Author Archives: Amy Jane

How often does “Better” equal “Easier”?

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My guess, if we’re honest, is Not very often.

Last week I attended my first Cooperative Extension “Preserving Alaska’s Bounty” class. It is taught by Roxie, a woman who’s been teaching preserving food for longer than I’ve been alive.

Over the next 7 months we will be learning canning (fish, meat, tomatoes, beans…), jams & jellies, sausage-making and more.  A different topic each month with an angle toward what we can grow or gather here in Alaska.

I went in with great trepidation, afraid of looking like some kind of ‘nut’ who’s  got the audacity to imagine I could live off the land with just a few more of these skills.

What a relief to find the class overflowing with folks that are just plain interested in having more control over the food on their shelves.

“I am a home economist,” Roxie said, introducing herself. “I teach living better at home.”

Before we left for the night Roxie gave a blurb about the cheese-making classes she’s teaching later this month.  Her way of warning the mozzarella was *work* was saying that most students continue to buy it just because it’s such a complex process.

She didn’t ever try to hint that “better” meant easier, and she made no apologies or conditional statements to go along with that.  I am delighted to meet such a knowledgeable and energetic lady, and look forward to learning all I can from her.

~ ~ ~

It was useful to step back from the EXCLAIMITORY! aura of the marketing world that insists one can have both easy and better. My experience has contradicted that enough times that I now gather encouragement from simple truth-telling.

Yes that novel is worth the extra draft.

Yes eating at home is worth the health benefits.

Yes working with weights is the way to go.

Yes, eight hours of sleep each night will make everything better: relationships, attitudes, health, stamina, creativity.

Is it easy? Uh, NO. But I have no doubt it is better.

I Don’t do Crowds

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I strained my voice yesterday. That used to be a lot harder to do.

I was talking with two other ladies at an indoor playground with forced-air heat. (Read: loud with happy children & other noise). With barely 18″ between us we still had to work to converse.

But it was lovely, talking with two women of similar intensity and confidence.  The whole conversation was very balanced, constructive and encouraging.

~

But it reminded me that I function best in a small group of two or three. I’m basically wired to pull 1/3 to 1/2 of the conversation, and that inclination doesn’t always change as the group grows.

Yes. I know.  I’m getting better.

This basic tendency seems to affect my writing as well.  I’ve said before I have a massive cast, and sometimes loads are on the stage at once, but usually no more than 2-3 interact at a time.  Maybe 4 do, once.

This explains why I freeze up when the prospect of an “epic battle” crosses my radar.  I feel desperate as any soldier’s mother for peace-before-conflagration; largely because I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to put off a large-scale anything… (and I’m afraid of what writing about war would say about me).

There have been three distinct times in my Lindorm novel when the action seemed to be pulling toward a war.

I suppose I’ve watched too many fantasy-genre movies– that obligatory CGI massiveness really can impress itself on the psyche.

And each time my “fear of conflict” (HA!) has forced me to find a different and (I believe) more creative solution to get to the next stage.

I can safely say that natural wiring does not have to be a liability.

First-Page Critique

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I visited an “agent chat” at a local coffee house this morning, asked and listened to a bunch of questions and answers and at the end had the nervous thrill of hearing a “First Page” critique of my WIP from the agent and the other writers around the table.

What got read aloud (not by me– which was part of my education) in front of the agent & 7 other writers:

1— Despoiled

Garm’s low growl made Linnea pause before entering the clearing around her family’s homestead.

For a moment she gripped the nearest tree, feeling the papery bark under her fingertips as she balanced on her good foot.

Nothing could be seen to be out of order, except-she felt a shiver slide down her neck. There were footprints in the newly fallen snow. The dusting didn’t allow enough of a print to be certain, but Linnea felt uncomfortably that the prints were of bare feet. Larger feet than any she’d seen before.

She’d just rested her forehead against the tree when she started at a rhythmic sound behind the small house.

The slow, shnick–THUB… shnick–THUB… sounded almost familiar, if only the pain behind her eyes would let her think.

Releasing the tree, Linnea looked down to the shaggy white form of her sheeping hound. Her stomach tightened when she saw him, tensed to launch at her word of release.

A shovel in the earth.

That’s what the interminable repetition was. And the only thing behind the house was her father’s grave.

Understanding seemed to snap her windpipe.

Regripping her staff, Linnea started across the clearing as quickly as her twisted foot would allow. Garm raced ahead, reading her intent and barking a challenge.

The agent began by asking the listeners what they knew from the first page. Continue reading »

Famous Folks’ Writing Advice

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There’s a lovely list of advice making the Twitter circuit now.  Here are my favorites– not all are original, but all I want to be able to return to.

Diana Athill

  • You don’t always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they’d be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it’s the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

Margaret Atwood

  • Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
  • Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
  • Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

Roddy Doyle

  • Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph
  • Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.
  • Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.

Continue reading »

Speaking of Identity

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Which you weren’t but I’ve been musing on for a while.

