Category: On Writing

This is only a test. If this were an actual emergency I would be using all caps.

My babysitter is sick today (poor thing, she’s fighting something ugly), so I am without my afternoon of writing. I hate how this makes me feel, and I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with lost expectations. I’ve had many meaty things in my head this week, and I was really looking forward to having some space to flush it all out. Now I just feel deflated.

Ruthie slept for an hour and a half, so I took the time to figure out how to make a linked ‘button’ for my home page – something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. And now that Ruthie is awake we are watching Peter Pan, and I will read a book. I find that I cannot steal away these short moments during naps to write through my most burning thoughts, for if I am interrupted by a waking child I become angry and bitter at her presence for intruding on ‘my time.’

I’ve learned that there is very little ‘my time’ in motherhood, and often the lines defining ‘mine’ are blurred by compromises and interruptions. I used to resent this, but I am adjusting – though not seamlessly. I recognized early on in my Recovery that I mother from a foundation of selfishness, and the whole house suffers if I am not happy. We all need time to recoup and re-create – to sabbath, as we call it in the church – but the purpose is to give us energy to do the work we have chosen to do, which in my case, is motherhood. I sometimes hold on to the method of my rest too tightly, hence the disappointment when things do not go as expected.

I have not discovered the balanced tension of being a writer and a mother, and fear the two are not compatible. Kyran at Notes to Self touches on this topic. She writes:

This is the central paradox of my life, for that matter, of any life that tries to encompass motherhood and art simultaneously. It is what I am usually trying to work out in my writing here. The writer belongs to no one, while the mother and wife are willingly indentured. There is never equilibrium, because life is never static. Just a lurching kind of motion between one truth and the other. This stagger that is my life.

Even as I try to write this essay, which has turned much more meaty than I intended, I find myself racing against the duration of Peter Pan, and it literally makes my head hurt. The writer/mother multitasking I do makes me tense and distracted, so now on top of everything else, I’m feeling tired and irritable. Where has the time gone? Is it really that late? What the hell am I making for dinner? Three hours I normally spend re-creating so I can be a better mother, I have spent thinking bitterly about being a mother instead of accepting What Is and embracing the afternoon with my daughter.

That is a sad place to be.

Wow, I feel like a writer!

Today at the wine bar, where I spend my weekly time writing, I began collecting essays together that I felt would be relevant to a larger project. It is something I’ve wanted to do, but felt it was a chicken-egg dilemma: do I figure out where this train is going before I let the people on? or do I just start pulling stuff together and see what happens?

I finally just did it. I unstuck myself from the fear of the unknown and I began pulling shit together into one place. And do you know what happened? I began to see a pattern of themes emerging from those essays, which led me to jot down six possible section titles.

Ta Da! The beginning of a book.

[this is me patting myself on the back.]

The t.v. Fast

I haven’t written much about any New Year’s Resolutions, mostly because I haven’t had time to, which is actually a result of one of my goals. If you’ve been following along with me for awhile, you’ll know that I’ve been working my way back from depression and incapacitation, trying to get my household into order. I have been fairly successful in that venture, creating routines for cleaning the house and getting laundry done, and then making the decision to get out of bed by 6:30am so I can shower, drink my coffee, and clear my head before the kids wake up.

My latest human experiment has been to seriously limit the amount of television that Ruthie watches, and what has resulted has been bitter sweet. What I have discovered, is that I am just as addicted to Ruthie’s t.v.-viewing as she is because I mostly use that opportunity as my own down time to take a quick snooze, draft a blog post, or surf the internet. My lack of thoughtful posts is a direct result of me not having the space to think, so I post what is quick and easy: photos and anecdotes about my day to day life. This is fun, too, and I enjoy it to a certain extent, but not writing thoughtfully also means I am not processing through many of my thoughts, which leads to short circuits in my brain from too many things bouncing around in there.

Without the t.v. on to babysit my children, I have been continuously engaged all. day. long. We do this, and we do that, and we go there – I’ll post more on my logistics later because we’ve been doing some fun things. But less time watching t.v. also means that Ruthie has had more opportunity to be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. But even now as I’m writing this, I realize that even though it is exhausting to deal with her strong-willed nature all. day. long, I am seeing how much easier it is to be consistent with disciplining her because I am not as distracted by other things.

Ironically (or perhaps, not), I sat her in front of the television the moment she woke up this morning – mostly because she woke up early and I didn’t get enough Introvert Recharging time, but also because I’m just DYING to have some time to myself. (Last night after we got the kids into bed, Bryan and I sat on the couch to watch t.v. and I grabbed my laptop, and he says to me, ‘What are you doing? You need to snuggle with me.’ To which my response was to shout, only somewhat jokingly, ‘I HAVEN’T CHECKED MY EMAIL SINCE TEN THIS MORNING – GIVE ME A BREAK, WILL YOU?’ Yeah, I’m wound a little tight.)

So, all this is to say I’m on that continuous obnoxious journey to find the balance between being a mother/wife and being an individual person with her own wants/needs/wishes. Three days without television was probably a bit extreme, but it was helpful in determining what I am capable of. I think I will eventually find something in the middle, but I don’t yet know what that looks like.

