The Scary Side of Writing

I read something on a blog last week that scared me. It scared me because I'm a writer of fiction, and it reminded me once again what a big responsibility that can be.

Believe it or not, this blogger was celebrating the fact that piracy is making a comeback these days, and was downright giddy about what Somali pirates have "accomplished." I looked up old news reports to read about these newfangled pirates, and found that they have fired rockets at cruise ships and hijacked vessels carrying food to starving Somalis. Why was this blogger so happy? Because he loves pirate lore, including Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, I've admitted being a fan, myself. Does that mean I make any connection between that otherworldly myth and these outright thugs? I don't think so. The writers of Pirates probably didn't see that one coming, either.

I also love Star Wars. Does that mean I want to ditch Christianity and become a Jedi? What a laughable thought, you might think. But did you know that "Jedi" was listed as an official religion on the last U.K. census, and that 390,000 people marked Jedi as their religion? Granted, a fair number of these people could have done it for a joke. But I used to go to science fiction conventions. Trust me, some of them weren't joking.

Did George Lucas set out to create a new religion? He has said (in a Bill Moyers interview) he merely wanted to get people to think about God and not endorse any particular faith. And yet, some people are embracing Yoda's teachings as real.

Fiction has always been a powerful force (no pun intended, Mr. Lucas), for bad and for good. Remember how Uncle Tom's Cabin riled people up about slavery? It's always exciting to think God might use our work for good. But it's a little frightening to think that, once it leaves our hands, our original message can become twisted and misused.

I've heard people say, "It's only a movie," or "It's only a book." I wonder if there's really any such thing?

Excuses and Promises

I think I have the Martian Death Flu. Okay, it's a cold, but yesterday at least, it felt like Martian Death Flu. That's why I didn't post anything since Friday. So much for Excuse #1.

I've been trying to figure out the rest of my excuses for why I haven't gotten much of anything done lately. Actually, I've been trying to figure out just what the heck I have been doing the past couple of weeks. The house and my laundry are dirty, so I obviously haven't been cleaning. Since Gilmore Girls and the Amazing Race ended, I don't watch TV. I have a stack of books I'm supposed to be reading, but that stack hasn't diminished. I'm more interested in the manuscript I'm working on lately, but somehow interest hasn't translated to producing many actual pages.

I think I've mostly been sitting in the vet's office. You remember Cera, the terror of groomers within a hundred-mile radius?

She developed an infection a couple of weeks ago, so off we went to the vet for our first visit. I mentioned to them, however, that she seemed to have a problem with antibiotics. Her problem is that she has no intention of taking them. If I do manage to get anything down her, she shows me! To put it delicately, within about 30 seconds she delivers it back to me--in a very unpleasant way. The vet told me we'd have to come back EVERY DAY for shots if I couldn't give her medicine at home. This vet's office, by the way, doesn't take appointments. And it's very popular, so you can count on a long wait every time.

Next day, however, we saw a different vet. He suggested I try some brand new pills they have, which are tasty and easy on the tummy. Cats love them. They gobble them up. I tried giving Cera one. I mixed it with tuna. I poured gravy on it. I stuck it inside a treat. She stared at me in disbelief and walked away. So much for tasty. Back we went for a shot.

Next time, the vet had his tech come in to demonstrate the use of something called a "pill pusher." He assured me if I learned to use this, I would be able to give Cera pills and stay home. Home! Finally I'd be able to sit at my laptop and create my Gothic ranch house (where the eyes of all portraits are covered with black tape). This happy dream lasted about 15 seconds. That's how long it took Cera to defeat the vet tech. She clenched her teeth, she snarled, she fought. But he was a professional. He actually got the pill to touch her tongue. At that point she began to foam at the mouth and writhe, like some Hollywood B-movie actor doing the poison scene from Romeo and Juliet. The vet just shook his head and told me to come back tomorrow for a shot. We've been seven times so far, and I have to go again this evening.

So Cera is excuse #2. There are lots more, like friends who needed a good cry on the phone, or developed scary medical problems and needed to talk. And then there's me just being lazy and inefficient. And did I mention the Martian Death Flu?

When I have posted, my messages haven't exactly been...deep. But I'm finished with excuses now. Here are the promises of the wonderful things coming up in the next couple of weeks.

• An interview with a writer I just discovered named Marlo Schalesky. On someone else's blog, she mentioned the ordeals of waiting and doubt she had been through while trying to have children and trying to publish her first book. I figured she would have plenty to say to this audience! So I contacted her and asked her to talk to us specifically about what God taught her during those times of waiting. Her experiences and her advice are so encouraging, and real faith boosters. We'll be reading Marlo's interview this Friday.


• Marlo also sent a devotional that I'll be posting. Guess what--it's about fires! Another big theme on this blog.


