Introducing… the New Normal

Here’s what you need to know if you haven’t heard from me in a year and wonder why some things are different:

~1

As of May this year, my legal name-change was finalized, but as of last August I’ve been wearing the name Wren for a year. That is, a year ago I asked people to use a name I chose, and as it settled and fit, I realized I wanted it to be real, not just a couple nice people being my friends. The paperwork was submitted in January, and finalized in May.

This startled some people, saddened others, and some folks just rolled with it. (A couple actively celebrated with me, sending a screen shot of my updated contact info.)

It’s kind of adorable the responses I get, and the options opened up by choosing my own name. I’ve missed so many chances in the last year meeting new people (so many new people) and hearing the complement, “What a beautiful name!”

Reading jokes with my girls last week we were laughing over “bad at flirting” jokes when (in one) person A says to person B, “I love your name!” B replies, “Thanks, I got for my birthday.” And one of my girls said, “You get to say, “‘Thanks, I picked it out myself.'”

So many missed opportunities. {grin.}

~2~

In terms of family/life updates: both girls are in high school, now, and E started his (and therefore our family’s) last year at the charter school where parents have to volunteer 45 hours/school year. I’ve mentioned this place before — that I choose and read aloud poems to match the 15 attributes that the students study each year.

Well, for the last year and a half I’ve been playing guitar (along with singing) at the small United Methodist church we attend. With this experience under my belt I decided to be brave and offered to bring in some songs for the younger students. I brought a guitar (the little 3/4-size Emerald acoustic) to the k-3rd grade classrooms and played four songs over and over with my different groups. {I hadn’t taken into account when signing up that my repertoire is largely church songs, and I’m not going to be doing those at school.}

But it’s worked out. The kids seemed charmed and we all have more of an idea about what is going to happen next time.

My idea for volunteering this year is that (if I can pull it off) I super-prefer stuff I can schedule and do regularly over the scramble or back-fill. I’ve learned I do best with large chunks of time alone (hello “empty” house while kids are gone *happy waving*), and planning when I’m going to be here or gone (not randomly) is useful.

~3~

Another piece of change this year is that I started a business: Untangling Tarot. If you’re curious and/or think it’s cool — Thanks :) I’m having a lot of fun, and seeing how my work is helping and encouraging others. It’s an extension of what I’ve done most of my adult life – namely, offering language to other people for their experiences.

If you don’t approve, well, I won’t try to change your mind (trying to sell meat to vegetarians was the phrase that woke me up to the incongruity of that). Read my site or don’t, but I’m still me. {shrug.}

I’ve begun teaching introductory classes at the Folk School of Fairbanks, too. My second class in coming up in October (sold out now, as was the first one, in August), and I’ll be offering my first “Step-2” class in November.

That one will be trickier, just because it will require more shaping. “Introductory” classes have often seemed easier to me, even when I’m trying to narrow down the absolute essentials, but “next steps” work is always harder to define, because with increased knowledge and flexibility comes increased options and areas one can focus.

Even so, I’m super excited about the opportunity, and I know it’s going to be great.

~4~

I haven’t been writing fiction for a while, but now a couple of old story seeds are starting to uncurl up into sight, and I’m sorting out where they fit in with the rest of my life.

Using the cards for novel-building is one of my favorite applications, and I’m looking forward to more of that, going forward.

~6~

My areas of study continue to to include power dynamics, equality, trauma, and domestic violence (DV)/intimate partner violence (IPV). I’ve got titles that I think every Christian in leadership should read (because people *will* come to you for help, and you want to get this right), so let me know if you’re looking for resources.

It is my deep hope and heart-cry that the people of God do better for the hurting, and value women (and men) — the individuals — and their health and safety, over the *institution* (of marriage – for example). Jesus didn’t come to save institutions, and never asked his followers to prop them up at the expense of his hurting lambs.

No soapbox warnings on this blog, and no apologies: you come to my space to hear what I have to say, or you don’t come. {shrug} that’s kinda how it works.

