Author Archives: Amy Jane

Practice as Service

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Writing to this blog does take time that could be spent on other, theoretically, productive things, and I have occasionally returned to the question of whether maintaining this site, basically for my own entertainment, it worth that time.

With all my commitments and desires and interests, everything I do continually comes back under scrutiny.

I look at things over and over again, determining why they’re in my life, and whether they are performing their intended function (it’s really easy to throw away magazines in this mood).

Several times this week I’ve used the analogy of a musician practicing scales, when I try to explain my writing, or why I write.

In themselves scales are not particularly beautiful music, and doing them isn’t even for anyone but the musician. But it is those daily exercises that provide the necessary familiarity with the instrument that enables him/her to be an accomplished musician.

My writing may, as I say, be solely for my own entertainment, but everything I do is honing my craft, and preparing me for my next piece.

I no longer question if this writing has value, because I am convinced it does.

Doubtless it was hours and days of David’s “diddly-dorking around” with a sling and stones that prepared him first for the lion and the bear, and ultimately for Goliath.

Practice is a form of faithful service.

It assumes that there is something worth preparing for (a word in season, for example), and rises to that call.

I’ve been writing stories for a long time…

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Here are a few tags I thought might sound interesting. I’ve been cruising through old files tonight (yes, avoiding my current novel– telling myself I’m too distracted/tired to work on it just now…)

Oh, help! Marika thought desperately. Will no one rescue me?

She huddled absurdly under her bed in the darkness, she, nearly 13, and almost too big to fit. She’d played at this game before. The memory seemed obscene now.

She’d played at losing her parents and being alone in the house when robbers came– just for the safely contained thrill of fear.

And now it was coming true. She stuffed the fabric of her skirt into her mouth to muffle the choking sobs. She was not a coward, but this was too much for her.

The snuffling sounds of dogs came into the large bedchamber, and Marika wished she could faint, certain she’d be quieter if unconscious.

~ ~ ~

Then this, like my current work, is from a fairytale:

Two young men, born on the same day into very different families and circumstances, both expect to marry the same young woman.

It just so happens the girl they both want is under a curse from a slighted fairy (aren’t all the good ones?), and because of that something bad will happen if she ever is touched by the light of day. She just doesn’t know what.

Only because she doesn’t have the advantage of having read the title of the story, of course. It’s from The Orange Fairy Book, if I remember correctly, and is called The White Doe.

~ ~ ~ Continue reading »

A Plea to Leave the Stories Alone

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Someone gave my kids a 3-pack of cheap paperback picture books for Christmas last year.

I have nothing against paperback books in general, and I’m not trying to say this person was cheap. I mean the quality of the books and the content itself was cheap.

Maybe the best way to say it is that these are the types of children’s books that are easy to write (ouch.) or, maybe worse, the type of book that’s only worth reading (or listening to) when very young.

I like what C.S. Lewis says in a number of different ways, and that, essentially, is that a children’s book only worth reading as a child is not really worth reading at all.

One of these books was a softened version of Hansel and Gretel. There were a number of changes made to make it more child-friendly, and what good I felt the original story could communicate was removed altogether.

The wicked step-mother and the hunger were entirely removed. The children were not abandoned by an endlessly (emotionally) battered father, but were simply lost. Hansel was not resourceful and protective of himself and his sister, merely curious or careless, letting the crumbs fall– and foolish too, imagining they would be there in the morning. (The original, you remember, had him using stones at first.)

When we got to the the witch was where my husband began to object. He has different ideas than me (our kids get a double wammy) of what wrecks a children’s story– traditional or otherwise.

Gretel knew the old woman was a witch because she made the children work ever so hard, carrying water and firewood. Whenever Jay was compelled to read the story (because we kept forgetting to make it disappear) he changed the wording to say the children were very good to help such an old woman with her heavy chores.

In the end, again, it isn’t the children’s cleverness or resourcefulness that “saves” them, but luck and the witch’s own clumsiness. And they find treasure somewhere as the house burns down around them and they bring it out with them. (Jay’s retelling always had the father scolding the children for not leaving the burning building at once).

I don’t even remember the original story having treasure at the end.

~ ~ ~

I like retellings, Just not when they change the essence of the story.

I like “age appropriate” versions of traditional tales. My 4-year-old doesn’t need to know yet that Snow White’s stepmother, the queen, wanted to eat her liver and lungs. It is enough that she wanted her dead.

My 2-year-old doesn’t need to know that a woman is being accused of eating her own children. That will not add anything to the story for her.

The stories were originally entertainment for adults, and it is only natural that some things should be softened or omitted when they are used as entertainment for children. But that doesn’t mean they should be changed to be “safe” by “modern” standards.

Continue reading »

from The Sherwood Ring

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This was just delicious. I love Pope’s imagery (someday I’ll make a post of my faves from Perilous Gard).

Outside the sun was shining and the birds were singing and the open windows were clustered round with yellow roses…but I was in no mood to do anything but sit on the floor with my back to the garden and think bitterly about my wrongs and grievances.

