Category Archives: Writing

C.S. Lewis, Writing

A Writer’s Nugget from C.S. Lewis

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I’m not talking about something he wrote, say some fiction or non-fiction, that was especially good intrinsically for writing’s sake. No, in a lecture he made a statement that is of considerable worth for writers. Here it is.

What are the key-words of modern criticism? Creative, with its opposite derivative; spontaneity, with its opposite convention; freedom, contrasted with rules. Great authors are innovators, pioneers, explorers; bad authors bunch in schools and follow models. Or again, great authors are always ‘breaking fetters’ and ‘bursting bonds’. They have personality, they ‘are themselves’.

This comes from the lecture titled “Christianity and Literature”, which was read to a religious society in Oxford. It was originally published in Rehabilitations and Other Essays (Oxford 1939). I have it in a book titled The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis, which is a recent reprinting of some collected lectures and articles by Lewis published in separate volumes.

I find Lewis’ words to be particularly insightful, instructing, and inspiring for an aspiring author, one who is planning to write secular works with a Christian worldview underpinning them. It is not convention that marks the great author, but spontaneity; not works patterned after someone else’s but creativity, perhaps also or better stated as originality. Great authors should break fetters and burst bonds.

This is something I must look at in my own writings. Am I bursting bonds, breaking fetters? Seeking not to bunch in a school but rather be an innovator, a pioneer, an explorer? I sort of think so, because I haven’t really sought to pattern my work after anyone, and, perhaps, my lack of learning in the great literature that preceded me means I don’t know a whole lot about those who I might pattern after.

True, as much as I love Robert Frost a lot of my poetry sounds Frostian. On-line critics have said as much, always in a good way. As to the mechanics of my prose, so far no one has said “You sound like ———.” The ideas I have for novels don’t seem to easily fall into genres. The Alfred Cottage Mysteries are almost cozy mysteries–except they won’t always involve a murder, and Alfred, while an amateur detective, will be solving crimes of years past, not of the present.
Documenting America is neither history nor politics, but rather a mix, and I think unlike anything I’ve seen before. Will it sell? We’ll soon see.

At writers conferences and on writer/agent blogs I keep seeing advice such as: follow the genre rules. Lewis would say “Innovate. Break the fetters of genre. Be spontaneous.”

I’m going to be thinking long and hard about this advice from Lewis. Well, he wasn’t purposefully giving advice for writers. He was defining what he thought were the characteristics of great writers. I think I’ll have more to say about this over the coming days.

Wesley, Writing

Little Time to Write

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Work has pretty much consumed my waking time this week. I’m at a convention/conference–well, it ended today. I presented three papers on erosion control: two one-hour presentations, and today a half-day class. This was too much, and until noon today I had little time to do much outside of present my classes, wind down, and prepare for the next class. I attended no other classes, other than a full-day course on Monday. Tuesday afternoon would have been free, but I had to put together the PowerPoint for today’s class.

I’m glad it’s over. Three papers in two days is too much. I put a lot of energy into the presentation, just as I do for my brown bags at work. The time to wind down and relax a little doesn’t give much time to do other brain-intensive things, such as write or research. Sunday I managed to complete one chapter (in manuscript) in Documenting America. I’m going to generate one more chapter from the document, but I think not tonight. Tonight I want to do a little bit of Wesley research. Haven’t done any all week. I may only read an hour, maybe less, but I need to do it. I think I have enough brain power left for that.

My cold pretty much ended on Sunday or Monday, minor residual hoarseness persists, but that will be over soon. I’ll be anxious to get back to researching and writing, perhaps by Sunday afternoon or evening. Looking forward to it.