~7~

Those are the highlights. Now that I’ve gotten you all caught up on the big stuff I might get back to blogging a bit more about the randoms and hmms, and so on.

You can also expect me to go in a bunch of other (potentially) uncomfortable directions, most of them having to do with (in)equality and my discontent with that. I haven’t been blogging for a long time in part because I was sorting my own laundry. There’s a lot of stuff baked into my life that I have had to think through, and continue to. A lot of that dust has settled, and there has been a lot of grief and private lament as a part of seeing where things are entrenched in our world.

I have things that I feel are important to share – about race, sexuality, Evangelicalism, maybe the Bible. Definitely about Story and the way it shapes us and perpetuates “intuitive” concepts about emotions, relationships and generally the way we assume the world works.

There was a hint of this from the Randomistas book review (Most recent post, more than a year ago, now), with its content about finding the right questions to ask about things that have been “above” or outside being questioned — before the randomized studies started asking these questions.

There are questions I never thought to ask of the Bible before the last 18-24 months, and some I did, but was (metaphorically) patted on the head for not having gotten past yet.

But I’ve asked, and I’ve studied, and I’ve listened, and I’ve learned, and those head pats seem more ridiculous and degrading than ever. Ten years ago I was counseled to “eat the fish and spit out the bones,” and I tried to practice that for four years before I left the church that I had to work so hard to be fed in.

Lots of “travel” and unchosen adventuring. And…

Well, I’m back.

“And the Unfortunate Thing…” [Randomistas – a book review]

This is the kind of mother I am: when I find something interesting, I want to share it with my kids.

In the same way, if my kids ask a question, I’m going to want to answer it.

There is a story (well-know in my former circles) of Corrie ten Boom when she was a child. She asked her father was sex is, and instead of answering he suggested little Corrie carry his work bag. She was proud to try, but it was too heavy for her young self, and Dad said something along the lines of, “That answer is also too heavy for you right now, let me carry it until you are older.”

I am always caught off-guard when I hear this story, because I both think it’s brilliant (I think most parents of any era would be looking for a way out of that conversation, and this was so gentle and respectful), and I think, What a missed opportunity.

For years now I’ve been reading my kids my favorite stories. Reading to them, because a lot of my favorite stories contain elements I’ll edit out as I read (often sex, subtext, or violence). Things that I am happy to let my kids wait to discover. These tend to be part of the larger cultural experience of being human, but an adult human, so I filter.

(And I expect I’ll talk more about these books in future.)

This summer I took up reading and writing reviews for Net Galley. It feeds my acquisitive nature and inquiring mind.

And if the books are interesting, I share with whoever’s handy. For example, one of the first books I read and reviewed was Randomistas, by Andrew Leigh. I got into it because it was about so. much. different. stuff. (The common thread being how those things were studied and measured: randomized trials.)

Leigh opens his book with a vivid section on scurvy.

Scurvy was something I knew about the way the average person knows about… let’s say tides. High tides and low tides exist, and they come at certain intervals and have these vaguely specific effects on certain professions. So: enough that a passing reference in a story usually makes sense, but nothing in depth or actually descriptive. [If you are someone who as read even one article or talked with someone who’s explained them to you, yes, you know more that me.]

The author describes the results of ships overrun with scurvy (“Few men having the strength to work, some of the warships crashed into the rocks off South America. … Some of the sailors drowned because they were too weak to swim toward shore.”).

Then I saw the answer to the question I hadn’t noticed I never asked: “Scurvy affects –”

“Hey kids!” I called, gathering the wandering brood.

Seriously, how hard is it to restrict one’s wandering to the kitchen and dining room while eating?

“You want to hear something interesting? I never knew this before.” I still didn’t know it then, but I was interested, and they were looped in by the invitation, and maybe it being new to me. I proceeded to read aloud, with minor apologies at certain points that I’d brought this up while we were all eating…

“Scurvy affects the body’s connective tissues. At first, victims feel tired and uncoordinated. They bruise easily and their legs begin to swell. Then their gums become inflamed, their breath grows fowl and their sin becomes blotchy. Sailors were shocked to see old battle wounds beginning to bleed and bones that had healed separating again.”

