L.B. Graham — author of the series "The Binding Of The Blade"

So, I finished John Gardner's The Art of Fiction yesterday, making that three of the books on writing in my stack. It was a good read, but man was it a striking shift after reading Stephen King's On Writing.

King, I think it is fair to say, has the common touch. He's sold a boatload of books and is very prolific. His book on writing is similar, in that I think almost anyone would find it accessible - ie, not too technical to follow or understand. Gardner, on the other hand, is a man of letters and his approach reveals extensive understanding of literary theory and fiction that a lot of people might call "high brow." I think The Art of Fiction would be a great read for literary students, for literate adults, and for anyone who is a serious thinker, interested in writing serious prose. It would, though, be a challenge for a lot of casual readers looking for simple writing tips.

Gardner's fundamental assertion is the one I mentioned in my previous post, namely that fiction - properly designed and executed - should be a vivid and continuous dream. Of course, that's easier said than done, so most of the book is about the things that contribute to making that dream vivid and about identifying the mistakes/choices writers make that interrupt and disturb the dream.

One quick "warning" here about King's book, On Writing. Someone emailed me the other day with a writing question, and that person mentioned she'd ordered some of the books on writing I've been discussing. If I didn't mention it before, I should have, but King uses a good bit of language that probably most of my readers would find offensive. So, if you're not an adult, or if you know use of language like that would make it impossible for you to enjoy the book & learn what King has to teach, then On Writing probably isn't for you.

Next up in the pile of books on writing, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

So, I've not really kept up with my blogging, but I have been plodding away at my reading on the craft of writing. To date, I've read The Elements of Style by Strunk & White, On Writing by Stephen King, and I'm about halfway through The Art of Fiction by John Gardner.

While Strunk & White functions mainly as a guide to the precision of language and its appropriate usage - a worthy read for those who care about the beauty of the right word in the right place, and an important read for those who don't - the other two books focus mainly on the larger task of writing fiction well. While I've come across a lot of things that would be worth posting about, I want to post today on two metaphors for fiction used in these books - fiction as a 'fossil' and fiction as a 'dream.'

Stephen King frequently uses the metaphor of the 'fossil' to describe fiction in On Writing. He describes the process of writing your first draft as a sort of excavation, where you discover for yourself as a writer the story you are telling, in much the same way an archeologist discovers the fossil he is uncovering. For King, you begin with a premise - he uses the term, 'situation' - and from there you create characters which are placed in the situation and both you and they hurl through the story discovering what happens next as you go.

In the second draft, then, once you've discovered the 'fossil' in the first, you work on crafting the story and refining it so that things like symbols and themes and the like become clearer. In other words, you work without full knowledge of the story in the first draft, but with that knowledge, you revise and clarify in the second draft what you are about.

Gardner used the metaphor of the 'dream' to describe good fiction in The Art of Fiction. The author of conventional fiction (we won't concern ourselves here with the unconventional forms he discusses), succeeds in his task if he creates a believable dream, into which the reader can step and stay a while as the events of the narrative play out. The dream works if all the aspects of the fictional world, from the characters and their choices to the unfolding plot and the scenes and the details used to create & sustain the dream all come together.

It is evident in some things Gardner has already said (in the half of the book I've read), that he both agrees and disagrees in some ways with what King argues. While King generally dismissed 'plotting' as something that negatively affects creativity and by extension, the interest of the story, Gardner seems to be saying so far that a careful plan and plotting are pretty important. The actual chapter on plotting comes last in the book, so I won't know what precisely he says about it until I get there.

In another sense, Gardner seems to agree with King on the explorative nature of writing a novel. He says a number of things which suggest that there are discoveries made along the way which suprise even the writer. Perhaps then, their disagreement is not complete. King almost certainly operates with some real if vague ideas of where his story might be going, and even writers who work on plot more consciously before embarking on their tale, find their cast of characters sometimes up to surprising things. I know that was the case for me.

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up. While I've been a bit of a planner to this point in my short writing career, I see the value of both metaphors. I need to create a world that is a believable totality, a 'dream' into which my readers can step and stay. Whether this is envisioned and constructed completely the first time through the story or not, the dream needs to work. At the same time, creativity comes in many different forms and ways - and at different points in the process, any of which we are foolish to ignore. From the initial thought or premise which gets the writer going in the first place, to the strange and sometimes suprising things you end up having your characters do at the eleventh hour when you thought you'd figured it all out only to discover that you were wrong, there is an element of exploration and 'fossil' recovery going on too.

