What Can You Write When You're Blocked?

Writer's block. Or maybe we could call it writer's agonized paralysis or writer's internal annihilation. Some real writers say they've been through it, others say it's an imaginary condition.

In my imaginary life, writer's block is a fact of it. Oh, the creeping horror of it all! The days when even thinking about sitting down to work on a writing project has me on the edge of panic. The times when my mind insists that a perfectly sound writing idea I've been working on is hopelessly bad, and must be abandoned in favor of something with more prospects.

In time the repeated effects of the block put my self-esteem in the bargain basement and below. I mentally re-write my writing history to eliminate the proud moments and magnify the failures. I'm nothing, I'm no one....

I'm a writer. I am a woman made out of stories. I don't know how to be anything else. When I decide to give it all up forever, I am making up new stories in my head within four hours.

Thomas Mann said: "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

I write like Thomas Mann now.

What can you write when you're blocked? What can you do, right now, in spite of your writer's block? Can you write a poem, a short story, a fanfic, a dirty limerick? Can you write a blog post or a Facebook status update? Do that, then.

But that isn't getting your novel written! you exclaim. True, but any writing you can do outside the novel is a step toward finding a way back into the novel.

Can you scrawl some lines into your journal? Perhaps you can write a few lines of your novel by hand in a composition book during a commercial break during The Walking Dead. Or if you cannot do that, perhaps you can transcribe some handwritten lines of your novel previously written into your YWriter novel file or your Open Office file.

Can you write a to-do list for your day's chores? Perhaps you can do some work on outlining your novel. Perhaps you can even do a full outline using the Snowflake method. You might think, well, what if I can write a full outline, how does that help if I'm too blocked to write the novel? But once you have outlined, you may find you can write the novel, at least a little bit at a time.

This is how to write when you have writer's block. Find things you can write outside the planned novel, and then see if you can't transfer that into your planned novel.

It's hard. It's almost impossible. But you're a writer. That's what makes writing so hard for you. And that's why you do it anyway.

How about you? In what ways is writing more difficult for you than for other people? Do you have any methods for getting around those difficulties?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

IWSG: Humble Writing Projects

 Written for the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop.

 It's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and so it's time for my annual re-read of 'No Plot? No Problem' by Chris Baty, founder of NaNo. And what struck me on this read-through is the value of having a humble estimation of your writing project.

While trying to write a first draft at a rapid pace, it can be FATAL to decide you are working on the Great American Novel. You will constantly be tempted to stop/slow down to get every word just right. It will seem like a good idea to skip two or three writing days in order to do research on a few minor things for your story, to make sure everything is just right.

The NaNo approach isn't about sitting down to write great literature and getting everything right. It's about getting things WRITE. It's OK to write second-or-third rate prose for NaNo. It's OK to use Thuggy for a minor thug character's name and plan to give him a real name in the rewrite. It's OK to write INSERT CLEVER PLOT THING HERE and move on.

The NaNo goal--- 50000 words in a month--- seems insane for the inexperienced writer, but it actually works out to the sort of writing pace many of the best professional writers do routinely, at least during their youthful, energetic career phase. A number of writers have written decent novels in the period required or less. In fact, some in their heyday could do a write and rewrite of a 50000 word genre novel in a month after they had a bit of writing experience.

Many writers who did this were working on forms of fiction they thought of as 'potboilers'. Lawrence Block, the mystery writer, famously wrote a lesbian novel as his first published novel, and went on to write soft-core porn novels to pay the rent while also writing mystery short stories.

By giving yourself permission to write imperfect fiction, you are giving yourself the needed permission to WRITE. Even great novels are not perfect, and were even less perfect in the first draft.

Fear of error is a great source of insecurity for writers. For me, at an early age I somehow internalized the idea that making a mistake--- in writing or in other things--- was close to unforgivable. In school I often failed to complete writing assignments to avoid the shame of having my errors exposed--- even though my writing skill was ahead of that of my classmates.

By deciding that my current work in progress is NOT great literature, but more of a potboiler, perhaps closer to a writing exercise in combining incompatible genres (gothic romance, science fiction), I am able to reduce my overwhelming anxiety when sitting down to write. Yeah, I still have this sick feeling that I'm about to have a panic attack when I just think about sitting down to write, but this counters it a bit.

So, that's it about my humble and insignificant writing efforts. How are YOURS coming along?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

Halloween is Really a Christian Holy Day

Some people falsely say Halloween is the Devil's holiday. Others say it is a Pagan celebration. But the truth is that Halloween originated as part of a Christian feast day. "Halloween" means, literally, eve of All Saints day (All Hallows, in old-fashioned English).

In the Jewish tradition that Christianity came from, a day officially began at sundown, and so that is why the eve of a holy day is also part of the holy day. That's why there are Christmas Eve church services, and why modern Catholics have church services on Saturday evenings that 'count' as Sunday church attendance.

Why the confusion? Well, in the Victorian era folks were keen on collecting folklore, looking into old history going back to the pre-Christian era, and making various connections that were not always true. One thing was connecting various old folk celebrations of Christian feast days with vaguely similar Pagan events that were either in the historical record, or surmised.

