Why Tell Stories

Teachers and nonfiction writers are sometimes hesitant to tell stories. Just giving the content straight seems so much better. People can get the wrong point from a story, after all. Stories can be subjective, vague, striking different people different ways. We don’t want people confused. And some may like a particular story and others not.

Giving content straight, however, has its disadvantages. Straight content can be limited and give the illusion that we know all we need about a topic in an aphorism or an essay.

If we say God is all-knowing and all-powerful, that is well and good. Maybe we add more. We say God is love, and as a result we also should love. This too is true. We definitely need to know that and believe it. It makes a massive difference in how we understand the Christian life. We have touched the mind in important ways.

And what if we tell a story? What if we tell of a man with two grown sons? The younger son shows immense disrespect for his father, asking for his share of the inheritance. Essentially he is saying he’d rather his father be dead so he can get his hands on the money.

How does the father react? Does he get angry? Does he laugh in his son’s face and mock him? No. He grants the son’s request. Promptly the young man leaves the family and squanders the wealth that he’s been given.

After some time, and having wasted everything, he is destitute and starving. In desperation he decides to return to his father, thinking to make an abject apology and ask for mercy.

All this time the father has been waiting, looking over the horizon, hoping to see his son return. And then, amazingly, he recognizes a disheveled figure, trudging down the road toward the house. The father sets aside his dignity and runs to meet him. Before the son can finish stumbling through his confession, the father calls for the servants to organize a great party for the whole community. Why? To celebrate the return of his beloved son who once seemed dead but is now back, alive.

And we? We have been touched in our hearts. We are moved. We are changed that this is the kind of God we have, a God who loves us even in this way.

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image credit: wal_172619 Pixabay

Reverse Writer’s Block

Recently a friend asked an interesting question after reading my blog on writer’s block. He wrote:

Andy,

I wonder if I need some writer’s block. I don’t have a problem with getting started. Rather, as I jokingly tell students, I’ve never met a word count I couldn’t exceed. I am working on my first solo, non-academic book for a Christian audience. In each chapter, I’ve stuffed in all sorts of things that I think are useful to know about the topic. That is giving me 4000-6000 word chapters, which I’m told is much too long. I need a tool for discerning what pieces I can safely leave out without losing my authorial voice. Any recommendations for that??? Thanks.

Prolific in Pittsburgh

It’s a great question. I have met a few other authors with “reverse writer’s block.” They know they should write less (or have been told to write less by an editor) but can’t seem to stop or keep the word count down.

Normally I don’t suggest self-editing before we start drafting. That can often shut down our flow. Unless you usually find yourself writing 3,000 words for every 1,000 assigned, it’s best to cut afterward. But how? A few things come to mind.

First, expect cutting to be painful. It will hurt because you believe in all your content. Don’t think you can do it without some anguish. If you don’t feel pain you probably aren’t cutting enough. Don’t expect to achieve what you want by deleting a word here or there. Whole sentences and paragraphs will have to go. Probably whole sections.

Second, save what you cut in a separate file. Maybe you can use it later for some other purpose. That could ease the pain a bit, knowing that your hard work is not forever banished to a digital netherworld. Remember: You don’t have to put everything possible into a piece. You can always write another book or article.

Third, when in doubt, throw it out. If the thought crosses your mind, “I wonder if this should go,” that is a likely candidate. Highlight it and everything else you think could be cut. Then see how many words you have left. If you are under the target word count, then you can reinstate some of your gems.

Fourth, in nonfiction you will often have main points. Sometimes you’ll have subpoints as well. But if you find you have sub-subpoints, those are likely candidates to ax.

Fifth, get a neutral party or two to give you input on what to cut. It should be people you trust and will listen to. It’s not fair to have them spend time reading your draft only to have you ignore most of what they say.

Two kinds of readers can be helpful. One is a person with significant writing or editing experience. Another type is someone in the target audience—your average reader. Have such people mark where their attention lagged or what they skipped over.

