Rock Writers’ Guild

     I got really REALLY brave & have a domain name now.  It’s agentlejoy.com  I thought I was making progress.  I thought to myself, so you don’t know how to do this, so what?  When has that ever stopped you before?  Did it stop you when you wanted to homeschool?  NO!  Did it stop you when you wanted to have a home birth?  NO!  Did it stop you when you wanted to become a christian?  NO!  I was born stubborn (you can ask my mother) and I have found in the past that if I beat my head against a brick wall long enough the bricks will wear out before I do.  
    That is, until now.  I can’t figure out how to use their quick start-up tools to start up.  I know what I want.  I want a place where people can go & click on words to get to pictures of my family, my columns I write for the papers, information about how to get to use my columns, or to different things I’m writing.  I’m not sure if maybe I need a link to my own blog (which I have yet to figure out how to set up.)  I know I want to make more available than I want to clutter up this site with!
     I want to make the pages pretty.  I want to make my website a nice place to visit.  I want to give people the option of getting on a list to recieve monthly emails.  I want to do a lot of things.  I’m tired of being afraid.  So I thought I’d get started.
     Why can’t I figure this out?  How can I teach my kids to compete & cope in the modern world if I’m so ignorant about these things?  What the heck is an ipod anyway?  (I want to learn how to download music, too.  Might as well go for broke as long as I’m at it.)  But where do I start?  I feel like a kid that’s been blindfolded, whirled, and pointed at an inivisible pinata but not handed a stick.  I have avoided becoming technologically savvy because it makes me feel helpless.  I hate feeling helpless.  Somebody help! 

Disclaimers have been outlawed!  Too bad.  A disclaimer is like modesty- the hesitation before unveiling the soul.  It’s a moment of separation, reminding myself that judgement will be of the work and not of me.  The disclaimer is not so much an insecurity about the quality of the work as an insecurity about the people it is being shown to.  I have little need for disclaimers with my husband.  Sometimes I tell him things about what I’ve written before I read it to him, but we both know that I am setting the stage, drawing back the curtains, lighting the candles before the meal… not hiding behind my hands.  Sometimes a disclaimer is like the tag that says, “Made by Hand,” on a gift.  It says, “This thing that I have made is precious to me.  I am a little afraid to show it to you.  I don’t quite know if it will suit you, but I hope that it will.  Speak softly, you are in the prescence of my heart.”  A disclaimer is dipping your toe in before jumping into the pool.  A disclaimer is humilty, not presuming to think that everyone will like what you’ve done.  A disclaimer is also uncertainty- not knowing if you like what you’ve done!  When a Shakespearian play ends, the last actor on stage comes out and submits a disclaimer in blank verse with a final rhyming couplet.  Even violets are shyly hesitant of their welcome and hang their heads.
     There are honest disclaimers and less honest.  Sometimes we are unable to appreciate the quality of our own work until we come upon it by suprise several days later.  Sometimes we have accidentally unveiled more than we meant to and struggle with shame.  Other times we are practicing the artifice of deflecting criticism by criticising ourselves, on the theory that no one would beat a whipped dog. 
     All of us are trying new things in this class.  We are uncovering private places, secret dreams.  We are facing our fears of criticism, of failure, of insufficiency, of foolishness, of pride…  You can’t judge the difficulty of someone’s writing process by the quality of what they produce.  We are all stretching ourselves to the point of pain.  I watch Melanie Haulman lay on the floor and drop her head on her knee as she stretches.  I can barely bend over my leg.  She produces much more grace, much more stretch, but we are both feeling the same amount of pain as we work to increase our capacity.  If I wrote only what I was comfortable with, I would have no need of a disclaimer.
     Perhaps what we need is not less disclaimers, but a more honest language in them.  Instead of saying, “Oh, this isn’t going to be near as good as yours,” perhaps we need to say, “Writing this really frightened me.  It brought back a lot of pain,” or “This seems really foolish to me.  I couldn’t think of anything deep.”

That said, let me quote a small section from a book I’m reading.  It’s “Pilgrim’s Inn,” by Elizabeth Goudge, and this section is spoken by a great artist to a younger man he’s teaching.

