Author Archives: Amy Jane

The Measure of Reality

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For all that trusted friends are the best mirrors, it is still true that for each of us we are the measure of the world.

That is, for all that we confuse ourselves, we also are the thing we know best.

Today’s revelation: I figured out my love-formula.

I mean “what it takes for me to feel loved”:

  1. being appreciated/honored – I’m treated as worthy of someone’s time
  2. being made to think – the ending is that endorphic euphoria you might recognize from the end of a good workout.

Now, taking myself as “the measure of reality,” I can do several things with this information.

  • I can see where I’ve already applied it, in the unconscious way we naturally speak our own language
    • Reading to my children, training them to think
    • Feeling *really* connected to individuals who have parallel definitions of love– or at least provide what I need
  • I can understand how my feeling unloved by certain people is a matter of practice and not of truth
  • And I can be motivated (combining those two) to more-actively apply my observational skills to be sure and learn how to communicate love in a meaningful way.

I got this multiple-languages concept (and looking for others to be different from me) from The 5 Love Languages model, but I was unsatisfied with the broad strokes of “only” five.  I can see the Five bound up in my Two, but knowing what specific “vitamins” I need I want to jump straight there.

Question: Do you find The Five Love Languages a useful model?

I am the Poet of Reality

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I am the poet of reality
I say the earth is not an echo
Nor man an apparition;
But all the things seen are real,
The witness and albic dawn of things equally real
I have split the earth and the hard coal and rocks and the solid bed of the sea
And went down to reconnoitre there a long time,
And bring back a report,
And I understand that those are positive and dense every one
And that what they appear to a child they are
[And that the world is not a joke,
Nor any part of it a sham].

This unfinished poem by Walt Whitman (published in this form in A Book of Luminous Things edited by Czeslaw Milosz) expresses so perfectly my need for the solidity of the physical to mean something.

I do find evidence for the unseen in the seen, and sometimes I think this is why I love so much what I see.

There is no shame in Ignorance

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Unless it is purposeful.

Had a lovely lunch with friends today. The children adored the fresh audience for their exploits and collected trivia.

“Caterpillars have sixteen legs,” 4-year-old Elisha declared with conviction.

An adult looked to me and I nodded. “Six to be adult legs and ten more for creeping along,” I affirmed.  Adding quickly, “The only reason I know is that we just read all about it on Friday.”

The story prompted the memory of an exchange that would happen between me and my siblings when we were kids.

Kid X: FACT!

Kid Y: You only know that because you read it in a book.

And I remember shame and accusation being in the rebuttal (I imagine being on both the giving and receiving end of the sting). but looking at it today we adults laughed at the idea we could inherently know anything. Especially about caterpillars.

As a child I would have been ashamed for not going out and counting for myself. And then needed to find multiple examples before I’d be sure I could trust what I’d observed.

~

A friend I went to high school with can only hear with one ear.  A surgery cut the critical nerve and she has no way to hear on the right side.

One day she was looking for her cell phone and had to call it four times before she realized it was in the right-hand pocket of her jeans.

“I felt so silly,” she told me. “I could hear it and I kept looking and looking…”

“There’s no reason to feel silly,” I said, feeling fierce and defensive of her. “There is no reason to recognize direction without two reference points!”

And I have no idea why I made this jump, but I instantly thought of emotional health (okay, the idea might be simply because the topic is near the top of my mind).

There are a spectrum of issues that people can deal with: bitterness, depression, fear, anger.  There are predictable causes, and nearly as predicable results and even “cures.”

My observant, analytical mind looks at the slice of issues I face, and questions why I haven’t already reached perfection.  I mean, gotten over these unattractive elements in myself that I find embarrassing. But probably that means perfection.

I’m hearing the phone ring. I’m looking all around. I know what I want is within reach and I’m ashamed I haven’t found it yet.

But right now I have only one reference point.  Myself turning in space.  We don’t learn in a vacuum.

So I reach out, discern which way is up, and identify reference points.

I will refuse to be ashamed of not knowing everything.  And I will trust God to guide me into all Truth, as he promised.

What if this isn’t something you get over?

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What if this is something God’s giving you to wrestle with your whole life?

Here is, to me, the biggest part of Christian community: individuals who are safe (as opposed to, you know, unsafe.), and have earned the right to be heard. I know this woman loves me. She genuinely desires peace and good things for me.  So a hard suggestion like that is not painful.