Documenting America, Suite 101, Writing

Another Snow Day, a Little Bit of Progress

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The forecast was for 4 to 10 inches, then 4-9, then 4-8. Last night at 11 PM the storm was hanging out just north of us, and I wondered if it would pass by to the north. I set the alarm to get up at the normal time, in case the forecasters had it wrong. I was up at 3:45 AM and looked out. 1-2 inches had fallen; the snowfall right then was heavy. I turned off the alarm and went back to bed.
When I got up at 7:30 AM, we already had 7-8 inches, and the snow was still falling. I had my devotions, then went downstairs to lok at stocks on an unusual day at home. By the time the snow ended, around noon, we had 12 inches, maybe a little more than that.
On such a day as this I should write. And I did. I finished edits to my article for Safe Highway Matters, after calling the Michigan Department of Transportation to get additional info and quotes. I then wrapped up a Suite101 genealogy article. However, when I tried to upload it I was foiled by my old, old computer. The hard drive had been crunching forever, and it kept doing it and didn’t load the article publishing page at Suite. I gave up, went upstairs, then out to shovel the driveway. That took an hour, then back in for some soup and back downstairs. I decided to do a files cleaning of the computer. I figured at the same time I’d install updates and re-boot. This took forever.
So I came over to Lynda’s computer (which she almost never uses), much newer than mine and more powerful, and I began this post. Meanwhile the old computer finished all its crunching and deleting and uploading and restarting. I’ve been going back and forth between the two, typing on this post and starting Suite101 again and getting the article uploaded. That finally worked.
Meanwhile, as I’ve had to wait on web page loading, I’ve been able to do some research for Documenting America. I also began putting together my next brown bag presentation at work, this concerning floodplains.
It’s now 4:16 PM as I write this. Hours and hours remain in the day. I’ll spend a little more time on the floodplain presentation prep, then finish reading the document for my next DA chapter, then maybe go upstairs and read some in the John Wesley biography I’m most of the way through and enjoying immensely.
Another snow day is a productive day, perhaps helping me to see a little more what a writing life would be like. Now if I could just get these fool pictures to place correctly in my blog, I’ll be happy.
Documenting America, self-publishing, Suite 101, Writing

More Snow, More Writing

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Beginning last week the weather folks were predicting a major winter storm for Tuesday. By Sunday some of the numbers had firmed up: 6-12 inches in our area. So Monday morning, to allow me to get to work the next two days over short, flat roads, I packed to stay two days in town with my mother-in-law, since Lynda was in Oklahoma City and not planning to be back until Wednesday, after the storm. However, as she got news reports there she decided to come back Monday, before the storm. So I came home, knowing that if the weather people were even close to right I would lose at least one and probably two days of work.

That’s what happened. We have 7 or 8 inches of snow, on top of about a 1/4 inch of sleet. It fell mostly during the daylight hours yesterday, so we hunkered down, read, used the computer, and ate. Today has been a mix of sun and clouds. I got out early to shovel the drive to let the radiant energy dry it out. I also cleared off my pick-up early (it’s parked well up the road, not quite at the top of the hill). I also shoveled our large deck, which had an average of 12 inches due to drifting. So today has been busy.

But on both days I was able to write. Yesterday I completed chapter 22 in Documenting America. I decided to use the extra research I did on Rev. John Urmstone and wrote a second chapter from some of his writings. I also began research for the next chapter. I read one document which, unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to use. I scanned several others.

Today I wrote an article for Suite101.com, the next in my series of genealogy articles. I don’t know if this is a correlation or not, but January is a record revenue month for me at Suite, 37 percent higher than my previous best month. January last year was good too; it’s my third best month, not topped until last November. So maybe January is just a good month, or maybe my genealogy articles are making some money. Either way, I have quite a few more in the series to write before I run out of ideas.

Now I’m going to start the next chapter in Documenting America. I found a document I can use, some of the writing of William Bradford of the Plymouth colony. I’ve also spent a lot of time these last two days reading for my next two Bible studies, and beginning to outline one of them. I’ve also studied (some) in the e-self-publishing market. I’ve printed out a lot of Joe Konrath’s blog posts, and the comments, to look for ideas and for guidance on the nuts and bolts of creating the e-book once you’ve got the words finished.

So these two days—the second one still with 6 to 7 waking hours in it—may not have been my most productive, but they have been good. Back to work tomorrow, with deadlines two days closer without commensurate production. Not looking forward to it.

Buildipedia, Documenting America, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

The Storm is Almost Here

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The winter storm that is so much in the news is bearing down on us. The winter storm warning from the National Weather Service starts at 6:00 PM tonight for us, so that probably means we’ll start getting some frozen stuff around 8 PM. The forecast has called for sleet, ice, snow, mixture—it keeps changing. That’s to be expected as the time nears and the computer models come together. The best guess right now is we’ll have a half inch of ice followed by 3-5 inches of snow.