All Saints and All Saints Eve celebration got mixed up with folklore from Celtic harvest traditions. The 'death' theme of the Celtic stuff came from the fact that cattle were butchered at this time for purely seasonal reasons--- grazing had come to an end so cattle could only be feed by preserved fodder such as hay, and cool weather meant that meat was easier to preserve.

All Saints had its origin in the concept of the Communion of Saints as mentioned in the Bible, and the customs connected with remembering the martyrs in the Early Church. The term 'saints' often refers in the Bible to all people who have received salvation through Christ, but since people could and did fall away from Christianity in times of persecution it was those who had passed away still loyal to the faith that were most particularly saints. Those who had died a martyr's death or who had lived exceptionally holy lives (by the grace of God) were even more likely to be called saints and in time the Church developed the custom of canonizing a worthy person as a saint.

Today the feast of All Saints is celebrated by Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians and other denominations as an official part of the church year like Christmas and Easter. In other denominations it may be celebrated unofficially. Some, though, deem it 'too Catholic', and since these groups often condemn Catholic practices (even those shared by Lutherans, etc.) as 'Pagan', there is another source of the 'Halloween is Pagan' myth.

Since Halloween is as much a Christian feast as any other, such as Christmas, it is within our rights to insist that the 'true meaning' of Halloween be honored. It's about remembering people like St. Stephen and Saint Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), not about devils, Dracula and Hannibal Lector. Encouraging kids to dress up as saints is a good idea. And if one of the kids insists on dressing as the devil, you might persuade his brother to go as Saint Michael and together they can represent the common image in Christian art of Saint Michael fighting the devil. (Remind your dear little 'devil' that Saint Michael wins.)

Our culture has been encroached upon by a lot of stuff we find to be wrong, from polygamy TV shows to smutty dance routines to drug peddlers on street corners. I think we would do well to reclaim popular things, like Halloween, that have been misinterpreted for too long a time.

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

NaNo Worksheet: Get Yours Now

Every month I make a writing goals worksheet, and NaNo month is certainly no exception. I also have transformed it into a PDF version which is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByKmSBhOQ1FSSDE3T2Izb25yRDQ/edit?usp=sharing

The rules I went by: NaNoWriMo has a goal of 50000 words in 30 days. I planned on taking the Sabbath off. Subtracting the 4 Sundays you'd need to write 1924 words every writing day. (If you keep a Saturday or Friday Sabbath, there are 5 days off which means you have to write 2000 words each working day.)

The work sheet has a column in which the total word count for the day is given. The next column is to write each day's actual final word count. The wider 3rd column is for jotting down the word count after each writing session, since one often has several writing sessions a day during NaNo.

It's actually fairly easy to make up a worksheet like this with your word processing software, but not everyone has learned to do this yet and so I thought I'd share my version.

Questions: Do you have any system, like my worksheet, to keep track of your daily word counts? What's your method like? Does it work well for you?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

The Importance of Orphans

Orphans--- along with widows, God's special concern in numerous Bible passages. And also, an important concern of literature.

Oliver Twist (pictured above), Cat from Joan D. Vinge's Psion, Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, Kal-El aka Clark Kent, Heidi, Dorothy Gale from Wizard of Oz, Dick Grayson from Batman, Martha Leigh from Victoria Holt's Mistress of Mellyn, Hannibal Lector, and many more. All are orphans, and in each case we probably couldn't imagine their story being the same if they weren't.

What is an orphan? Usually in English it means a child who has lost both parents, sometimes extended to an adult who lost both parents early in life. The Old Testament word for orphan means 'fatherless' (Strong's number 3490 for the Bible-literate out there who use that resource) and it's related to the word for 'lonely'. That is the origin of the common 'widows and orphans' phrase in the English language--- 'orphans' including the fatherless children of the widows as well as children who have lost both parents.

Feminists may hate this fact, but in traditional societies a child without a living father was without a male protector and had a precarious life. Stepfathers and male relatives often had little interest in seeing the fatherless child grow up and possibly inherit from his father what otherwise might be in the hands of the stepfather or male relative. And since fathers are the traditional providers for the family, widows and orphans were often poor even if the widowed mother had a trade as women often had even in Bible times (Proverbs 31:24). And even the financially successful widow had to sacrifice time and attention she would have given the child.

There is another word, 'half-orphan', which can refer to a child who has lost a parent of either sex. It's a literal translation of the German 'Halbwaise', 'Waise' meaning orphan. While 'half-orphan' is not so common in English I feel it ought to be used more for clarification purposes since 'orphan' so commonly means a child who has lost both parents.

Why are orphans so prominent in fiction? Because the orphaned child or young person is more vulnerable, and vulnerable is good for the writer. It is your bounden duty as a writer to get your character in a lot of trouble they can't easily get out of, and that's easier to do with an orphan.


