The Writing Life

Don’t worry.  I haven’t forgot about discussing the journey of my published works.  I’ll get to the rest soon.

 

Infuze has a good interview with Melanie Wells, author of the “Day of Evil” series.  I would put down the web address, but since I now blog from my e-mail, I’m not sure the link would transfer.  If you want to read the entire interview, there is an Infuze link over to the right of my blog.

 

Writing is hard work.  If it were easy, then everyone would be doing it.  And just like anything else that is hard, the rewards can be great.  And I’m not talking about monetary awards, although they are nice when they come along.  Few people make a living of just writing and even fewer people become wealthy from it.  The satisfaction is in the process, in the end product, in the know that you have created something out of nothing.  Like Melanie says, the best part of the writing process is “holding the book in my hand the day it comes off the press.”

 

But it’s the next question and answer that got me to post this.  The interviewer asks, “Is there any part of writing you loathe?”  Melanie answers, “Um . . . all of it?  Writing is much too solitary for me.  I usually feel a little foggy and grumpy after I’ve spent a day writing.  I don’t think I could do it full time.  And though I love spinning the story, creating and developing characters and writing snappy dialogue, the actual doing of it is tedious.  It’s like being constipated all the time.  You’re constantly straining to get something out of your brain.”

 

People who don’t write seem to think that there is something surreal about the writing process, particularly the fiction writing process.  It’s as if we sit on the porch of a cabin by the lake and the words pour out of us as the squirrels scurry about and the birds fill the air with chirping.  Trust me, most writers would like to live that life, but we can’t afford to rent the cabin, much less own one.  And at times the words flow, but more often we are trying to force it out, or as Melanie says, “Straining to get” it out.  Work is work, no matter what it is.  Some people like to write as a hobby because it’s fun, but when something changes and that hobby becomes a job, the fun seems to deteriorate and some of the joy is lost.  That’s why it’s important to work at something you love, no matter what it is.  Life is too short not to enjoy it.

 

Melanie also talks about being a musician, which ties in nicely with what I want to talk about next week.  She says, “Writing is very much like music.  As a classically trained musician, growing up listening to jazz and symphonic literature, I learned how to deconstruct a composition while I was listening to it.  You listen for theme and timbre and rhythm and voice and structure.  And you pick it apart and then synthesize it into a whole and you do the whole thing unconsciously after a while.  Writing is the same thing – I use all those skills very naturally, which is by, I think, my books seem to have a natural rhythm and continuity that works.” 

 

I believe all art has the same basic tenants.  An artist can learn by studying different forms of art and applying those forms.  Melanie has seen the connection between music and writing.  And I want to talk more about God’s connection to music and how we can apply that to writing.  That’s the plan for next week’s discussion.

 

 

 

 

Poems of the Passion

About ten years ago I was trying to decide what kind of Easter program I wanted to produce at church.  The play I was working on wasn’t ready and I needed something fast.  Then I thought, what if I took my poems about the passion and turned them into dramatic readings?  That’s exactly what I did and the result was fantastic. 

 

After the performance I began shopping the program around.  National Drama Service liked it and contracted me for it.  I was excited, because the payment was larger than anything I had received up to that time.  Unfortunately, the editor was over-ruled on the program and it was cut from the final printing.  The powers-that-be decided it was too hard to present dramatic poems.  But since I was already contracted, I received the full payment, plus five complimentary copies of the issue that the program didn’t appear in.  Well, their bad decision was my good fortune.

 

Another publishing company wanted to program, but couldn’t fit it in to their publications that year and asked me to resubmit if I didn’t find another publisher.  Well, I found another publisher.  Meriwether Publishing liked the program and published it.  I was contracted for the work and I was on a royalty payment plan that maxed out at a certain amount of money.  I maxed out in three years.  In some ways I thought the contract was unfair because I was only making 10% of the proceeds and if I was making money, then they were making money.  But it was also a foot in the door and the beginning of what I hope will be a long relationship.  The editor said that they always gave new writers that contract because they were taking the chance.  Hopefully, our future contracts will be a win-win situation.  But how can I complain?  Two companies paid me for the work.

 

 

 

A Gift for the Giver

For many years I had received the National Drama Service through the church.  It would come in a packet along with things for the music department.  I liked reading the skits in NDS and sometimes using them in our own productions.  So, I knew their style and the types of works they liked to publish. 

 

I had the idea for “A Gift for the Giver” written down in my journal and sat down to write it specifically for NDS.  I sent it out ot them and it was accepted for publication.  This was proof that a writer should know the publication before sending a work. 