I offered to stop when they stopped eating, but clambering cries of “You can’t stop now!” kept me reading. Continue reading »

Self-Discipline Poems

This is the first year I’ve brought poems to the Pioneer (4th-6th grade) classroom, along with the Mentors (7th & 8th), so I wanted their first experience to be fun. As in, funny-fun. Obvious-fun.

I’ve sometimes let the poems for the older kids be serious, and the sort that maybe half won’t “get,” because I know we’ll have the next round to be more generally accessible.

But this time I pulled everything from Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends.

We addressed how our level of self-discipline can affect other people:

THE ACROBATS

I’ll swing
By my ankles,
She’ll cling
To your knees
As you hang
By your nose
From a high-up
Trapeze.
But just one thing, please,
As we float through the breeze–
Don’t sneeze.

 

We laughed about the ways we can cause trouble for ourselves by lack of self-discipline:

CAPTAIN HOOK

Captain Hook must remember
Not to scratch his toes.
Captain Hook must watch out
And never pick his nose.
Captain Hook must be gentle
When he shakes your hand.
Captain Hook must be careful
Openin’ sardine cans
And playing tag and pouring tea
And turnin’ pages n a book.
Lots of folks I’m glad I ain’t–
But mostly Captain Hook!

The most interesting part (for me) came when we began to discuss this poem:

IT’S DARK IN HERE

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it’s rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be to clear.
But this afternoon by the lion’s cage
I’m afraid I got too near.
And I’m writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it’s rather dark in here.

This time when I asked the students how they thought this poem incorporated or spoke to self-discipline, none of them went where I’d expected.

Every brave soul who spoke up in four classrooms’ worth of 4th-8th graders suggested that the speaker had displayed poor self-discipline by standing too close to the lion’s cage and getting him- or herself eaten. (“How careless of you!”)

And while I can totally see that interpretation, it wasn’t where I’d meant to take the discussion when I picked three different poems for three different arenas of self-discipline.

“For me,” (I told the students), “this last poem represents incredible self-discipline because this person cares enough about writing their poems to keep writing them from *inside a lion*!

That’s some dedication for you.

I asked them if they’d ever had a want that motivated them to do something even when no one else was making them do it. Something from inside.

~

I have a name, a metaphor, for mine.

I call it my badger. I say I have a badger inside me that needs regular feeding to keep it happy and peaceful. Sometimes it can feel really uncomfortable if that badger is neglected too long. I can feel *yuck* or off, sometimes torn up on the inside, like that badger is fighting to be noticed, to be fed or taken care of.

~

“It’s that badger I’m thinking about,” I told the kids, “When I give up time doing some kinds of things to focus on the other projects that are important to me. That’s what I think about when I see that kid writing “from inside a lion,” because that kid is seriously motivated. We can call it self-discipline, and it is, but self-discipline isn’t particularly about giving up fun stuff. Sometimes it’s about focusing on something even more important.”

The Ugly Side of Perseverance

Perseverance is one of 13 “attributes” my oldest daughter’s school studies each academic year.

I bring in poems to share each attribute cycle. This attribute I found the perfect poem for last year– and it was perfect because of the story that framed and created it.

Today I found the book that introduced me to the piece (First Loves, edited by Carmela Ciuraru), and began to reread the selection, noticing what I underlined last year:

…Broadsky’s trial in the former Soviet Union condemn[ed] him to forced labor. When asked on what authority he pronounced himself a poet, he had answered that the vocation came from God. Silence followed, and also the sentence.

It was Broadsky, of the stirring conviction in his vocation, who recommended reading the Russian poet Anne Akhmatova.

Anne was a poet “in a time when a poem on a scrap of paper could mean a death sentence.”