Imagine Jane Eyre at the dreadful charity school Lowood. If she'd had living parents, no matter how poor, they would have pulled her daughter out of that school immediately, either teaching her at home or finding a more humane charity school.

Imagine Harry Potter growing up with two living wizarding parents. He would not have had to live with the Dursleys, and he would have two adult-wizard protectors against any danger. He would not have been the person he became in those circumstances.

Gothic fiction of the modern type, inspired by Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, nearly always has an orphaned heroine, of gentle birth but usually poor, trying to make her way in the world. Often she's a governess or other not-quite-servant in a creepy castle/mansion and the orphan status means she can't just leave her position when things get weird.


Another factor with orphans is that an orphan represents a rip in the fabric of 'the way things ought to be'. In a tribal culture, the person without parents, extended family or a clan to turn to is so bereft that they might as well be dead, and without a religious command to be kind to the widow and the orphan their lives are precarious indeed.

Even in our own family-disdaining culture the traditional situation of the biological parents being married and raising their children together to adulthood and beyond is a building block of our society. Other family situations succeed best the nearer they can get to that ideal example. The orphaned or half-orphan child may have good adoptive or stepparents, but usually feels an intense desire to know more about the biological family that produced him.

In fiction, the orphan character often mends the ripped fabric of his life usually by forming or becoming part of a family. Jane Eyre finds a husband in the end--- once that husband's mad wife dies. Harry Potter first becomes a virtual member of the Weasley family through his friendship with Ron and the maternal instincts of Ron's mother, and as an adult makes it official by marrying Ginny.

Series characters, on the other hand, often stay alone to keep the tension up, as in Cat from Psion. As a lonely outcast his story is compelling, giving him a wife, inlaws and kids, would have changed the storyline too greatly.

In some fiction, a character with living parents is set up to be orphan-like, at least temporarily. In a Gothic romance I read recently (Seven for a Secret by Victoria Holt), the heroine has a living mother in nursing care after a stroke, and a living father she's never met who lives off on an island somewhere, therefore she's the same as an orphan for much of the book.

In Mercedes Lackey's Magic's Pawn, young Vanyel has a harsh father who rejects him because he fears Vanyel shows signs of being gay (though at this point teen Vanyel doesn't even know homosexuals exist, much less that he's one of them.) Vanyel's mom is foolish and frivolous and won't stand up to her husband. Vanyel is sent away to his harsh old aunt whose first words to Vanyel are essentially, 'I didn't want you here, stay out of trouble and out of my way.' So during the crucial early stages he has no one to turn to, gets in a romantic relationship with a boy with family troubles, and has no one to confide in when his boyfriend asks Vanyel to help him seek revenge against the killer of his brother.

Later in the Vanyel series, the adult Vanyel has a close relationship with his aunt and reconciles with his parents--- just at a time when they become burdens to him, people he must protect with his now-great magical skills. So the author can make Vanyel a near-orphan when that is more dramatic and restores his family just when the family is no longer a needed support but people Vanyel has to protect. The best of both worlds, for a writer.

Who are your favorite fictional orphans, half-orphans, and almost-orphans? How does the effect of the characters' being orphans affect the story? Have you ever used orphans in your fiction? How did that work out? Are you writing any orphan characters right now?

In my as-yet-unnamed NaNo novel, the heroine, Hana Li, is the orphan child of parents who died on a starship while traveling to a colony planet. She was raised on a space station orphanage before getting a job on a colony planet, working for a man who lives in a creepy, castle-like structure which at the time of Hana's arrival is deserted for no reason Hana can detect. It turns out the owners of the castle are away, and they have hired a whole new staff of servants for their home as well as moving the inhabitants of three villages elsewhere and replacing them with farming folk from other parts of their world.


 Strong's Concordance (essential Bible Study tool):
New Strong's Exhautive Concordance (Super Value Series)

Blog Link:
The Anne Shirley Project: Anne Shirley and orphans in fiction


My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

Organizing for NaNoWriMo: Asperger - AD/HD Edition

 

NaNoWriMo 2013 begins Nov. 1st, which means that now is the time to make last-minute preparations. Since NaNo is a step up in writing intensity for most of us, chances are that our everyday ways of organizing our writing life might not hold up to NaNo.

Spending an hour looking for a few notes in a massive paper pile is NOT the way to succeed at NaNo. We need to be able to have a system to deal with the notes we generate, with the reference books we may need close to hand, and someplace to put our cups of tea and our writing snacks that don't put our precious paperwork at risk. And some of us are NOT organized people.

This is particularly a problem for people with Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorders or AD/HD. Those books on how to get organized often have suggestions that don't work well for people like us.

One example: file folders and file cabinet drawers. Many people use these tools with success, but for someone with the above-mentioned conditions, putting a paper in the file cabinet is a little like throwing it off the planet--- the paper feels 'gone for good'. So instead we stack up our important papers, and our not-important papers, and candy wrappers, and a book on the history of Esperanto we were using four writing projects ago, into a massive Sacred Paper Stack that no one is allowed to touch. There are better ways to deal with it, though.

