Author Archives: Amy Jane

Advice from the Unqualified

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Have you ever thought about how, technically, people at the same level as you are not qualified to give you advice?

Take parenting, for example.  I’ve offered quite a bit of random advice here, all written down because I expect it to be useful (to someone… sometime… somewhere…) but if you were looking for real results, you wouldn’t look at my advice.

For that you would look around for some mother whose kids are grown and turned out the way you want your kids to turn out.  That’s results.  That’s experience.

Unfortunately, those moms can also be most insensitive to the place where you are currently living.

“Oh yeah,” says one lady enthusiastically, the first time I bring my 2-year-old and 6-month-old to practice for the musical Beauty and the Beast, “I brought my four kids with me *everywhere.* It’s so good to have them watching real life.”

Six weeks later she was irritated with me for bringing my baby, even with the 2-year-old farmed out.

I thought it was tremendously silly: even wearing the baby I could do all the choreography, and felt rather pleased with myself at that.

So I am not an expert in mothering: I am only keeping notes about what’s worked for me as I go along.  And sometimes that has been helpful.

In the same way

I am not a best-selling novelist.  I am not even a published writer (beyond our local paper), but I read people who are, and I am writing. I also happen to be very good at compiling and extrapolating.

So.  I have advice about writing.  Yay for me.  ;)

I’ll just share the thing on my mind just now, that provoked this post, and perhaps I’ll write more in the future.  But if there was one thing I could say to anybody gung-ho about getting published it’s this:

Don’t Trust Yourself.

Aren’t I mean? That’s the opposite of every female-written piece of advice I’ve ever seen published.  But I think it’s very important.

If you’re already convinced you’re a great writer, that you can slap your best stuff together on the first go around, I (or anyone else who might disagree with your assessment) am not going to seem all that helpful.  And you’re not going to be very easy to work with.  The trick is to let other people (the kind of people who should know) praise your writing.

There’s a great story in G.K. Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy where Ches is speaking with a publisher who remarked, “That man will get on; he believes in himself.”

Chesterton’s reply began with the observation that those who believe most in themselves are the ones who end up in lunatic asylums.  When the publisher protested they don’t all go there Chesterton agreed.

“And you of all men ought to know them.  That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself.  That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself.  If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.

Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay.  It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself.

Strong words, and mentioned largely for their hyperbole, I mean them to illustrate my point; that is, no matter how much we believe in something, unless there is external proof backing up the belief our own effort or enthusiasm is irrelevant.

So, write if you must (it’s certainly cheaper than therapy!), don’t try to stop if you can’t, and feel grateful for your certainty if you know God had called you to write.

Just remember that He may not be calling that publisher to distrubute your work, and you’ll have healthier expectations.

Learning Humor

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I *really* don’t want one more more thing to investigate– one more thing to learn– but, like I mentioned a while back, I’ve always wondered if I could learn to be funny(er).

Two examples of my inherently serious nature/demeanor:

  1. When the kids were younger and growing more verbal, one of the girls asked me, “Why is your face angry?”  I realized I was concentrating on something and she couldn’t tell the difference between that and angry.  I tried to soften my expression and excuse it by saying, no, Mother wasn’t mad, it was my “thinking face.”  The explanation obviously sank in because they asked several times over the next few weeks, “Mama, are you thinking again?”
  2. My children have made it quite clear to me that it is the role of men to be “silly.”  Mommies and Grandma’s are most-definitely not silly.  (And, most of the time in this family, they’d be right.  I come by most things naturally.)

I was vaguely troubled by the realization that so much of what we find funny comes out of anger (sarcasm, slapstick, thwarted expectations), so I was both relieved and delighted to come across another example of humor in the book I finished a couple weeks back.

Gladwell used improvisational theatre as an example of topic of instant-processing and discussed what made it successful.

In the course of this discussion he compared improv to basketball– pointing out the parallels of working within a set a rules to know how to respond to the people around– while you want to win ultimately you want to keep the game going.

Actors working together on an improv have to agree to a set of rules before they begin in order for the piece to “work.”