I promised to end, so I will, but with this encouragement - keep reading, you writers, both examples of your craft, and reflections upon it...

As I said in my previous post, I have launched into self-assigned curriculum of reading books on writing, beginning with Strunk & White's classic work, The Elements of Style. The venture is already paying dividends.

I'm about 25 pages in, 25 pages packed with fairly compact instruction on usage, so far, with more coming on composition and style. I have found already, though, something I want to share from my reading and briefly commend to all.

This is a quote from the beginning of the section on "Elementary Principles of Composition." What follows is the principle, the quote, and my thoughts upon it.

Principle: Choose a suitable design and hold to it.

"The first principle of composition, therefore, is to foresee or determine the shape of what is to come and pursue that shape" (15).

And again...

"The more clearly the writer perceives the shape, the better are the chances of success" (15).

My two cents: Structure matters. A lot. I know some view writing as a "create as you go" enterprise, but I think really good stories rarely emerge that way. I don't mean you can't sell lots of books and be a "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of writer, I mean that carefully crafted works of art are usually just that - carefully crafted. And craft includes thinking about it carefully before you even begin.

A thought for the writers out there, for what it is worth.

So I'm starting out on a new venture tomorrow, seeking to address a serious deficiency of mine. I've gathered a stack of books about writing, which if I had any decency or discipline as a writer I'd have read long ago, but which I have sadly neglected. Still, better late than never, and it is my hope to give periodic posts on things I find along the way that I want to pass on. The stack includes books like the following:

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
On Writing by Stephen King
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne & King

and possibly...

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
On Writing Well by William Zinsser

My friend Jonathan Rogers recommended the books by Anne Lamott and Stephen King. Jeff Gerke at his website "Where the Map Ends" strongly recommends the Brown & King book, and my older brother has pleaded the case for Strunk & White and John Gardner for many, many years. I don't remember how or when I acquired the other two, but they were on my shelf and so now they've been moved to my stack - and, though not a book about fiction, Zinsser's book is considered a classic on non-fiction prose, so I thought it worth a gander.

I will start, of course, with Strunk & White, because it is perhaps the most commonly commended book on writing that I know, a definitive work - if such at thing exists - on style, and because E.B. White was about as good a writer as there ever was.

On that note, I want to commend White too you, dear reader. You probably know him from Charlotte's Web fame, and deservedly so. However, his essays are must reads for anyone interested in learning style. "Once More to the Lake" is probably the most famous, but there are many good ones. "The Geese" is a reflection on growing older, and very powerful, as is "Death of a Pig," an essay which any fan of Charlotte's Web should read, as it is almost certainly the story behind the story. Pick one and dig in.

So, stay tuned for occasional updates from my journey through some of the literature on writing.

I thought I'd throw this question out there to see what kind of responses it elicited. I'll get us started...

Gandalf - This is an obvious one, but I always loved Tolkien's Gandalf. He's wise, he's powerful, he speaks his mind and he is really, really beautifully written. That leads me to say, if you only know of Gandalf from the LOTR movies, you need to read the books. The movies were good and Ian McKellen was probably as good as I could have expected anyone to be, but the movies moved quickly, focused on action centerpieces and left stuff out, meaning that I don't know if all of Gandalf made it to the screen, if that makes any sense.

Merlin - Perhaps after mentioning Gandalf, Merlin is obvious, but I've always had a soft spot for the bard/wizard/wisdom character. I like the more traditional Merlin of most Arthur stories, I like the slightly strange and enigmatic Merlin of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and I like the more Celtic vision of Merlin from Lawhead too.

True story. When I was younger, I wanted to get two dogs when I was older, and I wanted to call the older one Merlin and the younger one Gandalf. Currently, we have a cat named Xavier. All that to say life doesn't always turn out like you plan.

Fflewddur Fflam - Speaking of bards, who can forget Fflewddur Fflam? Of course you might be thinking that you've forgotten him, but if you've ever met him, I doubt you could have forgotten him. He's a character in Lloyd Alexander's marvelous Chronicles of Prydain. Fflewddur is a fairly comical character, a traveling bard/minor king who has a magical harp that makes beautiful music but is also sensitive to fibs. Whenever Fflewddur lies, a string breaks, and since he likes to stretch the facts, the strings break a lot.

(By the way, if you know Alexander's series, then you know about Gurgi. Gurgi is the main reason why I wasn't much of a Dobby fan in the Harry Potter books. Dobby seemed too much of a lesser Gurgi.)

