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Friday, June 24, 2005
When you only have a hundred years to live…
I was on my way to Starbucks, which is my second office, by the way, (After I pay my three dollar ‘table fee’ which is the price of a non-fat latte, I get to sit and write there all day. I can even check my email.), and I was listening to Capital FM, our local radio station that features light rock which I like most of the time. And that angst-filled, sad, reflective song came on the radio, When you only have a hundred years to live. (Click on the song title for the complete lyrics.)
I listened to all the words, maybe for the first time. The song brought tears to my eyes. Really and truly. (But a whole lot of things bring tears to my eyes. I basically have that default writer’s personality, which is neurotic, obsessive crybaby.)
I’m fifteen for a moment...
And it is just a moment. Just a flash. At my age time is racing. It’s not meandering slowly like a lazy stream like when I was ten. Or fifteen. It’s racing, rushing. It’s a waterfall that is picking up speed. I can sit on my porch and actually see the sun move.
I’ve been married for almost 34 years, which is a number that is incredible to me. I don’t know how this happened. I can remember vividly when I’d been married for three days. I woke up in the morning and looked out the window and said, I’m married! I’m a married woman! This is so weird!
And now it’s almost 34 years and it’s taken maybe a week of real time to get here.
I’m thirty-three for a moment…I’m forty-five for a moment…
Yesterday I attended my husband’s work barbecue. These are all the people and their families who work in the computer department of the university, so there were plenty of babies and young children. My husband and I sat at a picnic table and he said, “Don’t all these people look so young!” And I said, “It's because they are young. This is the workforce and it’s younger than us."
Sixty-seven is gone…We’re moving on…
I think this is maybe why I write fiction. In fiction I can, in a small way, capture time. I can be thirty-two if my character is thirty-two. I can be fifteen. I can be 85 and imagine what that will be l will be like then. Maybe that’s why we read fiction. So, we can, put, as the late Jim Croce sang, put time in a bottle.
We are, all of us, created in the image of God. We are eternal people, trapped, (and that is precisely the word – trapped) in a place with is bounded on every side by time.
My husband said to me yesterday, “It’s strange to think I only have twenty percent of my life yet to live.”
I said, “Heaven’s going to be great, though!”
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Being There…
Time for another quote – this one from Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan, a book on writing I’ve been slowly devouring, highlighter pen in my hand.
Here’s the gem:
'When a reader fully believes our story, both intellectually and emotionally, he moves in and unpacks his bags. No longer a tourist living out of a suitcase, ordering room service and watching suspiciously from his hotel window as the natives bustle on the street below, he has become, for the moment at least a native himself. He changes into comfortable clothes, strolls the avenues, eats in open-air cafes, even tried the local catch-of-the-day. He turns another page in the book. Anything is possible. Who knows? He might even fall in love.’
So, what this tells me is that it’s not enough to visualize a scene in my head before I write it, what I must do is to ‘live’ that scene, and then write it. I need to ‘become’ each character in every one of my scenes, pull on their skin over my own skin and then write the scene.It's not enough to observe, I must also live it.
Thursday, June 9, 2005
Dreams and goals…
I’m currently reading To Be Told by Dan Allender (Waterbrook Press) and something I read this morning flies in the face of everything in our American Idol/win-a-million-dollars/be-famous culture. In a chapter entitled ‘Following Your Dreams’, I expected to read, write down five things you want to accomplish and work toward them, or set measurable goals in terms of your finances and every five years re-set them or, if you want something in this life, then GO for it!
Instead, he wrote something that was completely opposite:
“If our deepest dreams aren’t about other people, then we have settled for mere power and accomplishment – the self-absorption of narcissism.”
In other words, if my dream doesn't involve helping others, working toward injustice, bringing people to Christ, helping them heal, loving them; then I have settled for something less than I was put on this earth for. If my five year plan is to get a six figure contract and I get that, then I have merely settled for what is second best, or even third. Power is mere. Accomplishment is meager.
I wasn’t put on this earth to satisfy myself. I was put on this earth to serve others. I don’t know why I keep forgetting that. If I’m truly following the path of Christ, my dream, the very thing that drives me, will be serving others and not about counting how many things I can accumulate.
Plus, I think there’s something else at work here, too. I think we, at our deepest level are really are only truly content when we follow paths of service. But we never quite believe that. And as a society we keep trying on other things; money, fame, power. But it doesn't do it, ultimately, at the end of the day, we are left unhappy and empty.
I’m in an industry – the book publishing industry machine – where it is so easy to get the focus off others, and onto myself. How can I get a better contract, win more awards and become more famous? Book publishing is like a blood sucking machine that will suck you dry if you let it. It will keep demanding more and more of you, until there is nothing left.
I remember something that I heard author Anne Lamott say - that the publishing industry will let you down, not maybe it will let you down, but that it will let you down. She went on to say that the writing life has to be about the writing and not about getting published because becoming published is not an immediate guarantee of happiness.
If my dream is truly to help others through my writing, then my greatest joy, the thing that will make me do the snoopy dance around my office will be the email from that one person who emails me that my book helped them through a tricky life situation, rather than the call from my agent with news that my book has been optioned for a movie, or that I have been offered a six figure contract.
June 4 , 2005
Empty nest and beyond…
A couple of weeks ago my good friend and I were featured in our local paper. The topic? We sat with a reporter from the local paper down at Starbucks and talked about how we survived Empty Nest. Both of us have been empty-nesters for a while. She told how she and her husband drove their daughter to a university five hours away, and on the way home, she cried all the way home. For five hours. Halfway home she turned to her husband, “You have to go back! We’ve made a terrible mistake!”
