We've all been there. You're taking on your first novel on your own since graduating from an MFA program where professional writers served as mentors helping you complete two novels. So what do you do? Run for the comfort a a familiar voice or style of character. No, you get a sex change.
In writing the first draft for my latest novel "All We Know of Heaven," which I completed in a record fifteen days, I chose to write from the point-of-view of a female protagonist, a seventeen year-old girl named Tia. My former students know this isn't much of a stretch for me. I mean, as the adviser of a high school newspaper and yearbook, there's no demographic I've spent more time with in the past two years than teenage girls.
Why, you ask, did I attempt to narrate from a female's perspective? Well, simply put, that's the story that came to me. I wasn't trying to stretch my horizons or anything like that. It wasn't an experiment in narrative technique or breaking out of my past habits. I simply became obsessed with the story of a girl and her struggles, so I wrote it.
I may be wrong, but I think Tia sounds like a girl. In fact, she probably sounds more like a girl than some of my past characters sounded like boys. Actually, some of my old characters have been criticized as whiny or overly sensitive. Now, with Tia, I don't think that criticism will come. Which says more about gender stereotypes than it does my narration. Perhaps I've always been writing like a girl.
Which brings up an interesting question. What's the difference? The only time I felt uncomfortable and actually consulted a real, live teenage girl (thanks Taylor!) was navigating the equally complex world of prom dresses and menstrual cycles.
When I really think about it, there's one thing I've learned about teenage girls--they are all supremely insecure...and they all find completely different ways to try and compensate for it.
But isn't that the same about teenage boys? And when you get down to it, that's pretty much true about adults, too. What became the essence of capturing a teenage girl was really pinpointing Tia's insecurities and developing how she compensates for them. When you're really afraid of losing those close to you, how do you best prevent being crippled by that fear? If you're insecure about your own sanity, how do make sure everyone knows you're sane?
I think this is the psychological drama at the heart of every great piece of writing. What are our characters' hangups that they let screw up their entire lives, and how do they come to terms with them to live relatively normal lives in the end? With that as the basic question, there doesn't seem to be much difference between a male protagonist and a female one. We're all whack.
Besides proms and periods, there doesn't seem to be much difference.
Yesterday morning I received God's grace publicly and, as Pastor John put it, chose the story by which I will live. I had read a great deal about baptism and, of course, was wondering if I would "feel different" after the ceremony was complete. However, just a couple of days before, a colleague of mine--a wise English teacher with a great soul for compassion--told me baptism was a lot like marriage or divorce. All three are just the making public of something, a transition, that has already occurred. I had already made the choice, and God had already shed his grace on me. If it weren't so, I wouldn't have been there in the first place.
What led me to this great change in course, to being saved, was God's work and stemmed from several events--most deeply personal--spurned on by a couple of heaven-sent angels. I may never share the entire story publicly, though you'll probably see glimpses of it in fictions I create for as long as God grants me the creative spirit to keep creating them. But the angels will always be with me, no matter where they move to or, more accurately, where ever God sends them to do good work.
The most remarkable thing about me, a devout atheist, finding God--about a man who once read Anton LeVay and cheered on Bill Maher's rants against Christianity turning coat and taking on the armor of Christ in the battle against Satan, about a devout fan of Marilyn Manson becoming a devout follower of the Christ Jesus--was also finding out just how wrong I was about Christianity. Actually, I would never say I "found God." To find God would imply I was looking for him. The reality was He was searching for me, trying to find a way into my heart. Part of what made me such a good atheist was my ability to hide.
While you can probably imagine what my miscalculations about Christ were, since many of you--even those of you who are believers--currently hold these beliefs, I won't recount them all here. I want to focus on what I have learned Christianity is, what it truly means to be a Disciple of Christ.
I found, quite surprisingly, that I did not have to throw out any of my professed beliefs to also believe in God. I simply had to start truly believing them and realizing that they were justified by God and Jesus and, therefore, playing lip-service to them alone would no longer do. The best way I can completely describe this is through the first piece of scripture that struck me as quotable, a passage which has become my mantra.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love; And the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV)
I learned that love is the fulfillment of the law and that love thy neighbor as thyself is the greatest of The Father's Commandments. All I thought about sin and guilt and having to be perfect to be Christian was fallacy. Christians realize we're all sinners. In the end, coincidentally, the man who imagined there's no religion, also had Christianity down cold. "All you need is love. Love is all you need." Now, it's not that simple, of course, nothing is, but it's a great place to start.