There were a great many of them; and I was getting a certain miserable satisfaction from laying them all out and rummaging through them over and over again.

The Reading List has Changed Again

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And I won’t inflict this one on you, because it’s far too long.

A book review over at Writer…Interrupted prompted me to buy the book. It is a sequel, and I enjoyed the style of the original.

(And Jay was buying himself a camera, so you could call it a kickback.)

Like the review said, this author recommends reading 100 works in your genre/field (source/inspiration works are allowed to be counted) before you begin.

She acknowledges you are not likely to be able to finish all 100 before you are impelled to begin your own work, but to continue hammering away until you know your niche cold.

So I started making a list of all the books I have, and have loved, and have drawn from (my folktale collections, for example), that are related to what I’m writing (Novelized fairy/folk-tale/YA fantasy).

Then I added the books I’d read that I hadn’t liked, and new books from authors I’d read only one book from, where the additional works were of the same pocket. I am currently at 67 titles.

This is somehow a surprise to me (to come in so far under the mark).

If anyone has some suggestions to round out my list, I’m open to hearing them.

So far I have more than one work (some read, some to read) on the list from Robin McKinley, Jo Napoli, Shannon Hale, Jeri Massi, Cornelia Funke, P.B. Kerr, and Gail Levine and Patricia Wrede. I also have J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, but I think I added them for padding because I was trying to make count.

Pullman (I only got through the first 1 ½-2 of his Dark Materials set) was one of those on my list I don’t recomend, but was probably worth reading as a genre guide.

The first genre-specific reading I’ve started for this marathon (and I already am hooked) is The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope.

This was a natural beginning, as I’m mentioned many times before that I adore her Perilous Gard. This was the only other book she wrote, and that nearly 20-years before.

Gives me a bit of perspective, certainly.

The Miller, the Cook, and the King’s Three Questions– a Tuesday Tale

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A prosperous, easy-going miller was brought into trouble with his king when the miller’s cook brazenly painted, “I have no cares in all the world,” across the side of the miller’s house,

when any fool ought to know this is simply an invitation to trouble.

The king himself saw the declaration and sent a message to the unsuspecting miller, demanding he present himself in the throne room in one week’s time with the answers to three impossible questions:

  • How many stars are in the heavens?
  • What is the king worth?
  • What is the king thinking?

The miller’s life would be forfeit if he didn’t answer to the king’s satisfaction.

Understandably peeved at his cook, the miller went to his kitchen with much hand-wringing and agonizing over the unfairness of his own lot.

The cook, feeling just a little bit responsible, offered to go in the miller’s place to answer the king, being ready (he assured his master) also to take the ax if his answers were unsatisfactory.

This solution seemed most appropriate to the miller (the king knew neither of them, making the switch possible) and he agreed. After a few sleepless nights the cook felt prepared.

Appearing before the king in the miller’s clothes, the cook entered the throne room pushing a wheelbarrow filled with sacks of flour.

“What’s this?”

“It is the answer to your first riddle, O Majesty,” the false miller replied. “I have collected a grain of flour for every heavenly star– though the exercise quite addled my wits and my memory.

“If you want the exact number and have the grains re-counted, please remind me of the total.”

The king smiled and let the matter of the first question pass by.

In answer to the second question, the false miller offered a sum of 29 pieces of silver. The king was about to be offended by this when the cook reminded him that Jesus himself was sold for 30 pieces of silver.

“Finally,” said the false-miller, pulling off his hat, “I will read your thoughts: You are thinking that I am the miller, when, in truth, I am his cook.”

The king was pleased with the cook’s clever answers and ordered that both he and the miller should be richly rewarded.

The cook returned to his position in the miller’s household, and together they changed the writing on the house to read, “We have no cares in all the world!”

(Most recently read variant was in Clever Cooks.)

Doing What We Really Want to Do (part 3)

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(Actually writing this down is a little embarrassing. It seems painfully obvious once it’s in print, but here ya go):

My final conclusion: I was right the first time (The second time too– but that wasn’t where I raised the question).

Barring other hardships, we really do do what we want to do. But, if you don’t get something done, that doesn’t have to mean it’s not at all important to you, or that you don’t care about it; it primarily means that you care about something else more.

~ ~ ~

This train of thought started with I’m Stuck, which I wrote after a Sunday School teachers’ meeting where I was fixated the idea that because I don’t do better/more preparation I must not want to. It made me feel that I must either be very undisciplined or simply not value my role of teaching the little children.

Neither of which I felt was quite accurate or fair.

In Getting Un-stuck, I shared a sort of “holding pattern” God led me to while my plane of thought (Oooo– I’m upgrading! Hmm, Or down? Anyway…) circled around to queue up for another attempt at a coherent landing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yesterday I sat down and made a list in one of those SAT, go-with-your-first- instinct sort of ways. Up to this point I think I was putting things into two categories (this is where the trouble in Stuck came from, I believe):

  1. Want to/important to me– I do.
  2. Not important to me/don’t want to do/not interested– I don’t do.

I felt an embarrassing sense that what was important or unimportant to me could be ascertained merely by looking at what I did and didn’t do.

