Monthly Archives: April 2007

Should I offer advice “publicly?”

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I just popped back over to a forum I haven’t visited in a long time and ended up leaving a huge (for a message board) post of advice to a gal asking for info for a virgin bride.

The stuff I told her I have written at least twice before via e-mail to different people (didn’t save either time, *grumblegrumble* so I’ve had to rewrite it every time.)

Now I’m thinking about putting it here so when it (inevitably) comes up again, I won’t have to rewrite it, I’d just point to it.

At first I thought I’d be too embarrassed to do any such thing, but then, imagining I don’t have many readers (and most of those in the demographic I talk to about this stuff anyway), I figured the benefits would be worth the risks (hey, I’ve got a good spam filter).

Now, I don’t have a counter and I don’t know how many people actually stop by here regularly, so I’d be swayed by just a couple comments, but:

Who thinks I should put my “advice column” on my blog for linking to in the future?

(And, if I put it up, expect a lot of posts in a short amount of time to push it off the bottom.)

;o)

This could start a whole new “advice” category… hmmm….

The Difference Between Fantasy and Sci-Fi

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I loved this distiction/definition from The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature by Brian Attebery.

Any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of that which the author clearly believes is natural law– that is fantasy….

And fantasy treats these impossibilities without hesitation, without doubt, without any attempt to reconcile them with our intellectual understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstances come true.

I like this definition very much, and even more so when Attebery places it in contrast to science fiction (so frequently lumped with fantasy as a matter of course):

Science fiction spends much of its time convincing the reader that its seeming impossibilities are in fact explainable if we extrapolate from the world and science that we know.

This distinction is very good for the way my mind works. By giving myself “permision” to accept that the fantastic needs no explanation, I free up all sorts of brain cells to focus on what I’m actually interested in.

The Pickpockets– a Tuesday Tale

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A skillful pickpocket realized his great talent was going to waste in the small town where he was born, and so traveled to London, where his craft would have broader application.

He began at once to make a fine living, and so went alone at his business until the day he felt his own wallet lifted.

Turning to see who could have been so accomplished as to pick the master, he saw a pretty blond girl, a young woman, making her way through the crowd away from him, and knew at once it was she.

He immediately chased her down and proposed a marriage and a partnership.

“With talent such as ours, we could breed a whole new race of pickpockets!”

The young woman agreed with the brilliance of his plan, and they were soon married, and expecting a child.

When he was born, the baby was perfect in nearly every way, except that one of his hands was crumpled in against his chest, and nothing his distraught parents could do would cause the little arm to straighten properly.

“What shall we do?” his poor mother wept, knowing what a great disadvantage her son was now in, having only one good hand to pick with.

Her husband was more stout-hearted, and insisted, now that they were comfortably wealthy, on seeing every specialist in London.

Most simply turned them away, as soon as they saw how young the child was, but at last gold and pity opened the office of one kindly old gentleman doctor.

He poked and prodded the child, and could find nothing else wrong with him.

“How bright-eyed and alert he is for his age!” observed the doctor. He pulled his shiny pocket-watch from his vest, and began to dangle it above the infant’s withered reach. The boy’s eyes followed the movement intently.

Slowly, slowly, the clenched arm began to stretch toward the watch. And just before the tight fist reached the timepiece to touch it, the little hand popped open, and the midwife’s wedding-band fell from it.

My Protective Man

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There is something undeniably esteem-building to know someone finds you worth fighting for.

To see a surge of protectiveness in a man is something close to thrilling.

The main problem, of course, is that none of us (I believe) are actually interested in having our Beloved in the position of danger that we imagine could precipitate that situation.

All that to say I saw an utterly “safe” exhibition of my husband proactively defending me this weekend.

Jay (if there has ever been a question in anyone’s mind) is the computer- genius in our household. I am certainly literate, but he is the poet.

It was Friday, and he was looking at my internet activity after he came home from work, noting how much I’d up- and down-loaded.

“Was this an average day?” he asked, and I immediately began wrestling with a strangling sense of defensiveness.

“Yes, I think so,” I said, trying to remember just what I’d done, and whether I’d been on enough to be embarrassed. “Just a couple of posts on the family blog– general updates.” I relaxed, deciding I was fine.