The picture at the top of the post shows stacking paper trays. Buy one or more sets of these and instead of building up a paper pile, you can sort the paper into a few major categories to make finding papers easier. Or at least possible. It also gives the papers some support so you don't have the problem of a too-high paper pile falling onto the floor.

What if you already have one or more paper piles cluttering up your writing area? It might take HOURS to sort them out. But you don't have to. Get some of those plastic sweater boxes from the dollar store and transfer your paper stacks, intact, into them. Sure, you've got to sort them out someday. But with plastic boxes, that day doesn't have to be today.

Other important tools: a three-ring binder with a set of dividers. You don't even have to label the divider sections in advance. But they can sort out some of the most essential paper generated by NaNo.

For example, I like to print out a copy of every day's work and put it in the binder. That way a computer death doesn't mean the loss of my novel even if I didn't back up, plus I can work on the novel by writing by hand and still refer to my previous day's work without turning on the computer. Other things that go in the binder sections: notes, outlines, research I will need, and perhaps a list of things to worry about during the second draft that I'm not going to be bothering with during NaNo.

A notepad such as the blue legal pad in the picture is great to keep within reach during a writing session. Write down character names, place names, and other bits of info generated in the heat of writing you want to remember for later. You DON'T want to have to page through three chapters for an hour looking for the name of a cab driver who plays a minor part somewhere near the beginning when you are in the home stretch.

A composition book in a pretty color can be a useful aid. You can transfer some of the essential info such as major and minor characters' names into a composition book. You can even write your novel, longhand, into composition books. Or use it for journaling your NaNo novel project.

Writing tools such as pens and pencils should be on hand. Keep spares. Know where the spares are kept. I have a plastic bin where I chuck newly-bought pens and pencils until I need to rotate them into the actively used category.

Another essential you need to arrange NOW is some empty bookshelf space near to the writing area. I have a very small shelf on top of my writing desk that holds books I want particularly handy. Another bookshelf is only a few feet away. But bookshelves like these get cluttered over time. Move some non-essential books elsewhere so that you can move any books you decide you need close-to-hand to a good location.

Those URGENT papers need a good home, especially during NaNo. If you don't already have a system, find a clear sacred space to put paper items that come in to your life that need to be handled NOW. Bills, for example, or government forms. In the heat of NaNo this sort of stuff can too easily get buried in a paper pile and forgotten until Too Late. And then you are sitting in a house with no electricity writing by candlelight--- if you can find a candle.

Organizing things in the rest of your life can also help during NaNo. Those essential chores of doing laundry and making meals can be streamlined and organized to help you get them out of the way in less time and with less effort. (If you are well-to-do, of course, you can eat fast-food and restaurant meals for all of NaNo and not use your kitchen for anything but a place to store the tea and snacks.)

SO: are you doing NaNo? Are you doing anything right now to organize your writing area for the NaNo onslaught? Do you plan to do it before NaNo hits?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
Please consider 'liking' us on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

Where the Modern Romance Genre Goes Wrong

 

For many years now I neither read nor attempt to write romance novels. But I read quite a few as a child and teen, and was fond of the novels of Victoria Holt aka Jean Plaidy. I even thought of being a romance writer. A bit later in my life I read some lesbian fiction and wrote about 75 pages of a lesbian historical romance featuring a lady pirate who passed herself off as a man. (I was not a Christian at the time, and certainly wouldn't have written the 'naughty bits' of that novel since becoming a Christian.)

But since my NaNo novel is a gothic romance/sci-fi mashup, I've begun to read romances, and think about the differences between the old romances I loved and the new romances I can't stand.

The modern romance, with modern career-woman heroines a requirement even in historical fiction, looks at a love relationship (since marriage is no longer a goal) as a woman seeking a fulfilling, equality-oriented love relationship with Mr. Right, a man who meets her romantic and feminist requirements. (These Mr. Right characters can seem awfully wimpy and effeminate to the male reader--- a tamed man, not a realistic masculine man.)

If you look at what the modern romance heroine is seeking, it comes uncomfortably close to a woman who is saying that she wants a man she can use to fulfill her romantic, emotional and sexual needs. The romance heroine does not think of herself as a user--- she is a feminist after all, even if she lived in an age before feminism (as Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear).

In an early age when Western Civilization still remembered being a Christian civilization, the ideals of Christian marriage had a greater influence. Christian marriage involves finding a person of the opposite sex and then sacrificing yourself for that person, even if that person is unworthy of your sacrifice. The model is Christ and the Church. The Church that Christ sacrificed His life for was at the moment of the crucifixion composed entirely of grubby, unpromising filthy sinners many of whom were shouting 'Crucify Him!'.

The Biblical text related to that is Ephesians 5:25-33, which begins 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it...' You will see that finding a person to use for your personal and sexual fulfillment is not part of it, and that's a good thing. But it's a tough job and not a win-win, equality situation. Christ was sinless, the Church is composed of sinners, and that's the model. So if you are a (relatively) moral person and your spouse has grave moral flaws, the Christian answer is not to find a better spouse as a replacement but to rejoice that you are being called to imitate Christ and make sacrifices.

