All posts by David Todd

reading, Wesley

Friendship Stronger than Death

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I thought I had one more post I wanted to write about the message of the unsaid, but whatever it was escapes me right now. I have a few minutes before I start my work day and want to write. As before, I find inspiration in a letter of John Wesley.

True friendship is doubtless stronger than death, else yours could never have subsisted still in spite of all opposition, and even after thousands of miles are interposed between us.
…
You seem to apprehend that I believe religion to be inconsistent with cheerfulness and with a sociable, friendly temper. So far from it, that I am convinced, as true religion or holiness cannot be without cheerfulness, so steady cheerfulness, on the other hand, cannot be without holiness or true religion. And I am equally convinced that true religion has nothing sour, austere, unsociable, unfriendly in it; but, on the contrary, implies the most winning sweetness, the most amiable softness and gentleness.
Wesley writing from Savannah, Georgia to Mrs. Chapman, somewhere in England, on 29 Mary 1737

Looking at the first paragraph in this post, how I have found this to be true in my own life. I have lived a vagabond existence, of sorts. First was the move to Kansas City upon graduating from college; then the move to Saudi Arabia in 1981; then to North Carolina in 1984; then to Kuwait in 1988; back to North Carolina for a few months in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion; then to Arkansas in 1991–where I remain, though likely not where I will retire. I am the only one in my immediate family who has wandered so, drawn by employment and advancement.

The bad part of all these moves is leaving friends behind in each place. The good part of these moves has been leaving friends behind in all these places. It’s a two-sided coin. Rhode Island friends from school and college remain, most still in Rhode Island, though some scattered. I found one in Louisiana in April, the man with whom I was in an auto accident junior year in high school. I found him through the miracle of the Internet. In December I found a preacher-friend I had last seen at his wedding in Kansas City in 1975, and have re-established a little bit of correspondence with him. How I would like to make contact with the expatriate group we were friends with in Saudi. We keep in touch with one of those families, but what of the six or seven others? What of those we were close to in Kuwait, with whom we shared the survivors’ bond?

Warren Henry (a character in Winds of War, by Herman Wouk) decried how his family had grown apart as the three siblings moved into adulthood, freeing the parents to take an overseas assignment without them. Torn apart and blown away like tumbleweeds by the winds of war. I see much truth in that in my own life.

Yet, re-establishing relationships with those old friends is a hard thing. They haven’t seen or heard from me in 20, 30, or in one case almost 40 years. They have a life full of relationships, of activities. Is there time to get to know again a Rhode Island vagabond who now thinks he’s an Arkansas? I must hang on Wesley’s thoughts, that “true friendship is…stronger than death” and can subsist despite when “thousands of miles” and, I add, decades of life “are interposed”.

Pray, Lord, let it be so.

Bible study, Writing

Message of the Un-Said: Inner Thoughts

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I alluded to this topic in my last post. In the story being considered, no where are we given any inner thoughts of the characters. Inner thoughts are common in modern literature, and are a frequent topic at critique groups: how many inner thoughts to give; how to format them; how long to make them; how many point of view characters to give the inner thoughts for. Get in the characters’ heads, we are told by writing instructors.

The writer of 2nd Kings didn’t do that. He merely gives us the characters’ action and words. They did this. They said that. They responded thusly. We don’t know the motivation of the Shunammite woman as she first asks Elisha for dinner, then asks her husband to build a room for him. We never see her say This is a man of God; we must be kind to him; what can I do? We never see her husband say Why is this woman always wanting to spend my money? Well, he is a man of God. As I mentioned last post, we don’t know if he thought She can’t possibly get back from Mount Carmel before dark. What’s going on between this “man of God” and my wife? Instead, the writing draws us in. It insists we dig deeper, try to figure out what the characters are thinking based on he condensed telling of their actions and words.

That wouldn’t work today with a modern readership. Can you see someone with a Tom Clancy novel saying, “Now what is Jack Ryan thinking at this moment?” No, now readers want the full story–shown, not told, with limited points of view. Paper and ink are no loner objects of concern; attention span is. Still, perhaps the writer of 2nd Kings has given me something to think about, something to try to work a little bit into my writing.