…To continue to write, to commit one’s work to faithful friends who were prepared to learn poems by heart and thus preserve them, was only possible if one was convinced of the absolute importance and necessity of poetry.

These are observations from Carolyn Forché, who coined the term, “poetry of witness.”

Knowing that about her, I see clearly the influence of Anna Akhmatova, who lived and wrote through one of the many intense seasons of the former Soviet Union, while her grown son was imprisoned for the crime of having two parents who were poets.

He was only one of many so imprisoned, and many others did all they could to comfort and care for their loved ones while they were locked away.

Anna wrote about the experience:

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day, somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):

“Can you describe this?”

And I said: “I can.”

Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

Carolyn Forché (the poet introducing Anna in this book) says, “I knew that the poet’s work was to describe ‘this’ before I knew what ‘this’ was, but that it was indescribable.”

I knew that [Anna’s] I can was courageous and defiant, less an expression of confidence in her ability than an announcement against the triumph of evil.

Continue reading »

Openness and Healing

Two Januaries ago, I started taking notes on what books I was reading.

This started because when I was in Antarctica (November/December 2014) and we finished our day’s work [read: quit before our arms fell off so we could still dig the next day], we had a stretch of down-time, and I had some novels in my Kindle app that I’d never gotten around to.

I don’t remember how many novels I read while I was on ice, but what I do remember was my shock at how quickly I could read an ebook. We’re talking an afternoon into an evening. Sometimes staying up late (24-hour light tends to promote such bad habits).

I had been struggling a long time with guilt over not reading enough as a writer, and now, it seemed, reading novels wasn’t so far out of my reach.

I do sometimes entertain the thought that reading is for writers as “good works” are for compassionate-minded people, and practice is for musicians of any kind. However little or much we do we always question whether it is enough.

The beginning of that next year (January or February 2015) was the last of a long stretch of frequent Jay-gone. That last few weeks was really hard, and every hour I wasn’t homeschooling the kids, managing food or the house we’d moved into six months before, I curled up with a novel.

When Jay returned he wasn’t going to leave again for almost a year. (I don’t remember the last time he was home this long of a stretch. Probably before we had kids.) He knew I’d been reading as a coping mechanism, so it was a bit disorienting for him when the reading continued after his return.

It was decadent, inspiring (you can find lots of stories with healthy relationships and characters to admire), and surprisingly soothing. I still can’t tell you whether it was the stories that made me feel so much peace and delight, or the experiential reality of laughing into tears while the house and family carried on for hours upon hours without me. Continue reading »

Convergence (continued.)

It is still my biggest challenge  in storytelling that I cannot select the *perfect* words for a given tale and be done with my work on it. The work is the continual internalization of the story (ostensibly in images– which I’ve learned is not my first language) in such a way that I will feel confident to convey the heart of the story, whether or not I use my most-favorite words.

Of course, between my love for precision, and my gift (I have to call it that, I didn’t earn it) of memorization, I find myself with the impulse to “cram” before every presentation, latching on to my favorite phrases like handfuls of candy, hoping the corner of a wrapper will be enough to hold on to this precious sweetness until I can share it with someone who’s never tasted it before.

From then on, with each day that passed, as the black serpents grew stronger, nourished by their ghastly food, Zohak grew ever more hardened, becoming more cruel and ambitious.

“I have seen the world, Rabbi, and I know that God cannot be here.”

“What would God have to do,” asked the rabbi, “to prove Himself to you, young Chiam who has seen so much of the world?”

“He would have to make a wonder, Rabbi. God would have to make a wonder.”

For all her joy and relief she was near tears.

Every time I tell a story, it is a surrender to imperfection. Not because I’m sloppy or don’t care enough, but because every live performance contains variables, and aside from memorizing the entire piece I can’t guarantee how exactly it will go.

Surrender to imperfection.

Accepting my limits, and believing that the story itself is more important than flawless delivery, as if it could be spoken as poetry.

It reminds me of a G.K. Chesterton quote, “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

I latched on to that saying in the beginning of my fight against crippling perfectionism.