I used to thrive on controversy. Then I married Jay and that really must have mellowed me.  I have made near-monumental efforts to avoid making waves, and have congratulated myself on how much I was maturing.

But now I wonder if part of such behavior isn’t some form of laziness, because if I don’t set myself up to be challenged I never have to think more than I want to; I never have to explain myself in opposition to anything else.

And now Jay and I are looking at starting a family farm.

As in, a small farm designed to make our little family of five as self-provided-for as our Alaskan environment will allow.

Which, as it turns out, is a lot if you plan properly.

To go back a step, my openness to this idea really flowered when a book encouraging healthy eating pointed out that planning for food never used to be optional.  And not just in a night-before or weekly-menu way, but seasons in advance.

It’s not just possible, it used to be both normal and necessary. I don’t need to feel foolish considering such a thing.

The farm is something significant I can do to provide for my family.

The first square in the “then” category of this chart hit me hard when I first read it.  The role of homekeeper isn’t devalued by our culture simply because some nebulous someone expects a paycheck to equal value. It’s devalued in a basic and capitalistic sense because it is no longer necessary.

I can be replaced by a McDonald’s/public school/TV combo.

Tell me that’s not demoralizing.

Enough to make me lazy & useless when I don’t feel like doing anything; after all, I don’t *really* have to.

And this is about controversy because the motivation for all this effort (other than I’ve always wanted to to the little-farm thing –- delighting in the learning curve as I do) is that my husband and I really feel our country (and world) is going to change significantly before our children are grown.

I’ve been thinking of homeschooling as “adult-training” as well as book learning, so to train them in self-sufficiency is to prepare them for their adult lives.

So we (mostly I, since it would be my responsibility as Jay continues to work a full-time job) are beginning research, to sign up for workshops and seeking out like-minded people.  And the kids are right on the cusp of being able to fully understand what’s going on.

Here comes the next adventure, and I am energized at the prospect of repeating something my and Jay’s Grandparents (and our parents) did in their younger years: create a new life and identity together, wrapped around hard work and a vision.

Wow. I want these.

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Bluestocking has held Wishful Wednesday for a while now, but I have so many books on my shelves I never participated. I never had an Oh-my-goodness-popular-book-available-soon hunger, but I recently found something that is so *me* that I’m chomping at the bit.

But I just bought a collection of resources for my WIP, so now I have to wait *GAH* till next month for these.

A Christian world-view retelling of various fairy tales in a modern context.

If I may judge from the first chapter(s) (available on-line)– and I usually do– this writer knows her craft, and speaks naturally of “unatural” teenage conversation, including homeschooling, poetry, and reading choices.

Primarily it is hints from the first chapter and the words of the many “testimonials” both on her site and Amazon that have me intrigued.  It looks to be a delicious series where faith and relationship with God is compatible with teenage storytelling– and that is my deepest desire as a writer.

I’m Starting a New Novel

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There, I said it.  It’s official.

This time I plan (at least at first) to do things completely differently.

Whereas last time I did NaNoWriMo, and wrote pretty much “by the seat of my pants” (though, to be honest I had the structure of the original tale to keep me on track), this time I’m attempting to plan before I write.

Jay bought me the Snowflake software when it was $20, so I’m experimenting with that.  I’m finding it’s hard for me to flesh out my characters before I’ve seen them in action, but I’m chipping away at it, wanting to give this method an honest go.

Seeing the issues I’m having with the Lindorm novel that’s currently wrapping up, I want to learn if I have fewer of those with more rigorous planning.  I’m also riding a bit closer to the original model (the folktale) than I thought I might.

Mainly because it’s easier to identify conflict and motivation when it’s less subtle.  Those girls, at least as far as I’ve painted/pegged them so far, are beyond my ken.

And I hope this story will be less complex then Lindorm.  But we’ll see.

I have the three brothers pegged in a very traditional manner, and I hope they will still be interesting for all that.

The princess is not your witty She-Ra that populate so many fantasies.  I suppose I am prosaic enough that I don’t trust the portrayal of women who are set forth as anomalies despite the fact that that world produced them.

*pah*  Foolishness.

This is not the popular heroine, if I may use my own awareness of popular heroines as a guide. I thoroughly dislike “strong” women who are strong primarily in contrariness, rather than in contribution. But I suppose this will come out in anything I write, whether my heroine is contrary or not.

What a writer is intellectually, morally, spiritually, emotionally will radiate through the work, like light on an overcast day in which there is no visible sun, so that all things appear illuminated equally.

–Joyce Carol Oates, from her essay Reading as a Writer

At this moment this feels like a very comforting surety.

I’m not sure if this is a true quote or something from my own mind, but If we must be hanged, let us be hanged for the truth is how I feel now. I don’t know how it will be taken, this Water novel, or the Lindorm one. But they will be true, as a story can be true, and I feel quietly comfortable in that.

Stepping off the cliff again.

It really is quite exciting to me, and I welcome your prayers.

Updating my World

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I hope this is a one-shot deal…

But today I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out things like TwitterFeed, Bit.ly, Tweeting in general, and fun stuffs like Acsii art and HTML specialties.

