A whole lot of typing

I don't often quote a movie I haven't seen (and won't) but I read a review of "Resurrecting the Champ," and saw what may be the only gem within it. (The reviewer was not impressed). At least from a writer's standpoint.

The line is apparently uttered by the cantankerous newspaper editor (somebody in Hollywood puh-lease give us a newspaper editor who's not crusty, rude or feisty. That character profile has been done to death), portrayed by Alan Alda. He says this to the hapless main character played by Josh Hartnett; a sports writer in need of a big break: "Your copy is unimpressive; a lot of typing, not much writing. The truth is, I forget your pieces while I'm reading them."

Now there's a quote to scare a writer silly. I can't think of anything more terrifying than punching keys and thinking I'm creating word art only to find out I am merely punching keys. It is bad enough to write something forgettable, but is there anything worse than writing something that is forgotten even as it's being read?

How does one write something forgettable? We must know if we are to avoid doing it. Well, the trouble is it's hard to note what makes a book forgettable because we have forgotten those books. You can't make a respectable list of things NOT to do when nothing comes to mind to comprise the list. Example: "Mmmm. What forgettable books have I read?. . . "

. . .
. . .

See?

The thing to do then, is note what make a book memorable. What makes a book invade my being with sentences and settings, characters and conversations, that tattoo themselves on my mind in ink that does not fade? Why do Peace Like a River and The Kite Runner and Life of Pi and The Poisonwood Bible and The Glass Castle linger in my memory, creating rivulets of emotion when I see their covers in Barnes & Noble or in someone's hands on an airplane or on the shelf in my living room?

What is the difference between a book I don't remember and a book I can't forget?

I would say that, based on everything else I remember that has long since passed, we remember what mattered to us. If it mattered, we remember it. That explains why our earliest childhood memories are usually traumatic or euphoric.

So actually, it's really rather simple, this task of being an author who is unforgettable:

Write what matters.

The way things are

Yikes.

Another Monday came and went unsung. I meant to visit the Edge yesterday. I do want to blog on Mondays like I promised I would. But I kept thinking it was Saturday. That's what happens when you marry a man who becomes a pastor and whose Monday becomes his Saturday. If you're home with him, you forget what day it really is.

(Technically, Monday is his Sunday. It's supposed to be his day of Rest. But I don't know any technical pastors. Do you?)

I should be thrilled. I am home on Mondays. It should be like getting two Saturdays. The problem is Monday is a Writing Day for me. And I am supposed to be writing, not playing Saturday with my pastor-husband.

This is one of those things no one told me about at Pastor's Wives' School. How to handle upside down Monday. Maybe that info was included in the lecture on how to always have a clean bathroom and unwrinkled skirts and a cake in the cake-keeper. I missed that one.

I am amazed at how topsy turvey life can be when you're busy trying to lead a normal life. There's always something to undermine the status quo, to shake things up, to mess with Normal.

Last week during one of my morning rendezvous with Sunrise Earth on the Discovery Channel, I was taken to an abandoned village in the clouds on a Peruvian mountaintop. The sun was beginning to turn the ancient stone a creamy yellow and wisps of clouds were evaporating as the heat of the oncoming day warmed them. Everywhere there were echoes of long ago lives; steps, paths, doorways,window ledges — silent and stony evidences of past human touch. And then, in the middle of this quiet monument to a lost culture, there came a parade of llamas. They lumbered about the village ruins as if they were the original architects. They didn't exactly belong in the picture, but they were there anyway, and had probably been there for years. Experts at tiptoeing manmade steps, no doubt.

I was wide-eyed at first, at these woolly intruders, but after ten minutes of watching them negotiate the village layout like seasoned stage crew, I got used to them.

I'm thinking Normal isn't usually the absence of the unusual, but more likely the acceptance of whatever defines your world at the moment.

Which is how I can excuse my mistaking Mondays for Saturdays.

Sorry about that.

Sort of.

I've always been a fan of short poetry that beckons me to read only a second time for clarity and a third for enlightenment. Not a big fan of long poems nor short ones that I don't get.

But I read this one this morning during my coveted alone time. I read it a fourth time just because I liked it so much:

"Save our blessings, Master, save,

From the blight of thankless eye,

Teach us for all joys to crave.

Benediction pure and high,

Own them given, endure them gone,

Shrink from their hardening touch,

Yet prize them won,

Prize them as rich odors meet

For love to lavish at His feet."