Finally, remember that after you make your cuts, your piece will almost always be better. Readers will remember more, and your prose will be stronger. Believe it. It’s true.

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credits: Pixabay stevepb (axe); Pixabay lograstudio (sleeping)

Aspire to Retire?

Retirement isn’t an idea you find in the Bible. Yes, the march of time slows us down, and we need to transition to a new rhythm, allowing the next generation to take the lead. But sipping drinks with little umbrellas by the beach for months on end is not the ambition recommended by Peter, Paul, or Moses.

When formal or full-time employment winds down, we nonetheless still have to figure out what to do with our time. A couple years before I actually stepped down from my job, someone suggested I do an exercise. That was simply to write out a plan. I did it and that helped me clarify in my own mind things I was already thinking about. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Read more. All the books were waiting that I’ve wanted to get to that I hadn’t had time for.
2. Do some freelance editing and consulting. I wanted to do some, but not too much. I already had one project lined up to begin with.
3. Write more. I had one book to finish in the first six months, as well as to keep my blog going.
4. See our thirteen grandkids more. They are in Chicago, Denver, and Tucson. We made several trips out West in the first year and subsequently. What fun!
5. Give more volunteer time to the church. In particular I wanted to start regularly helping out at the food pantry our church sponsors.
6. Give attention to home improvement projects. Almost every room in the house needed attention. I planned to do one or two rooms a year.

Your list would look different. My ideal day, I thought, would be to write, read, or edit in the morning, and then get my body moving by doing home improvement in the afternoon. It has rarely happened exactly that way, but I have enjoyed the mix over weeks and months. All six items on my list have been part of my regular routine.

My wife, Phyllis, needed to do it differently. She is such an activist I suggested she not make a plan or any long-term commitments for a year. Otherwise she would fill up her schedule without a clear sense of priorities. And I knew she would have plenty to do during that year, but she needed to organically see what her new rhythm of life would be. So she did. She spent the year continuing to be active with friends, family, discussion groups, and service opportunities. But no big plans.

This took a bit of discipline on her part because immediately on stepping away from her job, she was offered an opportunity to volunteer with a weekly jail ministry. That sounded just right but she waited a year, at the end of which that option was still at the top of her list. She’s done it ever since and loved it.

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credit: Andy Le Peau (food pantry)

A Message to the Future

What if you wanted to send a message to someone in the future. Would you need a time machine? Would you have to reverse the polarity on your deflector array to transmit a message through a supernova? Maybe you would need to harness the power of a black hole to energize the system.

That might not even solve all your problems. After all, sending a message into the future can be a tricky business. What could make sure that it didn’t degrade as it passed through the space-time continuum? The technology could break down. Human error or human limitations could prevent the message from being transmitted. And because language and culture change significantly over time, our words and syntax could be difficult to understand by those in the future.

Yet if these difficulties could be overcome, who would you write? To yourself in five years? To your children in fifteen years? Grandchildren in fifty years? To those living five hundred years from now?

What would you write? Your hopes and dreams? Your hard-won wisdom? Stories from your life of sadness and joy? Or just the funny thing that happened today?

It wouldn’t have to be profound. The very commonness of our letters to the future can profoundly communicate our bonds as humans across time and culture.

What can encourage us in this rather daunting project is that people have been sending messages to the future for almost ten thousand years. Some of those earliest messages scratched on clay tablets were very commonplace—a shopping list, a record of livestock sold, a recipe for beer.

We also have records of how teachers taught students to read and write five thousand years ago. They used some rather sophisticated techniques (both semantic and phonological) and unsophisticated (the cane).

But wait, there’s more. Two and a half thousand years ago Homer, Confucius, and Isaiah sent messages to the future. From hundreds of years past Dante, Scheherazade, and Shakespeare still speak to us. More recent messages to our day come from Hemingway, Achebe, Borges, and Solzhenitsyn.

Writing and reading are so commonplace we forget how almost magical the whole process is. We can receive and send ordinary and exceptional stories as well as knowledge across thousands of miles and hundreds of years with people we have never met and who may not know our language.