The rule that Gladwell emphasized in particular:  One must accept everything that is offered.  The unnatural state that invariably follows can hardly help being funny.

“Think of something you wouldn’t want to happen to you or to someone you love,” wrote Keith Johnstone, one of the founders of improv theatre.  “Then you will have thought of something worth staging or filming… In life most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action.  All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very ‘gifted’ improvisers.  Bad improviser block action, often with a high degree of skill.  Good improvisers develop action.”

~

“The humor arises entirely out of how steadfastly the participants adhere to the rule that no suggestion can be denied.”

In those two summaries– essentially by looking cross-genre– I understood better than I ever consciously did before what to do when I’m looking for a story.  I’m not just trying to be a sadist (though that frequently helps), and I’m not strictly looking instantly for conflict (I’ve complained before that feels like a cheep shortcut).

That is, I’m not looking to instantly make it as huge as possible– two immovable forces– because then, despite its hugeness, it will stall.

In reading the book’s examples of following or not-following the rule, I remembered my one semester of high school drama.

I was most-definitely a blocker.  There was only one improv over the whole semester I was in that went well (probably because this rule was never articulated), and that one should have humiliated me, but it didn’t.  It might have been the only time that semester I was in complete “agreement” and had locked-in with my classmates.

In that moment, having “clicked,” I got a taste of why kids will do stupid things for their peers.

~

There was a near-psychic unity of purpose that frightened me just a little: we were dancing on the edge of “inappropriate,” but winning, and I mistrusted myself for being able so easily to align with those whose character I didn’t trust.

It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I fully “relaxed” enough to see my peers not as subversive tools of an oppositional force but young humans swimming after purpose and focus the same me.  Until that point I felt resistance to them was part of resisting sin.

On some level this makes me sad– that I spent 2 ½ years on high-alert (approaching fear) of my age-mates– but on the other hand I sometimes think that schooled mistrust was what (ultimately) kept me safe until I developed greater discernment.

And so I’m recognizing that my kind of being funny has a lot to do with trust, because until I trust that a situation is “safe” I don’t relinquish control.

Jay and I (like most couples) have our own humor that hinges on things like looks and lines half-spoken or left unsaid.  But invariably they depend on one person taking a fall trusting the other one will catch them.  That sort of mutual dependence feeds itself, growing stronger and deeper the more times it’s proven.

One becomes “ingrown,” perhaps, but that becomes delicious: “your own brand of magic,”

the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to just a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage…

their response and and your performance twinned.

The jokes over the phone.  The memories packed

in the rapid-access file…

(from Perfection Wasted by John Updike)

This is where my (other) favorite kind of humor comes from– for those times when there’s just not enough brain to be witty, but there’s certainly enough heart to play.

Oh, Right.

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Three years today.

Current stats:

  • 634 posts on Untangling
  • 279 posts at Family News

I’ll make my annual list of self-determined faves from the last year. . . eventually.

But mostly my mind– and mood– is still filled with #s 5-7 below.

So, while congrats are always nice, I desire your prayers most of all.  Especially for wisdom as I try to determine where my place of service is in this new balance of things.

7 Quick Takes (Vol. 7)

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~ ~ 1 ~ ~

On Wednesday I was up early and knew I was close to finishing my story.  I felt as restless as a cat looking for a place to have her kittens.  I was agitated at not being able to finish what was so close, and ended up cleaning the whole house.

As in: the whole. house.

  • Both bathrooms
  • all the floors
  • playroom
  • bedrooms
  • laundry washed
  • 3 dishwashers run and emptied

I had called and griped to Jay earlier in the day: frustrated at having to wait, and very close to nagging at him to give me more time.  When he came home he was more than impressed.

He took the kids the rest of the evening and it was that night I reached my ending.

~ ~ 2 ~ ~

With a clean house I am a better mom.

Yesterday I let the kids paint until their projects filled the whole table with their drying.  Today I could say yes when they asked to use playdough.

When the house is cluttered (and stuff is dried on the table) I never let them use all the cool stuff I’ve collected for them to use.   So this has been fun.

