Author Archives: Amy Jane

Snoop & Dragons

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It’s a good thing I’m not in the habit of buying new books whenever I want them, since I’ve got two new ones on my wishlist now (more, actually, but today I’m talking about:).

Snoop and Imagine Dragons.

Snoop, by Sam Gosling, is a fascinating book about using *stuff* to explore personality and how personality might be read by observing an environment. It uses the “Big Five” model of personality-typing (where I read– like most people would expect– as an extrovert), and uses particular environmental cues connected to those 5 elements.

I am loving the contrast between this typing and the Myers-Briggs model, since they really tell me very different things about myself and others.  If I still like OCEAN after finishing this book I might big-five type my main characters to see the differences.

For example, just as I am an introvert according to the M-B definition and extrovert under OCEAN, I think my MC is the reverse.

One way I’m trying to say it so far is M-B is pretty good at describing behavior (especially putting it in context with a whole individual) while I’m guessing OCEAN is more useful at predicting behavior– though both can do either, of course.

The other book is what convinced me I could never go 100% to any of the digital platforms, though I’ve convinced myself that for non-picture books I’d actually like an e-reader: if I’m buying new anyway.

  • the book takes up less space physically
  • is usually cheaper (price would determine format choice) and
  • is easily searchable
    • Most of why I hang onto a book is because I *need* some perfect line or example at my fingertips.
      • this, BTW, is what is most traumatic about having all my book collection packed away.

My favorite part of Snoop so far was in the first chapter, where the author categorized the types of stuff that fill our spaces.

  • Identity Claims
    • others-directed (See: this is who/what I am)
    • self-directed (Remember: this is who/what I want to be)
  • Feeling Regulators
    • things that exist “not to send messages about our identities but specifically to manage our emotions and thoughts.”
  • Behavioral Residue (*Love* this label. Very convicting for me)
    • What is seen because of the way you live and the choices you make.

I’m also enjoying the exploration of what makes a relationship deeper (or deepen).  hint: it’s not information exchange.  But for my current situation (where I’m living in someone else’s house– I just don’t know whose, yet), it helped me understand why I feel less settled, despite my contentment with whatever.

Beginning to think of these three elements, especially in ratio to one another, gave a bit of definition to what I’m feeling about my home.

When I prepped the house, emptied it to a showing (neutral) state, I expected to surrender the first segment– Identity Claims.  It wasn’t that important to me anyway, since visits would be about the house, not me. (Pshaw, I don’t even exist!)

What I wasn’t aware of was the “Regulating” category. Turns out books and music are HUGE regulating factors for me. And with the shift I lost both: books packed away and computers in the back room, so the music system was gone as well.

The last three weeks have involved larger and larger trips from the library (along with some buying) and an evolution of mobile music (I’ve lost my iPod Nano!) that has, I think, settled at my laptop in the kitchen with a new Pandora station.

But it’s only been with the reading of this chapter that I understand my lengthy agitation. (One that I hope is now over!)

~ ~ ~

For something completely different, please consider

I wish I could show you some images from inside the book.  They are just amazing. All this wonderful interplay between line, color and texture. (And I’m not any sort of visual artist!)

Books like these convince me I could never go 100% digital, because *what* could replace my child(ren)’s experience of studying for minutes at a time a complex image like that?  Because that’s what they do when the text is being read: exploring the picture, discovering details.

This is a book I want in my collection!

And you can believe I’ve already reserved this illustrator’s other books from my library. I am eager to see more of her work!

The book itself is a very respectable survey of dragons and lore– including stories well-summarized. The Eastern dragons may be said to be favored (commentary emphasizes they’re not-evil), but their depiction is naked enough to show them as no more kind or caring.

This was meaningful to me mainly because I like using them in discussions of dispassionate, elemental forces.

Yeah, I do that. Weird?

Anyway, I am trying to hold off on buying new books right now (at least, when they’re not inexpensive…), so I’m thankful for our library right now. It’s the patch on a big hole in my life.

from The Wounded Spirit by Frank Peretti

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But wounds can fester. They can become infected, and then they infect others.

And then they can  change you because you haven’t merely cut your finger or bruised your knee. You’ve been wounded in your spirit, and that wound pierces deeply, painfully, sometimes permanently. As Proverbs 18:14 says, “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?” When tough times or injuries come, we must be able to draw upon a reservoir of hope, faith, and self-confidence that God has stored up inside us through the love and encouragement of friends and family. If enemies, through cunning and cruelty, have plundered that reservoir, what will sustain us then?

Won’t God sustain us? Won’t He give us the grace we need? Don’t we find our hope and strength in Him? Won’t He get us through?

Absolutely. I wouldn’t be here today if God’s presence and grace were not ultimately provable.

But that’s the rub: To prove anything ultimately takes time and experience. You have to live it out for a while, sometimes a long while. A process is involved. Even now, in so many of our lives, there are issues to be resolved and wounds that have to be faced squarely, forgiven, and healed. Many of us adults have been carrying unhealed wounds since we were children.

Why Euthanasia isn’t Merciful

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Euthanasia has been defined as “mercy killing.”