Bible study

Message of the Un-Said: Factors of Time and Distance

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Continuing the thoughts from my June 1 post, not knowing the time and distance (space) factors involved in a story can leave you confused. In the 2nd Kings 4:8-37 story about the Shunammite woman, her husband, and son, and how Elisha helped them, the text says little about the times, and nothing about the distances. Without looking at a map, we don’t realize that Shunem is a perfect spot to break up a trip from Samaria to Mount Carmel, or that it is slightly off the most direct route between the two. In the story of the son’s death, we learn he died about noon. Before that, he had gone out to the field to be with his father, become sick, been carried back to his mother, and sat on his mother’s lap for an unknown amount of time.

Here is where the time and distance becomes interesting, and critical to fully understanding the story. The woman “called her husband”, meaning, I guess, that she sent a servant to the field to ask him to come back to the house. Or maybe, since it was noon, he was already at the house eating lunch. She asks permission to go with a servant and a donkey, obtains it, makes the minimum preparations for the trip (we assume), and leaves with the intent to “go to the man of God quickly and return.” At that time it is after noon, perhaps about 1 PM.

But Mount Carmel is 15 to 20 miles away. The poor donkey, if spurred and whipped, can go about 5 miles per hour. The servant, if walking/running beside, could probably only go three or four miles per hour. If riding, the servant will slow the donkey even more. The the woman cannot possibly arrive at Mount Carmel until 4 or 5 PM, maybe 6 PM. If she turns around and comes right back, it will be 9 PM to midnight before she returns to Shunem. That’s no time for a young woman to be out, even if she has a single servant for “protection”.

This leads us to consider what the husband is thinking. We know he questioned the need for the trip, but he was thinking about the fact that it was not a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath. From those we can conclude that the woman must have been in the habit of visiting Elisha on some of those occasions. But he must be thinking, “What is this woman thinking? Will she travel these dangerous roads at night? Why will she go there and ‘quickly return’? What’s wrong?” Or, might he also think, “She’s sure going to see this man a lot. New Moons, Sabbaths, and now this unplanned trip with no hope of returning tonight. What’s going on between them?” This adds a richness to the story that cannot possibly be understood without considering what a map tells us.

Will modern readers stand for such ignoring of time and distance in stories today? We are not hampered so much by the expense of paper and ink and delivery systems. The need for conciseness of language has mostly passed; not that we should be wordy or include unnecessary description. Now our problem is time available for our readers to read, and for turning away from the television and Internet to read. We are told readers don’t want to read anything except conflict. They don’t want to take the time to read how characters get from point A to point B, unless there is conflict along the way that is integral to the story. As a person who wants to know about the details, this is going to make my writing more difficult.

Time and distance. Something to think about.

writer's platform, Writing

Change of Plans

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It always happens. Despite the best intentions of coming back to my topic in a day or two, I was unable to. With my wife gone I had some extra things to do around the house. Also, I put in some extra hours at the office relocating my work station. I was not under a deadline to do so, but I thought, once they assigned me the different space (and good space it is) I’d better make the move ASAP. Then, I was expecting to be home all last week, and gone today through Wednesday, helping our daughter, son-in-law, and grand baby move from Kansas City to Oklahoma City, but it turned out they needed me more last week, so I changed plans and drove north on Thursday. Thus, I blogged not.

Tonight, I’m also working on a change of plans in my writing. I see myself mostly a novelist. I have no platform–best defined as a ready-made audience to whom I can directly market any non-fiction ideas I have, so fiction seems right for me. Plus, the fiction ideas came to me first, and continue to come more frequently than do non-fiction. However, as hard as it is to break into fiction (non-fiction outsells fiction 8:1, or maybe 10:1), non-fiction seems an easier sell. But again, not having an established audience is a hindrance to breaking in there. So, I have been casting about, trying to figure out what to write, and it hit me: Bible studies, and small group study guides.