And what technology shall we use for this? While our words can easily be multiplied thousands of times digitally, ink on paper may still be the most likely to survive into the next millennium.

Today, then, read a message for the future that was written long ago. Today, write that those in the future might know you and as a result know themselves better.

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Credits: Pixabay eli007 (black hole); Pixabay Pexels (writing),

Twelve Books I Keep Talking About

One measure of how much I like a book is by how much I keep talking about it. In one way or another it has captured me, provoked me, stayed with me.

Here are twelve, in no particular order, that I’ve read in the last two years which I keep thinking about. As they range from fiction to nonfiction and from academic to popular, I think you can find one in the list below that you’ll really love too.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling
A mindblowing book that shows with solid data (1) that the world is much better economically, politically, educationally, medically than we ever thought, (2) why we are ignorant of these facts, and (3) why this gives us hope to keep working on what needs fixing.

Recursion by Blake Crouch
Believable, well-rounded characters that we care about and a sci-fi page turner all in one.

Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
Stephen Colbert meets Strunk & White in this informative and cheerfully acerbic guide to grammar, style, and punctuation

The Road to Character by David Brooks
A much-needed book about the importance of eulogy virtues (the impact we have on others) over resumé virtues (our achievements) which reveres the “crooked timber” school of humanity; that is, people who are very aware of their flaws and who, as a result, push against their bent selves to achieve strength.

Them by Ben Sasse
A U.S. senator says America isn’t polarized for the reasons we think but because we are lonely people who have lost connection to our communities.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
This fun supernatural novel is an homage to H. P. Lovecraft and his spooky, weird pulp fiction of the last century while also serving as an incisive critique of Lovecraft’s bigotry.

The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge
A substantive and pastoral celebration of Christ’s crucifixion as God’s victory over Sin, Death, and the Devil, while seeing his substitutionary work (in our place and on our behalf) as the necessary partner to this cosmic triumph.

12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
Peterson is the crusty, old coach who does not tolerate excuses, lack of effort, or stupid choices. He expects the best from you and won’t settle for anything less—not because he needs another victory but because he wants the best for you.

Originals by Adam Grant
From what makes a great base stealer to how to parent for moral development to why you should get rid of the suggestion box to how to write a great headline to creating change as a minority in a majority culture, the book offers wide ranging, stimulating ideas we can put into practice.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Great fun all the way through, at the intersection of books and technology, old knowledge and new.

The Myth of Equality by Ken Wytsma
This important and eye-opening book reveals how state-sponsored racist policies did not end with the abolishment of slavery, what biblical justice calls us to, and how we can move ahead individually and corporately in concrete ways.

The Theological Intentions of Mark’s Literary Devices by Dean B. Deppe
A tour de force; a systematic unpacking of the structural and other devices Mark uses to highlight four themes: the Messiah is a suffering, crucified servant; discipleship will also be met with suffering, confusion, and failure; the Gentiles are welcomed into the new community in Christ; many Jewish regulations are fulfilled in Jesus and are no longer in effect.

What are the books you keep talking about?

Everyone Gets Writer’s Block

One way or another we all fall victim to writer’s block. But it can come in many forms. It is not just a blank screen that sits forever mocking our lack of output. Sometimes it means we just move at a very slow pace. Our perfectionism kicks in so we fuss over every sentence before moving on. Or we fear someone will think we are shallow or just borderline literate.

If that’s you, you are in good company. The good news is there are very practical things we can do to get us moving. Let me just reiterate a few ideas that might help.

1. Get The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and practice Morning Pages as she describes them. Writing thirty minutes a day without self-editing or correction about anything at all can help us form new habits that can get us writing more on a regular basis. If you think thirty minutes a day is a lot to commit to, think of how much time you’ve wasted staring at a screen getting nowhere. Highly recommended.

2. Read Betty Flowers whom I reference in Write Better. In just a page she gives us a great image. We all need our Judge and need to assure ourselves that the Judge will indeed have her say. But not till the end of the process—not at the beginning and not in the middle.