Now I’m just a perfectionist. Or maybe I have perfectionism, like most people get the common cold. It can be an irritation, a distraction from the simple experience and enjoyment of life. It reminds me that failure is all around me, like dog poop, just waiting to be stepped in if I don’t pay close attention to every. single. step.

The difference between this and crippling perfectionism is that I’m no longer afraid of scraping dog poo off my shoe. It’s disappointing, frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing, but it’s not the end of the world. Or even the walk.

That said, I’m not bad at storytelling. A number of people tell me I’m quite good. And everyone should know that the vast majority of stories don’t take themselves so seriously that they are massively improved upon memorization. I think my impulse to memorization is tied to my drive for perfection. There’s a competitive element in my nature that wants to get everything “correct” and that element is tangled with an instinct that sees being right as a sort of armor.

Precision as armor is definitely a hold-over attitude from my journalism mind. When I’m writing about something that could make people uncomfortable (especially if they might feel the need to pass that discomfort on to me), getting all my facts/quotes/statistics accurate is the best way I know to shield myself.

Uncertainty feels like liability.

Uncertainty = liability is a crippling mindset to bring into either noveling or storytelling.

In noveling, this shows up as the critical editor, mocking or damning material before it is evaluation-time, squelching the baby bird of a rough draft rather than letting it hatch, breaking itself free with the muscles that must be developed by the fight of its escape. The critical editor’s voice might purport to try and help open the egg, but most often it is too clumsy and can crush the shell while it challenges the blind and featherless life inside to prove its right to exist.

In storytelling, this crippling mindset demands a perfection in practice that is not possible before practice. One of the great paradoxes of learning a story is you always have to start before you’re ready. Ultimately, to make a story mine, I have to step away from carving filigree, from expecting the tools of noveling (falling in love with whole paragraphs of beautiful prose), and start making my story selections based on their content, rather than the poetry in the pen of the collector.

In storytelling, as with noveling and my non-fiction work, the key seems to be know and choosing what’s important to me. Once that core is in place I have the motivation that leads to the attention-span that results in quality work.

I’m still figuring out which tools are best for which area, but recognizing a) different forms thrive in difference circumstances, and b) it makes sense that my __________ muscles will get fatigued through prolonged use, I’m learning to trust my instincts. Which, considering I’ve only acknowledged them for the last five years or so, is an encouraging point of growth.

The Convergence of Expertise

It started out badly enough: a journalism background muddying the waters of my novel-creating.

My scrupulosity — the need to cite/confirm/reality-check everything — was getting in the way of just creating a high-stakes story.

I eventually separated that (in my head) by pretending I was one of those high-output authors who just roll with the story and write it as it comes, waiting till the story is done (and someone complains that it doesn’t work) before seriously considering that something is weird or unrealistic.

Last I checked, a lot of the reason people read is the alternative from reality. (As long as it supports their core view of reality — but that’s another conversation.)

Then, just a couple weeks ago, I shifted from a word-glut of novel-production (that is NaNoWriMo) to prepare for a sudden opportunity to bring storytelling into a local middle school.

And discovered another level of complexity.

It makes me think of the red Snap-On toolbox my dad used for his work as a mechanic in the first half of my growing-up years.

The thing was taller than me (with drawers that slid beautifully smooth, and a satisfying solidity that let one bang the drawer shut  for clangs upon clunks as the tools collided at closing), and no matter how full it got, it never ceased to amaze me that a) more might fit or b) more were needed at all.

Eventually I learned about metric vs. empirical measurements, and the need (essentially) to double ones tool stash in order to best interact with different systems.

Add a third measurement system (tonakle?) and you start to see the convergence of journalism, noveling and storytelling.

All require similar skills, and understandings of a fairly consistent process or structure: Problems – real, natural, or created – are encountered, and decisions must be made and/or consequences ensue. That is the core of everything I deal in.