While these ideals of marriage have never been lived out fully in the world of poor, flawed mortals, it had an influence on many of the older romance novels. Consider Jane Eyre. Jane is a poor girl, who takes a post as a governess and does her best to serve well in that position. Mr. Rochester is scary, rude, and fails to tell Jane, during his proposal of marriage, that it would be a fake marriage since he would remain legally wed to the madwoman in the attic. Only chance prevented Jane from giving herself to a man that she thought was her legal husband but was not.

But when Mr. Rochester was freed from his marriage by the death of his mad wife, Jane had not moved on to someone more worthy of her. She came back to him, not screaming anger at him, but serving him in his weakness and neediness.

Another flaw of the modern romance is that it is claustrophobically focused on the romantic/sexual relationship. In many an older romance novel--- say, Gone With the Wind--- you could pull out the romance scenes and there would be a good story left. In a modern romance, all of the other stuff--- the interesting stuff, back when I was a child and first began to read romances--- is excised.

Which explains why the romance is more limited in its appeal. The German writer Hedwig Courths-Mahler had her little 'fairy tales for grown-ups' published in special editions to be given out to the men fighting World War One. Today's romances have far less appeal to the male reader. (Unless they are the sort with explicit sex scenes. One of my favorite novels in my old romance-reading days was a bodice-ripper historical romance which a teen boy of my acquaintance was using for 'entertaining impure thoughts' material, a more-available substitute for actual porn.)

Conformity to feminist dictates also weakens the modern romance. In Jane Eyre the heroine is a poor girl who must earn a living, but who can be saved from her poverty by a good marriage though she never becomes a husband-hunter. Feminism would demand that Jane Eyre have access to a good career to which she becomes sufficiently devoted that she would accept Mr. Rochester only if her relationship with him didn't interfere with her career. And her Mr. Rochester would have been a tamed down, feminism-obedient poor thing that would be hardly worth having, anyway. So the modern writer would gift him with a bodybuilder's body without the obsessive gym work that requires, and a really impressive set of genitalia. Ugh.

To write a romance that is more endurable for the woman of taste, this is what I would do--- take the best of the older romances as a model. Ignore the modern trends. Write as if the romance side of the story were more like a slightly overdeveloped sub-plot rather than making it the whole story. And question any ideas in your head that are 'what the feminists say a relationship should be' or 'what the romance publishing industry say a relationship should be', and find your own path.

Have you ever read romance novels? Do you love them or hate them? What are their good points and what could use improvement? Could a man write a good romance novel? If you are a man, would you consider it?

Some Blog posts by Mike Duran about the Romance Genre
Author Mike Duran is not a big romance fan, nor is he thrilled by the dominance of romance novels in both the Christian and secular book marketplace. But his opinions on the genre--- and the blog comments they generate--- might be of use in forming ideas of where the modern romances have gone wrong and what can be done to set things write. Or it might just make you angry enough to have the energy to write the Great Romance Novel that will prove Mike Duran WRONG.

What Do Jane Austen and Contemporary Romance Novels Really Have in Common?
Why Men Don't Read Romance
How Paranormal Romance Killed the Undead

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
Please consider 'liking' us on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt
  

Goals: You Must Pay the Price

 This post is part of the Five Year Project/Do You Have Goals blog hop.

My Five Year Goals: 
1. Finish the Sons of Jacob poem series.
2. Build up this blog til it's popular like Mike Duran's.
3. Finish 3 novels.

Setting goals. It's kind of like being a kid at Christmas Winter Holiday and making a Christmas Santa Claus list. But it's not enough to set the goals. You must follow through. And the first step to that is being willing to pay the price.

Each goal comes with its own built-in price, and this differs from writer to writer. For example, some writers, unlike me, didn't learn spelling and English grammar in their school, and so part of their price is to go back and study these things so they can write well-crafted or at least correctly spelled and understandable English sentences.

A novel-writing goal always comes with a reading 'price'. You need to be well-read in your genre--- the classics of the genre, older genre works, and today's newest offerings. You don't HAVE to follow the latest trends in a genre, but you DO need to know what these trends are to work within the genre with confidence. (You might find your writing ideas place you in an emerging subgenre. Or maybe you will start a whole new subgenre.) So perhaps we all need to include 'read 3 novels a month in my genre(s).' Not to mention outside-of-genre and nonfiction reading. (Note to mainstream and literary fiction writers: those are 'genres', too. At least as far as the reading requirement goes.)

Sometimes the 'price' means overcoming problems of disorganization, as in the case of a person with AD/HD. I have Asperger Syndrome, which comes with 'executive function deficit'. Which essentially means AD/HD. So you may need to search out organizing tips for AD/HD people to find organizational ways that work for YOU.

You may need to overcome psychological issues. I have a sort of chronic writer's block which when it hits makes it next to impossible to work any further on the current WIP, or even on any writing. I am currently reading a number of books which help writers with these issues.