 

I was glad for the sale, but when I received a copy of the booklet in which my skit appeared, there was an editing change made to the skit that I didn’t like.  A line was changed so it would be proper English, but people don’t talk in proper English and the line change sounded very stiff.  I thought it stuck out like a sore thumb, but maybe others didn’t notice it.

 

Anyway, it was my first paid work and that was great.  I even have a picture of the check!

 

 

 

 

Victorian Culture vs Wonderland Culture

Victorian Culture vs. Wonderland Culture

 

When I went back to get my graduate degree to teach secondary English, I had to take a lot of English classes.  It didn’t seem to matter that I already had an English degree.  So, I sat in classes with students much younger than me and aced the classes because I had already developed the skill they were trying to teach. 

 

Well, one of the classes I had to take was Introduction to English Studies.  As part of the class we read Alice in Wonderland.  We had to write a critical essay on it and my essay compared the Victorian culture to the Wonderland culture.  I got an A on the paper and was later asked if the professor could use it as a student example in her writing textbook.  Of course, I said yes.

 

I was promised a copy of the book, but I never got one.  I didn’t see that professor until one day when I was in the English office talking about the doctorate program.  I asked her if she had used my essay and she said no, that she ended up going with another essay.  That was fine with me – no big deal.

           

Then one day I “googled” myself and found my name listed on some college syllabi.  Come to find out, the essay had been used and classes were reading and discussing my essay.  I looked the book up on Amazon.com and ordered a used one for three dollars.  I was proud to find my essay in it.  But it was a sweet satisfaction, because I was a little aggravated at the comments the professor had about the essay.  She picked at some little things that she shouldn’t have and tried to pull some examples of “what not to do” out of the essay, when she should have used it as an example of “what to do.”  Others who read the comments and essay felt like she was really pulling to try and find something to say about the paper.  I guess she forgot the footnote that said the essay received an A and that I had aced her class.  But why should she remember that when she didn’t remember to send me a complimentary copy?  And she didn’t thank me in the acknowledgements, even though she did everyone else who had an essay appear in the book.

 

I am grateful that the essay was used and that I can list it in my writing credits.  But there are also some lessons to learn from this experience.  One, I need to follow through when I promise something to someone, especially a student.  Also, if I ever promise complimentary copies to someone, then I need to be sure that person gets a copy.  And lastly, if I’m going to acknowledge people’s help, I don’t want to leave someone off.

 

 

 

The Story Behind: "Billyball: Home Sweet Home"

Every story has a story.  As writers, we know that stories take on a life of their own, but once the writer completes the story and begins shipping it out to publishers, the story begins a journey that’s all its own.  And although the experiences are unique to the writer, I believe most writers will find a lot of similarities to certain aspects.  For the next few entries, I’m going to talk about the stories I’ve published.

 

Billyball:  Home Sweet Home

 

I actually wrote this story as part of a writing workshop at the library in Somerset when I was in high school.  I was too young for the adult workshop, and really felt old for the kid workshop, but I knew I wanted to be a writer and stuck it out anyway.  Karen Koger was on a fellowship from the state of Kentucky and was teaching the class.  Years later I picked up her collection of short stories at a store and was glad to read her work.

 

It was the summer I turned fifteen and I remember sitting on the beach in Clearwater, Florida while on vacation and trying to think about my story.  I tried to capture the beach scene, but my heart was back home, so the story developed about a man giving up a baseball career to come home and care for the family.

 

The story was a hit with the kids in the workshop, but it was still lacking.  I filed it away until in college when I used it for a writer’s workshop class, where it was critiqued.  It was pretty much ripped apart by the adults in the class.  In my mind there were two keys things wrong with the story.

 

First of all, I had only just begun my formal writing training.  I hadn’t taken a literature class that actually made sense.  This was my first fiction writing class.  Of course, I didn’t have all of this symbolism in the story.  I barely knew what symbolism was, much less how to use it effectively in fiction.  On a side note, the seriousness of that workshop led me to write Parlor of Mistaken Identities, which was categorized by the teacher as being absurd.  I just wanted to see if the arrogant students could pull something fancy out of a slapstick story.  They couldn’t find anything of literary worth in it, so I guess I succeeded in my attempt.  But I did get a nice compliment in the fact that the story kept them laughing throughout, which isn’t easy to do.  So, I guess I actually accomplished both goals.