In fact, the biggest surprise about studying scripture and Christianity and going to church every Sunday was that, at least in the research I was doing and at the church I was attending (a church that sanctifies gay marriage and seems more leftist than the Democratic National Convention), was the absence of Satan. The media and historians tell us that church is all about fire and brimstone, warning us to conform or be sent to Hell, yet when I began attending church, I was shocked to see the services completely devoid of Satan. On my first day of church as a Christian, I assumed I wasn't hearing the words "Satan" and "Hell" for fear of their power. By my baptism, however, I was already fully aware that those words weren't being spoken not because of their power, but because they were powerless in the house of God--evil rendered negligible by the awe-inspiring love of God.
This love of God, along with the sheer bliss and utter peace His love was able to bring to my soul, was key to my conversion. I saw no fear of Hell or the punishment of God in any of it; in fact, trying to live life God's perfect way rather than my own flawed way was a reward in itself, not something to be feared or cause guilt. The term "God-fearing" is probably the most misunderstood term by non-Christians. I chose a Christian life not because I feared the wrath of God, but because I felt a love so strong that I feared facing life without it.
Now, the media has done a great job of portraying Christians in a hateful light. Sure, there are fringe members of Jesus' church that do a great job of feeding that image, but what I've seen of Christianity, and what I've felt of Christ's love, has been nothing like the media image I had bought into. It was, also ironically, Bill Maher who said that Jesus needs less fans and more followers. Living Jesus' way means not judging anyone, loving everyone, and being held accountable to that standard. Hearing about a website called godhatesfags.com alone is enough to make me pray for their souls, not the souls of homosexuals, the souls of those who practice hatred and erroneously attempt to use God's Word, found in the old, pre-Jesus covenant, to justify their hatred. This is not love.
Bottom line: God doesn't hate. Any time the Bible is being cited to support a claim of hatred, you can dismiss the claim altogether. God's name and God's Word can only be used to support claims of love. Judging others only serves to prove our own laziness, for it takes a concerted effort to understand them. And sloth is, after all, one of the seven deadly sins. Practicing slothful judgment is not love. The Bible is a story, after all, and it's moral is love.
So now I come to the atheist's favorite target of Christianity--faith. How can you simply believe something of which you have no proof? Without going into detail, I can honestly say I believe I have, in fact, seen proof of God moving in our secular world. The more open I become to it, the more I see it. Once you've let God into your heart and soul, it's hard to doubt Him. The second a doubt creeps in, He finds a way to show you exactly where He is and how He's working.
Ever just look at the clouds? I mean, really look at them. I'll just leave it like that. He's everywhere if you choose to look. Just try this--eliminate the concept of coincidence from your life for just a day. Imagine, if you have to, that everything that happens is scripted. And once you embrace that concept, ask yourself "why?" with each thing that happens, with each person that has entered your life. This is a truly intellectual endeavor. You'll be analyzing your entire life as if it were a classic work of fiction, trying to discern the author's intentions in creating his characters and his plots. The author, however, is God, and when you can figure out, intellectually, what the grandest of authors' intentions are, it's a moment of insight that cannot be matched by any other intellectual pursuit. That's faith.
Furthermore, faith doesn't only mean blind belief. It also means trust. And once you put faith in God and Jesus--not just belief but trust--many of the things that plague your daily life start to dissipate like the clouds after a storm. I used to be the worst of worry-warts. It was brutal. Social gatherings, safety of friends, family, and students--all a merciless quagmire of fear. Through prayer and true faith, I've come so far. My daily life is nearly free of this paranoia, this insane desire to control the uncontrollable. Let go and let God, they say, and boy are they brilliant. Whatever happens, I know God is in my corner, and even when the worst of times come, there is so much to be thankful for, which leads to the third component--hope.
Emily Dickinson found, I think, the perfect way to show us the connection between faith and hope:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
We don't consciously ask for hope; it's just there. God-given hope through the faith we have that things will be better sustains us. We all have it if we would only admit it. Sometimes the world seems hopeless, but we keep on going, and we have God to thank for that.
We can also have hope that the world can be great, absolutely divine. Once I felt the Holy Spirit and saw It at work in my life, once I had that faith, my life became about putting myself in position to feel it again and again. I had hope. At one point in my life I would ask "How can anyone want to spend Sunday in a boring, stuffy church." Now I wonder how anyone wouldn't want to be part of something so breathtaking. Every Sunday I see humanity at its best, if for only an hour. Christianity can make this a better world, if only we could replicate that one hour on Sunday every hour of our lives. If only we all lived like Jesus every day, if only we tried to be the man or woman He wants us to be, he knows we can be, every day. God and Jesus have faith in us and hope for us. If only we returned the favor.