Self-confidence is a major problem for writers. Your 'price' likely will include working on this. I can recommend 'Write for your Life' by Lawrence Block as a help with that. (It's a bit new-agey, but the affirmations technique is also recommended by Christian pastor Norman Vincent Peale in 'The Power of Positive Thinking'.)

So as you look over your goals, think: are you willing to pay the price? What will that price be? What steps can you take to pay it?

My goals update:
1. Have written 2 of the poems and taken notes on the third.
2. Am working on posting on this blog and commenting on other blogs more regularly.
3. Planning to participate in NaNoWriMo with a cross-genre novel (Jane Eyre inspired Gothic with a sci-fi setting) that doesn't seem as complex as my previous, unfinished NaNo novels. Currently at work writing an outline of a favorite Gothic novel that will serve as a model for my own novel's outline. Writing starts Nov. 1. My NaNo page: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein





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Spotting "Fake Christians" along Doctrinal Lines

I just read a disturbing blog post at an Evangelical blog that I follow: 7 questions that help spot fake Christians Go there and read to understand what I'm talking about.

Back? OK. Now, in my opinion the term 'Fake Christian' should be reserved for an in-name-only Christian who has no commitment to the faith, is not 'saved' and is likely not bound for heaven. For those of us who are non-fake Christians, that's an important distinction. A nominal Christian--- who usually knows little of the faith and either does not attend church or does so for social reasons only--- needs to be educated on the faith, and may cast a bad light on the faith by their actions since some perceive them as Christians.

There were several things that bothered me about the 'Seven Questions'.

1. The tone of the questions was very specific to a certain type of Evangelical Christian. People outside those Christians circles, no matter that they are devoted Christians, may be perceived as 'fake Christians'.

2. Some of the 'Seven Questions' can be answered only by God. 'Are they controlled by the Holy Spirit?' 'Do they have a new nature?' Only God can know for sure.

3. The 'Seven Questions' encourage us to disobey the 'judge not' command of Jesus. If we are examining other people's lives for clues that they are not Spirit-controlled, we are judging them in a way Christ forbids. Besides the sin aspect of this, when real non-Christians see us making such judgments they decide that Christians are all unloving and judgmental. Plus, we will find situations like this: Jerry looks at possible 'fake Christian' John and sees that John still drinks a beer now and then, still smokes cigarettes, and still goes to visit his elderly homosexual great-uncle Bill in the nursing home without preaching fire-and-brimstone at him. "Aha!" Jerry says. "A fake Christian!" No, it's more likely that John is simply from a church with different teachings (doctrines) that does not require giving up alcohol and tobacco for salvation, and that teaches that one should show the love of Christ to homosexual persons, even if those persons are seriously sinful (as not all homosexuals are, some are celibate, voluntarily or otherwise).

4. The seventh question may be designed to expose Catholics as 'fake Christians'. Catholics ask for the prayers of saints in the same way they ask their living friends to pray for him, but certain hostile-to-Catholic Evangelicals go around preaching that Catholics trust to Mary instead of Jesus for salvation.

5. This 'Seven Questions' post leads to another post with a lot more evangelization questions. One of the questions on this second post, meant to be asked to the subject of the evangelization and which presumably detects the 'unsaved' state, is 'Are you 100% sure you'd go to heaven if you died?" This is a question which is specific to the 'once-saved always safe' dogma believed by some but not all Evangelicals and which is not what the Bible and Early Church teach. It IS possible for a Christian to fall away from the faith, even to become hostile to the faith. Some even go from being a 'saved' Christian child to being an adult who, like Josef Stalin, hates and kills Christians. The only way the 'once saved always safe' believers get around this fact is to claim that those who fall away weren't saved properly. Which leads to what I experienced as a child in Presbyterian Sunday School. I 'got saved' by praying a version of the 'Sinner's Prayer', but my life was not wholly transformed in the way some Christian books said would happen. I was the same little kid with problems (undiagnosed Asperger Syndrome) which didn't go away and make me like the joyful spirit-filled, doubt-free Christians in the books. So, I figured I wasn't REALLY saved--- a possibility the OSAS folks mentioned. So I got saved again. And again. And always worried I was hell-bound and without Christ in my life. The uncertainty caused by that false doctrine may have contributed from my later falling away from the faith for many years. Well, now I'm a Catholic. I know I'm not 100% guaranteed of heaven because I have the free will to turn away from God at any time, and as a mere human I can never be sure 100% of what choices I will make in the future.

The Take-Away for Christians
We are not called by Christ to judge who is for-sure saved and who not. Even when we are in the position of helping to choose someone for a responsible position in the Church we can only judge whether that person, right now, seems to be a faithful Christian living a Christian life. So if we want to evangelize, rather than judging we should be dropping 'seeds' of faith whether we are talking to a foul-mouthed streetwalker or a Christian evangelist or even the Pope.

The Take-Away for Christian Writers
In our local church we learn what our denomination (or 'non-denomination') teaches about what it means to be a Christian and what the Christian life would be like. And some denominations are more accurate than others. But as writers we are speaking to a broader group of Christians than at our church, and we need to understand the other Christian 'faith-languages' so we will not be leading other Christians astray by our writing.