 

The second reason why the story failed was the stakes.  For one, the climate of baseball changed between the mid-80’s when I originally wrote the story and the early 90’s when the story was work-shopped.  Players were making a lot more money and the decision of staying in baseball or going home to save the farm wasn’t really a choice.  Baseball was paying so much that Billy, the main character, could have played and saved the farm.  I also didn’t pull out that connection between Billy and the land he grew up on.  It worked for Margaret Mitchell, but not for me at that point in life.

 

So, the story went through the revision process, with updates to the 90’s and the second critique was done by the professor who thought the story came off well.  I sent it in for publication in our school literary magazine and it was selected for publication.  It only received an honorable mention in the short story contest.  That kind of aggravated me, because here I was with the dream of being a writer and I couldn’t even place in my college writing contest.  But now I see it as a stepping stone.  I learned so much from that point to the end of my degree and the learning hasn’t stopped.

 

 

 

 

 

Death to Sin

(This is my conversion story for the Faith in Fiction short story contest. Let me know what you think.)


Facing our mortality wasn’t something I wanted to do, but Deon was getting impatient. “Man, let’s get in there,” he said. “Visiting hours is almost over.”

I just sat in the driver’s seat, unable to move. I was filled with mixed emotions, unsure if I wanted to pay my last respects to Stevie Warren, a former high school teammate. He was a year younger than Deon and me, but he was the starting point guard.

He wasn’t really a friend, and I wouldn’t say that I necessarily liked him. Basketball was the only thing we had in common. And despite our differences, going to the funeral home was the right thing to do.

“There goes Bridget Covey,” Deon said with a gasp. We’ve been out of high school for five years and he still can’t say Bridget’s name without gasping. She was the most beautiful girl in school. The problem was that after junior high she knew it and didn’t bother to talk to the guys her own age. She only dated upper classmen, then college boys. She was too good for us.

“All right,” I said, stepping out of the car. “Let’s go.” I straightened my suit jacket and checked my zipper.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Deon said, laughing but covering up his mouth with his fist. “Bridget Covey shows up and you’re ready to go in.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “No. She won’t even remember us.”

“Are you kidding? We were basketball stars. Every girl knew who we were.”

“Not Bridget.” I lowered my voice as we neared the entrance. “And we weren’t stars. We never even had a winning season.”

Deon opened the door and waited for me. “But when you’ve got even a little game, that makes you a play-er.” That was a reason why Deon had gotten along with Stevie better than I did. They were both partiers and girl crazy.

When we reached the sign-in book we both dropped the banter and took on a more somber appearance. Perhaps the banter was just a way of dealing with our own immortality, of seeing a peer dead before his time. We were too young to think about death; we still had our entire lives ahead of us. But in one bad turn, we were facing the reality of our mortality.

We stepped into the chapel. The casket sat at the end of a long isle. A few people were gathered around the casket. Others sat in the chairs and talked quietly. Every once in a while a wail filled the room, but no one looked or stared at the person wailing. Everyone was respectful.

“You guys okay?” asked Brother Davis, a youth pastor at the Methodist Church and an assistant coach when we played. He shook each of our hands and smiled. “I’m sure the family will be glad to see you guys.”

As we walked down the isle, I tried to remember his family, but I couldn’t. They didn’t sit with the other parents and Stevie always bummed a ride home after practice, at least until he got his license.

We stood silently in line, each of us with our own thoughts. I tried to think of something good about Stevie and our years together on the team, but I couldn’t. We were completely different people. He drank a lot and partied. He went out with girls for only one reason and kept them around as long as they were amicable. I didn’t drink, only went to parties thrown by my Christian friends and did a lot with my church youth group. He sometimes dated a girl from my youth group, but he never came to church with her. That would have broken the cool image that he tried so hard to maintain.

The group around the casket broke up and Bridget Long turned and walked out. She wiped a tear in the corner of her eye. “Hi, Jay. Deon,” she whispered as she passed.

“Hey, Bridget,” Deon replied.

I was able to throw up my hand, but that was it. I was too stunned. In four years of high school I’d never heard Bridget say my name or even look my way. I watched her walk out of the room before realizing I was doing so. I just shook my head. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong about someone.

We stepped up to the casket and I shook hands with Stevie’s mother. There was no father, at least not one at the casket. “He was such a good boy,” she wept. She wrapped an arm around me and one around Deon. “He was so full of life.”

I looked down at his body. The make-up on his face was dark, to try and keep the dark tone of his tanning-bed body. He wore a gray suit and tie. Obviously there were no signs of the bullet hole in his chest, but I still thought about it, picturing him on the sidewalk, a slug shattering his chest and piercing his heart. They said he fell back into his girlfriend’s arms and she watched him die. They said it was a drug deal gone bad. There was no mention of that in the papers, but there were plenty of whispers. The young adults knew the truth, even if the adults were in denial.