3. Do some writing exercises regularly. You can find sentence completion and other options on websites such as these:

Writing Exercises

Creative Writing Exercises

10 Best Creative Writing Exercises

Doing these show us and remind us that we can indeed write on demand.

4. Play Balderdash. This box game in which we create phony definitions is great fun in a group, especially when you let your imagination run wild and other people can spur you on. Getting a group together will be easier, we trust, in the near future. The fun in this game is the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of writing without overthinking go down easily.

Finally, Paul Silvia in How to Write A Lot tells us that people who were required to write daily wrote 3.5 time more pages and had twice as many creative ideas as those who waited for inspiration.* Being productive (such as with Morning Pages), can—even if our writing is flawed, wordy, or logically suspect—get us into a rhythm of writing which allows an opportunity for creativity.

Remember: We always can (and should) fix it later.

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*Thanks, Marcia Bosscher, for highlighting this for me.

America’s Most Polarized Election?

They say, America’s polarized in unprecedented ways.

Is that true? Consider the election held in 1800 too.

Just twelve years after ratifying the Constitution, President John Adams ran for re-election against his own vice president, Thomas Jefferson. The rhetoric was superheated by hyperpartisan media, making it one of the country’s most acrimonious episodes.

Jon Meacham’s outstanding volume, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and David McCullough’s excellent biography, John Adams, reveal the apocalyptic language that was common on both sides of the aisle. Federalist papers supporting Adams and Republican papers behind Jefferson were the equivalent of FOX News and MSNBC.

“Hyperbole was the order of the day,” Meacham writes. “For Republicans, Adams was an aspiring monarch. Americans, one Republican wrote, ‘will never permit the chief magistrate of the union to become a king instead of a president.’ For Federalists, Jefferson was a dangerous infidel. The Gazette of the United States told voters to choose ‘GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT or impiously declare for JEFFERSON__AND NO GOD.’ ” (Meacham, 322)

McCullough tells us, “In almost daily attacks in the Aurora, Adams was belittled as ‘The President by Three Votes,’ mocked again as ‘His Rotundity,’ excoriated as a base hypocrite, a tool of the British, ‘a man divested of his senses,’ . . . a man ‘unhinged’ by the ‘delirium of vanity.’ ” (McCullough, 485, 498)

Adams ended up third behind Jefferson and Burr who were tied in electoral votes. Yes, this was the election in which for Jefferson, “It might be nice. It might be nice to get Hamilton on your side.” Hamilton’s tilt toward Jefferson helped break the deadlock in the House between the two Republicans.

One irony is that Jefferson and his Republican friends feared that Adams wanted a stronger executive leaning toward that of a monarch. Yet it was Jefferson who expanded the power of the presidency far more than Adams ever contemplated. Not the least example of this was doubling the size of the country through the Louisiana Purchase, though the Constitution was very unclear (silent?) about such a transaction. (Meacham, 389-391)

Extreme political language is not an invention of the last twenty years. And if we are looking for the period when the country was most at odds with itself, we dare not forget a Civil War costing the lives of six hundred thousand. That level of violence seems to be more polarized than anything we are experiencing today.

Am I saying the issues we face now are unimportant and not worth vigorous debate? Not at all. Rather, we should put today’s conflicts in perspective. The end of the world is not at hand pending the outcome of the next election. Nonetheless, we should always work for the common good, to support those who are in need, to ensure justice and fair play for all.

Do you want more insight on how to think, to act, and to understand our current situation? Then read a good history book or two and stay away from Twitter.

Lovecraft Country

Matt Ruff’s fun supernatural novel, Lovecraft Country, is an homage to H. P. Lovecraft and his spooky, weird pulp fiction of the last century. Yet it is also an incisive critique of Lovecraft’s bigotry.