But journalism (what I began with my formal, college degree) uses what I would call the empirical system. It is (sometimes) less elegant, but definitely complete and logical. And (having the advantage of being brought up in the system), it feels as natural as any externally prescribed system to label the world I’m interacting with.

Words themselves are a system of labels, and God knows I’m comfortable with those.

Noveling, as I encounter and interact with it, is more like the metric system. Decidedly more elegant than raw journalism, “literature in a hurry,” noveling gets to make sense (in fact, most readers demand it).

Mark Twain is attributed with this gem: “Of course life is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

Sense and symmetry in journalism is like the beauty in nature as distinguished from the beauty in human-created art; it most-emphatically exists, but we don’t generally get to choose when.

That said, just like a good photographer can bring meaning and (through that) beauty with the angle of a lens, in the way s/he chooses to frame an image of reality, just so a journalist can seek or distill beauty from a hard place.

Noveling has the freedom to be deliberately beautiful, a freedom that can become a beloved obligation.

I’ve made peace with that. I’m wresting into cooperation my two major art forms of the last 13 years.

And then, Storytelling.

Orally. Out loud, in front of an audience: attentive or indifferent, it doesn’t matter.

Let me rephrase that: It most-definitely makes a difference how engaged the audience is, but my job doesn’t change. If I was more of an expert, I might feel more of an obligation to make sure the audience was connected, no matter what.

At my current level of skill, my focus must still be on the story as much as the audience, and if this particular story doesn’t connect with an individual, all I ask from that listener is a quiet patience till the end where you’ll soon get the chance to try an alternative on for size.

Storytelling is another animal altogether.

It has the requirements of the novel:

  • It must entertain, or why will anyone listen?
  • It has elegance and symmetry, because those are ingredients of beauty as well as aids to memory

But it also reminds me of journalism, because the stories tend to be short and spare– a description that invokes a reaction, not necessarily because of the exact words chosen (since the piece is seldom memorized) but primarily because of the content itself.

When I talk about massive snakes growing out of a man’s shoulders (something, in all my years of folklore I’d never seen before this story), people react. And why wouldn’t they? The original teller told it to get a reaction, and so do I.

That is the work of every journalist, every novelist and every storyteller. To grab the imagination of that consumer of our words.

Ah, but the means.

Knowing the difference between the systems has become so important. This is where the tools can start to slip, or have to be held so carefully in order not to strip the useful edges and angles from what we’re working on.

Hardest Writing I’ve Done in a While

I currently have the first regular writing schedule since I began ~10 years ago. The first three hours my kids are gone, I sit down and work on Lindorm Queen.

It helps by having a straight focus (makes it easier to ignore non-novel distractions when I know I’ve just got these three hours — but I do have them, and that creates something of a positive motivation loop…) But that’s not the hard part.

The hard part is looking at a story that seems as though it was written by another person (I started it so long ago), knowing it was me that put all that together, and then remembering to treat me as gently as I’d treat any other fresh novelist who has a lovely story with lots of weak parts.

Sometimes it’s easier to be nicer to other people.

Yesterday I clocked myself (a trick I started NaNo ’13 when I could only write in little chunks) and for raw output I maintained a steady 1100/hour, which satisfies me. Today I went to work, and hit with a familiar problem, I rewound and looked at basics, and saw (perhaps again) the behemoth I’m taking on in changing the story’s main character.

The good news: story’s getting way stronger.

Bad news, that just highlights how weak it was.

You see, the story itself isn’t weak so much as the characters.

Celia and Torbilan, while unique and interesting in LK, were never (in my mind) built all the way up to major-character status. They existed as foils– contrast, backdrop, opportunities to highlight– the main couple of Asmund and Linnea. C & T were (on-purpose) relatively passive in order to give the other characters more opportunities to be active (a technique I don’t think I’ll repeat, but it got that first story told).

Now I have to find a way to work up the goals and motivations of these two very. quiet. individuals so they have enough energy and drive to be the impetus of their own story.