I resisted setting up a second Twitter or Facebook account for specific “networking” or “marketing” (barely trusting myself to keep up with the new elements I am trying to understand now).

We are currently on day 10 of 21 of our scripted eating, and I think the lack of variety, along with excessive focus on the details, is messing with my thinking processes. i.e., I think I’m even more obsessed than usual with the little things over general reality.

Also discovered #YAlitchat on ning, and signed up because one of the blogs I visited today said they have online critique groups– but I haven’t found them yet, and my patience for on-line time is just about frayed out, so I’ve accepted not figuring this out today.

~ ~ ~

I started reading On Becoming a Novelist yesterday, and quickly decided I want my own copy.  He begins with an entirely different approach than most writing books I’ve read– that is, in attempting to answer the niggling question, “Am I really cut out for this?“

Well, instead of actually answering it, he paints a variety of portrait possibilities, and since I can see bits of myself in them, I feel affirmed and encouraged that my tendency is both natural and reasonable.

This is much easier to swallow than the idea that I am irreparably messed up, so I’m thankful to roll with it for now.

As for the novel: it is decidedly on hold until this special eating project is over.  I am at the stage where I need to think of the details in relation to the whole– and I am personally at the place where I will “strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.”

Which I’m beginning to fear I’ve done already.  But those 30,000 words really did need to be cut!

The Princess Adelina — book comments

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I’ve only finished one book this year (though I’ve made use of many).

The “season of transition/discovery” is still on, so, just as I last year abandoned the no-buying-books idea that sounded really good January 1st, so I’ve let go any pre-imagined idea of reading and writing this season.

I am doing both, but they are being done in a utilitarian way, not in any way that could be called orderly or disciplined.

But then, that’s almost redundant to say on this blog, since that seems to be the regular pattern and progression of my growth.

Anyway, on to the book, finished clear back on January 6.

~ ~ ~

This was a fascinating example of story overcoming its way of being told.

I, along with many of the snarky unpublished, have at times commented in a vague (or not-so-vague) way about the amateur quality of writing in certain popular books.

With this day I hope I am done with such comments, being, I believe, founded largely on an assumed standard that (while useful) is frequently ignored without great loss.

What I speak of in this book isn’t just an over use of adverbs, or (just) telling versus showing, but the wrestling between my wanting to know what happens next and feeling slowed in that finding by the sloppy-choppy means of presentation.

You might gather from the rhythm of this writing that the book was written in a rather archaic and stilted style. (It is one of my characteristics– I almost wrote flaws— to fall into the rhythm of language I’ve been nearest.)

This book is reprinted from a series of missionary stories that took place in the first millenium A.D., recounting the entrance of the gospel into heathen Europe (in this story’s case, Germany, in 703).

It is a painfully beautiful example of God as the perfect writer, calling together all those circumstances, “coincidences” and personalities that create the most satisfying story.  The one we’re too cynical to “allow” or believe before we know it’s true— though everything happens as our heart tells us it “should.”

The only example I dare give is a pagan perjuring himself by his god and own right hand.  He loses that hand– but not as soon or in the way I expected.  And still, as seems to be the message of the whole story, God’s gracious compassion “conquers all.”

There is not always peace for the good (“You will have suffering in this world.“) but God will not be mocked.  His will is accomplished (“Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”).

It needs re-written.  It need a broader audience.  But (in a manner that I think the ESV translators also use) there is something with the stilted delivery, in it’s very austerity and clunkiness, that lends authority to the telling.

If I ever attempt Script Frenzy it might be on this narrative. I think for our jaded world to embrace this story we’d have to have some intensely sincere performances.  But with those it could soar.

This is an effective example of God’s divine orchestration of the lives of kings, and when/if this gets brought to film, I pray it is every bit as solemn, amazing and believable as it deserves to be.

The story itself is about a Christian girl who agrees to marry the pagan ruler of their corner of Germany in order to prevent to expulsion of the other Christian missionaries and their work.  She is a faithful wife and Christian, steadfastly standing for the unadulterated gospel while enduring slander and fear.

It is surprisingly romantic (in both senses of the word) and my only excuse for not having a more coherent review is that I’d have to translate the story itself first.

As it stands the best I feel I can do is give a very exciting list of bullet points, and that hardly seems appropriate for a book review.

To those who complain fairy/folk tales are unrealistic

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The point of folk/fairy tales isn’t to be  über-original, or show a balanced view of humans, in all their contradictions and shades of good and evil.

The point of these tales is to look at the good and the evil (as represented by the characters), and then to decide what to do with them.

Whether we will encounter evil in this life is not the question.  The question is, What will we do with the evil we find?  Will we fear it?  Flee it?  Fight it?  Surrender to it?

This is what these tales explore.

Leave the fine distinctions of good in the heart of goblins or evil wizards to those writing for a more “modern” purpose, and let the folk tales do what they’ve done for millennia: personify good and evil, and let us watch how they interact.