- John Keble

Is it possible for our joys to harden us? Yikes, it must be. Keble was a great scholar, loads more clever than me. And if joys can make us stony from having too many of them, then that would explain why God sometimes throws calamity our way. To keep us soft.

And now a little shameless plug for a friend of mine with a new book out. "Off the Record" by Elizabeth White is about ambition on a collision course with secrets from the past. (Doggone those secrets from the past. But hey, they make for great novels!) You can buy Beth's newest book here. Here's the scoop:

Judge Laurel Kincade, a rising political star, is announcing her candidacy for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Her aristocratic Old South family, led by her judge grandfather, beam as she takes the podium.

Then her eyes alight on a reporter in the crowd-and suddenly her past is on a collision course with the present. Journalist Cole McGaughan, religion reporter for the New York Daily Journal, has received an intriguing call from an old friend. Private investigator Matt Hogan has come across a tip-that Laurel's impeccable reputation might be a façade.

Matt suggests that Cole dig up the dirt on the lovely judge in order to snag his dream job as one of the Journal's elite political reporters.There's just one problem: Cole's history is entangled with Laurel's, and he must decide if the story that could make his career is worth the price he'd have to pay. A sensational scoop becomes a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

Reviewer Wendy Keel says: "OFF THE RECORD is a thrilling read that will have readers quickly turning pages and yet hoping the story never ends. Elizabeth White has once again written a “keeper shelf” story. The characters are fresh and multi-dimensional, with flaws that make them seem all the more realistic. The story is fast paced, engaging, and fun."

Sounds like a great weekend read. Have a super one, Edgelings. Stay soft and stay joyful.

Short and to the point

When I was editor of a small town newspaper and writing my own headlines (small town editors not only have to do that, they also shoot their own photos, choose the page layout and type up the occasional obituary when deadlines loom) it was a quite a brain-numbing task to come up with a stellar set of words that really packed a punch.

I had been taught that a good newspaper headline is short and powerful, crafted with unique and clever words that convey how this story is different than every other story like it since the history of the printing press. You could not write a headline like this: City Council holds meeting. That was bad, bad, bad. You could write this: Council eschews underwater skate park scheme. "Eschew" is a clever verb. And how often does a council get to do that while discussing an underwater skate park? Not very. And scheme and skate are nicely alliterative.

Now — generally speaking — small town journalism is packed with the seemingly mundane. Weather stories get front page attention. So do planned burns by the fire department, the fall musical at the high school and a new business opening on Main Street. Every now and then there's an eye-popping indictment or a robbery or even a murder. After spending lotsa waking hours coming up with clever ways to headline stuff of the ordinary, it was actually hard coming up with a snappy header for a truly newsworthy piece. But I did it. I had to. Edgy verbs. Meaningful nouns. No extraneous anything. Word punch. That was the order of the day.

And above all, I had to craft a headline that made the reader read the first paragraph. That may be all they read of that story, so both the headline and the first paragraph had to say it all. Those two little gems (the headline and the first paragraph) were the hardest items to create and were often mentally taxing.

Anything that drains you mentally is memorable, and so that is why I am forever scrutinizing headlines. Even now, years later. I see an out-of-the-ordinary headline and I ponder whether I could've come up with it if I had to.

Today, on my Google homepage, this headline awaited me: "Bears eat man at beer festival."

Wow.

Bears. Eat. Man. Beer. Festival.

Like, totally original.

The answer's no.

Mean what you say

I was e-chatting with a friend earlier today, peppering him with questions about dorm life at a college I'd picked for my current protagonist. I asked him if he took his meals in the dining commons when he lived there or did he subsist on Cup O'Noodles alone.

He ate at one of the commons. But he couldn't remember which one. All he remembered was the food.

Ah, the food, he said.

And I mistook sarcasm for nostalgic reminiscing. I thought he was e-saying "Ah, the food!" but he was really saying, "Yuck! The food!" Do you know how to say "Yuck! The food!" in sarcasmlish?

"Ah, the food!"

That's the problem with e-sarcasm. It's nearly impossible to detect. You can't massage the tone or shape of your words with Stewie-like (Family Guy) cynicism. The words stand alone, without anything to help you gauge their seriousness. In fact, sarcastic words in an email look just like informative words, so you wouldn't necessarily even think to gauge the seriousness. It simply wouldn't occur to you.

I wonder how many relationships are in tatters because of undetected e-sarcasm. How many ships have been sunk. How many jobs lost. How many hearts broken. How many unrealistic passages of books written. Do you hear the sarcasm in my e-voice right here?