I’ll Always Have New York

I lived in New York for two years in the mid ninties, about 45 minutes North of Manhattan on the Hudson River. I lived there alone – as in, I didn’t bring any friends or family with me. I ventured out on my own to a new land. An opportunity opened up for me to volunteer at a residential treatment program for drug addicts, and I started out working in their office, managing all their donations and donor records.

I sold my car, broke my lease, packed up my stuff, and went.

It was like me to do this, but not typical. I’m a homebody with an adventurous spirit. I like to plant roots and let them grow deep, but I’m willing to take risks and try new things. I took this job because I knew it would only be for two years. It was temporary, a sort of internship, if you will. Had they recruited me for a full time position I’m not sure I would have been so adventurous.

Before New York, the last time I packed up all my stuff and moved was when I turned 18 and went to college. I came to Seattle, and aside from spending my first summer back in Minnesota, I never really went back. Even while in New York, when people asked where I was from I always said I was from Seattle.

It was a time of solitude.

I spent hours sitting on huge boulders by the river in a little town called Cold Spring. I missed the waters of Puget Sound, and would retreat to the river in the evenings. I road my bike down Highway 9 toward the Bear Mountain bridge and back in the heat of the summer. The vigorous exercise in the high humidity seemed to set free all my stress and confusion. I took long drives on Saturdays, picking a spot randomly on my map – every Saturday, a new highway. In the summer I drove two hours all the way to Long Island’s Jones Beach just to swim in the warm ocean waters. On my weekends off I ventured out to further places like Boston, Cape Cod, Vermont, and Washington D.C.

Had I been a good writer then, it would have been my Prime Time. I was filled with angst, confusion, wondering, and love – perfect grist for the mill.

It was my belated Coming of Age.

I was in love with a boy who was not good for me. He was sweet and sensitive, but shoulder deep in his own demons, and I was not mature enough to let him work it out on his own. I felt he needed me, and that without me his life would spiral down the proverbial drain and he would end up in Hell. And I loved him too much to let that happen.

I asked God, Why. I asked God, How. I begged God to make him better. But in the end, God changed me instead. In a matter of months after returning from New York, I finally broke up with him for good. It was the third time. I was filled with sorrow, and I listened to a lot of Tracy Chapman, but this time it stuck. I didn’t go back.

Before him, I dated a lot of boys that were not good for me, but he was the last. I vowed to wait for the good ones, and let God heal the broken ones. I became ‘the lily among thorns,’ from the Song of Songs and waited for my lover to come and declare, ‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.’ I became the pursued, rather than the pursuer.

It was the final frontier of old theology.

The God of my old theology was weak. He was not capable of keeping his own sheep, so he needed me to do it for him. And in order for me to be worthy of the undertaking, it was necessary for me to attend a prayer meeting every day from 6 – 7am in a cold, dark, basement. Without this fuel in my tank I might be won over to the Dark Side, because God knows Satan is lurking around every corner and under every rock.

Working in a rehab exposed me to sin and depravity within an intimacy that I had never experienced before. I knew and loved each woman deeply as I watched them wrestle through their addictions and uncover the hurts their drugs were meant to cover. But so much of the work seemed to rest on their shoulders, and each of them feared the failure of ‘back-sliding.’

When I returned to Seattle I sat under a young pastor who taught me about a Mighty God, one who not only delivered, but also kept. One who used me, but didn’t depend on me; who gave me opportunity, but didn’t leave me holding the bag. I could sleep at night, knowing that one person’s salvation was not solely dependent on anything I did or did not say, and even if my words did turn someone sour to the gospel, God is sovereign. I could be friends with anyone without trying to convert everyone.

It’s the music that did it.

This afternoon while I was making a pot of soup for dinner I heard a song from Natalie Merchant’s Tigerlily. I listened to this album endlessly in my New York solitude, and whenever I hear it I am transported back in time. When I think of New York it’s like sandbagging a rising river – it strengthens my soft, muddy edges and I stand taller, more confident. I know who I am, and I know what made me. I can face anything.

I will always have New York, and for that I am grateful.

—

I’d love to hear your thoughts and critiques on this essay – what you like, what you didn’t like, things to work on, etc. If you’ve been reading for awhile you know I’m trying to flush out a book, so consider this a Stab At It. Please send any critiques to jenzug (at) gmail (dot) com, and please be specific. It drives me crazy when Bryan says, ‘nice post.’ Please don’t do that to me. Any other regular comments can be left below as usual. Thanks!

Book Review: Writing from the Inside Out

writing from the inside out - book cover

The more I learn to embrace my calling as a writer, and the more I read about the craft of writing, it becomes more evident to me that we are a narcissistic and introspective group. We fit into that artist category of being free-spirited, difficult to nail down, temperamental, and a little haunted by our own talent.

But in a good way.

And that’s just it: Dennis Palumbo, in his book, ‘Writing from the Inside Out,’ encourages me to EMBRACE my quirkiness as a writer – the ‘dark and twisty’ Jen, to borrow a phrase from Gray’s Anatomy. For it is the darkness and twistiness that provides the raw material, the grist for the mill.

