Happy Birthday USA

 

Two-hundred-fifty seems like an awesome milestone birthday. For a person, it would be. As a country, though, it means we are still in our infancy. Compare the USA to Egypt, which has existed over 5,000 years since it was first unified, and even to England, which is over 1,000 years old.

Being an infant isn’t such a bad thing. Infants are full of promise. While they are born with some limitations (not everyone has the ability to be a great athlete or a concert violinist, for example), they are also born with vast possibilities. So while it isn’t true to say they can grow up to be anything they want, they do have immeasurable choices. They don’t achieve their full potential on their own, however. They need parents who play an active role in their lives, guiding them rather than criticizing them.

Even for people who approve of the current political environment, few are perfectly happy with the course our country is currently taking. It’s been that way for the last 250 years, and it will continue that way for however many years are left in the country’s future.

Just as with a human infant, the USA has plenty of potential to turn into something great if its parents take their responsibilities seriously, guiding rather than criticizing.

Whether you agree with the current administration or not, the country’s relative youth is a source of hope. But here’s the rub. America’s citizens, both individually and as a whole, are its parents.

Do you take your responsibility seriously?

He Comes at Every Season

 

With the advent of summer, I decided to print a poem about the seasons that I wrote back in 2014. Without further ado, here it is.

He Comes

He comes in summer
In thunderstorms and showers
Cleansing the earth.

He comes in autumn
When trees proclaim his glory
With blood-red leaves.

 

He comes in winter
As white blankets cover seeds
Soon to awake.

He comes in spring
When a tiny robin’s egg
Brings forth new life.

 

Jesus comes all year
Into the hearts of Christians
Saved by His grace.

The Missing Piece

 

Have you ever thought you had finished a jigsaw puzzle, only to find one piece left over? That happened to me this past week.

The leftover piece had been driving me insane because I kept trying to figure out where it fit. It had black on it, and the only areas I hadn’t completed were yellow with minor amounts of blue. Or that’s what I thought, anyway. But after I had finished the rest of the puzzle, I ran my hand over the entire thing and found the hole and a place where I hadn’t been looking. Yes, there was black there, but I had thought everything was filled in.

Obviously, the problem wasn’t an extra piece that was left over but simply one that was left out.

Like jigsaw puzzles, novels must be carefully crafted so that every piece fits.

I was halfway through my current work-in-progress when I woke up in the middle of the night because my subconscious told me my timeline didn’t work right. As I lay there, I came up with what I thought was a good solution, and I got up and went into the office to write it down before I forgot it.

When I looked at it again in the morning, I realized that it solved the timeline issue but created new problems. Now fully awake, I came up with a better solution. Unfortunately, it required me to make changes throughout the manuscript. Still, the extra work was worth it. The new solution fit into the hole exactly, both as to shape and as to color.

Because, like jigsaw puzzles, novels need the right pieces to complete them.

A Hodgepodge of Writing Quotes

 

The TV game show Jeopardy is known for its skill in finding synonyms for the word “miscellaneous” when creating categories with unrelated material. I’m not as good at it, but I try nonetheless, so I am calling this a hodgepodge of writing quotes. It includes a little bit of everything about being a writer.

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“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Stephen King, On Writing (2000)

“Writing is one-third imagination, one-third experience, and one-third observation.” William Faulkner

“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea, Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.” Louis L’ Amour

“It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.” Will Shetterly

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L. Doctorow

“Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers ‘Please will you do my job for me?’” C.S. Lewis

“The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the ‘lightning bug’ and the ‘lightning.’” Mark Twain

“Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.” William Zinsser, On Writing Well (2001)

“There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they’re not useful. But always know what you’re throwing away.” Will Shetterly

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable.” Mark Twain in a Letter to D.W. Bowser, 3/20/1880

“Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.” Winston Churchill

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” E.L. Doctorow

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” Alfred Hitchcock

“The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.” Tom Clancy

“There is no great writing, only great rewriting.” Justice Brandeis

***

I’ll finish up with this quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."

Writing is An Addiction

 

We’re having some work done on our condo and it will be a hectic week, so I’m taking the easy way out and populating today’s blog post with quotes about being a writer.