There should be a font just for e-sarcasm. I'm not one to use those those hyper emoticons, so don't send me down that road. Besides no little smiley face can accurately capture the sarcastic look. What I'd like is a type style that is solely for sarcastic e-words. No more guesswork, no more misunderstandings, no more conversational train wrecks.

A simple font that quietly declares, "I am just kidding here," without saying a word.

But. . . .

Is sarcasm sarcasm if you have to say, "Hey! This is sarcasm!" I mean, is that like having to explain a joke? Is a joke still funny if you have to explain it? Maybe a special font just for sarcasm would be like, like,

Having to explain a joke.

Yeah, it's still a wee bit funny, but there's little punch in the punch line.

Sarcasm gets its punch from the tone of the voice, doesn't it? And the rolled eyes, the cocked head — all things which email cannot accommodate.

Hmmm.

Maybe we need to work on that emoticon after all. . .

No joke.

Keeping it real

The first time I heard the word "postmodern," I very much furrowed the proverbial brow. How can there be such a thing right now as the "postmodern" age? An age after the era of modernity? I am living in modern times. They can't be over. They can't be post.

So what the heck does it mean?

Well, I figured out the "post" in postmodernism doesn't really mean "after." It isn't about time at all. It describes instead a reaction to modern thinking. There is a mindset in our culture that is contrary — reactive—to what we've long called the modern way of thinking.

The arguably informative Wikipedia tells us "postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality." I think that translates into, "It's all relative. Absolute truth included." Or as one blogger said, "Postmodern means never having to say you're sorry."

Call it what you will. I can see that we live in a world were relativity is where it's at. We who are parents are raising kids in a world where situational ethics are the order of the day. Which means we have our work cut out for us. Ethics, if they are what we say are, should transcend situation.

My good friend, Mary DeMuth, has penned a new book that unpacks this notion. It's entitled Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture. I'm happy to be a part of the blogtour promoting this new book. Mary joins us here at the Edge to tell us more:

Edgewise: Who did you write this book for? What kind of parent?

Mary DeMuth: I wrote it for any parent, particularly parents with kids under their care, who want to see their kids become Jesus-followers and authentically reach their culture for Jesus Christ.

E: Some in the CBA world get a little edgy about the word “postmodern?” Why do you think that is so? What obstacles does the postmodern parent face that his grandparents didn’t?

MD: Folks equate “postmodern” with liberal theology, and therefore deem it dangerous. Postmodern is simply a descriptor of the mindset of today’s world. There are great things about postmodernism that gel with the Gospel, and there are things that don’t. It was the same with a modern perspective. I think folks are simply afraid of what they don’t know. The parent in a postmodern world has to learn how to translate the gospel to a generation that is highly skeptical, and balks at the idea of knowing all truth. In this storytelling generation, we need to learn how to approach our kids with stories alongside Biblical truth.

E: I am more intrigued by the word “authentic” in your title than “postmodern.” What does it mean to be an authentic parent? What is the opposite of being an authentic parent?

MD: I call them “image parents”—parents who are more concerned about how the family looks to others on the outside than how Jesus sees the family behind closed doors. An authentic parent asks for forgiveness when he/she fails. He/she shows kids that we all need Jesus, we’re all frail, we’re all on a spiritual journey and none of us have arrived fully sanctified.

E:What prompted you to write this book? Why did you think you were the one to write it?

MD: I still feel small and unworthy to write parenting books. I didn’t grow up in a home I wanted to duplicate, so I learned how to parent by trial and error and a heavy dose of Jesus. What prompted me to write the book was my own journey trying to find a different way to parent in this culture, particularly when we parented in hyper-postmodern France. I long to help parents deeply connect with their kids, to have such life-changing conversations with their kids that they don’t want to rebel when they leave the house.

E: Which chapter was the most difficult to write? Why?

MD: Probably the conversational parenting chapter because it’s so very hard to live. I re-read it before an interview and was convicted by my own words! This crazy, crazy world is so busy (particularly in America) that it takes concerted effort to deeply connect with my kids.

E: What are the qualities you admire most in an authentic parent?

MD: An authentic parent:

• Tells the truth
• Doesn’t gloss over their own sin
• Love their kids enough to set limits and boundaries
• Yet knows when to let out the leash
• Is deeply committed to Jesus and knows its his/her relationship with Jesus that will ultimately make for better parenting

E: My kids are either teenagers or in their 20s. It is too late for me to read your book?