• I will share some thoughts I've had on why my own writing journey has been so long, and maybe a few pitfalls you can avoid.


• My teenage cousin will be reviewing Jenny Jones's new teen book called In Between, and we'll also have an interview with Jenny.
  
• I will share some insights about writing and faith that I got from reading a fabulous C.S. Lewis book called Surprised by Joy.

I will bring all of this to you and more. Just as soon as I get out of the vet's office.

Spooky House Stories Needed

I seldom mention specifics here about what I'm writing. However, I need your help on my current project, so let me tell you a little bit more.

It's a suspense called Jordan's Shadow. I took a shot at writing it last year but I'm starting over, and I've decided I want it to be very atmospheric and Gothic. You know those books, right? The covers usually feature a dark, stone mansion perched on a cliff, with the angry waves crashing below.

Mine's going to be like that--only in a brick ranch house in Georgia. Seriously. Instead of cliffs and waves, the house will be perched between acres of piney woods and a shadowy pecan orchard. But I am going for that same sinister, Gothic thing.

So I'm wondering. Do any of you have stories about "normal," non-mansion type houses that gave you the creeps for some reason? Here's a couple of my examples.

I grew up in a brick ranch house, sort of like the one in my novel. When I was about six, we added a large living room onto the house, which was mainly used for big family gatherings or when we had guests. It had a separate entrance from the porch and French doors that closed it off from the rest of the house. When I was a child, that room gave me the willies. To this day, when I visit my parents, I'm not thrilled if I have to go into that dark room by myself.

I was telling my sister about this recently, and she tried to guess the reason for my fear. Was it because of all the windows in that room, which made it easy to feel like someone was watching me? Because it was so separate from the rest of the house? Nope. It was because--and I hope no one takes offense at this--of the picture of Jesus that hung on the far wall, and which still hangs there today.

I've never seen another picture of Jesus quite like this. It's a portrait, and He looks very stern. Almost angry. It's also extremely lifelike. To use a cliche, the eyes seem to follow you all around the room. Sometimes one of my parents used to send me into that room to fetch an encyclopedia from the bookcase. I'd have to open the French doors, cross several feet in sheer darkness, then fumble for the light switch. I tried very hard not to look over at that portrait, because I was certain that, some night, one of two things would happen. (Or possibly both.) Number one, the eyes would be glowing in the dark--and still following me. Number two, it would come to life.

She swears she doesn't remember this, but I told my sister all this when I was a kid. She said I must have a guilty conscience. That did NOT make me feel better.

DISCLAIMER: I promise I have a very healthy and loving relationship with the REAL Jesus. It's just that picture I don't do so well with.

My next creepy house example: When my husband and I were house-shopping a few years ago, we looked at a home in a very nice, older neighborhood. It was a small, brick, single-level house except for an unfinished basement. Here's the weird part. Right in the middle of the living room, there was an opening in the floor with a narrow staircase going down into that dark basement. Right there in the living room! It was a nice house otherwise, but I knew I had WAY too much imagination to put up with that. I tried to picture myself lounging in that room at night, watching TV, with an open hole down into a dark pit a few feet away. Yeah, right.

I'm definitely using the weird basement entrance in my Gothic ranch house.

Have you seen other things in houses, or had spooky experiences, that I could blatantly steal from you and help build the atmosphere in my story? If so, please share! You can leave it in a comment or email me at robing8300 at gmail.com. Also, if it's a really good story, let me know if I can pass it along to the other readers.

Thanks so much for your help. Have a great weekend!

Oh, What a Tangled Mess I've Knitted

A few weeks ago, I posted about my new passion for crafts, like knitting and making beaded jewelry. I talked about losing much of my enthusiasm for writing, and about the peace and contentment that comes from making things with my hands.

Well, God may be trying to tell me something. I tried to follow a knitted shawl pattern and, after a few days of working on it, realized I needed to rip it out and start over. Easier said than done. I was using a tricky ribbon yarn which refused to ravel back into a nice, neat line. Ever tried to unravel about 50 feet of tangled Christmas lights? Yeah, it was like that.

I hated to just give up and throw the yarn away, because it's expensive, but eventually I decided to just give it to Wendy to play with.

She didn't want it, either.

Then I turned to beading. We went on one of our camping trips, and I sat out under the trees at a picnic table, working on a necklace for my mom for Mother's Day, then another one for myself. Ah...sweet tranquility.

The necklace for my mother came apart three times while I was working on it. (When it was almost finished each time, of course.) My necklace waited until the day I wore it to work, then fell apart. Thirty-three inches of beading, mostly tiny seed beads. Did I mention it came apart in my car? There will be beads rolling around in those floorboards until that little Mercury is scrap metal.

I haven't done much beading lately. On the positive side, I'm starting to enjoy writing again.