I spent a lot of my work time today on TVtropes.org, working through articles and examples such as Obfuscating Stupidity, The Coward, Guile Hero, Master of Disguise, and so on. Torbilan has such a deep hope and idealism in the face of everything that he frequently can look foolish or a little stupid (when he’s not), and that might have to go by the wayside, but I’m hoping that this aspect of his will play well with Celia’s super-practical survivor-cynicism.

My play with opposites is less about “opposites attract” than “filling the gaps.” The similarities have to be there for the initial pairing or the gaps won’t get filled anyway.

What shifting the main characters has also done is made the B-line of the story (a kidnapping) more significant. In the original, it was just a tool to get the men off being heroes so the folks back home were stuck solving the Big Story Problem, but since the B-plot is now about LK‘s main character (not a spoiler– it’ll be part of the book blurb), I have more history and an established character to play with, so the options have expanded.

It’s been a long time since I had to dig down and build characters from the skeleton out, but it’s a tiny bit exhilarating, too.

And it’s a reminder that research is part of the writing, even when I don’t know exactly where it will all be used.

Lindorm Queen in Process

I chose to self-publish Lindorm Kingdom, because it had been sitting too long for me to do something else first. It was a matter of something like fairness, and also insecurity.

The story represented not just the amount of time I’d been working on it, but also the themes that had been weighing most-heavily on my mind during this latest bout of self-formation (and reformation): justice, strength, using opportunity, and one’s voice.

One writing friend voiced dissent among the other people who have known the story as long as its been in process. She hated the idea of my spending more time on Lindorm, she said, because it was such an early work, and that after reading my current stuff, offering criticism/feedback now seemed like correcting my third-grade homework when I’ve already moved on to calculus.

I was determined, however, and I wrestled the behemoth into submission, ultimately dividing the story in two, and determining to return to the second half in the future.

Well, the future has arrived, and after a seven-month immersion in reading published novels, I finally see what my friend was talking about.

Don’t get me wrong – I still think the first part was well-wrestled – but the second part represents everything that has barely been touched in five years. And that was maybe only two passes away from what I wrote nearly nine years ago.

What I find myself with is the classic (?) troubled novel, where the characters are there, and even some significant and (I’ll be the judge) moving scenes, but there isn’t a strong, compelling through-line in this half, binding it all together and pulling it toward the necessary end.

“Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story for themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.”

–Kurt Vonnegut

As a result, the experience of revision and pulling this draft up to snuff is daunting.

Sort-of as a result, I’m self-coaching now. I am taking the work, and applying what I’ve learned since I first invented Linnea, her stepmother, stepsister, and enigmatic sister-in-law, considering character growth, drive, goal and relationships.

As a fairy tale (or wonder tale, as I prefer to call them now, since so few include fairies), the plot is already determined. For me, the life in this type of novel comes not from any huge surprise, but from a new logic of events or connection with the characters.

I’ve always felt that the irrational randomness in these tales must have made sense to the principals in the moment, and that’s what I look for in recreating the story – the complexity that creates its own sort of sense. And that eventually becomes (through persistent editing) simple enough to follow.

I am traveling back to basics with this one: premise, hook, characterization, goals. It shines an uncomfortable light on on the cockroaches of my noveling process. Apparently most of my stuff comes pre-packaged, already assembled. Picking apart the yarn to weave in a different, more purposeful direction is a new experience for me. But for now I’ve got a bit of time for that.

God and the Faerie King

I’ve read very few folk tales or traditional stories for a while, but my understanding of that world and mentality is still pretty solid. When I read a fantasy that has fairy tale or mythic roots I can catch the multiple layers pretty effectively.

A year ago I started looking for good self-published books to read, and this was one of the first I bought. It was a cute take on the arranged-marriage trope, with the (new to me) twist that the bride-to-be was willing to accept her “fate” and wasn’t a jerk to the guy and having to be won over.

What grabbed me wasn’t so much the story itself as the treatment/behavior of the fae, and the Faerie King in particular. The fae were portrayed in an utterly traditional way, with all their predictable selfishness and capricious unpredictability.