For sure, I lack credentials in this area, other than the experience teaching adult Sunday School. I’m currently teaching a study I planned and wrote, titled “The Dynamic Duo: Lessons From The Lives Of Elijah And Elisha.” That seemed to be something I could expand from my two page weekly handout into a full length Bible study. Then, a study we did previous to this was of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I was substitute teacher for that, and taught maybe 25 percent of it. We were hindered by lack of a good study guide. I found one I purchased through Amazon.com, but it was written for a high school level literature class, not for an adult Sunday School class or small group. So I thought “I should write the study guide we didn’t have for class.” I wrote four sample chapters, the beginning of a proposal for both studies, and went off to the Blue Ridge conference.

The good news is: an editor for a very good publishing house for this sort of material is interested in both! He asked me to get proposals to him by about June 13th. So, this week all fiction is shoved aside for the two proposals. I’m finding the writing difficult, and am having trouble concentrating. It is so different than writing the actual material. I plug away, get a little bit done, then find myself pulled away to mindless things. Hopefully taking time to do this blog post will move me back on track.

Bible study, Life Group lessons, poetry

The Message of the Un-Said

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In my study of 2nd Kings 4:8-37 this week, as I finished preparations to teach it in our adult Life Group today, I was struck by how well the story was crafted. The full story came out only when I examined what the author didn’t say–which I learned by examining what he said and filling in gaps, examining factors of time and space, and assessing motives of people based on what little the author told.

I’ve thought about this before as I have critiqued poems at the Absolute Write poetry forums. The poet has presented us with a few lines for some purpose. He/she made choices of what to include in–and exclude from–the poem. Looking at the inclusion is easy, for the few words are there for me to pick apart, to ponder as a series of lines and as a complete work. Exclusion is harder to evaluate. What has the poet chosen to leave out? The choices are as broad as the language itself, as deep as human experiences of body, soul and spirt, though clearly narrowed by the context of what is included. I only do this occasionally, for the exercise can be very time consuming and mentally draining. I actually wrote one poem using this method, consciously thinking inclusion-exclusion as I wrote each line.

Back to 2nd Kings 4, and the story of Elisha and the woman from Shunem. How much the author has said by what he has not said! I must digress briefly to consider the nature of writing in antiquity. Paper, in the form of scrolls made from papyrus strips laboriously cut, wetted, woven, dried, and trimmed, was expensive. Ink, made up of fire ashes, water, and other ingredients, was expensive. The writing process, without the benefit of computers, typewriters, erasers, even cut and paste, was difficult. Dissemination of the completed work, through manual copying and hand delivery, was both expensive and difficult. I think writers must have learned that every word counted; hence repetition, fleshing out of characters, and back story were all kept to a minimum. We actually have a story significantly condensed from what could have been written. Often I wish the Bible were ten times longer than it is, doubling he length of the stories it has and giving five times the number of stories. Ah, but better it is as it is, methinks.

Back to the story, this passage includes five characters: Elisha, his servant Gehazi, the man and wife from Shunem, and their son, born following Elisha’s prophecy. The actions of Elisha, Gehazi, and the Shunammite woman are somewhat well described, though even for them some inclusion-exclusion analysis aids in understanding the passage. The husband, however, must be the strong, silent type, for we hear little from him. We know that he was responsive to his wife’s requests for building a rooftop room for Elisha, and for the donkey and servant to go visit Elisha. Otherwise, we see him only in the matter of his young son becoming sick while they were out in the fields with the reapers: he sends him back to his mother.

Consider, however, what we can learn about the husband from these actions of the wife, or by the actions of others.

  • He did not invite the traveller Elisha to the hospitality of a meal; possibly he was out in the fields when Elisha came to town.
  • He didn’t think about building the room for Elisha, to better aid the man of God in his travels.
  • Elisha didn’t ask what could be done for him, but what could be done for his wife. It appears, by this, that he did not develop much of a relationship with Elisha.
  • After his son died, and his wife went to see Elisha (having hidden the boy’s death and her grief from her husband), he doesn’t seem to have enquired about the boy, hasn’t found his body in the prophet’s room, hasn’t arranged for his burial.