What I was reminded of this week is that, for honest Christians at least, there can be no such thing.

Bible-believing Christians know that judgment comes after death, and how can hastening God’s judgment on an individual be mercy? We do not know their hearts, only what they’ve shown us. How can we know but God’s reason for allowing the suffering (and therefore, continued life) holds more mercy then throwing someone unready on the unavoidable Judgment?

The Shadow of the Bear — book review

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Finally wrote another book review.

About the first of those books I wanted.

I’ve read two now, but with moving et.al. I’m feeling my own frailty, and the second book was too tenuous too long for me to be ready to spend the review time with it right now.

It was also good, and it was gratifying to see the writing mature from one book to the next, but… perhaps if you read them both you’ll understand what I mean.

Go. Find. Read.

Quite worth it.

Character vs. Circumstances

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It is really too bad that, while we recognize lapses in judgment or steadfastness in ourselves as merely circumstantial, we quickly assume similar lapses in others as character flaws.

Turn that around and you’ll understand why I stayed up until 2 a.m. finishing critiques for my new writing group. They don’t know me, so protestations about busyness are (at this point) excuses and not reasons.

I know how harshly I would want to judge them (Transform my gracelessness, Lord), and can’t bear my own censure– so I work late, uh, early.

The point of these meetings is feedback and interaction. If I can’t expect that of myself, how can I expect it of them?

Compromise

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Had a very effective talk with Becky last night.

It is such a relief to be able to talk about a story and have someone else have more than a clue what you’re talking about!

Several useful things were clarified. Among them, Lindorm is a *folktale* (duh.) not the next fantasy epic; so I can relax a bit about the ax (mallet) in the ceiling. My concerns about things “missing” are a bit misplaced.  Having a new category for fantasy work (basically, beyond *epic*) is very helpful.

Two of my favorite fantasies: The Seer and the Sword, along with its companion novel, The Healer’s Keep, are more what I need to keep in mind than, say, Eragon or Lord of the Rings. For that I’m on-track.

“We’ve” also decided it’s a character novel, which has solidified the structure as well.

I spent last night rebuilding the Table of Contents to cut and rearrange, before taking my two current versions of Despoiled (Chapter One) and melding them into a single opening chapter.

The “compromise” referenced in the title is this: Since we’re still trying to move (You know, get the house packed and on the market… long-term goals and all that ;) ) I’ll limit myself to one chapter a night for the next several weeks.

I have 20 chapters that have two versions before I reach new (untouched this revision) material.  Those need to be gone through as I did the first chapter, keeping details of a particular timeline while incorporating the improved writing where possible.

I’m quite content with this arrangement, and thankful to keep pecking at the novel.  I know how to move slowly; I just want to keep moving.

*Knowing* My Characters

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I’ve been studying personality theory (Especially the Myers-Briggs expression) for several months. Tonight I applied the four perimeters to the eight most prominent characters in my Lindorm novel, and this is what I came up with:
Linnea          ESFJ
Kennett       INTP
Tykone        INFP
Runa            INTJ
Ivan             ISTP
Torbjorn      ESTJ
Cecillia        ISFJ
Irene           ESTP

I determined/identified the types by going through each parameter for every character (Does Linnea gather more energy from being alone with her thoughts or being with other people? What about Kennett? Tykone?).

Comparing them one parameter at a time helped me focus on what they were, rather than what I wanted them to be. I tried to base my judgment on the characters’ behavior as much as possible, but the exercise was especially useful for the characters I had too deep in my head.

I have been concerned that Runa is more interesting than Linnea, who’s supposed to be the main character.  *Surprise* (or not) Runa has my personality type so I “get” the way her brain works. Being able to look as clearly at Linnea– her similarities and differences compared to my type– is very helpful.

The main reason this discovery is so exciting to me is that reading the profiles for each character did two things for me.

  • It affirmed how consistently I’ve written (most of) these characters, both in action and motivation, even before having this clarity.
    • Makes me feel like I have some aptitude toward this thing I love to do.
  • It was a delight to imagine my created characters were *known*.  That’s exactly him! or, So this is why that response always felt right happened over and over as I read through the profiles.

Kennett, the elder of the twin princes, has no interest in being king, and one descriptor of his “type” is the loner element, that this type “isn’t interested in leading or being led.” The coldness of his type makes the device of the mind/emotion-reading-by-touch (it’s okay, I don’t expect you to know what I’m talking about if you haven’t read the story) especially delicious. It facilitates a closer relationship than would have been possible without the magical connection.

Linnea’s personality type explains why she’s so shaken by her stepmother’s emotional abuse and and almost equally by her stepsister’s indifference. It shows how she could be cowed by her stepmother’s words not even a day after standing up to the stranger unearthing her father’s coffin.

It makes me almost ready to keep my original scene order (that is, the one from October). I’ll have to look at it seriously before I’ll know for sure.

I could never say before why I felt Linnea’s behavior wasn’t inconsistent (it sure looked that way– that’s why I started shuffling scene order). Now that I understand the why, I hope to more clearly show that. It should make a number of things a lot easier to juggle.

Nailing Linnea’s type also showed me where to build her flaws– namely in manipulation. Not sure yet how that’s gonna look.