The ultimate story-climax-question became Will the Faerie King be just? Will he do what’s good for these good people, who’ve served him all their lives?

And because the faerie king has all the power to do anything with impunity, there’s a real sense of peril. There is the genuine question, since (as a Young Adult novel) this romance isn’t guaranteed the genre’s usual happy ending.

The heroine’s family of origin is blessedly intact and tight (unique and cheer-worthy in YA), but they’ve grown up working for the fae. They (the family) know the faerie folk’s power and inscrutableness, and as much as the humans hope for the good, I got the feeling their long experience also blunted their expectation, tempered their painful hope to the possibility that what they desired — the thing they knew would be right and decent and essential to happiness — might be denied.

And in real-life, sprawled out reading, I was hit with an almost physical ache. Because I recognized that holding-back.

It was painfully familiar. I’d instilled it in myself over years: through ways of praying, fed by fears that cultivated a drive to self-preservation. I’d scraped together a bark shield in an effort to blunt the pain of deep disappointment and loss.

I had done it all within context and language of religious community. I listened to the pedantic reminders that “God’s ways are higher than ours” (Is. 55:9), and “How inscrutable His ways” (Rom. 11:33).

Through distancing rationalization, I hid behind that flimsy shield in a dull attempt to save myself from further pain. If I didn’t expect too much – or if expected a lot, and was prepared to live without, “be it God’s will” – maybe I could avoid deep disappointment.

When I saw how this family’s response to petitioning the Faerie King paralleled my attitude in asking God for Deep Important Things, my eyes were opened to the sickness of it all.

I feared (not too-strong a word) a god I saw as capricious, and once I realized I was afraid, it disgusted me. Because the God I worshiped did not ask (or inspire) me to fear him in that way. It was a muddled attempt to survive pain, and that muddledness distorted my view of the power that touches my life.

I know the difference between the Faerie King and the God I love, and having that stark a contrast, having that vocabulary, helped me peel back some of the distortion that had been weighing on me.

I looked back at the Isaiah 55 passage and saw it wasn’t designed as an excuse for God being confusing, it was a celebration of his incomprehensible generosity. The same with Romans 11– we don’t have the wiring to conceive of the kind of love and generosity that roots such openness and availability.

That’s why it has to be told to us, and told to us again.

According to a study published in 1998, it takes the average child between four and fourteen exposures to learn a new fact. Some children need over twenty exposures for something to stick.

I am 36 years old. I grew up with sermons and Sunday school, and given the topic I can predict a lot of what’s going to come out of a given pastor’s mouth. I am not short on knowledge, or a critical number of times to hear “Jesus loves me.”

But it took throwing the love of God into stark contrast with the bone-deep fear of power without love before this piece of him broke through (again?): God is dependable.

My lack of understanding (even of big things), and my grief and pain (which are real and often enduring) do not negate the dependability of God.

Since I’m constantly depending on this truth, I had to have known it already, but somehow I felt this other side. A fear of pain. I had my walls up, bracing myself for the time he doesn’t do what I need. And what I’m still wrapping my head around, is that God promises to give us the desires of our heart.

I don’t know how that reads in the original language, but in English that phrasing doesn’t just mean God gives us what we want, he gives us what to want.  I put that all in the Mystery category.

There is so much I don’t understand, but I know God wants to give us good things. “So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.” (Matt. 7:11)

There’s no way for us to completely understand God.

Metaphor, analogy, simile and Story are all essential to drawing near to him in understanding, but the difference between our God and every other entity in eternity is that a) he wants to be known, and b) he is able to make up what is lacking in our understanding.

His constancy, his desire to be in relationship with us, is bigger than our ignorance, confusion, or misunderstanding. I’m thankful for the way God uses even seemingly unconnected elements to reveal and highlight his character, because even if I don’t have enough ink to tell you all God IS, I can know bone-deep what he isn’t, and even find security in that.