     “You were perhaps right, just then, to turn your board round.  But, generally speaking, don’t do that.  Don’t hide your work.  What you have done you have done and you must take the consequences.”
     “I hate people seeing my stuff,” murmurred Ben.
     “Afraid of being laughed at?  Well, what of it!  Never hide from adverse criticism.  Mockery, indifference, misunderstanding- welcome the lot.  Criticism of your work is much the same as criticism of yourself, you know, your work being an extension of yourself, and there’s nothing like good slashing personal criticism for begetting humility.  A conceited man never yet made a good artist.  How could he?  Satisfied, you stick where you are.”

Jesus is Coming!

I know I know….stop looking at the clouds and get busy with the harvest. I can’t help it. I don’t remember a time before not knowing that Jesus is coming. Now I feel like the child who grew up in the fishing village and was told of the great storm that was to come and what signs to look for before the “Great Catch”.

All around me  people are looking gloomy, fearful or tuning out. I can’t think straight for the joy that is bubbling inside me! Lock me away I suppose they are saying, she’s over the edge they whisper behind my back. I truly try to contain the excitement. I know things will get worse before they get better. I know I know I know..but..Jesus is Coming!

Is my heart right, are my eyes on You?  I want to prepare for the wedding feast; I want to tell everyone I see, are you ready? He’s coming, isn’t it exciting! Yes I know it could be minutes or millennium. I don’t care. The excitement inside me is so intense I want to scream to the top of my lungs! Jesus is Coming! Get Ready Now!

Years of teaching, books upon books of reading and thousands of hours listening to Prophets, teachers, evangelist, apostles and preachers.

None of it stirs me as much as His breath in my ear. I have known of His coming from my very beginning, yet I walked away. I hardened my heart and mind. Stiff necked, disillusioned, desperate, lost and forsaken. I turned to my own way and fell into a bottomless pit. I deserved nothing but to be left there. How could I turn away from His Grace?

So now that His coming seems a heart beat away, why am I so ecstatic! Because He called me back to His embrace, He pulled me out of the pit I had dug for myself. He cleaned me up, and tore away the demons that had attached themselves to me. In time to sit at the wedding table, in time to dance at the feast, in time to cross the river Jordan.

I cannot begin to comprehend why He would love me so. Not only did He die for me, but He brought me back to commune with Him in these Last days. Perhaps they are only my last days, and not the end of times, I do not care. For in my declaration of Jesus is Coming I say Jesus has Come to renew His Bride for the wedding day. Prepare ye the way!

I only have a second- Patrick’s screaming on the bed, Mike needs his diaper changed, and my mother-in-law is driving my sick eldest son home from summer camp to go to the doctor this morning but…

Thank you for your comments on my “purpose for writing” post.  I am very very sorry that I made you feel down, Mike.  But what you & Abbey & Connie wrote showed me two things:

1) perhaps it’s not so much about purpose as process.  I have been reading a little book called “Lifegiving” that has talked about this too.  If I try to do every action in my life with love (Do ordinary things with extraordinary love) then even the simple things will turn to blessings.  Perhaps it is that way with writing, too.  Perhaps I should stop trying to eat purpose in one big chunk, like a jelly donut the size of Milwaukee, and try to take it in manageable nibbles.  If I try to bless and love and give hope in every thing I write, no matter how small, perhaps the end result will be a life’s work that looks like what I’m dreaming of.

and 2) I also, like Abbey, find God and inspiration in the most suprising places.  Sometimes it seems he’s peeking out at me from everywhere I look.  For a while I was very strict about what I watched or read or let myself look at, but as time goes on I seem to be able to find purity and purpose in a greater variety of places.  I’ve loved science fiction since I was a little girl, but for several years after I joined the church I wouldn’t read any of it.  It’s what I always wanted to write.  Trying to change directions has been hard for me.  Trying to learn how to be subject to anyone’s authority has been difficult.  (I think I’m rambling, but the two thoughts seem to go together in my mind so I’m leaving them.  If I seem a little scatterbrained, blame the crying baby.)  At any rate, I’ll try to be a little braver about what I’m doing and, in my own words, “follow him and innocently trust/ that all things will be as all things must.”

 Thank you for your feedback.

Alright, I need to make a confession to everyone so that you can all keep me in check. I have been convicted about the excuses I can come up with at the drop of hat for not writing. I recently read a poem that Jane Schneeloch wrote in a writing workshop and it made me ache, literally. 

WRITING TIME

I stop writingto make a cup of coffee

to read the mail

to put a load of wash in

to play a game of solitaire

to water the African Violet

to straighten out the piles on my desk

to pluck my eyebrows

to call my mother

to shorten a pair of slacks

to pay a bill

to look for a lost phone number

to check my e-mail

to get another CD to play

to file my nails

to scan a picture of my cousin

to make lunch

to watch the news

to read a magazine

to put the wash in the dyer

to make a cup of tea

to take a nap

to put the laundry away

to shut off the computer

and wonder where

I will find the time

to write great things.  