I read aloud more when the house is clean, too.  I’ve just, well, like I said, been a better mom.

~ ~ 3 ~ ~

Jay and I give the children our one-sided pages for their artwork.  Yesterday on the back of their painting I found a page of my original-original novel (as in, I couldn’t find the passage until I went back to my roughest draft) that addresses an issue I’m working out now.

Namely, how to make the Hero more interesting than his foil.

It also brings in a secondary character who (I’d made a note about) needed to be introduced earlier for better context.  I read the back of the paper with great interest, making mental notes about where it belonged and what to change.

When I came back out of my office/bedroom I saw Natasha turn over the painting and read the page.  I started loading the dishwasher and she looked up, startled.  “Is this from one of your stories?” she asked.

~ ~ 4 ~ ~

I’ve fallen off the wagon.

That is, I’m buying books again.

It started innocently enough, as it did last year: buying for the children’s schooling.  Then finding several $2 books that I really wanted for my reference shelf (analyzing folk and fairy tales) then picking up the used books that fit my collection, just because they were available and would cost twice as much new.

Once I’d gotten that far I just shrugged and figured I’d blown it.  So I’m back to normal.

And normal’s okay for me.  I guess that’s what makes it normal.

~ ~ 5 ~ ~

Having just returned a couple weeks ago from my uncle’s memorial service, I am thrown for another loop by the news of another man in his early 50s who died just last night.  One of the deacons in our little church.

We got a call as the hospital was doing CPR, and I was shaken by the horrid feeling that I was entering that new life-stage I had only vaguely been aware of 5 years ago, where you start watching friends die.

I remember being delighted with the awareness that I was so much in the “adult” group now that I was making friends with other adults– some old enough to be my parents.  Sure I’d been friendly with adults my whole life, but it was like they always knew they were doing me a favor (or that I was doing them one) because we weren’t of the same clan.

And now the down-side.  I get to outlive people I love.

Really stinks.

Then I have to wonder what it was like for my Grandpa living longer than many of his friends or, like I’m reading about just now in Numbers, the Israelites loosing a whole generation (a good million people I’ve heard it estimated) in 40 years, and that would be around 68 deaths a day.

So I get a little perspective (“Everybody dies,” my girls chirrup every time we watch Enchanted), and I’m not nearly as morose.  But I’m still sad, and I think that’s okay.

Paul said we need to know the truth about those who die, “so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.”  But I take that to mean not that we won’t grieve, but that we will grieve with hope.

We grieve for ourselves, and our loss– and while realizing that makes me feel incredibly selfish, it’s not really going to change my behavior much, other than I’m trying to shift my feelings to think more of the family and their loss: recognizing whatever I feel is nothing compared to them.

~ ~ 6 ~ ~

When my dad’s dad died I was 14.  The thing I remember most is watching my parents from the back seat– my mom’s hand on my dad’s leg as we drove the unfamiliar town my where my Papa had lived.  And the words my mom used to describe that time.

I don’t know when I actually heard them, but they’ve defined my feelings so many times:

You see that pain someone is feeling, and you start to put yourself there, wanting to share their loss, or understand what they’re feeling– but it’s too much.  It’s too painful, and you have to pull back.

~ ~ 7 ~ ~

I’ve been comparing European fairy tales and Greek myths this week (looking at episodes from The Storyteller series is what prompted this chain of thought).

And have you noticed none of the Greek myths really end well?  Really.  I can’t think of one that ends well (feel free to correct me).

I began thinking that this could have something to do with Christ.

The Greek stories all pre-date him, and center on a time when the best men could hope for or imagine was more powerful versions of themselves.  Humans felt knocked about by the world and never knew where or how they would land.  Human folly irreparably destroying lives.

The fairy tales, by contrast, have just as much folly and trial and tears, but rooted in a world where the Church had gained great influence there is always the founded hope that the end will come ’round right.

This relief of “happily ever after” (or at least, an ending moment of peace– which is more common if you actually run the numbers) is what ties me so tightly to the Tales I love.

To me it is a reflection of the hope and promise of heaven: that after enduring all trials, through obedience and because of a power beyond ourselves, we have the assurance that will never again be alone or in need.