His mother sighed. “At least he’s in a better place.”

Better place? Stevie split hell wide open.

Then it hit me. It was a Saturday morning practice, late in the season. We came out to shoot around before practice and noticed a tall black guy putting on a dunking exhibition. We were told to sit in a semi-circle along the top of the key. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he was from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Ball State University. For ten minutes he put on a dunking display. Then he stopped and asked if he could talk about something. Of course, he had our full attention. He went on to talk about God and our life on earth. He compared life to a football game and how we are fumbled into the world. We are automatically picked up and head the wrong direction, toward Satan’s goal. If we don’t get turned around, at the end of life Satan has won. But if we turn our lives around and go toward God’s goal, we will spend eternity in Heaven. Then he talked about Nicodemus asking about being born again and Jesus explaining a spiritual rebirth. He offered that spiritual rebirth to us. I remember his speech well because I used it myself when I later spoke at a youth rally. He had us bow our heads and repeat after him. I sat quietly because I was already saved, but there were a few voices praying after him. And the one voice that I recognized above all others was Stevie’s. I was amazed. Of all the people on the team, I thought he was the one who would make fun of the whole presentation and make sarcastic remarks to those of us who were Christians. But there he was, bowing his head and praying the sinner’s prayer.

Deon left us and went to talk to some of the family. I stayed there with Mrs. Warren, my arm around her shoulders, my eyes staring at the person I knew.

“He sure loved playing ball with you boys,” she whispered.

After that day at practice, I guess I expected Stevie to completely change, but he didn’t. He continued to cuss and womanize and party, but he did start going to church with Brother Davis. He became an active part of their youth group on Sundays, even if he was drunk the night before. I wish I could say we became friends, but we didn’t. We were still worlds apart. But standing there at his casket, his mother’s arm around me, I wondered how far apart we really were. Yes, I had my own sins and vices, which maybe weren’t as outwardly destructive as Stevie’s sins, but they were there just the same.

And I remembered the words repeated so often in church, “Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” I heard Stevie call upon the name of the Lord. I heard him asking for forgiveness of his sins, for Jesus to come into his heart and life. Was Stevie now in a better place? Who am I to decide? I’ll find out soon enough.

In Remembrance September 11, 2001

When I learned of the attacks on New York I sat down and began to write in my journal everything that was happening. I knew it would one day be an important piece to my children. The next day I also made my students write on it. I urged them to keep that writing forever.

It was a moment that no one will ever forget, but I didn't want to forget the little things about that day. I've turned my journal into a creative non-fiction piece. I don't think it's anymore special than the story you have to tell and especially the stories from those who witnessed the catastrophes first hand. But it is my story and what I went through on that fateful day. I have not filtered the words through four years of knowledge. I have stayed true to what I felt and experienced that day. Perhaps this will inspire you to post what you wrote in your journal that day or to recollect what happened for your future generations. Let me know if you post your piece so that we may share these memories together.

9/11/01
It was a bright and sunny day. The first inklings of the cool fall air had blown in and for the first time in five weeks, we were somewhat comfortable at school. September 11th was an important day for us at Northeastern High School in eastern Indiana. It was the first day of the state ISTEP testing. And my students, the sophomores, were taking the test to qualify for graduation. Without a certain score, they would not be allowed to graduate from high school. Of course, they would get a few more chances over the next two years. And then if they didn’t pass, they would only be given a diploma of participation, a piece of paper that meant nothing for the twelve years they had spent in school.

J-, one of my underachieving I-don’t-care-about-anything students from the previous year, came up to me before school started and asked me if I heard the news. He said a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. He thought it was funny and I told him that it was very serious and the people on the plane probably died. He laughed and said, “It was probably a bunch of stupid tourists.” I shook my head, not so much at him but at the understanding of why the other students found him annoying.

Later that morning another teacher relieved me so that I could take a break. It was somewhere around 9:30 central time. I went to the lounge to call my wife because I needed to call a grocery store chain about a trip we won to the Greek Islands. Two interns were in the lounge doing homework and I asked them how they were doing.

“Not too good,” Mr. Griffin, the history intern, said.

“We’re listening to the news,” Mrs. Thomas, the math intern, said. I smiled because I figured she meant they had to listen to the computer technician’s radio blaring in the next room. The technician usually had Rush Limbaugh blaring from his small office.