He was still looking at the little flickering graph on my screen.

“It says here you’ve uploaded three-hundred megabytes today.”

“What?!”

“And you’re still uploading…” He killed the internet connection.

After poking around a while and reaching his verdict, he called me back into the room (I was making dinner).

“Go ahead and close all your windows,” he said. “I’m wiping your computer.”

And that’s what he did. He transfered all my projects to a portable drive, wiped everything off, and spent the next three nights and the days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) reloading all my programs.

My computer has been glitching for a while now, and this was the final straw.

It is now “cleaner” than it was when it arrived from Dell.

I am very well-taken-care-of.

EEK! Now he tells me!

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Last weekend Jay was snow-machining with his family.

From about an hour before he left Saturday, and all Sunday morning I felt this aweful sence of foreboding.  I was continually pulled, tempted, toward fear, and each time (“It’s the most I can do!”) I returned to praying for Jay.

I mentioned my discomfort to a few other people and asked them to join me, and to pray for my own peace too, since I didn’t know if it had anything to do with Jay at all.

When Jay finally called that evening, I felt peace for the first time all weekend, and was finally able to relax.

“Did anything happen this weekend?” I asked.  “Did you have a good time.”

Oh it was great– loads of fun.  His machine never broke down, he was the only one of the party who didn’t get stuck, etc.

I thought his not getting stuck was a sort-of cute anti-climax  to my fervent prayers and the week passed.

Today, for his birthday, I gave Jay an avalanche book written by a lady here in Alaska.

He thought it was great and was thumbing through it and casually mentioned how he broke an avalanche loose Sunday morning.

“Sunday morning!” I say.  “What happened?”

And he says he was zipping along and hears this huge crack, and sees this huge snow starting to lean, so he turned and started ripping away as fast as he could.  He looks over his shoulder, and to his surprise the snow’s not falling.

He, of course, told it much more coherently than that.

I just felt a mind-numbing, gut-twisting realization that there was probably a very real reason I felt my husband was in danger, and that I needed to pray.

I Am Thankful Today

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Actually, I’m thankful most days.

But today I am giving a thank-you note. (It is my husband’s birthday.)

And, because I want to remember what I wrote, and maybe give some married readers an idea, I’m putting it here too.

If you read this here, too, Teena, I want this to be honoring to you.

If you read this and want to know why it’s such a big deal to me (other than the obvious) my previous post explains what my mother-in-law did that was unique. She did what every mother needs to do, with less support (I dare say) than most.

Outside of card:
Just a note to say…

Inside of card:
…Thank you, Teena.

Thank you for Jay, and the gift he is to me.

I know he wouldn’t be everything I need today if he hadn’t had you to prepare him for where God would place him.

Thank you for the time and thought you invested in guiding his heart and education.

Thank you for the effort you took to give him a foundation in spiritual things.

Thank you for introducing my husband to Jesus.

Thank you for your faithfulness, Teena.

You have blessed me, more than you’ll ever know.

–Amy Jane

4/9/2007

I wanted to share this idea with more people, so it is now my WFMW this week.

Blessings on your day!

Why I’m Thankful for My Mother-in-Law

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My husband grew up (literally) on an island.

A tiny island that only his own family lived on, miles and miles away from the next batch of humanity. It’s still 60-miles away from the nearest town, though a village has since been planted closer.

There is no church, of course.

Jay was home schooled, and remembers being gathered with his brothers to listen to The Children’s Bible Hour on the radio every week for Sunday School.

More than many mothers, his was directly responsible for the information that shaped her sons’ minds and character.

~ ~ ~ ~

I wrote her a thank-you note for my husband’s birthday today.

After I finished writing it, I brought it to Jay and asked his opinion.

“She’ll like it,” he said, shrugging. “She’ll cry, and hug you.”

“Does it bother you,” I asked, “for me to gve her so much credit? Do you feel belittled to have me place so much emphasis on her work?”

I was trying to feel out the source of an unnameable something I felt when he handed the card back to me.

“No.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

He was quiet for just a moment, then said, “I guess I was reminded how important I am to you.”