Rather than negotiate the hills of Bella Vista tonight, I’m going to stay in Bentonville with my mother-in-law. Here apartment is about 3 miles due north of the office, on flat streets. If need be I could walk to work from there. Tomorrow should be the worst, with an inch of snow on top of the ice at the time of morning commute, snow still falling. She doesn’t have a computer or Internet, so I’ll probably stay at work late, or perhaps go to the library until it closes.

The storm is hitting at work and in writing as well. I have to have one of my flood studies re-submitted by Thursday. I worked on it some Saturday, and am in good shape with the computer modeling; now need to have the CADD tech do the mapping and pull a brief report together. It would be a snap except yesterday our 18-inch diameter water transmission main advertised in the newspaper, so today we should be deluged by contractors coming by to obtain drawings and specs—which aren’t ready. Hopefully they will be by 10 AM. Plus I really, really, really need to make major progress on my Rogers flood study. I’m so close to being able to run the first computer model. Four hours of undivided might do it.

In writing, I will be a journalist this morning. I have phone interviews scheduled with two DOT officials in two states, for information on my article for Safe Highway Matters. That’s due on Wednesday, and since this is the first time I’ve written for them, I’d like to get a draft in Tuesday. It’s only a 400 word article, but short doesn’t necessarily mean easier. Then I have an article due for Buildipedia the following Wednesday, and another the Wednesday after that.

Meanwhile I’m working on Documenting America and on articles for Suite101.com. Both of these are discretionary, of course. I could drop them at any time. But if I did, I would in effect be saying, “I don’t have what it takes to be a writer.” So I keep going, keep my schedule a whirlwind, hoping that I get to the point where I have something more than freelance articles published. Having decided to go the e-self-publishing route, this year is the critical year. More on that in future posts.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

Crowded, Uncrowded, Crowded, Uncrowded

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The new market I added to my post yesterday didn’t work out. So my schedule is less crowded than I thought. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can write for that market if I want, just not the type of article I wanted to write. The articles they want would require more research than the articles I wanted to write. So if I write for them, the schedule will be even more crowded; if I don’t write for them, less crowded. My choice.

I had my call with the Buildipedia editor today. We agreed to get two articles under contract with February deadlines. He also wants another article from me with an early March deadline, and a series of articles I could write that would string out through the year. This sounds about like the frequency of articles, the amount of time, I want to put into that source. So the schedule regarding Buildipedia is about as crowded as I thought and hoped it would be.

Everything I see about e-self-publishing, every new bit of information I gather or opinion I see from someone whose opinion I value, says this is something with no downside, something I should do. So that means I need to dispense with further research and get my short story and first e-book on line. That means I’ll have to learn how to format an e-book, or hire someone. That means I’ll have to learn how to design and produce a cover, or hire someone. That means I’ll have to come up to speed with marketing an e-book. All part of a schedule crowd.

But that also means I can ignore the need to go to writers conferences. Money saved, time saved. It means I can quit worrying about a platform big enough to impress an editor or agent. Time saved. It means I can quit looking for new freelance work, since that is mostly for the purposes of platform building. The income I’m getting from articles will pay for hiring the covers done, so I’m sure I’ll do that. It might also pay for hiring the formatting done, but I think I’ll at least take a stab at the formatting. If my technophobia results in my being unable to master the formatting, I can always then hire it out. All that’s wasted in that case is a little time, but that’s not even wasted if I can later use that initial effort and figure out the formatting for book two, or book three.

So is the schedule more crowded, as crowded, or less crowded than I thought it was when I posted yesterday? I think less crowded, due to that one market then under consideration now being out of consideration. I’ll hold that market in abeyance, always there for the future.

Documenting America and “Mom’s Letter”, here I come.

Buildipedia, Documenting America, Suite 101, Writing

The Schedule is Getting Crowded

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I mostly took yesterday evening off from writing. The reason? My wedding anniversary. Our 35th. We had plans to go out to eat. I scheduled a 4 PM meeting with a client who is only three or so miles from the house, which put me home about 4:30 PM. But we stayed home. Lynda had a persistent headache, and my stomach was doing jumping jacks for some reason, so we stayed home, worked on a puzzle, ate left-over enchilada soup, read some, watched a couple of our favorite news shows, then three episodes of Criminal Minds. A good evening, despite the change of plans and doing nothing special for our special day.

While we were sitting and watching TV, I worked on the next chapter of Documenting America. It’s going a little harder than I’d like. Later, from 11:00-11:30 PM, I read in a biography of John Wesley, which I consider research for a future small group study I’ll write. But that was it for evening writing.