Gareth - O.K., this could be a stretch, calling Gareth a fantasy character, since I'm referring to the Gareth of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which is a series of long narrative poems Tennyson wrote over the period of many years, all about Arthur, etc. Gareth is the first story you encounter about the round table and the knights thereof after reading the introductory idyll, "The Coming of Arthur." Gareth is the epitome of chivalry and heroism in that story, and I won't say too much because I don't want to spoil it in case you ever pick it up and decide to give it a chance (despite the challenge of the poetic language, the stories are beautiful and rewarding).

In a nutshell, Gareth is only allowed to go to Camelot and be with his older brothers in Arthur's service after he promises his mother to work in the kitchens for a set time - she's hoping he'll tire of the work and come home again - but he goes and works cheerfully until he's released from his vow. When he is, he goes to Arthur's court and is immediately assigned a quest to help a young lady named Lynette. She thinks he is a kitchen helper and not a real knight, and ignorant of his noble birth, feels that Arthur has scorned her in appointing Gareth to her cause. She thus treats him badly all along the way, and Gareth never complains and never responds in kind, and as his valor and nobility is proved, she slowly comes to realize her mistake. It's a wonderful story!

Reepicheep & Puddleglum - I love Aslan as much as the next person, maybe even more. Still, I wanted to say here that I love the whole range of characters that Lewis populated his world with. The Beavers, the bulgy bears, both horses from The Horse and His Boy and of course Reepicheep and Puddleglum. The valiant mouse and the Marsh-wiggle are characters that left an indelible impression on my young mind.

I could go on, but I won't. It's your turn. Who do you like, and why?

The title of this entry is borrowed from a Charlie Peacock lyric, taken from my favorite song of his, "In the Light." (Yes, Charlie Peacock wrote "In the Light," not DC Talk.) The full verse that the lyric is pulled from is quoted below:

The disease of the self runs through my blood
Like a cancer fatal to my soul
Every attempt on my behalf has failed
To get this sickness under control.

The inspiration for this post was a conversation I've been having with Jonathan Rogers by email about the insidious nature of self-righteousness. It infects and infests the Church because it infects and infests us all. We may not all struggle with self-righteousness in the same area and to the same degree, but we do all struggle with it in some area and to some degree. The more adamantly we declare our freedom from it, the more surely we are guilty of it.

Despite the clear testimony of scripture that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and that if we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (I John 1:9), we each and everyone seem to be hard at work in some form or another to justify ourselves. Of course, attempts to justify one's self are not acts of rectification, let alone redemption, for unless wrongdoing is acknowledged, there is no admission that there is anything to redeem, anything to be rectified. Rather we engage in a massive cover up, following our first parents by trying to hide from the eyes of God, wrapping our sin in not-so-clever excuses that may fool us but can never fool Him.

The story of the Gospel, the story of salvation, is the story of the rescue of Man by God, which is why, of course, the full depth of Man's depravity and need of rescue must be acknowledged for the full scandal of God's grace and mercy to be understood. This is why self-righteousness is a disease, why it is fatal: it seeks to nullify the grace of God by erecting a monument to human goodness - namely our own - in its place.

This is also why a sure mark of growth in grace is marked by a deepening awareness of our own sinfulness. We find it in the Old Testament, in the penitential Psalms, where David, the man after God's own heart, cries out to God for deliverance from his sin. We find it in the New Testament, where the Apostle Paul moves from being the self-satisfied persecutor of the church, to being the least of the apostles, to being the chief of sinners. We also see it throughout history and in our own experience. The most godly men I have known have not proudly proclaimed this fact, nor have they verbally refused it while every word and act that flowed from them reeked of self-satisfaction. Instead, they have freely and consistently acknowledged their own unworthiness without resorting to an insincere language of self-loathing designed to solicit assurances they really aren't that bad, while at the same time living with the settled peace and assurance that can only come from reliance on the God who is the source and sustainer of that peace.

All of this is part of the reason why one of my favorite literary characters is Msimangu, a character in Alan Paton's brilliant novel about South Africa called Cry, the Beloved Country. Msimangu epitomizes love and mercy throughout the book, and when the man who is the beneficiary of this love and mercy, Stephen Kumalo, tries to credit him with being the source of this love and mercy, Msimangu consistently but graciously redirects the praise, saying, I am a selfish and sinful man. God has put his hand on me, that is all.

If anything good and right, worthy and true, beautiful and blessed, is found in me, or in any of us, then that is all. Likewise with you, reader. That is all. Thanks be to God, who reaches down, and puts His hands on us.