In fact it was perfect, because whether or not it proves to be accurate it provided the necessary re-framing I needed to lighten up.

I’ve been treating my emotional health as something like a sprint: The goal’s not far away: the harder I push, the sooner I’ll reach it!

So I read, and think, and self-analyze, and look for the right book, or bible study, or counselor. And I see real improvement, and I can feel myself getting stronger and that just encourages me to dig in harder, I’m so close!

And then find new things I need to work on.

*sigh*

I don’t know if I’m going to fight this my whole life (naturally I hope not), but I can see the wisdom in in treating it as a marathon and not a sprint.

The most effective teaching seems to be about slowing down. And not just about but some reasonable suggestions how. That’s been my missing link.

Not only does the shift in perspective encourage a more-thoughtful approach to how I divide my time, it also lightens the pressure on each new thing I approach or try.  This does not have to fix everything. This can be appreciated for what it is, not just how far it advances my goals.

And doesn’t that sound more sane?

A Warning:

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The Number One reason to cultivate good habits is that when you are too tired to do anything else, habits are what you live from and on.

~

I am sick.

I hate being sick. It enhances all my limits and tendencies.

To my relief I see light as well as darkness: I couldn’t spend more than a day utterly doing “nothing.”  My need for order (hey! I have one of those!) has dragged me through my sludge to get significant (though not nearly “enough”) things done each day.

I have taken more time to read (non-fiction– I haven’t had the stamina to enter anyone else’s drama this week), and I feel like a long-neglected part of my mind has been watered and nourished.

But mostly this experience has made me more aware of habits, and how much I want to focus on training them once I have the strength again.

Thinking Links

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Two posts I read last week made me think about my writing in a new way:

The Seven Virtues Every Writer Needs to Succeed

Which was a nice change from “discipline-” “organization-” “perseverance-” type lists I’ve read many times before.

What’s your Signature?

A lot of writing arenas talk about “brand” and how you need to market yourself to get read.

Steven King wrote in his book On Writing about life themes that come out of a writer.

But I rather like this concept and language better. It sounds more personal and poetic.

To answer the question I believe my stories all deal with the fragility and hunger of honest people searching for sustaining relationships.  I write a rebellion against what my critique friend calls “miscommunication as a plot device” and other relational gaffs that pit people against their feelings, not to grow them, but to create more story tension.

I call this Lazy Writing.

Another element my writing frequently addresses is the tension between helplessness and inaction. This is one of my favorite things about writing fantasy: as god of a whole new world I am able to say frequently, Yes, that first step is enough.

Not a little because I am assuring my own troubled heart that that first step is all that’s asked of me.

God Designed Religion for Us.

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Life itself is a series of problems that often act as obstacles to our search for significance… Our fulfillment in this life depends not on our skills to avoid life’s problems, but on our ability to apply God’s specific solutions to those problems.

Robert S. McGee in  The Search for Significance

There is a complicated confusion for Christians in the area of self-image. I have even been chastised for “thinking of myself.” Not for thinking of myself more than others, but simply thinking of myself at all.

And that almost makes me angry.  As if in thinking of myself (with anything other than contempt at my sin) I’m somehow being disloyal.

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton pointed out that it is only when the unlovely is loved that it improves.  That the disgusting inspires disgust is no surprise, but disgust leads to destroying, not enhancing. (Think snakes, spiders and rats, as opposed to specialized breeds of dogs or rabbits.)

We must accept that we have value if we are to proclaim that all human life has value.

If we are to champion the unborn, and the poor and infirm, we must also recognize there is something beautiful even in this soddy old skin we happen to be confined to.

Jesus Christ gave His life as a ransom for or lives. The price is too high for us to even calculate. Our desire to be loved and accepted is a symptom of a deeper need– the need that frequently governs our behavior and is the primary source of our emotional pain.  Often unrecognized, this is our need for self-worth. God knows we need to know how valuable our lives are, and he spends much of his Word telling us so.

Robert S. McGee in  The Search for Significance

I think there are very few passions or needs within us (I question if there are any) that don’t originate form the core of needs and desires that God himself planted in us.

It was C.S. Lewis who wrote, God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.  There is no other.  That is why it is no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

In his book The Search for Significance Robert McGee creates a mind-spinning connection between four big churchy words, and how they meet four deep areas of hurt in our wounded self-worth.