Of course, during the work day, in my pre-hour and noon hour I worked on some things. I did some research for the article for the “Safe Highway Matters” newsletter. I read two writing related blogs, one by an agent and one by a writer. That’s not a lot of writing work, but it counts.

Now, I have a week and a day to complete the highway article. Tomorrow I’ll have my call with the Buildipedia editor and we’ll establish a schedule of articles for the next couple of months. Those will all have fixed deadlines. My two floating deadlines are articles for Suite101.com and chapters for Documenting America. I’d like to write two of the former and three of the latter each week. However, that alone would require about 15 hours, perhaps more than I can dedicate to them.

ETA: Shortly after I posted this, I learned of another on-line writing gig that would be just up my alley, I think. Did a little investigation on my noon hour, and it continues to look promising. The pay would be great, if I would be approved for the premium section of the website. I’m waiting on replies to two e-mails before I do anything else about this, other than some more research into the site tonight.

So I see things backing up very quickly, as they often do, and a logjam not too far in the future. I’ll just have to see if I can do a good job of managing my time and completing as much of this as I can. Lofty goals are good, so long as they don’t become stressful. As an long-gone evangelist in our church is quoted as saying: “I’d rather shoot at a star and miss than shoot at a toad in the road and hit it.”

Documenting America, freelance writing, self-publishing, Writing

Snow Day Writing Report

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It’s 4 PM. I’m at home, at my dinosaur computer in The Dungeon, writing away. Yesterday the forecast was for snow starting around 11:00 PM, 3-5 inches accumulation, or maybe 4-7 inches, depending on who you believe. I e-mailed my boss to say I wasn’t going to be in on Thursday, and I reported on Facebook that I was going to read, research, and write till my fingers were raw, my arms and shoulders tight, my butt numb, my eyes blurry, and my head hurt. Okay, I didn’t actually mention the butt numb part on FB, but I was thinking that.

The storm gave us only a little over 3 inches; it was over by 11 AM. With that little, I probably could have driven the 15.6 miles to work with no problem, so possibly I wasted a vacation day. But I get plenty of vacation after 20 years with the company, so I don’t mind. And it wasn’t wasted at all. It was kind of a dry run for what a day might be like if I had a real writing career, where I wrote full time. Now, it wasn’t a true dry run, because knowing I have the day job to go back to tomorrow, I didn’t stick to writing quite as faithfully as I should have.

But write I did. And research. The day began with a couple of chapters in Ezra. Devotional, yes, but also part of my research for To Exile and Back. From my reading chair, I discussed stocks with Lynda, and I began to draft a genealogy article for Suite101.com. Then I came to The Dungeon. First I proof-read and reconsidered the Documenting America chapter that I wrote yesterday. It still seems good. I polished it a little and consider it done. Then I wrote and posted the article on Suite101.com. That brings me up to 120 articles there.

Upon publishing, I saw an e-mail in my Suite inbox. It was from an editor of a transportation newsletter. They need a writer with a civil engineering background to work on the feature article for their next newsletter issue. Would I be interested? I quickly said e-mailed her yes, and suggested a phone call. Then I went upstairs to listen to the weekly conference call Lynda joins each Thursday noon for stock trading. During the call I worked in ideas for new articles for Buildipedia.com. After the call and lunch I returned to The Dungeon and fired off an e-mail to the Buildipedia editor. He quickly replied that he’s interested, and asked for a phone call next week.

About that time my computer bad stuff protection program decided to do something, so I pulled out a volume of The Annals of America and chose the next subject for Documenting America, read it, and began to formulate a chapter about it. I next went to the daily writing blogs I follow, and found a great new post on Jon Konrath’s blog.

During all this activity, I came upon about six ideas for posts to this blog. I think the next step will be do get those down on paper so I don’t lose them. I might be posting here with greater frequency for a while. The internal but public debate about e-self-publishing continues, along with some other subjects.

For the rest of the day, I’ll finish reading a couple of blogs, plan and perhaps draft the Documenting America chapter, maybe work some on either the harmony of the gospels of on my baseball novel. Oh, I need to prepare for teaching Sunday school, and write some student sheets. I don’t know if I’ll look to do any recreational reading or not, but perhaps.

book reviews, Writing

Book Review – One Writer’s Beginning by Eudora Welty

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Eudora Welty is one writer I don’t remember reading. Possibly in an English class somewhere we were assigned one of her stories and I read it. I know I haven’t read any of her novels. Yet, when I saw the small paperback One Writer’s Beginning at a thrift store for 50 cents, I bought it. I was pretty sure I would gain something from it.