One of my habits is stopping at McDonald's on my way to work for a drink and a few minutes of quiet reading. I get up pretty early, a little after five, and I'm usually in my booth before six with drink in hand and book before me. I was never a 'morning person,' not really, but I have adapted well to this practice and find my mind sharpest right out of the gate at the start of the day - which means I grow increasingly slow and befuddled as the day wears on.

The other day I went into McDonald's without my book. (I'm currently reading Peter Kreeft's excellent book, Christianity for Modern Pagan's, in which he interacts with a large selection of Pascal's Pensees, and I am enjoying it very much.) However, the next section was pretty long and I didn't feel like I had time to start it. So, I thought I'd go get my drink, watch some soundless CNN on the flatscreen TV, and then head into work.

Well, of course, this was the day the flatscreen wasn't operational. Actually, to be accurate, the flatscreen seemed fine, but there was nothing on it to watch, only a simple text message congratulating me or the restaurant or someone for having a dish, much good it was doing me not turned on, however. So I sat there, drinking, annoyed that the things wasn't working the one day it was my express intent to watch it.

That set me thinking about the curious phenomenon of TV's multiplying in restaurants around the country. I guess it isn't such a new thing, as lots of Bar & Grill type places have had TV's for years, and a lot of casual restaurants and fast food places have followed suit. And yet, it is striking if seen from a certain point of view, and I sat their wondering at exactly what point it was decided that the time it took to wolf down a Big Mac was now entirely too long to go without television?

The world used to be full of quiet places, by which I don't just mean literally quiet, but lacking in sound and visual diversion. These places are disappearing, and while this isn't all bad, as no doubt there are any number of places where the tedium of waiting has been curbed a bit (like say, an airport waiting area), it is a trend that will have cost, I think. I'm not anti-technology, but I think sometimes that all the gadgets and gizmos that now travel so lightly and so easily wherever we go, are cutting into our intellectual capacities, not just our spare time. We are constantly being entertained and preoccupied, a fundamentally passive experience, and the impetus to think and reflect, even carry a good book to read, is decreased year by year.

At present, there are still many quiet places, even if one has to know where to look to find them. I wonder how long they will remain so?

For all those fans of The Binding of the Blade who were sad when it ended with All My Holy Mountain, this might come as a bit of good news. I've begun discussion with P&R about writing a few stories/vignettes from the world and history of Kirthanin, with the thought that we'd make them available as free PDF downloads on the official Binding of the Blade website.

This isn't definite yet, but I'm currently thinking about what stories I'd like to write if I go ahead with this plan. My hope, at this point, is to write three and release them periodically throughout 2009, maybe spring/summer, fall and winter.

O.K. so here's where this post becomes more than just information. I have some ideas about what I'd like to write, but I thought I'd invite fans of the series to supply some suggestions. So, any ideas out there? If so, post a comment here and let me know.

With less to say about my own writing than I'd like, I'm going to be doing more blogging about books I've read or am reading. I'm starting today with a post about a quote from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. (I'm reading Gilead because Jonathan Rogers recommended it highly to me while we were on the Motiv8 Tour.)

I won't try to explain what is going on in the story, save to say that the main character has just read an article about religion in America. (It might help to say the story is set in the 50's and the article is supposed to be from '48.) I'll begin quoting below:

The article is called "God and the American People," and it says 95 percent of us say we believe in God. But our religion doesn't meet the writer's standards, not at all. To his mind, all those people in all those churches are the scribes and the Pharisees. He seems to me to be a bit of a scribe himself, scorning and rebuking the way he does. How do you tell a scribe from a prophet, which is what he clearly takes himself to be? The prophets love the people they chastise, a thing this writer does not appear to do.

I don't know, out of the context of the story and the book, how this quote will strike you. It struck me as profound, as several things in the story have. Gilead is one of those books; it rolls along, veering here and there, and every so often it brings the world around you to a standstill with its poignant observations that make you stop reading and consider. This was one of those moments for me.

There are, of course, many differences between scribes and prophets. I say this to appease the literal-minded who might be looking to make of the quote something it does not intend to say. It is good hermeneutical practice for all of us to take a writer's words in the spirit they are intended, as best as we are able, and Robinson clearly isn't trying to give an exhaustive theological or historical summary of the difference between scribes and prophets. She's saying, it seems to me, that many of those who would critique the church do not love the church they critique.

Again, to forestall objection, she isn't talking about people outside the church critiquing the church. That's to be expected, isn't it? Those who don't believe don't see the sense of believing and tend to be critical of those who do. Those who believe, who are part of the church, are those she speaks about here, and her point is very important. Critically important.