The Take-Away for Non-Christian Writers
Wow! Thanks for sticking with me through this post. As an ex-non-Christian myself I know it may have been dull. But the take-home for you is simply this: for a Christian, the word 'Christian' has a specific meaning. It may vary a bit around the edges but the core is the same. (To discover this meaning, perhaps read C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. Or at least the common Evangelical tract The Four Spiritual Laws--- Google it.) Some non-Christian writers of the past have used 'Christian' to mean 'a nice person', but Christians don't understand it that way--- in fact, Christians believe that many Christians are not nice at all, though nicer than that specific person would be without Christ. Other non-Christian writers use 'Christian' to mean 'those uneducated Fundamentalists I've read about and don't like'. Well, if you are on that path I won't try to talk you out of it. I might have done the same thing at one point in my life. But I think the more sophisticated and knowledgeable among the non-Christian readers--- the only readers you will get with that approach--- may take exception, perhaps because they have Christian family members and friends that the love, and may even respect as thinking human beings who simply have the 'wrong' opinion on the religion thing.

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Kerry Nietz on “Amish Vampires in Space”

Kerry Nietz on “Amish Vampires in Space”

Amish Vampires in Space--- yes, it's an actual book. How cool is that? Click on the link above to see a great interview with the book's author.


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NaNoWriMo: Challenge Accepted!

Peggy Eddleman: Will Write For Cookies: This NaNoNewb wants to know: Are you in?
I came across the link above while scanning through the blogs I follow. (Please click on the post and read the link.) I myself am not a newb to Nano, but I had already decided I wasn't going to participate this November.

But in the past couple of days I've had the idea of doing a major change-of-pace project to outwit my chronic writers-block problem. I've had the idea of writing a gothic romance novel.

I know. EW, ICK, romance! It could lead to KISSING! But as a kid I read Jane Eyre, sort of the forerunner of the modern gothic romance. And I read Victoria Holt's Mistress of Mellyn when I was a teenager or thereabouts. (Victoria Holt also wrote under the name Jean Plaidy, writing historical novels about British queens under that name, and I loved Jean Plaidy books when I was young.)

My idea, which is more as a treatment/cure for my chronic writers-block than anything, is to outline Jane Eyre and Mistress of Mellyn, and from that create my own 'typical-gothic' outline complete with an orphaned-and-threatened heroine and a brooding, secretive man as love interest.

And then, I'm going to put the story in outer space. Specifically, in the Terran-empire-type setting I've been creating for my Starship Destine project, on a planet bought and settled a few generations back by an eccentric family, whose descendants now are that world's aristocratic caste.

My strategy will be to NOT reveal any details of the work save the brief outline I've already put up on the Nano web site (my profile at Nano), and some character names when I've devised them. I will be interacting on the NaNo forums on a daily basis as well as posting updates on this blog or on my Facebook page. My nickname at Nano is Ilsabein, which seemed like a good idea nearly eight years ago when I first joined that site.

Are you participating in Nano this year? Why or why not? If so, what is your project this year. More importantly, do you have a strategy to get the most out of your participation this year? And what is your goal for this year's Nano?



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How to Write a 'Buy my Book' Post in a Facebook Group

Actual 'buy my book' post.

For many of us who use Facebook groups, forums, Yahoo groups and such, this post title probably makes you cringe. "Someone's encouraging people to post more bookspam in our groups!" you are exclaiming. "Awful! More spammed-to-death groups are sure to result!"

Don't worry, folks. Bookspam in groups is a pet peeve of mine, too. Not to mention a moral issue since our host, Facebook, also sells advertising at quite reasonable rates. Trying to get free advertising in the Facebook groups feels a bit like swiping a candy bar from the mini-mart.

But the one thing that strikes me about most bookspam self-promotion of books in groups and forums is how ineffective they are. If people would only take the time to learn how to be more effective before they post those self-promos, they would have a skill that they could use in more ethical self-promotion.

Here are some of the common flaws in buy-my-book posts:

1. Bare links, with no comment or intro. They are demanding that their potential book-buyer follow the link to discover what the book is about. Fix: always post a tagline--- a one-sentence summary of the book--- along with the link.
2. Abstract tagline. You know, as in 'This book is about the struggle of man vs nature.' What man? What nature? The tagline should read more like this: An accountant wakes up to discover he's been transformed into a cockroach, making it more difficult to get to work on time.'
3. Blatantly ignoring posted rules. If the group that is being exposed to the book promo has a sticky post at the top of the group's page stating no self-promotion allowed, or no off-topic posts, and the buy-my-booker self-promotes anyway, it shows contempt for the group and its members.
4. Promo and run. This is when a person joins the group, posts his promo, and then doesn't participate in the group until he feels it's time for his next promo. Fix: follow the rule of thumb by posting ten comments or posts on stuff that ISN'T related to you or your book before you even mention your book.
5. Miss Speling. If you misspell words in your self-promo, everyone who catches your mistake will presume you are a hopelessly bad amateur writer and warn their friends against buying your book. Fix: Learn. To. Spell. Spellcheck is not enough. If you want to call yourself a writer, you need to at least learn the most basic tools of the craft.
6. The Christian obligation ploy. Found in Christian fiction groups, this is when a writer insists that if group members are REAL Christians, they will show their Christian charity by allowing him to promote his book as often and as clumsily as he wants. Similar guilt trips can be inflicted by Amway or Avon sellers. The extreme is when it is insisted that the group members must show their Christian charity by actually making a purchase. Other groups, both religious and other, may suffer from similar unfair appeals to group loyalty. Fix: Never, ever do this. 
7. The hundred-group campaign. This is when the misguided would-be author joins and promos in a hundred or more different Facebook groups. With such large numbers it is impossible to participate in these groups in any meaningful way. So the buy-my-booker is essentially a stranger to the group who visits only to 'advertise'.
8. The aggressive group member. This is the person who makes a point of saying sarcastic or harsh things to other group members to get noticed. And then posts a book promo. Fix: don't alienate group members and then expect to sell them books.

Of course, all misuse of groups and forums is an amateurish mistake. When you read about using social media to build a writer-platform for yourself, this is NOT what they mean. Social media is useful when you use it to build up relationships with people. And the only was to build up a relationship is to take your focus OFF what the other person can do for you--- buy your book, review your book, promote your book--- and focus on what you can do for the other person.

If you participate in a group or forum, let it be because you are interested in the discussions that the group is about. Participate politely--- treat people as you would if you were there with them in person. In many forums, you can put a signature with your blog's link in it. In Facebook, every post leads to your personal Facebook page. In both of these instances, other group members are able to get more closely connected to you if they want to do so. You don't have to do any buy-my-book stuff that will just offend people.




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Poetry Sunday: Fragment of an Unnamed Haibun Novel

Haibun is a form of Japanese traditional writing which combines prose with a haiku. I thought it might be interesting to try something similar to that, prose and short poems mingled.

What I did was an opening to a story about werecats and werewolves. It begins with a haiku which is not strictly traditional, since it lacks a season-word and is not about cherry blossoms or peonies or the like.

I thought I would share it this Sunday just for the heck of it. It's very new and unedited.... written this morning..... but I thought I'd share it while it is still in progress.

Fragment of an Unnamed Haibun-Novel

dogs howl
while cats nibble at the
government cheese

That Saturday we went to the food bank. We had to borrow Hagger's truck, which worked, unlike Papa's which was broken and needed gas and tires. Hagger had nodded at that. "Cats 'ud be hard on the tires." Which was a stupid thing to say, but what could you expect? Hagger was only a dog.
We got to St. Paul's Moravian Church about an hour after the food bank opened. 'Sats 9-12,' the sign said. And pointed to the concrete path which lead around the church. Toward the back, there were some steep steps and we stopped.

We. I suppose I ought to explain that. 'We' meant me--- Inae, daughter of the most prominent of the local cat-lords--- and Mishkina. My afrit. Who, I suppose, is not precisely an afrit any more.
The legends say that when a pure-of-heart young human child sprinkles a young afrit with holy water, the afrit does not die or disappear from the human world, but becomes transformed, and follows the human child around for life as a protector.

When I did it I wasn't thinking of the legend. If I had I would have assumed it didn't apply to me. I wasn't a human, nor all that pure-of-heart after what I did to the Saint Michael statue, according to Pastor. And by reckoning in human years-of-age I wasn't even in the young-child category any more, though I had been by the reckoning of my own people--- still was, as for that.




Shared on Poetry Pantry #171.
 
The cat in the picture is Katniss, daughter of Chachamaru, older sister of Therese, younger sister and possible daughter of Joel. Yes, my kitties are naughty.

Recommended Reading:

For many years I didn't dare to tackle writing haiku. On the one hand there were those that thought haiku were something for schoolchildren to do on assignment. On the other, I knew that good haiku probably had a lot of rules I didn't know about. Recently I acquired some quality books on haiku, and found them very inspiring, though often my haiku-ideas turn into sijo, which is a somewhat longer Korean poetic form.

It includes haiku in English by poets I've actually heard of: Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Amy Lowell, Langston Hughes, e. e. cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Richard Wright, among others.

It's a good antidote to the notion that good haiku in English can only be written by Western Neo-Buddhists who reject everything in Western civilization in favor of often-romantic images of the civilization of the East.

Along with a book of good translations of classic Japanese haiku, this book makes a great introduction to the haiku form. Poets and writers ought to consider owning the book. It also makes good sense for classroom teachers and homeschooling moms.

My favorite haiku in the book, so far, is this one by Paul Violi:

Don't look at my face.
No change, just large bills.
One wrong move will be your last.

I mean, WOW! A poem that doubles as a bank-robber's note! It makes me long to run out and rob a bank, but then I'd have to go to confession.

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (Amazon.com)
A Review of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, by one of the poets included in the book, Melissa Allen.
 

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