Why We Write

“I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn’t, I would die.” Isaac Asimov

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” Somerset Maugham

“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can’t help it.” Leo Rosten

“If you can see yourself surviving the rest of your life without writing, then don’t try writing. It’s a passion. It’s something that pushes you, that thrills you.” Stephen Bly

“You might be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.” Stephen Leigh

“Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell, Why I Write (1946)

It’s Not an Easy Job

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you—as if you haven’t been told a million times already—that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.” Harlan Ellison

“I would never encourage anyone to be a writer. It’s too hard.” Eudora Welty

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades (1947)

***

Stay tune next week for quotes on other problems writers face.

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The image at the top of this post is an illustration created by Frank Merrill for a 19^th century printing of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Portraying a Character's Attitude Toward Slavery

 

One dilemma that a writer of historical fiction faces is how to make the story historically accurate without offending readers. As mentioned last week, I faced this dilemma when writing my middle-grade historical novel Learning to Surrender with a protagonist who grew up in a culture where slavery was the established way of life.

My protagonist has never thought deeply about the issue, but here is a quote from the first chapter showing her initial feelings.  

As Charlotte waited for the artillery to stop firing, she frowned. Why did the North want to get rid of slavery? The Gibsons had always treated their slaves well, and Benjamin and Nettie didn’t have to worry about anything. They had a comfortable place to sleep and plenty of food to eat, and her parents never beat them. Yes, there were some bad masters and mistresses, but that was the fault of the owners, not the system.

That passage takes place while Charlotte, her family, and their two slaves are cowering in a small cave as cannonballs and bullets fly around them. The danger Charlotte is in and the fear it causes her create some sympathy for her in spite of her attitude toward slavery. At the least, they give the reader a reason not to give up on her yet.

The story tries to be true to the historical context in which slavery existed and was accepted by the white community in the deep South, but it also shows my protagonist grappling with the issue and learning what slavery meant to those in figurative (as well literal) chains. Here is the book blurb:

When the Union armies surround Vicksburg, 12-year-old Charlotte and her family find themselves living in a cave. As she discovers what it is like to lose control of her life, will her attitude toward slavery change?

Of course it does. Otherwise, she would have been an unsympathetic character all the way until the end.

If the readers had gotten that far.

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My research indicates that the image at the top of this post, titled “The Auction Sale,” is one of six illustrations created by Hammet Billings for the 1852 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is in the public domain because of its age.

A Historical Dilemma

 

Last Sunday’s Bible class topic was Paul’s letter to Philemon, which deals with slavery. It reminded me of the struggle I had with that issue when writing Learning to Surrender, which has since been published and is available on Amazon. The story takes place during the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, and my dilemma over slavery was how to make the book historically accurate without offending my readers. This week’s blog post is a slightly revised reprint from February 19, 2024, just before the book was published. Next week I’ll tell you how I resolved the dilemma mentioned in the reprinted post.

Creating Sympathy for Characters with Unsympathetic Beliefs

During a trip down the Mississippi River to research a different book, I came across information on the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, where the residents dug and lived in caves that served as bomb shelters. The idea intrigued me, but it had one big negative.

There were few, if any, abolitionists in Vicksburg at the time. Early in the writing process, I came up with several ideas of how I might make my character and her family secret opponents to slavery, but Roland wasn’t sure that even closet abolitionists existed in the deep South then. Besides, that choice didn’t feel right. Historical realism dictates that my main character believe in slavery, so how could I make her sympathetic in spite of her unsympathetic beliefs?

This isn’t an unusual situation for a writer to be in. Many stories begin with an unsympathetic protagonist whose change in character or beliefs is at the crux of the story. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, who starts out as a people-hating miser and ends up as an open-hearted and generous person. Or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, who is one of the most spoiled, selfish heroines in children’s literature until she starts having compassion for someone else.

Readers don’t usually identify with unsympathetic characters, and they don’t like to read about people they don’t identify with. Unless we catch their interest at the beginning of the book, they won’t read on. That means that one of our tasks as writers is to generate sympathy for unsympathetic characters or for otherwise likeable characters with unsympathetic beliefs. Charles Dickens did it with humor. Frances Hodgson Burnett did it by showing the circumstances that formed Mary’s obnoxious character.

Generating sympathy for a main character with unsympathetic beliefs is just part of the job.

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The drawing at the head of this post comes from Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History (vol. 10), John Lossing Benson, ed. (New York, NY, Harper and Brothers, 1912). It is in the public domain because of its age.