MD: No. Because the book is so relationally and culturally focused, I think you’ll get a lot out of it. (At least I hope so!)

You can learn more about Mary's thoughts and ideas on her blog relevantprose, and you can also order Authentic Parenting there as well as view the other books on her authorial bookshelf. The guide for this blog tour is right here, if you'd like to see what other bloggers are saying about Authentic Parenting.

Have a fabulous weekend, Edglings.

A richly-tailored debut

I brought home a little treasure from ICRS in the form of a debut novel by Bethany Pierce. Feeling for Bones, pubbed by Moody and just out this spring, is a wonderfully-crafted story of the illusion of control in the life of an anorexic 16-year-old.

Pierce, who teaches English at Miami University, knows her stuff. Her prose is rich with detail, metaphor and unused turns of phrase. Told from the protag's point-of-view, Feeling for Bones, ushers the reader into the shaky world of the disordered eater; a world where food really has nothing to do with the eater's troubled soul.

The main character Olivia is deeply likeable, flawed but authentic, and she moves about in a family setting that rings true. Life isn't always easy, even for a pastor's family. Maybe especially for a pastor's family. We all search for ways to manage emotionally what we can't manage physically. Olivia uses and abuses the exercise of eating, turning it into a strange art form; an expression of what life is like for a girl faced with a major move, the loss of the familiar, the ache of a hurting & demoted pastor-father, the uncertainty of living in a dangerous world, and the prospect of a first romance.

I liked how the story was not about anorexia. It was about a girl who struggles to control her universe and resists surrender to God. The writing is fat with lovely descriptions like this, taken from a scene late in the book when Olivia has at last removed the glossy magazine pages of beautiful, skinny women from her bedroom wall. The magazine pieces lie in shreds on the floor.

Mom appeared in the doorway. I was washing my face.

"Thank you," she whispered. I looked down. In her hands, she'd gathered a pile of crumpled papers from my floor. White and curled, they blew about in her palms like bits of ash. My little paper kingdoms."

Very much character-driven, Feeling for Bones is a great pick for those who like Jodi Piccoult, Anita Shreve and Lisa Samson. The pace is measured, very nearly relaxed, but that allows you to enjoy the subtle and lovely artistry in the words.

Recommended!

I'm cholersangmelmatic

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I read all about the four personality types in Tim LaHaye's classic Spirit-Controlled Temperament, the original version. I duly noted the telltale signs of each type. I easily concluded that my husband-to-be was a textbook phlegmatic but I bristled at the notion that that quite possibly made me a choleric, seeing that opposites attract and all.

I didn't want to be the know-it-all, in-your-face choleric. I wanted to be the happy, Labrador-like sanguine. Who doesn't like to be around sanguines? Okay, sure. Sometimes you just want to slap them, but most of the time, they make life fun. They cry when you cry. They laugh when you laugh. They buy you cool birthday presents.

When they remember your birthday. . .

But jeepers! Cholerics just want to take over the planet. They are tyrants masquerading as good managers. They don't know how to have fun. They don't cry when you cry. They tell you everything you did wrong that got you boo-hooing in the first place. They are usually right, but that's beside the point.

I knew I wasn't much of a thoughtful melancholy who doesn't get jokes nor a laissez faire phlegmatic who gets them all.

And I wasn't a very convincing sanguine.

But I was sure to the core that there wasn't a choleric strand of any kind in my personality threads. Not one.

I ddin't want to be Slytherin. I wanted to be Gryffindor.

So for the next 27 years I thought of myself as just a very decaffeinated sanguine. It didn't occur to me that such a thing does not exist. Sanguines by their very nature are perpetually energized.

This past weekend, though, I heard Marita Littauer speak on these oh-so-familiar personality types. Get this. Three decades later, they are still the same. Happy sanguines, dominating cholerics, analyzing melancholys and laid-back phlegmatics. I reacquainted myself with the weaknesses and strengths of each. I considered the phlegmatic man I married and the notion that he would most naturally be attracted to a choleric, and that a choleric would find him likewise attractive.

I mused on the choleric's good points. I pondered the bad. I began to squirm in my seat. Then I remembered something Marita said at the beginning of her talk: Jesus exemplified the strengths of all four temperaments and none of the weaknesses.

Well, there you go. I want to be like Jesus. We're supposed to be like Jesus. I can be all of the personality types. All the parts that are good. If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.

So. That's that. At last I can say I don't have to be who I don't want to be.

And don't bother telling me that's not how it works.

You're not the boss of me.