As I dialed the phone, they filled me in. They said two planes had crashed into both buildings of the World Trade Center and another plane crashed into the Pentagon. About that time Brooke answered the phone and was relieved that I called. She had been watching the news all morning. She began to fill me in even more. Since I was talking to three different people and relaying messages back and forth, I can’t remember who said what. The facts that we knew at the time were that three planes had been hijacked. Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and one crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth plane was unaccounted for.

As Brooke spoke, the World Trade Center building collapsed and the estimation was something like 150,000 were dead all together. All of the airports were shut down and people working in tall buildings in other large cities were evacuated. The White House and other government buildings had also been evacuated.

While I was away from my room, the school counselor came by and told the other teacher not to let the students know what was going on, so it wouldn’t affect their testing. When I was coming back from break I was stopped by the French teacher. He was given the message by the counselor, but he didn’t know what she was talking about. I filled him in on what I knew and it was apparent to him that we were going to war.

I returned to the room and sat quietly, feeling the tears building up and working their way through my body. I asked myself what all of this meant and where we were heading. When the students finished testing that morning, I filled them in on what had happened. They seemed a little cut off from what happened and didn’t seem to understand why I was so upset. I chalked it up to them being young and thinking the world centers around them. I knew it would sink in later, when they saw the news. At least, I hoped it would sink in.

After lunch we were able to watch CNN on the school TVs. We watched replays of the first tower on fire and the second plane crashing into the second tower. We watched the federal agents searching for the fourth plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania forest. We saw the Pentagon with only four standing sides. And the same two questions raced through our minds: how could this have happened and who did it?

Those two questions permeated the discussions for the rest of the afternoon. Most people believed Bin Laden was behind it, but we still held to the fact that someone else could have done it. One girl in my advanced class said that her father used to be in the military and he got some kind of newsletter or paper just last week that said the Chinese had turned their missiles toward us and we turned 250,000 toward them. She believed that China and Russia were behind it.

After school activities were cancelled and the principal encouraged all of the students to go home, be with their families and reflect upon what happened. I called Brooke to let her know I was coming home early and she was glad. She said there was a scare with the gas prices and people were saying it was going up to three or four dollars. She also said we needed milk. I told her to go ahead and get gas as long as it wasn’t that high and to get the milk.

When I got home she said she got the last gallon of milk and didn’t get gas because the lines at the pump went all the way around the block. We watched the news and Dad called. He said he just came from the gas station and they said prices were going to $4 a gallon at midnight. Since I drove 60 miles a day, I figured I’d better fill up my car and Brooke’s van at the same time. As I was going to get gas, I heard over the radio that explosions were being reported in Afghanistan. Afghanistan had been harboring Bin Laden. The newscasters speculated that we had begun to bomb them.

We waited in a long line at the gas station. One worker had to come out and direct traffic. We paid $1.91 per gallon. By the time we got to Mom and Dad’s after getting gas, the TV was showing Kabul and saying that some military camp in Northern Afghanistan was claiming responsibility.

A lot of things happened that it’s hard for me to say when or in what order these things happened. Major League Baseball cancelled all games. Amusement parks shut down; busses and trains shut down. Thursday night’s college football games were postponed or cancelled. The entire country seemed to be at a stand still.

Once home my father-in-law George called Brooke from Columbus. He had been sent home from a meeting. He told her that we should just cancel our trip to Greece. Brooke’s mom, Jean, called later that night and also told her that we shouldn’t go.

We watched the TV for the rest of the night. We watched the senators and congressmen sing on the steps of the capital. We watched with anticipation President Bush’s speech to the country. He only spoke for about five minutes. I’m not sure it was some great eloquent speech that consoled the free world, but what he did say in the middle of trying to comfort us was that we would make no distinction between the terrorist and the countries that protect them.

Around 10:00 PM we got tired of watching the same things over and over, so we turned to a BBC broadcast to get the British take. The newscaster seemed a little cynical about the U.S. We also watched the CBC to get the Canadian view. They seemed really upset, as if it had happened to them. They showed schools watching the news and children crying, a stark opposite to the reaction of the students in my class.

At the end of the day, as I reflected upon all of the information I received, these were my thoughts. The terrorists got exactly what they wanted. They wanted to disrupt the U.S. economy and that’s what happened. All public transportation stopped. The stock market closed. All sporting events were cancelled. Amusement parks and attractions were closed. Federal buildings and tall skyscrapers were evacuated. Our stocks in foreign markets took a hit. As Americans we were outraged and demanded retribution. And we called on God to comfort those who had lost loved ones in the attacks.

May those prayers never cease.