Wow – does anyone else feel convicted for neglecting their gifts besides me?  I have for years but I have made a decision to do something about it. And I have finally decided to put my money where my mouth is! Last week I enrolled in a two year Creative Writing Program developed by Jerry Jenkins. I have been assigned a professional writing mentor who will guide me through the process, grade my assignments and give me valuable insight and advice. There is no turning back now. (Well, I do have 30 days to change my mind and get my money back, but none of ya’ll are allowed to let me do that!) 

So, now it’s out there. I can’t take it back, you all know my secret and I expect you to ask me about how it’s going. We all need a little accountability, especially us creative types. (We can become awfully creative when it comes to making up excuses, can’t we?)

    I have been thinking about vocation (in the Catholic sense) and the purpose of writing for Christ.  I have been thinking about what I should write about.  I have been trying to choose a voice, a purpose, and a genre.  It’s not enough to have talent, you know.  You have to know what to do with it.  So many artists fall into the trap of worshiping their own talent.  They give expression to their feelings and desires with little thought to what they are building or producing with their work (other than money of course.) 

I am interested in writing as a vocation.  I’m not thinking of vocation like a vocational school- just a job, a way to get ahead.  I’m thinking of vocation as a calling, like the calling a nun has to subject her entire life to the service of her Lord.  I had a vision once of how the Lord saw me.  I was clothed in shining white, and I held a sharp sword, like a vestal virgin or Joan of Arc.  (I have trouble reconciling that with the overweight nearly middle-aged woman I see in the mirror, but God has his own way of seeing things.)  He was speaking to me about the purity and clarity and acuity he expects from me as I write. 

    Once I complained to him that I was terribly self-centered.  I can only write about myself, what I think and what I feel.  Everything I write is about what’s within me.  He said that it was all right- if I was filled with Christ, when I wrote that way He would be displayed for all the world to see.  Another time he told me simply to write “More truth, less art.” 

I am frustrated with my work because I am not satisfied to simply entertain.  I don’t want to write something that is merely appealing or fun or pleasurable.  I want to write things that are “first of all pure… also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others… full of mercy and good deeds… show[ing] no partiality and always sincere…” because the bible says that this kind of writing would be the wisdom that comes from heaven, planting seeds of peace and reaping a harvest of goodness.  (James 3:17,1

There was a time when, for entertainment to be an escape from reality, it was full of action heroes, spies, drama, and maybe even a little thrilling violence.  Nowadays, everyday life is so full of drama and violence we are ready to vomit it up, like Israelites full of quail!  If we want a book to be an escape from reality, it would have to be a book of peace.  How many people remember anymore what peace feels like?  What it feels like to rest and feel comfort and joy?  Perhaps I am foolish- perhaps a book like this would never find a publisher and never sell, but I think people are exhausted.  I think we are wrung out with highpaced sound bites and flashing images and brutality and pain.  I was watching my children play an arcade game on our computer recently that was very fast-paced and loud.  I thought of all the parenting magazines that are worried about creating a stimulating environment for our children to develop in- I think the poor things are over-stimulated already.  They don’t know how to sit still.  They don’t know how to rest.  They find no peace, no quiet, no place of safety.  We are all like children who have forgotten the way home.

What I just wrote sounds like I am condemning action fiction, and that’s not what I meant.  What I am trying to explain is why I don’t want to write it.  I know it’s popular, and thus it is a good vehicle for witnessing.  But what I want to make is something that will reach into someone’s heart and create in them a longing for joy or an expression of home that they’ve never experienced but hungered for all their life.  And I stagger and rage at my inability to express what I mean.  I feel what I want to say inside me, and I so visibly lack the ability to translate it for other people.  I’m not even sure what it would look like, forget actually writing or selling it! 

I told someone once that it would be something if I could just write a book that people would walk away from with two things: 1) a feeling that God wanted them and loved them deeply and 2) that there was still hope on earth.  I want to make literature of trasmogrification, that turns grief and suffering into a hymn of joy.  On odd days I despair and beat myself up, but on even days I can’t contain the glorious love of God within me and I feel if I can’t write it out, I’ll bust.  Today was an even day.  I can still feel my spirit shaking like a leaf.