In the end, or the beginning I suppose I should say, I find that all that held me back, all my depression, all my fear, all my anger, all my hatred, everything that made daily life uncomfortable, unhappy, and sometimes unbearable, wasn't a result of chemicals in my brain; it was the absence of God in my heart.
Faith brings us alive, in tune with things we used to ignore. There are things in this world you just can't see, you can only feel. The greatest literary minds have agreed on this throughout time. There are more things in heaven and on Earth than we dream of in any of our philosophies--logic can't explain it all. Somehow we all think that to believe instead of beg for proof, to simply wonder instead of looking for evidence, makes us somehow less intelligent, less wise. It's hard to imagine why we fear to speak the words that most confirm our own wisdom--"I don't know."
Furthermore, hope gives us reason to live. If we truly thought life was hopeless, we would just curl up in the fetal position and starve to death waiting for our souls to be fed. We all have hope, but we could all use more. He gives us that hope. "You only live once" has become a slogan for young people to do crazy things in the name of carpe diem. However, this life is temporal. God has promised us eternal life through belief in Christ. What more hope can you ask for. A daily, on-going relationship with God through the generosity and sacrifice of Jesus has given me all the hope I need.
And most importantly, there's love, the true elixir of life. Bathe in love. Eat, drink, and breathe love. Pour love out upon everyone and you shall receive it back ten fold. God loves us all. I can feel it each time I pray. I can feel it each time I love others. I can feel it each time I am able to see his intentions while writing my story. He crafts my life like an author, a true labor of love, and the love He has given me has given me faith in him, which in turn gives me immeasurable hope. It all just fits.
I used to look at people smiling on Facebook, those with more money, bigger houses, and better cars--cars that actually run--and wonder how they did it. How did they achieve this mysterious thing they call happiness? I've found that happiness comes from redefining what makes you happy. Living life God's way, not mine, trusting in God's plan, not mine, and tapping into God's unlimited love, not relying simply on my own human limitations for the emotion, have changed everything.
How will it turn out? I don't know. At least not how it will turn out on Earth. I've just begun this wonderful journey and have only just started to learn. But that's the beauty of it. God does. So loving Him, having faith in Him, and having hope will get me there--to the promised land. This change has meant I can know at least that. In the end, there's a place for me in His kingdom, no matter what, because Jesus died on the cross for me. For all my flaws, He still made the ultimate sacrifice for me. And that has made all the difference.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)
I am officially writing my lack of success in getting published off as a lack of luck...
So, starting today, my career takes off in a different direction. So far my two novels have both been young adult. Well, today I'm writing what I want to write, and I have a unique thought about how to get the next one published.
A few weeks ago, Levi Luck was born. Levi is the protagonist in my next novel, which has barely begun to get underway. Levi's a rock star, albeit a reluctant one (at least at first), and boy does Levi have some surprises in store for you.
Born Levin Gluck, a transformation at the hands of a wannabe producer makes his first album No Such Luck a hit. But stardom always comes at a price, and Levi struggles to see the good in the world through the sparkling glam of the record industry. Disillusioned by a year on the road, Levi decides to spice it up a bit for his big performance as a headliner at historic Madison Square Garden.
Now, I typically do some character building exercises before getting going, like finding a picture online of what I want the character to look like and writing some background stuff I won't actually use in the novel. This time, I decided to take it to the social media level.
I have created a Facebook for Levi, and filling out all the information necessary has certainly helped me get to know my new character. He also has a Twitter. Now, not only did I have to sketch him out in full to create his accounts on both, but I can practice being him--sounds schizophrenic I know--with his Tweets and Facebook commentary. He will also reveal some of his character quirks and maybe some smaller plot points or tips about the plot in doing so.
Having set this up, it then occurred to me that this could be a sales tool. When querying, why not give agents the Facebook and Twitter accounts for them to check out. Also, if some lucky publisher should decide to publish No Such Luck, readers of the book could actually friend, follow, and interact with the character online through social media. How cool is that?
Well, I'm off to do some more pre-writing for the novel. I'll keep y'all updated, and hopefully by the end of summer 2012, Levi's journey will be complete. It'll just take a little perseverance. Oh, and a little bit of Luck!
Follow Levi on Twitter @LeviLuck or friend him on Facebook!
It's already starting. Every Christmas season, we hear the same complaints.
"They start the advertising earlier and earlier!"
"They're just trying to get us to spend more money!"
"Christmas has become about commerce and not about family and love!"
This is new to you? People act as though there was some magic Santa dust that floated around coating everything in happiness and joy as far back as whenever their childhood took place that has somehow disappeared into a cloud of greed and Grinchy mock-cheer.