I still remember saying goodbye to my youngest, my son, at the airport. I tried to keep the tears in check, for his sake, but as I walked back to the car, I lost it.
That was a while ago for me now. That son now has two babies of his own. And my daughter, my eldest, has her own daughter. But now, it’s not Empty Nest that I struggle with, it’s distance. My son’s family is a 12 hour car ride away and my daughter’s family is a five hour plane ride away.
Maybe it’s my age, but suddenly I want all of the people I love really close to me. That includes my parents and my sister and her family– who are a 14 hour car ride away. Is it age? Maybe.
I just received a video-phone-camera picture of my youngest grandson. He just started smiling for the first time.
May 27, 2005
My birthday …
My birthday. Today. All day. Another year older. Ah me.
May 22, 2005
Rainy days and deadlines…
Today is a rainy Sunday afternoon, and I finally have a free moment. I know, I know. It’s been a month since I wrote about Rabbit Proof Fence, but let me fill you in:
I’ve spent most of this past month working hard to meet a May 15 deadline. And, working hard means a few eighteen hour days where I woke up early, got right at the computer, only leaving to get myself more cups of tea, and a few crackers and cheese. Then it would be late into the night. Such is the life of the writer; long stretches of writing and working a normal eight hour days, and then short stretches of doubling that.
Right after my book was emailed in (The name of that book by the way, is Dark Water, and will be out early 2006), my husband and I drove a thousand miles to visit our two baby grandsons (and their parents). The littlest one, is turned a month old when we were there. He was dedicated last Sunday, so it was nice to be there for that, and for the party/barbecue that followed at our daughter-in-law’s parent’s home. Pictures of our three of our grandchildren are at the left.
April 24, 2005
Rabbit-Proof Fence and other thoughts…
Late Wednesday night I arrived home from a three day retreat at my publishers. Prior to that, Rik and I spent a week's vacation in Aruba (Note picture to the left.). We did a lot of nothing; snorkeling, reading (three novels in six days), exploring the beautiful island in our rental car and of course walking on the beach. (I’m not much of a sunbather. When I head to the beach I’m constantly looking for shade.)
If you want to read my husband’s report on our trip – which is very detailed and very fun reading (I’m constantly telling him he needs to do a blog or be a writer) click on ARUBA REPORT.
For pictures of our trip click on PICTURES and MORE PICTURES.
And – next picture please – on my husband’s birthday, which happened when we were in Aruba, our second grandson was born!
Now, we are back, and it’s catch-up time. Writing for me, and teaching and consulting for Rik.
But tonight we took off a bit of time and watched a movie that was recommended by an author friend, Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Rik has been to Australia six times and I’ve been there three, so, we love all things Aussie. Rabbit-Proof Fence was a very powerful movie about a government’s treatment of its aboriginal peoples, and the long, long journey that two young girls make from their boarding school back home to their mother.
Not many countries have stellar records when it comes to their treatment of aboriginal or first nations people. Canada, my country now, certainly does not. Many first nations children were forced into residential schools in the north and forced - absolutely forced - to speak English and learn English ways and believe in an English God. It's for their own good, was the thinking of the day.
These people who took these children away, both in Australia and in Canada probably were thinking they were doing the right thing, the Christian thing, the good thing.
Yet, we with our hindsight know that they weren't. And because of this, our churches do foreign missions differently today than we did even fifty years ago.
This gets me thinking; are there things that we are in the process of doing now that in fifty years will be shown to be the wrong things? Are there prejudices we hold now – this day – sure and certain that we are right, according to the Bible and all things good; and yet are these things that future generations will look back on and say, ‘they didn’t know what they were doing'?
I don’t know. I’m just asking. But sometimes after watching a film like that, I have to examine my own life and my own prejudices and my own beliefs.
April 7, 2005
I couldn't have said it better..
Today I'm not going to write here. I'm going to give you a link which links to a prayer which is my prayer, through and through, every word. It's written by mystery author Lawrence Block. Click here for and then scroll down until you get to writer's prayer. If you read this prayer you will know exactly what it's like to be a writer.
April 6, 2005
A part of my mind..
It’s interesting being a fiction writer. Not because I get to play with imaginary friends all day, but because my fiction mind, my story brain never gets completely shut down. I live this normal life on the outside; I go to church and I make supper and my husband and I visit with friends and I go grocery shopping and I visit my kids and grandkids and write emails to my parents and read books and watch TV and drink tea and iron clothes and do laundry and make the bed and listen to my music and go for walks; but even as I’m doing all of these things my story people are alive in my brain and I’m thinking about them. They become real people to me. At night when I can’t sleep I think about my story people and work through plot problems. Insomnia has to be good for something!
When I was a little girl I did the same thing. I would daydream and these dreams usually involved some heroic feat that I would accomplish which saved my school from certain and imminent disaster. I loved Nancy Drew, you see.
And now I’m adult, but the difference is, I now get paid for it. The reason I’m writing all of this is that I’m just getting over a miserable cold. But even when I was sick and depressed and feeling awful there was this tiny little person in my brain aiming his little pointing stick at me and saying , ‘Linda, pay attention to this feeling. You can use it in a book.’
I make it sound easy. It's not. Right now I’m blogging, because I’m putting off the inevitable. I have major edits due in at my publishers by May 1 and it’s knowing where to begin that’s the challenge for me.
April 1, 2005
An April Fool's Time Waster...
Click on Collaborative Quilt for a supreme time waster on this first day of April. Use your mouse and click at the bottom of the screen, and then move it slowly up the screen and you'll move into the picture. Have a nice journey. |