I’ve read many many Christian books, so new gets my attention.  McGee asked a new question that totally rocked my mind and still has me reeling: If God has one perception and you another, whose is correct?

Well, we all know the Sunday School answer: God’s!

Why then do we preface such discussions of value or even forgiveness with the words, “In God’s eyes, I’m-“ as if we’re qualifying what we’re about to say.  As if he’s a dear old man who doesn’t really know what’s going on, but we’ll humor/acknowledge his version out of respect for his position as, you know, GOD.

We’ve lived backwards.

I love to quote 2 Peter 1:3 – His [Jesus’s] divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (emphasis mine).  The following quotes are from McGee’s book, and showed me for the first time the tremendous and usable gift of words I’d heard all my life.

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Novel Samples Available

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To give a quick update, I am now ~2/5ths through my latest revision (at least, there are 5 distinct sections, and I’m one chapter from being done with section #2).

I have had difficulty staying focused this round, and was relieved to find a reason.

The short version is that my life has been really stressful lately (I’ve moved, set up housekeeping, restarted homeschooling and attempted to restart our gluten-free eating.  Apparently too much for a single month’s efforts).

While the novel used to be my go-to recreation, the amount of tension in the story on top of the tension in my real life has been more than I’ve had energy for.

Did you know that your body processes stress and adrenaline (essentially) as it hits the brain, not waiting for reality.  This is why worry can be so damaging (your body is continually gearing up for the worst), and why we feel so exhausted after an intense story.

This really just entered my awareness last week when my writing friend (Hi, Jennifer!) brought up two categories of murder mysteries: thrillers and cozies.  People looking for a rush read the first kind, and people who read to relax gravitate to the second.

So I did question for a while whether I’m writing the right story or the right genre, mainly because I’m so weary I question whether I can continue creating a whole world (and an intense world, no less!).

But then I find I can’t really quit, so on we go.

I’ve decided to release the story in sections to people I know, so if you’re willing to give feedback and we’ve talked before, comment here or send me an e-mail and I’ll get you the first block (then the next once you comment on the first).

The third and fourth sections contain the most changes for this newest draft, so they may be longer in coming, but several of you have been so patient already I wanted to give you the option of reading a bit of the story, if you would like, while you wait for the full.

Weaving Tales is Live

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So I did it.

Turns out (and I was very excited to learn this) the package currently supporting my blog has a lot more room than I’m using. So all I had to do was buy the domain ($4.99 the first year; I can so do this), and put my info into the template to have a basic website.

Naturally I’ll like best to have a blog-based (and therefore interactive) site, but this will do to celebrate securing the site I’ve wanted for a long time.

Check it out: WeavingTales.com

Meeting the Readers

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There’s not a lot (in my writing world) much more exciting to me than meeting and talking with the type of young people who will be reading my book.

I’ve had a few delicious encounters with teenage fantasy fans, and they all go about the same way. In my half-curious, half-outgoing way, I start asking questions about the sort of stuff they read.  I love hearing what draws somebody into a book, because I want to make a book that draws people in.

Last night I talked with a trio of teenage girls and was very disappointed to hear (though not for the first time) that the *cover* is the first thing that makes them pick up a book to learn more.

Disappointed, not because I’m not the same way, but because I know I shouldn’t expect to have any control over what the cover looks like. Kinda drives home my powerlessness.

I also found words coming out of my mouth that weren’t quite fair, like, “I don’t like it when authors seem to be trying to teach you something– like a character does something bad and everything else that happens is to show you how bad it was.”

This is both true and not-true.

I don’t like didactic books that make a story serve the lesson the author wants to teach. I do like stories that leave me feeling like I know more than I did in the beginning.

Generally, because of the kinds of books I read, I’m observing more about interpersonal relationships, or emotional intelligence, than anything “factual,” but those are things I’m not seeing a lot of alternate teachers for, so I’ll take what I can get.

I don’t have to “believe” it all, obviously, but good authors definitely make me think, and frequently see things in a new way. 

THIS I like.

A lot.

But giving them my blog and e-mail (Hi, girls, if you’re reading this.) I was forced to look at this website in a different way, realizing that Untangling Tales probably isn’t going to be able to serve my goals as a writer, simply because there is way. too much stuff going on here.

So I’m playing with the idea of an author/novel site to move my fiction-specific stuff to, and I’ll keep y’all posted.  The domain I want is still available…

For the record I am down to two blogs: this one and the family scrapbook.