love, is it any wonder we've lost him too?

I think our dearly departed John had it right: we are most alive when we're in love. But being in love isn't feeling romantic about someone. It's being in Christ. And Christ in us. We love because he first loved us. How simple it once was. We only came to life because of love. And at some time in most our lives, that simple truth is enough.

And as Luke says, when we love others, we love God. But as Philip says, it isn't easy. We sabotage it. To be "in love" and fully alive, we have to learn how to love others like it's our job. For writers, that's writing and sharing the deepest parts and never backing down when it gets uncomfortable.

Make that your goal next time you sit down to write. Work at truly loving others through your words, through your characters. Because through them, you're loving the One who made them.

Write, like food, to bring to life

I'm not Episcopalian. Sometimes I wish I were. Or maybe Catholic--just one of these denominations that makes a really big deal about the "sacrament," the "host," communion. I enjoy every once in a while focusing on the original meaning of the metaphor—remembering Christ's sacrifice in the physical symbols of His love. That we can remember the most beautiful fact of human existence--restoration--through the elemental symbols--eating a flayed, disfigured body and drinking its spilled blood—it can easily feel to me like trying to think of eternity. It overwhelms us.

But at the heart of that metaphor, there's a deep truth: the experience of grace is shocking.

Remember the central scene in The Matrix (or what I think of as the central scene) when Neo has taken the red pill? As he's about to enter the real world, he sees his broken reflection in the mirror. And suddenly, the image repairs itself. He's intrigued, reaches out to touch it and the reflection comes off on his hand, a silvery liquid, and it starts to slide up his arm, across his body and up his neck, growing until it overtakes him and we follow as it enters through his mouth.

That's like grace. It awakens you. It overwhelms you. It replaces you.

It's been my experience that grace causes awareness of life to increase. When you witness it, you're replaced by a more deeply-aware you. You're less distracted by the monotone of the world around you. Somehow, the experience awakens you to the taste of more real life, the life underneath that remained silent before you'd been shown it. If you've seen Babbette's Feast or Big Night or Ratatoille, you understand something of grace. It seems there are a few of these moments in life where you realize that something like this is happening. You're being shown a picture of grace, and you may or may not miss the opportunity to be grateful for that new awareness, but you're struck again at how you can never seem to anticipate the surprise of it. Maybe it came even though you worried about taking the red pill, wondering if you'd be sorry. But the surprise itself almost made it worth it. The mellow sting of the wine hit your tongue where you expected only grape juice. That was grace. The blood was not cheap. It wasn't artificially flavored. And it wasn't diluted with too much tepid water as you've learned to expect.

Do you know that feeling?

Muslims understand this idea of using the body's desire for food to surprise and shock it into deeper awareness. You eat better during Ramadan, the holy fast. No one eats until sunset. And then at supper, when your stomach and your senses are already heightened from the longing, and you place that spicy soup into your mouth, and savor it anew, you realize this is about more than being fed. You wonder if anything has ever tasted so good. And how could you ever go back to Saltines and grape juice?

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.” —Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

There's a reason we're hearing more about the "slow food" movement, local restaurants using local ingredients, farmers markets, suburban farming, and authors like Michael Pollan rising to prominence. Our world is starving for this deeper life. And I believe many of us suspect, if not fully realize, that food is a major vehicle to transcendent awareness and deep grace.

It's in this way, I think good writers are like food, a vehicle to awaken deeper awareness of the world  and bring people to life again. That is creative writing. That is why we strive to use every tool available, to shock people's senses and take their awareness deeper. The metaphors are literally everywhere if we can only learn to see them.

Imagine being able to taste what your whole life was leading up to you tasting. With the cracking of a fresh loaf of crusty bread, one moment of elusive perfection for which taste buds were created, you may realize that for as much life as you can know, you are here, only for now, to know it.

That is grace.

May we learn the shocking grace that's given to us all, even if only through a movie, a metaphor, or a writer's poor, stolen approximations.

The place of excrement

This post is made from recycled, post-consumer content.

 

    But love has pitched her mansion in

    the place of excrement;

    For nothing can be sole or whole

    That has not been rent.