Set in Chicago in 1954, the novel follows a series of exploits of an extended family and their friends as they encounter mid-century racism while traveling, while trying to buy a house, and while trying to get jobs. These characters are very aware of the power dynamics at work around them, but they nonetheless act with resolve and creativity to achieve their ends. In ways these are classic underdogs—unlikely and under-resourced people who somehow manage to succeed.

The encounters with the police, with realtors, with employers are vivid and real even as the paranormal and extraterrestrial weave in and out of the narratives. At the beginning of the second episode, for example, we get one of the best, briefest explanations of redlining in Chicago in the 1950s to be found. And then there is the fun—the tributes to Lovecraft’s genre, to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, to fifties-era space comics, and more.

Ruff is a master of comic irony, of flipping the script, of teaching us our own history without our even knowing he has done so.

Remembering J. I. Packer

Over my forty years at InterVarsity Press I crossed paths with J. I. Packer a number of times. This soft-spoken and steady British theologian, who died this past week, became something of an accidental celebrity when his substantive book Knowing God suddenly became a best seller. When, as a newly minted InterVarsity campus staff member in 1973, I learned that IVP sometimes gave free books to staff, I made sure they knew that’s the book I wanted. I drank it in.

Once I recall him talking about his concise writing style. “Packer by name; packer by trade,” he responded. I could tell he enjoyed saying that, and I got the impression he used the line often.

On another occasion Jim reprimanded me and IVP for dropping the dedication to his wife in our latest printing of Knowing God. I assured him that wasn’t possible. He assured me it was. He was right. I checked, and somehow it had been dropped. We fixed it next printing.

I introduced him two times when he was a speaker, and once ran him on an errand for cookies for the group of Regent students he was hosting. I was impressed by how he took personal responsibility to make sure his students were treated with genuine hospitality.

Once several of us took him to lunch, and as we ate IVP publisher Bob Fryling posed the question, “How would you describe IVP among the many Christian publishers that are around?”

Immediately Jim responded, “Some publishers tell you what you should believe. Other publishers tell you what you already believe. But IVP helps you to believe.” We were amazed at the instantaneous response, but he took it as par for the course that he could spout off such aphorisms on demand, and gladly gave us permission to use the line publicly.

Perhaps my most memorable encounter was when I got a glimpse into his humanity. At a conference I was assigned the task of chauffeuring him and another famous author. As these two good friends talked in the back seat, they began sharing intimate updates on their similar experiences of grief and difficulty—all as if I were not there. I never forgot that no matter how elevated we might be, we are not immune to life.

And I never forgot the joy and good humor Jim always exhibited in every circumstance.

A Story of Art, Addiction, and Renewal

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is famous for its albatross and for “Water, water, every where,/Nor any drop to drink.” In Mariner, Malcolm Guite gives us so much more in this first-rate biography of Coleridge combined with a masterful analysis of the work’s compelling story, vivid images, and powerful poetry. In doing so Guite unveils the remarkable parallels between the two. Even more remarkable, Coleridge’s life seemed to follow the pattern of the ancient mariner after he had written the poem, not before.

Coleridge is also known for his addiction to opium which took him to his own “Night-mare Life-in-Death.” It began when a doctor prescribed it for his various aliments (something doctors of the day commonly did not knowing its powerful addictive effects). Intertwined with his years-long struggle for physical well-being was one for spiritual renewal. Coleridge never rejected his faith but went through struggles to a deeper more profound personal, intellectual and theological commitment.

We also see his early friendship with Wordsworth which was crucial as the two launched the Romantic movement in reaction to the dry rationality of the Enlightenment. Yet even this relationship went through its stormy patches, much of it due to Coleridge’s own troubles.

Such was the power of Coleridge’s personality and intellect that even in the midst of his deep struggles he reshaped the way the world saw Shakespeare in a series of landmark lectures. Previously the Bard was viewed as a second-tier talent of popular leanings. After Coleridge we know him to be the premier wielder of not only the English language but of art and life.

As a priest, poet and songwriter, Guite is perfectly suited for the task of bringing this life and this work home to us. He does not disappoint.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.