And now I think that is only partially true.

Yesterday I suddenly had three categories (which, technically, was four categories, since I didn’t list anything from the above #2).

I began creating a more finely articulated hierarchy of priorities. Everything on the list was important to me, or I wouldn’t have put it there.

Sunday school came in at tier 3, which was utterly appropriate, even when I came back to think on it more.

  • Tier 1 had to do with our nuclear family, God, and my callings/ability.
  • Tier 2 was those things I’m primary responsible for and/or want to do. They make my daily life more rich and peaceful.
  • Tier 3 was where my periphery interests sit, and the things I do simply because they need to be done.

Jay asked, “So you really put teaching Sunday school lower than doing housework?”

“Well, yes,” I said (having my epiphany). “Home is supposed to come before outside ministry. Putting Sunday school in tier three didn’t lower teaching as much as it raised (emphasized) that housework sits at Tier 2.”

That was one of those needed-to-write-down-to-understand things.

I seem to have a lot of those… But at least I’ve got the mechanism down.

Friends

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The second half of my freshman year in college I had one of my most unique friendships, unlike anything before or since.

We were all the same age, and at the same level in our schooling, but beside that (and our faith in Jesus) we seemed to have little in common. We had different body-types, personalities, hobbies and majors.

I can’t remember now how we came to spend so much time together. It was bad for my Biorhythms (I learned with these friends to stay out late) and my Biology 106 grade, but good in every other way.

While staying up late we talked about what we’d read in our Bibles, discussing the scriptures and sharing thoughts about life and growing up. All that sorting out of life that begins snowballing in college? We hacked away at it in student housing, late into the night.

I still lived at home. I got my first curfew.

We all become like what we spend time with. This is why aspiring writers are told to spend time with good books.

I couldn’t understand was why my mom felt so reserved about this relationship when I knew it was doing so many neat things for me.

I admired the openhearted generosity and creativity of the one friend. I aspired to the intellectual honesty and self-discipline of the other. Both of them modeled a healthy disinterest in what others thought of them, something I struggled with. And I learned new (healthier) eating habits.

When I finally tried to explain it to my mother, I described the three of us us as colors: I was red, she was white, he was black; as different as we could be and still complementary and complete.

“But that’s the problem,” my mother said. “You’re so complete you don’t need anyone. What will you do if someone else comes along? There’s no room for anyone else.”

She might have been concerned that I wouldn’t feel a need to date while my intellectual and emotional needs were being so thoroughly met in a platonic relationship (I’ll have to ask her someday).

The statement got me thinking for the first time about how exclusive friendships are supposed to be.

I was so excited to finally have “best” friends, “in” jokes, and crazy shared memories, I was not thinking past us.

(In our own defense we did include a fourth person, and more, several times in our adventures– one a story for another time– but the question still stood.)

That friendship “broke-up” within a year, due to travel and shifts in interests and life-foci.

For a long time I missed what we shared more than I missed the individuals themselves (we still saw each other around). The camaraderie was gone. I mourned its passing and seeing once-intimate friends dissolve into mere acquaintances.

My mother, once again my only confidant, listened to me articulate my disappointment. It had a lot to do with time invested and memories grown, and how it seemed I as the only one they mattered to any more.

“You are going to love being married,” Mom said. “You have a best-friend to share everything with– build memories with– and they never go away.”

And she was right.

Changing Habits

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From Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, originally published 1934.

Old habits are strong and jealous. They will not be displaced easily if they get any warning that such plans are afoot; they will fight for their existence with subtlety and persuasiveness.

If they are too radically attacked they will revenge themselves; you will find, after a day or two of extraordinarily virtuous effort, all sorts of reasons why the new method is not good for you, why you should alter it in line with this or that old habit, or actually abandon it entirely.

In the end you will have had no good from the new advice; but you will almost certainly feel you have given it a fair trial and it has failed.

Your mistake will have been that you tired yourself out and exhausted your good intentions before you had a chance to see whether or not the program was the right one for you.

This resonated with me– as few “motivational” essays or calls for “visualization” have:

This is not a plea to abandon the will. There will be times and occasions when only the whole weight of the will brought to bear on the matter in hand will prove effective.

But the imagination plays a far greater role in our lives than we customarily acknowledge, though any teacher can tell you how great an advocate the imagination is when a child is to be led into a changed course.

House Update

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Mainly because of my confession below, I wanted to say that I’d scraped together the energy to pull together my front room and make it baby-friendly again.

(My version of baby friendly is somewhat different than his: Elisha rather liked having a floor to graze from. He’s managed to recover from his disappointment.)

And this morning I caught up on some dishes while the girls played with water in the dishwasher door. I was disappointed, though, that the water doesn’t all just pour into the dishwasher when you close the door (like I thought it should) or even drain out once it’s in.

{shrug}

File away for future reference.