The book was assembled from lectures Welty gave at Harvard University in 1983. She was from Jackson, Mississippi, to parents who moved there from Ohio and West Virginia when they were married in 1904. Welty was born the next year, to be joined by two brothers over the next five years. In the first part of the book, titled “Listening”, Welty tells how her earliest childhood years, and how they fed her imagination. She doesn’t talk about writing at all.

In the next section, “Learning To See”, she tells of family vacations back to Ohio and West Virginia, and spending time with the extended family. Train trips and road trips are part of this section. A road trip in 1917 was quite an adventure. Each set of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins had an impact on Eudora. From abundant story telling on her mom’s side to an absolute ignoring of the past for sake of looking toward the future on her dad’s, she learned to look to the past and the future.

The third section, “Finding A Voice,” is where Welty tells how the events of her life became scenes in stories, and neighbors and teachers became characters. Welty even says how she put some of herself into one character.

All in all, the book didn’t give a lot of information for writing help. It was not inspirational, or motivational. It didn’t really provide hints on the writing craft. it’s a straight memoir. If it had anything to help a writer it was: Use the events and people in your life to populate your stories. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation. Despite the lack of immediate benefit, I’m going to keep the book, and possibly re-read it in a few years.

The previous owner of this book made a note here and there. Inside the back was written, “Purchased at University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Ark June 1987”. Most of the marginalia was a single word, such as “genealogy,” “scenes,” “library,” “Latin”. Many words or phrases are underlined. But, what caught my eye was the single word written on the introductory page: “Interesting”. Ah ha, Dr. Farina, former high school English classmate. I’m not the only one who find that an acceptable word to characterize reaction to a composition.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Editorial Silence

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In the seven (almost eight, actually) years I’ve been trying to be published, I think my biggest gripe against the publishing industry is what I call editorial silence. Let me think, though, if you include submittals to literary magazines I’ve actually been submitting for about ten years. There’s always a time lag between submittal and answer. Magazines, agents, and book acquisitions editors almost all state what their response time is: 6 weeks, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, whatever. It’s a little different if you meet an agent or editor at a conference and they ask you to submit something. That’s a little less formal, though I suspect their posted response times could be considered to apply.

From my perspective, I don’t mind the slow response. What I mind is non-response, or responses so long after the stated response time that it might as well be a non-response. That’s the way this business works. A non-response most likely means a no. Most editors say to send them a reminder e-mail once you’re a little past their stated response time. When you do you’ll get a no.

Some examples. I met with an agent at a conference in Kansas City in November 2007. He asked me to send him the complete manuscript of Doctor Luke’s Assistant, as he was planning to represent more fiction in the coming years. I did so about a week later, and heard nothing. The following April I learned this same agent was going to be at a conference I was hoping to attend the next month in North Carolina. I thought we could meet then to discuss my manuscript, if warranted, so I e-mailed him, now five months after he requested the material, and asked for a status report. He said he couldn’t find my mss and would I send it again. I did, and talked to him briefly at the next conference. He said, “Your writing is strong, but I don’t know if I can sell it. I’m still reading it. Send me a reminder e-mail every week until I respond.”

That sounded strange, but I did as he asked. About two weeks later he passed on my book. Looking back, I now suspect he hadn’t even looked at the book when I saw him the second time, and he was just giving me “agent-speak”.

Another example. At that same North Carolina conference in May 2008, I met with another agent and pitched In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. She asked me to send her a partial (30 or so pages) and a proposal. I did so promptly, and heard nothing for four months. I sent a reminder e-mail, and heard nothing for two months. I sent another reminder e-mail, and she responded, passing on my book because she already represented something similar.

How strange that these two agents, who I met with and who requested me to send them some material, should totally fail to respond. Add to that about thirty magazine submittals where I’ve either never heard back or heard back up to a year after submittal, and I’ve concluded that the submittal process is broken across the board. Some writers call it the “query-go-round”. Others have a less complimentary term for it.

It’s enough to drive an unpublished author to self-publishing. For now, I guess I’ll go do something that will make me some money.