There is much to criticize the church about. I don't think that is at issue. Like each of us individually, broken and marred by the sins we commit and that are committed against us, the church as a whole is broken and marred. Again, what should we expect? Take a large group of selfish and sinful people and put them together, we could hardly think the result would be anything less than painfully disappointing at times. And yet the scriptures are clear that the Church is the bride of Christ, beloved of God and in the process of being redeemed, as are we. In short, while it is good and right to point out the failings of the Church in the hope that it may change its ways where it needs to, there is room for charity (in the older sense of the word) in the way we critique it.

If you find yourself with reason to chastise the Church as a whole, or your church in particular, consider carefully how you do it. There are undoubtedly enough self-righteous proclamations about what's wrong with it already, so there's no need to add more. Ask yourself, do you love the Church that you chastise, for Christ certainly does. If you find that you do not, or not as much as you feel you should - I find myself in this category, too often - then perhaps your time and energy would be better spent pursuing the correction of your own heart and leaving the correction of the church to those whose love for her shines in even the hardest things they have to say about her. (These people do exist - some of my former teachers, Lyle Dorsett and Jerram Barrs for example, come to mind.)

Undoubtedly it is true that the church has more than enough scribes and Pharisees still within its ranks - let's not add our voices to theirs, compounding that particular problem. Let's learn to take a different road toward the same end, the correction and growth of the church in holiness, for own sake as well as the Church's.

Christmas has come and gone once more, and now the dawning of the New Year awaits. For children, it is so hard to let Christmas go as it fades in the rearview mirror. After all, there is so much anticipation and build up, they feel it is somehow wrong that the day can simply pass them by in the usual 24 hours. What's more, the younger the child, the fewer the Christmases he or she has seen, so the rarer the spectacle and experience and the harder it is to believe that it will come round again. For us adults, Christmas has been coming and going, lo these many years, and the prospect that intervening time will fly away and Christmas once more be here is not so hard to believe - we've seen it happen, year after year after year.

And now, as "normal life" begins slowly to resume, we enter the season of running into our friends and acquaintances where we'll undoubtedly engage in the usual post-Christmas small talk. We might ask about their trips or their families, if they traveled or gathered as part of their Christmas festivities. We might ask about time spent with kids, if they have collegiate children home on break. We might ask about all sorts of things, depending on the person, but one question that most will ask and be asked more than a few times, is "what did you get?"

Often the question is really a way of trying to ascertain if your Christmas was satisfactory. Was Santa good to you this year? In short, did you get what you want?

I've been thinking a bit about that question, and while I don't want to dismiss it entirely, as I'm sure there is value in it somewhere, I've been struck by how much more important is the related question that we never ask, did you get what you need? No doubt, we don't ask it because it is a trickier question. What I truly need is hard to quantify. You can't slip grace into a stocking, or wrap humility with a big bow - or a small one, as I imagine humility isn't a "big bow" kinda gift. Mercy, love, forgiveness, repentance, justice, kindness, gentleness, patience, goodness and joy are all likewise hard to package and distribute. So really, I understand why we don't ask people if they got what they needed.

Let's face it, many wouldn't even understand the question. Having so much and truly needing so little, in the strictest material sense, they'd likely only be confused. For those who grasped that we have needs beyond the material basics of food and shelter and so forth, the question would come dangerously close to being an inquiry into their spiritual estate, and goodness knows we don't want to do that. We're so practiced at keeping even our friends and families at arms length on the things that matter while we chat and chat and chat about things of little consequence. Perhaps that's another thing we should add to the list of things we need - the courage of true friendship, the ability to speak about the unspoken.

What's perhaps most remarkable, is the gulf, seemingly fixed forever between the two domains of what we want and what we need. When you ask me what I want for Christmas, my mind doesn't automatically go to the long list of needs above, but rather to gadgets and gizmos and other things that are ultimately of little worth to me or to my place in this world. And isn't that, in the end, a tragedy all of its own.

Christmas is about the birth of a savior. I tried to express some of my thoughts about it last year in this post. Thank goodness that our savior knows without needing to be asked what we need, and thank goodness He is gentle and patient and kind already and so bears with our incessant obsessions with our various wants.

As time passes ever more rapidly, year after year, I am increasingly aware of what I need, and isn't it strange that our celebration of Christmas, the time of year that should focus us more than any other on the true solution to our great problem, has evolved into one of the most successful diversions ever conceived, so that the season often comes and goes without our ever really giving it any thought. May this not be true of you, or of me, as we look past the wrapping paper of our daily life to examine what lies within and to contemplate the savior who came to save us from ourselves.