It is a hope big enough to carry us through every pain and loss.

For more 7 Quick Takes visit Jen’s Conversion Diary

Other 7 Quick Takes on Untangling Tales

The End

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I reached it.

I am amazed.

Stories I have in plenty; endings are one thing I have a dearth of.

Two next-steps:

First, updating the added strands of story so they all are current with this version.

Second, I have the notes I made as I went along, like, this event needs to be grounded in an earlier hint, and, she can’t be standing on the left and be doing that on the right.

I’ve got nearly 50 pages of notes, and while I know they aren’t all changes I need to make (most is just a dated list of how much work was done each session) I still get a bit psyched out if I let myself think beyond just a page or two at a time.

Time to Get up Early Again

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Spring is not near by any stretch, but here in the North we have reached a different milestone: being able again to open the drapes when we watch Daddy leave for work, and leave them open.

The light is back!

This makes early rising much more natural and achievable.  I’ve spent the last couple days adjusting my internal clock, and I’m all ready to go.  Woo Hoo!  (Of course, I say that here to twist my own arm a bit to do it.)

I met a gal last week who said growing up in Alaska she gained 15 pounds every winter and lost it every spring.

Winter changes your life.  And so does summer.

So I’ve been up early the last several days and have been picking at that last chapter (it’s turned into a total re-write, so it’s a bit slow-going).

I’m reinspired just now, though, because in a pure, words-per-minute way, morning writing is decidedly more productive than evening writing.  For now I can still see how much is being accomplished in terms of word count.

I think it’s the natural sense of urgency that I can only write until the day “starts” at 7a.m.

At night it’s a lot easier (or perhaps I should say “more natural”) to dawdle and stare off into space.

I’m not implying these have no value, but not all of them are productive (even sideways) and they certainly don’t get the story written down.  Every writer needs both kinds of work.

At night, when the fire of creativity is lit, it’s much easier to ignore the tugging and begging of one’s body complaining it’s tired than it is in the morning to ignore a similar tugging of little hands and voices.

Knowing that that is coming– hearing the restlessness in the next room as little eyes watch the clock waiting for that long-anticipated 7:00— has the effect of hurrying me along.  I agonize less over adjectives and race instead to know what happens next?

~ ~ ~

The challenge just now is balancing my theme of teamwork against the need to stay focused on the main character.  The first version of this ending was a mass of names and bodies throwing themselves at the problem, and the importance of Linnea and her contribution in bringing the fight to this (manageable) point was lost in the surge.

On one level you could say I don’t trust Linnea (my main character).

~

She’s not all that charismatic or attention-gathering by her personality or wit, and there have been times when I’ve feared she’ll be overshadowed by her companions, so I feel very strongly she needs to be as distinctive as possible at the end.

So this morning I think I found a way to do what I want to do, and I’m just itching to play with it (but I can’t just now ’cause my brain won’t work that way when I’m juggling kids).  So that’ll either wait till an early bedtime or tomorrow morning.

I should mention, because it might be of interest, that this teamwork vs. the individual dichotomy became most clear while watching Disney’s Dinosaur with my kids Sunday.  That’s a show that tries to be all about teamwork, but it still comes down to the one in the end.

~

Made me think about my goals and how they looked in another story.

Bookin’

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As in, moving quickly.

I put up more than 2,000 words in the last two days.  Which is really good for me.

Actually the whole of it is one scene– the first wholly new scene I’ve written from scratch since… I can’t remember when (rewriting the one I’d already written didn’t count– I knew where it needed to start and end).

One very. rough. scene.  But it sort of fixes the problem of #1 in my 7 Quick Takes for the novel, so I’ve got one more thing off my immediate to-do list.

By the time I cycle back around to it I should be able to iron out the really lumpy parts and just keep the useful stuff.

I only have three scenes left people—three!— and everything I wrote that month, long, long ago, will have been chewed through at least once.  Everything in this document will be brought into alignment with the final storyline.

I wish now I’d kept track of how much of that month I wrote one-handed, nursing a 6-month-old all hours of the day and night.