~ ~ ~ ~

And I guess that’s why I wanted to post this today: because it’s my husband’s 31st birthday, and he is so much of my world.

And he wouldn’t be who he is today if it wasn’t for a faithful mother.

First Lines

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Following Kaye’s lead, I am doing a first-lines post.

Only, to make my list unique (I have seen a number of these floating around in the last few months), I am choosing books I have read that I haven’t seen in a list of first-lines.

Most of mine are from children’s books, as I feel these are woefully under-represented in lists of merit.

Commencing:

Tawny shivered, not understanding this and not liking it because he did not understand.

Desert Dog by Jim Kjelgaard (a last name I still can’t pronounce)

The city was silently bloating in the hot sun, rotting like the thousands of bodies that lay where they had fallen in street battles.

A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child anyone had ever seen. It was true, too.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

However perilous and astonishing the exploits of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society, each separate adventure always started off at a formal General Meeting. (Corporate rules and regulations, order and decorum, provide a solid foundation for individual heroism.)

Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp

There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.

Holes by Louis Sachar

Linderwall was a large kingdom, just east of the Mountains of Morning, where philosophers were respected and the number five was fashionable.

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

“She won’t be angry with me,” said Alicia. “Why should she, Kate? Every word I wrote her was true. This is the most horrible place in the world. You know it is.”

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Long ago a river divided two kingdoms– one great and one small.

The Bridge by Jeri Massi

It was Old Bess, the Wise Woman of the village, who first suspected the baby at her daughter’s house was a changeling.

The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw

 

Making the Most of My Time

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If Chapter After Chapter (a book I’ve been reading) has a major flaw it is the author’s assumption that if writing a book is really important to you, it should consume your life, your thoughts, all your creative energy.

This is how you will be able to write a book.

She says that those who think you can fit writing a book around the edges of a full life either have never tried or are very good at compartmentalizing.

I don’t think I’m that great at compartmentalizing (in fact, I think this is what makes me an imaginative writer), but my whole life, it seems, I’ve always loved doing more than one thing.

As a result I’ve always been bouncing from one love to another, eager to visit the next thing but always expecting to return, and (this is the important part) preparing before I leave for that return.

My best example of this is of my quilting or beading. Each of my projects (I have several in each “genre”) is at a different stage, and if the mood struck me (ouch!) I could walk across the hall and pick any one of them up with nothing more than a flat clear surface.

Setting aside for the moment that flat surfaces rarely remain clear in my home, this is how I organize. I still don’t have a system for keeping my home clean (working on that) but I have a system to indulge the way I know my creativity works.

This is why getting my novel organized tonight was so exciting to me.

Because of this stretch of work, I can now sit down in those spare half-hours when all three kids are playing nicely (and I’m ignoring those un-clear flat surfaces) to do whichever type of writing I’m interested in at that moment.

And the neat thing is that this one project is big enough that (at least for now) I can conclude/revise/create from scratch some section, all without starting something new.

This was my habit with quilts. I have 4 or 5 at various stages of completion.

In my own defense I also have a good half-dozen I’ve finished.

I am far too sensible (or, at least, have too many loves) to allow writing this book to consume the majority of my time, but the book is important enough to me that I do keep writing, in the “edges” I can find.

So… is this compartmentalizing?

Spending Time to Save Time

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Well, I’m hoping that my latest “organizing” work has functioned as time-saving rather than writing-avoidance.

Actually, I’m quite tickled. (There’s another word I wonder if anyone else uses.)

I’ve gone through my story, and while I haven’t outlined subplots or motivations (beyond a shadow), I have gotten from beginning to end.

As a result I now have four categories (and assignments) for my manuscript/writing-time:

  • Started (Finish.)
  • Finished (Edit.)
  • Changed (Revise.)
  • Need (Write.)

There are 6-15 “headlines” under each.

In everything I do, this has always been my challenge: finding the next-step. Looking at the mess that is my bedroom and saying, “What do I do now?”

I now have two pieces of paper hanging from the shelf next to my writing desk, one with all the headlines in order, and one with them grouped as writing prompts within their category.

I’m looking forward to my next noveling corner. :oD