                    --William Butler Yeats

 

You know those maps in the back of your Bible? They were mysterious treasure maps to me as a kid. I’d flip through all the places Jesus spoke, never really thinking about them beyond the fact that they were some color in an otherwise black and white book.

 

But zoom in and go to where Jesus gave his sermon on the "mount," which was probably more of a natural rise in the landscape and you might get a new perspective. I think there really is treasure there.

 

The places Jesus traveled—Caesarea Philippi, Ephesus, Laodicea, Rome—this is the landscape that provides perspective of the upside-down message of Christ. In the ancient city of Sardis, early Christians worked to establish the revolution of grace in the city squares and cultural centers. Jesus stood overlooking the city, outside of it, probably where some shepherds had been the night before, sitting around a campfire, never imagining a huge crowd would be there tomorrow listening to a lesson on how to live life. How to be better people, enjoy life more, get to heaven, get healed, please God. And about how to be salt.

 

The shepherds didn't have firewood, so they'd sat there mixing the sheep dung with salt they'd brought for this very thing. It became night, and as someone created a fire, Jesus grabbed a patty and broke it, like the bread he'd done earlier. In his hands. “You are the salt of the earth,” he says. Maybe his disciples remembered how he'd picked the mustard weed and crumbled that in his hand too, how he used it to explain faith. Now they were supposed to be the salt? And the earth was the dung? They’re to be in the dung, but . . . what? “But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” Of course, it can’t. So we're to be in the dung, but not become like the dung just because we’re surrounded by it. We have to be careful.

 

Sure, salt is used in food too. Flavoring the bread and the fish. Without it, the food would be bland. But also, we're to be the agents of hotter, brighter, longer-lasting fires. And that requires being mixed into some pretty nasty stuff. And still not losing our essence. Makes sense, doesn't it?

We’re capable of  hotter, brighter fires if we're willing to have our assumptions challenged, even as we work to challenge others' assumptions. The most subversive figure in history gave us a timeless call to impact culture. Down in the slimy, disgusting fact of humanity, pulling it apart, analyzing it, and transforming it with supernatural love.

 

What could be more honest than that? Chosing safety over cultural impact is losing saltiness. Don't do it. The crap of the world will affect you. It will influence you. But that is how you'll be made whole.

Market for "non-preachy" movies is elusive

Christianity Today Movies
Biblical perspectives on contemporary cinema
Friday, December 05, 2008

Out of Their Minds?

A few years ago, Buzz McLaughlin and Aaron Wiederspahn formed a film production company—Either/Or Films, named for a book by Soren Kierkegaard—for "the purpose of developing and creating films of beauty and artistic excellence that provoke the public to engage with the providential mystery of grace."

So far, so good. McLaughlin, a producer, and Wiederspahn, a director, are Christians, but they didn't want to make "Christian movies." They didn't want to "go secular," but they didn't want to do anything "preachy" either. They just wanted to make art with excellence, art that just happened to reflect their faith, but more in subtle ways than didactic ones.

Still, so far, so good.

But there's been a catch. They're finding that the market for such movies is elusive.

Their first film, The Sensation of Sight, is a thoughtful piece of work starring Oscar nominee David Strathairn. But they couldn't find an audience, or get it widely distributed. They even ran into some resistance from the film industry when people learned they were Christians; one publicist even said, "I know what you're up to."

McLaughlin and Wiederspahn never expected that kind of reaction. "Up until that moment," McLaughlin told CT Movies, "both of us had been blissfully unaware that a sizeable portion of the secular media would be hostile to any production company bold enough to state what they're trying to accomplish on the spiritual plane."

In an interview with CT Movies, McLaughlin also says that what he and Wiederspahn are doing is unique: "Hollywood was supplying the marketplace with movies that consistently attempted to reflect the chaos of the world ... but rarely tried to make sense of the chaos. On the other hand, films that did attempt to reveal God's hand behind it all were often didactic or overtly proselytizing, preaching a 'message' rather than telling a story artistically."

He acknowledged that theirs is a difficult journey: "One could say we're either masochistic for going down this path, or devoid of business sense, or perhaps just out of our minds. But those are the kinds of films we feel called to make."

And we applaud that kind of vision.