You remember how Christmas "used to be" in the "good old days." You remember watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer every year as your house got greener and redder every day and the neighborhood began to glow in yuletide electric light. The one neighbor that you all complained took it "too far" created a pulsing tribute to holiday happiness that although you disapproved outwardly, you couldn't wait to see. The tree went up the day after Thanksgiving, you picked it out yourselves, and you merrily watched "the Grinch's heart grow three times that day" more religiously than The Ten Commandments on Easter.
News flash! Rudolph is still aired each year, as is the Grinch--in fact you now have a movie version to choose from--and neighborhoods seem to be just as brightly lit as ever before. The bulbs are just a bit more energy-efficient and actually better for the earth.
And if you think those violent Walmart rushes 'twas the night before Black Friday are a sign that commercialization has ruined the holiday since you were a child, replacing Santa with Mattel and elves with those stupid Walmart smiley faces, I have three words for you. Cabbage. Patch. Kids. Have you forgotten the violent commotion during those Christmas shopping seasons back in the 80s as the last of those little ugly bastards were sold off the shelves?
You sit back and watch A Christmas Story pine-treeing for a better time, a more innocent time, a time when love and family came first and commercial greed was tucked away under the tree skirt or in a stocking somewhere. You forget that the movie was set in the 1940s on the verge of WWII and on the heels of The Great Depression. So much for innocence and lack of commercial greed. Wasn't it the greed of the 1920s that brought about all that we see in that movie? America was already long gone. And the whole story revolves around a kid who thinks all is lost if he doesn't get the exact one perfect gift that he's been hoping for. The story could easily be set today with much the same results. In fact, many think the movie is set in the 1980s when the film was released. Bah humbug?
The commercialization of Christmas and loss of spirit we whine about today was actually alive and well over 100 years ago. It could be heard as the gentle subtext in the words "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" way back in 1897. In 1947 we needed a Miracle, with an address no less--34th Street in Manhattan--to renew our faith in a holiday corrupted by the commercial tyranny of Macy's. The cynic should not forget that Santa and shopping were synonymous even as far back as then. And that Grinch we watch every year to renew our spirit was necessary because of the greed and lack of charity Dr. Seuss saw ruining Christmas way back in 1957.
I want to let you in a little secret, haters. Christmas hasn't changed. You've changed.
I'm sorry to have to break this to you, but you're not kids anymore. It's as simple as that. Christmas "just ain't what it used to be" because you don't believe in Santa, you now have to supply the gifts while paying the bills, and when you wake up on December 25th, all your problems and issues that plague you all year long don't magically disappear. Ask your parents and their parents and their parents if they're still alive. Ask every generation that's ever celebrated Christmas. Of course it's not the same. You're not the same. But you now have the power to make it not just the same, but better.
Don't be selfish. Don't wallow in no Santa bringing you magic gifts and the whole world not turning to snowflakes and stars on tops of trees. Create that experience for your children. Do you want it to be like it was when you were child? Do it. Was there one part of Christmas you think could have been better? Fix it. Tradition and spirit don't just magically happen, people create them. Make it mean something. If you don't like the commercialization of the holiday, why the hell are you in that line at midnight Thanksgiving night with mace in your purse? Slow down, appreciate the special moments you create with your family, and give the bah humbug a rest.
If you think you can't afford a "proper" Christmas because of "today's prices" and "today's economy," just think back to that family in A Christmas Story. On the tail end of a depression, on one income, with a furnace acting up, they pulled it off. None of the gifts under that tree were very expensive, but they meant something to those kids.
So enjoy your family, enjoy the gifts you do have, not the ones from Mattel or Sony but the ones you create yourself in the hearts and memories of your children.
A poem in honor of the one day, if I had the chance, I would go back and erase...
Ten Years
Ten years of heartache. A nagging limp or chronic breathing condition. A child, now an adult, wondering why Daddy still hasn’t come home. Rage. Non-stop cranes and jackhammers rebuilding a grave. Still forgetting that she won’t be there when he rolls over. Guilt. Replays on screens. A recorded voice announcing, “Let’s roll.” A message from Afghanistan.
Ten years of life. Ten years of freedom. Ten years of beauty from sea to shining sea. Ten years of camaraderie, generosity, and service. Ten years of love. Ten short, fearless years.
Ten years ago they attacked the fabric of our lives. That fabric endured, wiping our tears, dressing our wounds, streaming across our skies in a brilliant red, white, and blue, announcing to all:
We will not give up.
We will not give in.
We will not die.
Ten years later, the souls of the fallen still whisper to us through glorious stars and stripes…