I love my writing.

Waiting and Hoping

A few years ago, I decided to brush up on my Spanish language skills, so I took a couple of continuing education classes. One night, a student was struggling through a Spanish passage and translated the word "esperar" as "to wait." The instructor corrected him. Although "esperar" does mean "to wait," in that particular sentence, it meant "to hope." The student remarked on the fact that the same word had both meanings. The teacher shrugged and said, "Why not? To wait is to hope."

As I retell this story, I realize I may have it backwards. She may have said, "To hope is to wait." I don't think it really matters. If you're hoping for something, you haven't attained it yet. You wait, and you hope. You hope, and you wait.

I made a similar discovery when reading a Scripture passage recently. One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 40:31. I learned it in the King James version: "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

Then one day, I ran across a different translation (NIV): "but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

What a beautiful promise! It's so tempting to print the whole of Isaiah 40, which starts off, "Comfort, comfort my people." Just before verse 31, we're assured that God never grows weary or loses strength. Even youths will grow tired and fall, but God has an unending supply of energy, and He will renew us if our trust is in him. (And oh yeah, still another translation of verse 31 begins, "Those who trust in the Lord…")

So it all depends on where we place our trust. Where we place our hope.

If our God is the Lord, to wait is to hope.

New Contest Announced!

It's Friday, so I feel like doing something fun. How about announcing a new prize give-away?

Thanks to all of you who let me know what you'd like to win. After giving it some thought, I decided to run a contest from now through the end of July. On July 31, I'll have a drawing, and the winner can CHOOSE THE PRIZE from among the following:
--a $50.00 gift card to Bath & Body Works
--a $50.00 gift card to amazon.com
--an iPod Shuffle.

There will be three ways to be entered in the drawing:

--ALL who are subscribed at the time of the drawing will be entered.
--If you refer a new subscriber (in other words, you're the reason they subscribe), you'll get an entry in the drawing. Just email me and let me know who you referred.
--As before, each comment you leave from now until July 31 will get you one entry.

So as you can see, there are ways to get multiple entries in the drawing. Isn't this fun?! It is for me, anyway. I hope you folks will enjoy it, too. My personal goal is to have 50 subscribers at the end of July. If I can manage that, I'll really enjoy this contest!

So help me spread the word. And again, thanks!

Research Tip: Making the Most of Google

Okay, if you're on a computer, writing and reading blogs, chances are you use Google. But did you know there are some extra things you can do to make it work even better for you?

There are several more "focused" Google search engines. Each one in itself is pretty nifty. The U.S. Government link will let you search within government sites. So if you want to do a search about space, you'll come up with NASA web pages, for example, minus all the web sites put up by individuals or folks trying to sell you an opportunity to name a star after yourself.

Google is in the process of putting the full text of thousands of books online. Through the Google Book Search, you can search within the full text of those books--and then read them online once you find them! Other books that aren't available in full text can still be searched, and you can see "snippets" from them, showing where your search terms are found. Then there are links to help you find the book in a library or online store.

Then there's the Google Scholar search, for journal articles. And the Google News archive search.

Want to find out what people are saying in their blogs about Pirates of the Caribbean? (Okay, that's probably just me, but it's still a good example.) Go to Google Blog Search.

If you don't want to try out all these new sites, there are plenty of tricks you can use to enhance your search at plain old Google. Start by clicking the "Advanced Search" button next to the quick search box. You can do all kinds of strange and wonderful things from the advanced search screen.

The first boxes let you control how Google looks for your search terms. The boxes are pretty self-explanatory. In the first box ("with all of the words"), you can put terms that absolutely must be in your results. In other words, if you're looking for web pages about The Color Purple, you don't want it to return results that only had "purple" in them. The most popular site could be about eggplants, in that case! Of course, for a search like that, you'd probably want to put "The Color Purple" in the box that says "with the exact phrase."

The box that says "with at least one of the words" is handy when you're not sure which word the authors might have used, and you don't want to miss any good sites. For example, you could put in "illness sickness syndrome disorder" and it would pull up sites that have even just one of those words.

Maybe you're looking for information about flea treatments for dogs. In the box "without the words" you could put "cats," if you want to avoid having to plow through info on felines.

You can put in limits on dates if you want to make certain a site has up-to-date information.

You can tell it to either leave out certain domains, or search ONLY in certain domains (like .com, .org, .edu., .gov, etc.) Maybe you're looking for some academic or scholarly information, so you might want to exclude .com sites, because they can be more commercial. Maybe you want to only search .edu sites, because these come from educational institutions and you could find out what academics are writing on the subject.

I'd tell you more, but it's making me tired just thinking of it all! Check it out and let me know what you think. I'm playing around with it all myself, and will probably cover each of these more in-depth later.