What does The Shack really mean?

It’s hard to think of a book as significant for religious publishing in recent times as The Shack. I believe a good portion of its success comes from the spiritual hunger that the public face of Christianity has forced so many believers to accept and endure. Many people believe the true cause of Christ and his love has been relegated to the background. Others—including some strong Christians—don’t always see that. But in The Shack, the love and acceptance of God comes back to bear on our human failings, answering not only our personal shortcomings, but our corporate ones as well, as part of this fractured and frustrated movement created in his name.

What most people love about it is what some people hate: it’s a deceptive little nut of a book. One of the things you notice in reading The Shack is that it’s open to interpretation. Much like the Bible. You can read it and interpret it differently by your own emphases and background. That was apparently intentional. Part of the revision process was removing any overt messages that might have taken over the story and made it into a theological argument rather than an engaging experience. The power of this book is certainly due in part to this intentional commitment. Fiction is by nature relational, not propositional, and just as grace is not a theological argument when it’s experienced in relationship, coming to The Shack as a story is intended to be incarnational truth, beyond arguments and words on a page. And however you feel about the writing itself, a lot of people are getting it.

To me, what’s most significant about The Shack is that it is meeting this great hunger for an authentic experience of God’s love, sans Christian “answers.” Many Christians believe they have all the answers and end up building pens around themselves and others, focusing on doctrine and orthodoxy instead of the real point. How many people have been looking for a book to say what they’ve been thinking for so long? How many feel vindicated by a book that points out the failure of church programs to replace personal relationship, that shows the inadequacy of “hating the sin, but loving the sinner,” and that portrays the real, humble love of God that’s bigger than any orthodoxy, right or wrong, or doctrinal superiority. How many have been waiting to hear the truth of God’s love in a way that doesn’t condemn them for it?

Some famous Christian detractors have said that The Shack is not serious enough about how we think of and worship God, one even going so far as to say that we should be “overcome with despair at our own unworthiness before God.” Overcome with despair? Really? And fretting over the too-familiar portrayal of the Trinity in the book, it is not appropriately high enough for The Godhead. Interestingly, the argument takes the same issue those who defend The Shack take: both believe the other side misses the truth of who God is, making real relationship impossible.

As an editor, what I struggle with is the fact that we live in an incredibly diverse world full of different audiences for the almost 400,000 books produced every year. Would those who encountered the truth of God’s love for the first time in The Shack ever have done so without it? I believe that unless you live in an isolated, primarily-Christian environment, you can’t make statements that relegate The Shack to “unnecessary.” In one sense, of course it’s unnecessary. God doesn’t need a fictional story to get his message across. The better question is, Is it of God? Is God using it? And if so, am I in danger of opposing God by speaking out against it? Setting the record straight about differences in theological interpretation is one thing. But to dismiss the book because you quibble with a few points of interpretation? That’s treading dangerously close to the sin of the Pharisees. And I won’t even start with those who condemn it without even having read it.

I’m not trying to defend The Shack. Or maybe, not only The Shack. All creative fiction about God is subject to the possibilities of story. No question, God is not who our creative imaginations make him to be. And yet, it’s only through imagination that some people can even begin to conceive of a God who loves so recklessly, so inappropriately, so unGodlike. At what cost do we hold to our interpretations of creative works? Is it our job to ensure that everyone interprets it “correctly?” Or do we trust love to overrule our limitations and indeed all restrictions on it but the one of our own acceptance? In this light, The Shack poses the ultimate question: Can we accept this inconceivable love or must we build barriers and intellectualizations around it? Any of that is ultimately our own choice to bring to the art, or leave off. As a story, the Bible requires interpretation. Does God’s love transcend the mistakes we make on the way to deeper understanding? And can we ignore the lessons of history when it comes to Christians demanding exclusionary control on orthodox beliefs and the damage that has caused?

I think of the kindergartener in the familiar illustration. He’s coloring and his teacher points out that he can’t really draw God because “No one knows what God looks like.” And the boy goes on drawing. “They will in a minute.”

The boy, the artist, can draw anything. He believes, reaching beyond his limitations. And God will accept him, suffering the little children to come, where his fathers saw only planks and stones.