Maybe I’ve found a new formula:

Four parameters = Instant depth. ;)

7 Quick Takes (Vol. 11)

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This was the format I needed today. Thanks Jen!

~1~

Today I had an intense and meaningful conversation with two other moms while our children danced together in Ballet class.  One of the moms was going (as I was) to the ice park after the lesson, and she commented that we could renew the conversation once we got there.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s sort of exhausting.” She agreed and we parted.

I felt the need to check back in later and verify she understood what I meant.  At the ice rink I asked if my observation was offensive and she said, “No, I knew exactly what you meant and didn’t think of it again.”

Ah, the delight of having an equally introverted and honest friend.

~2~

I’ve been seeing a lot about “branding” lately, and it’s got me thinking again about my name, my domain/blog’s name and my “identity” on-line. The name “Untangling Tales” seems to have a lot of potential, and I have these vague ideas in my mind about the Ta of tales getting wrapped around the ta of Untangling…

And then I ask myself, What’s the point? and return to my regularly-scheduled diligence.

~3~

A month ago when I started packing to move God-know-where, I asked the Twitterverse for advice on how to thin my stuff.

I got advice on packing, which, while relevant, was not what I was seeking.

What I most wanted was How do I choose what stuff to keep and what to get rid of. Because, God knows, something’s got to go! I mean, I can live this way, but how can I *move* with all of it?

The answer came when I was forced to pare my kitchen down.

Jay had suggested I make a menu of 16 meals or so, and leave out the elements of those.

A very sensible, reasonable suggestion but I ended up not needing, because instead I went through the ingredients, herbs and spices on “instinct” and removed most everything I didn’t use without a recipe.

For dishes I left out everything I was constantly (re) washing, and therefore using.

And that looks like it is the key to everything: not just use but continual, frequent, and varied use. This is the kind of packing you don’t have to have your laundry done to do.

I’ll be verifying this tomorrow when the children are off on their all-afternoon playdate. ;)

~4~

On Saturday, the day after my kitchen discovery, I visited my favorite bookstore’s 50%-off everything day. I managed to come home with only five books, and one of those was It’s All Too Much.

In my desire for how-to-thin (my stuff) I imagined there must be a resource out there *somewhere* but had no Idea how to find it. So God gave it to me: a delightfully specific provision I didn’t even know how to look for.

Reminds me of the kinds of gifts my dad gave when I was growing up: I used to describe his gifts as “the thing I never knew I always wanted.”

~5~

One of the points the book’s author makes is that a lot of stuff-collecting is preparing for the future, and while this is not a problem in itself, the time required to manage too much of it can steal from your “now.”

I’ve been thinking of this for a month or two, and was already troubled by it, bothered by the idea that I spent more time acquiring and organizing to “be ready” but didn’t really have a structure to decide which part was the “too much” part. Because, I really do believe some of this is basic prudence.

~6~

The question that provided clarity was this: What does your ideal life look like?

One of my theories about why romances are so popular has to do with my guess that finding/choosing a life-partner is the last time anyone (or maybe it’s just Christians) are actively encouraged to think of themselves.
Think about it: “Are you happy?” “Make a list” “Know what you *won’t* settle for!” “Does he treat you right?” are common questions until one is married. Afterward (again for Christians in particular), you just deal. Why remind someone their life’s not perfect? And if it is, who wants to know? {grumblegrumble}

I agree with the author’s opinion that an important part of building a new life (with more life and less STUFF) is envisioning what you’d like it to look like– the kind of future you want, how you want to spend your time– so that your choices move you purposefully toward that goal, rather than vaguely hoping you’ll end up there.

So far my new-home list has two things (beyond the obvious): a well-trained dog, and a home that hosts well.

I want meaningful conversation in my home– I imagine hosting things like The Truth Project or the Crown Biblical Financial Study. And more even than that I want my kids to think of home as the place you bring people to get to know them better. I want them to be proud of their home and in the habit of opening it and seeing it opened.

It’s the model I had, and I want to perpetuate it.

~7~

I have a newborn in my hands.

Not literally, it is actually a relationship, but it seems lain in my arms fully formed, in all its wobbly-headed glory. And I am in heart-fluttering awe at the responsibility and beauty of it all.

For more 7 Quick Takes visit Jen’s Conversion Diary

Other 7 Quick Takes on Untangling Tales

Cultural Shorthand

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One place I believe we discover identity is in the cultural shorthand we share with those similar to us; the stories we have in common.  This can be movies, literature, shared experience and even the Bible– if you have that in common.

For example, in this odd season I find myself in, I’m finding it easier to explain to Biblically grounded people what’s going on.

And I don’t mean that as any species of slur to people who don’t know the Bible.

It is a running gag (mercifully petering out) in *Bones* to have one character make a cultural reference and the title character responds, “I don’t know what that means.”

In the 3rd season someone compared the latest antagonist to the Sith (Everybody here knows Star Wars, right?) And the point: A master and an apprentice, there can never be more than two, which one are we dealing with? was communicated that simply and succinctly.

If you got the reference.

This is one advantage of a shared culture: efficiency.

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