From this, we can draw interesting conclusions about the Shunammite husband. He is somewhat absorbed in his work, not even bothering to develop a relationship with the premier man of God in Israel who regularly sleeps under his roof; he seems to love his wife and is responsive to her requests, but their relationship is best described as strange.

I have more to write on this, but the post is too long now. I will try to get back to this tomorrow, or the next day.

miscellaneous, Writing

It’s been a so-so week

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Back at work; hard to concentrate; too much self-starter stuff and not enough firm deadline stuff. Somehow I’ve got to do better on the self-starter stuff. Discipline, discipline is the key.

At home, I have just barely finished my Life Group lesson for teaching tomorrow. I’m printing multiple copies of it right now. I was two weeks ahead, until I had to begin getting ready for Ridgecrest. Last night and today I spent a fair amount of cleaning gutters–not of leaves, but of accumulated dirt, pollen, and grit from the shingles. The house is 20 years old, and I doubt they have ever been cleaned. The gutter guards keep the leaves out, and taking the gutter guards off and re-installing them is a pain. In one gutter on the back, above the deck, about half the gutters (or 2 inches) was full of this stuff. I spent so much time on the ladder that my legs were quivering. A thunderstorm hit this morning before I was done with the back one, and, since I worked “upstream to downstream”, it now has a small puddle.

I have found a new writing critique group. They meet on Thursdays, twice a month, including this week. I did not attend due to the busyness of life, but I’m hoping I can become a regular at this and somewhat find an answer to a question that’s been bugging me: Is my writing good enough?

I was able to write this Life Group lesson only with great difficulty. I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t find the words to express what I wanted to. Part of the reason is I’m trying to help the class find things in the Bible based on what is not said, rather than on what is said; or to whom the words are spoken, instead of who else they might have been spoken to. I found that difficult to write. I may blog on that tomorrow.

I still have much follow-up to do from the Ridgecrest conference: e-mails and proposals and sample chapters and summary paragraphs. My schedule right now looks like I should be able to attack some of that in the week ahead.

Well, this was a dull post. Just a report on the week following the big conference in the life of one wannabe writer.

miscellaneous

More on the Culture Gap

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At the Ridgecrest conference, the culture gap was again hammered home by a couple of classes I attended. In a class about writing “curriculum” for small group studies, all the examples shown were videos with a little bit of writing in a book; the intent being to watch the video and discuss it, using a few simple questions from the book. The videos were the typical run-from-scene-to-scene, or shot to shot, with almost no time spent on any one shot. No time to focus on what is being said, to absorb the points made. Just run, run, run. One video-based study we spent a little time viewing was The Trouble With Paris. We watched the first five minutes, which was totally unmemorable to me. I think the on-camera narrator said something about our culture being a problem, but the study title was not explained. After watching, our class instructor said Paris referred not to Paris, France, but to Paris Hilton, as a symbol of what’s wrong with our culture. Funny thing was, the video itself seemed to me a symbol of what I don’t like with the trend in the culture. I immediately decided this was Gen-X stuff, and I can’t write it.

Another class was on fiction writing. The instructor, talking about the importance of conflict in the modern novels, said, “Knock your hero down with angst, then shovel angst all over him.” Later, I talked with this same instructor in an informal setting, and mentioned I liked best the sagas, such as written by James Michener and Herman Wouk. He said, “You and three other people.” They won’t sell. A novel over 100,000 words won’t sell. We live in a TV culture world, and books have to compete with American Idol, Survivor (another show I’ve never watched), Lost, etc. The population at large has fewer readers than we used to, as a percentage of population. Words aren’t enough to captivate the mind. We must now have fast-paced visuals as well, and more of that than of words. Don’t let description crowd out dialogue. Don’t let dialogue crowd out conflict and angst.