And people asked me how I could get so much written when I had a little baby…

Education as Savior

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Here is an attitude pervasive through our society, and unless you are looking for it, there’s no natural reason to be wary of it.

But it isn’t Biblical.

It was most clearly brought to my attention within the last month, as I was reading Wilson’s The Case for Classical Christian Education.

Modern society does not want to recognize the existence of and problem that does not admit of a human-engineered solution. This solution invariably comes down to some form of education.

I saw the perfect example of this when reading the introduction to a popular education book on the way back from Anchorage this weekend. It was clear the author sincerely believed that if only we could get this education thing *right* we’d finally have everything we’ve hoped for.

That idea might have struck me as vaguely creepy before, but it hardly seems fair to argue against. After all, what other means do we have to even attempt pursuing this high goal?

It was after reading that paragraph from Wilson’s book that a number of things I’ve been struggling with began to come into clearer focus.

I must say, writing a novel while living my life has the tremendous effect of forcing me to see innumerable parallels. Wasn’t I just talking about seeing things more clearly? Things I sort of knew already, but couldn’t quit get at because they weren’t quite… clear.

Anyway, having something before my eyes always makes a tremendous difference for me.

I’m not saying self-education is a bad thing (I live on a steady diet of that); I’m asking, Where is the first place I turn?

If we were not so dependent on the Holy Spirit we could claim our own efforts (frequently to self-educate– some of us) were our solution, our salvation.

In the same way that I can hardly complain of not understanding everything about God (3-in-1? Jesus incarnate = 200%?), I’m beginning to think I should not be surprised when my own efforts or *will* is insufficient to accomplish something.

And I’m beginning to wonder if this is so often the reason why a project may fail, even with with the best of intentions and planning: We really can’t do anything on our own; Jesus himself promised that.

It seems to me we must take that dependence as the most essential starting place, and throw ourselves on the mercies of God if we expect to get anything significant accomplished.

But don’t you dare take that as a suggestion to do nothing. I affirm the “folksy” saying (with my own observations):

Pray as if everything depends on God (because,of course, you know it does). Work as if everything depends on you (because you don’t know how much of it does).

Salvation, of course, is by faith. But blessings (and I would include success here), the Scriptures tell us, are measured out by obedience.

But to finish what I started:

Education is the solution only as much as ignorance is the problem. That is, for “defects of character” or manifestations of Original Sin, education has no relief to offer.

But Jesus does.  We’ll be much more effective when we start there.

Never Save Anything for Your Next Book

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That is a point emphasized in one of the bossiest and most point-by-point practical books I’ve read on novel-writing.

You Can Write a Novel by James V. Smith Jr.

He approaches the process from a strictly utilitarian point of view; if you are hoping to be published, think in those terms from the beginning: Here, let’s rate your idea.  Is it strong enough to sell?  No?  Throw it out and try again!

~

Anyway, I’ve been thinking in terms of two books for months now, but Book Two has been much more hazy than Book One that is getting more-done every week.

Seeking to re-clarify things for myself I backed up and tried to name my three story strands– the magic number, remember?– and actually found them this time.

  • Linnea’s journey from abused single mother to strong defender and cherished wife
  • The journey of the mysterious stranger from slavery and isolation to freedom and community
  • The almost love-story of another pair of secondary characters (yes, I’m sure anybody will guess.  It’s part of the fun of prediction, isn’t it?  Knowing you’re right).

Once I had these clearly before me I could look at what I had bumped to Book Two for the wrong reasons.  When those pieces were added/returned to my current document it suddenly clarified the question of what Book Two was actually about.

Currently it’s nearly a complete thematic opposite, which is fascinating to me, considering how important I see the original themes.

It also made this finishing process a bit easier because now all of my three strands are happening where we are now, and the time line of the second book may be fitted to this one, rather than trying to write them simultaneously (I was drowning).

As a side-note the compilation bumped my word-count by a solid 10%.  This can be good or bad, but I’ve determined I’m not going back to iron out the added sections until I reach *The End* of my current track.