I used to say that I had talent, but nothing worth while to say.  Now I have something to say and every bit of talent I once thought I had seems like dust before it.  And all my pretensions to please fade away…  A couple of you kind of lovingly and gently spiked me for my “disclaimer.”  I guess I write disclaimers because I feel like someone newly off of crutches.  You’re telling me to cheer up- that I’m jogging so well!  And I’m dreaming of marathons and frustrated and fearful that I’ll never be able to go the distance.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been thinking about the purpose for my writing.

1. If someone says you have a face for radio, is that a complement?
2. 2 wrongs don’t make a right, but 4 rights make a square.
3. I believe Krispy Kreme donuts should be a food group.
4. Kids can remember every detail to a promise we’ve made but they can’t tell you who broke the vase on the mantle.
5. Needing a band aid or tissue is a great stall tactic at bed time.
6. Anyone who tells you their feet don’t stink is lying.
7. I am a risk-taker… I don’t wait 30 minutes to go swimming after a meal.
8. If our pets could talk…. What would they say about us?
9. Do you remember where you were when you realized the power of the phrase:  “Because I said so!”
10. Every place is within walking distance if you have the time.

How do you define success in your life?  Is it passing some test?  Perhaps creating some grand invention that will net you millions of dollars.  Is it short lived, here today and gone tomorrow?  Are there just a select group of people who can attain it?

I believe it is all those things and much more.  Success to me in the simpliest of terms is getting up one more time than you were knocked down.  At its best, it is something that takes a lifetime to achieve.  Sometimes the results of which are never seen in the short term but only show up in the long run, like raising Godly children.  I would like to believe that I have succeeded at things more than I have failed at them.  Unfortunately that is not the case, for it has taken multiple attempts to pass some tests.  I am trying to look at those things as bench marks and mile stones along this journey, knowing that the final exam will be here one day.  I will only get one shot at it and to pass it means I hear those words “Well done good and faithful servant.”  I am determined for that to be said of me, but to get there I must continue to be tested and refined. 

When it is all said and done I want to look back at my life and see times of disappointment and failure.  It will say that I was not afraid to take risks and not stick with the safe choices. 

I am not the man that I want to be.  I am not yet the one God sees, but I take heart in the knowledge that I am closer to that man, than when I started this journey. 

These are my random thoughts, I hope they make sense to all who read them.  

Like Angela, I was dragged against my will into the computer age. Thirty years ago I thought about becoming a programmer, but didn’t speak fluent Cobol or Fortran. It was all quite overwhelming. I returned to the security of pencil and paper, which is supplied in abundance when you work for the government. I was content to be computer illiterate.

About 15 years ago, my employer handed us portable computers and said, “Here, try this.” This digital dinosaur, a predecessor to the modern laptop, was procured, I’m sure, from the lowest bidder. “Portable” was a misnomer; the thing was bulky and weighed a ton. A keypad flipped down to reveal a very small screen. You had to remove and insert large disks to open a new window and squint at the screen (Open a window? I thought the screen was the window.) to find a C prompt. I put it back in its shoulder bag, sat it on the floor beside my desk where it collected dust and once again returned to my pencil and paper.

Five years later, my employer got serious and placed a PC on my desk: “You will use this, or else.” My computer education has been steady ever since. Now, blogging.

I’ve read posts in forums on other sites and tried following threads but always got lost. I’ve never created a post anywhere. So this effort is a test to make sure I’m doing this right. I hope the learning curve is not too steep because I want to keep up. I wouldn’t want my posts to end up lost in cyberspace.

Hoping you’ll be patient,

Michael Porter

I would like to state for the record that I am being forced into the 21st century kicking and screaming.  Only my love of writing would be powerful enough motivation to try and figure this stupid thing out!  I am posting this as a testing “strand” for those of us who maxed out our technical education with a pen and spiral notebook to practice on!  I will probably put it in the wrong place.  I am going to try and put it into a category, if I can figure out what a category is and how to use it.  Hey, P. Abbey- I have a subject for your next guild meeting!  How about a training class on how to use a blog?  Why does it do crazy things every time I hit “enter”?  How are you supposed to start a new paragraph on this miserable thing?  Do you know what “blog” reminds me of?  A bog of jello.  Blogging would be like slogging through blotted logs bobbing along in the jello.  Green jello.  Looks like slime.  So far I am developing very few positive associations with this particular piece of technology.  Now I must go and learn to comment!