I suppose every generation decries the culture of the next, and I’m no different. All this stuff saddens me. It seems like the culture has been coarsened by television and the Internet. More and more I find myself further and further away from the mainstream in America. I once wrote a poem that included this couplet:

for I, I must with sorrow state
was born two centuries too late.

More than ever I think that is true. Maybe not really 200 years, but at least fifty.

I leave most writers conferences, after some initial time of wondering “why am I here” with a feeling of “I can do this.” Then, a week later I realize what “this” is. It means writing things I don’t particularly like to read just to get published. It’s a form of prostitution. I guess I’ll have to think about it some more.

Writing

Culture Gap

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Am I the only one in America who does not watch American Idol? Who doesn’t talk about it at coffee pot or water cooler? Who doesn’t care whether this David or that David won? Okay, obviously I’ve heard enough to know that it was David vs. David in the final, one young, one younger. And a bunch of us were sitting in the lobby that evening during the writers conference when people began receiving text messages saying which one had won. Last night and today I’ve been catching up on the week missed on the blogs I read regularly, and almost every one of them had something about that show. Most had several somethings. Christian and secular, literary and political, all were the same.

At the writers conference, Monday night was faculty talent show, and they did a sketch “Ridgecrest Idol”, where the faculty played the part of famous writers through the ages, reading the first page of some famous work. Three others of the faculty formed the panel, acting out the part of the three judges. I’ve seen enough sound bites from the show to know what was going on. I couldn’t have cared less, and probably should have left the show.

Why don’t I care? Not my type of music in general. Not much enamored by pop culture. Not much swayed by hero worship. My life is not changed by who wins the competition, or by which judge is meanest to which contestant. I guess I have a choice to make: get with the culture, or remain out of touch, further and further out seemingly on another planet. It’s bad enough I get pressured to watch Gray’s Anatomy, and Lost, and now Battlestar Gallactica, when I could care less about any of them.

I conclude that I am cut off from the current culture, adrift in a world gone mad over singers and stage performers. What hope is there for writers?

family, travel

2043 miles

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We are home again. The direct route from Bella Vista to Ridgecrest was about 880 miles. A little bit of back-tracking in the Asheville area, the diversion to see my sister in Evansville, Indiana, and the diversion to see our children and new grandchild in Kansas City made for the remainder.

I’m now in the process of post-conference follow-up. Sent two e-mails tonight, and may get one more done. I have to work on two non-fiction book proposals requested by an editor, and a novel proposal and a series of book summaries (for books I have not yet written) for another editor. I have a bunch of other e-mails to write, and many web sites to visit–as well as catch up on sites not visited while I was gone.

Then, in order to not forever be an arrow through the air, disturbing unseen gasses but never hitting a target, I need to figure out what my correct target should be. That will take some time, hopefully not too long. Then the real research and writing will commence.

technology woes

Strange things computers do

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We are en-route from Ridgecrest Conference Center back to Arkansas, with stops along the way in Evansville, Indiana and Kansas City, Missouri. Today was an easy drive. But, before we left Ridgecrest, we hiked to the peak of Royal Gorge Mountain. This is not the world’s tallest mountain, but it was a feat for us in the shape we are in. Maybe this will spur us on to do the things required for better fitness.

We took a couple to the Asheville airport, then double-backed a little and toured the Biltmore mansion in Asheville. This was an incredible house, and I may blog on it some day.

Here in the hotel, we tried to connect to the wireless Internet, and couldn’t. We confirmed with the desk that they did not have a network/router/access problem, then called tech services. The man there talked me through the problem. It turns out the feature to have Windows search for available networks was turned off. I didn’t turn it off, nor did Lynda. What caused it? One of the strange things that computers do. Then, on my user receiving e-mail is possible, but not on Lynda’s user. And neither of us can send e-mail–at least not with Internet Explorer. Yahoo is doing fine, and we can check e-mail through cox.net’s site–when we have Internet.

Why do computers mess up like this? We don’t knowingly change the settings to cause this to happen. What gives? This is one of the reasons I describe myself as a techno-phobe.

I’m so tired I’m going to post without proof-reading. I’ll look for mistakes another day.