I have alluded to this many times in my own writing, including this post about my boring happiness:

Life seems uninteresting these days from a blogging perspective, though it is FANTASTIC from the survival aspect. I’ve said this before, but it’s easier for me to write about things I’m complaining about or struggling with. Depression? Martial strife? This is the stuff great stories are born from – the setup, upset, reset. When was the last time you saw a movie about a really happy guy that led a really happy life and nothing tragic or embarrassing ever happened to him?

I think I’ve always embraced the dark and twisty Jen and recognized that it provided valuable raw material and ambiance to work with. But at the same time I think I still viewed it as a personal defect, something to overcome so I could get on to the REAL business of writing – as if writing about the dark and twisty Jen was just practice.

Palumbo’s book opened me up to embrace the many things I thought were supposed to be labeled as distractions, but were, on the contrary, quite therapeutic for me. Things such as the phenomenon he writes about in his chapter titled, ‘In Praise of Goofing Off,’ which is about the valuable downtime a writer spends daydreaming, or reading, or reorganizing a closet. It is this time we spend allowing our thoughts to ‘percolate’ or ‘simmer,’ as he puts it, that is just as necessary as the actual act of writing. “You’re allowing that part of the brain that creates to work unconsciously,” he writes, “filtering and sorting, selecting and discarding.”

It is the mystery of inspiration and the writing process.

The over-arching theme of the book is this: love what you do, because the rewards of writing won’t always come in typical or tangible success, so our reward must be IN the writing. This is not a step-by-step how-to of writing the great novel or screenplay. Rather, it is a therapeutic salve that encourages the writer to be himself, to write from his own experiences, and to find joy in the everyday mundane.

The Regular

This is what I love the most about living in a walkable community – being The Regular. I walk into the Coffee/Wine Bar near my house and Charlie the Customer greets me, asking me how the book is coming along. He says he admires me for my consistency in setting aside time to write.

The lovely barista is excited to tell me she has two more pours of that New Zealand Pinot I had last week, and would I like her to start my goat cheese plate?

It’s Peg’s birthday today (she’s another Regular) and we share stories as she drinks her birthday beer.

There are many things that I like about being spontaneous and adventurous, but community and familiarity is what grounds me. I am faithful to my little coffee shop on the corner, and it’s a comfortable place for me to write. I’m the fat guy at the end of the bar that everyone knows by name. I have arrived.

Oh, the Irony.

Given my post from this afternoon and my general trend of blogging about not writing, I found this passage of my current book quite entertaining:

“Every hour you spend writing is an hour not spent fretting about your writing. Every day you produce pages is a day you didn’t spend sitting at a coffee shop, bitching about not producing any pages” (from Writing from the Inside Out, by Dennis Palumbo).

And yes, I was sitting in a coffee shop when I wrote that post.

On Writing: Theme

When it comes to my lofty goal of publishing a collection of essays, I have two role models: Anne Lamott and Donald Miller. Lamott was the catalyst, and Miller’s Blue Like Jazz proved the idea wasn’t just a fluke.

Reading Lamott’s Traveling Mercies was a huge epiphany for me – it being a memoir, of sorts, written as a series of essays on her journey of faith. Part way through the book, as I realized what was happening on the pages in front of me, the lightening bolt hit and I went, “I can TOTALLY do this!”

I’m a very literal person, and I think the idea of writing about my life always meant to me that I started with birth, or my childhood, then proceeded to chronologically unravel all the events that were significant to me, and topped them all off with a ‘the end’ and an epilogue. All very boring, now that I think about it.

Linear is not always interesting.

Pulp Fiction was interesting because the story line went beginning-middle-beginning. Memento was interesting because it took place in a backwards sequence. LOST is interesting because flashback is intertwined with present, and one cannot understand the present without interpreting the flashback.

But now another problem presents itself to me, and I wonder what will be the catalyst for pushing me through this road block: now that I have embraced the essay style, I am working through the theme. What is it? What is my point?

I know I’ve written about this struggle before, and I thought something would come to me if I just wrote. I figured if I just penned the memories and the personal transformations, that I would have another epiphany and it would all come together. But the unknown Big Picture has me in a holding pattern. How much research should I put into this? Should I shoot from the hip, or read all my old journals? Am I taking myself too seriously? I tend to over-think and forget to just DO it.

Another problem is also my lack of time. I am very grateful for the three hours on Tuesdays that I have to write, but it is simply not enough time to devote to a writing project of such large scale – not when such a writing project involves huge personal introspection. Or when I have other writing interests that bring me much more instant gratification, such as blogging, and liturgy pieces for my church. These can be produced quickly and without intense concentration.

I would put the whole thing on hold if it wasn’t eating away at me so much. I think about it all the time. Perhaps this is all part of the process – the chewing, the contemplation.

Storytelling

Nothing drones on more than a boring story. It’s like that scene in Finding Nemo when Marlin takes Nemo to his first day of school and the other fathers ask Marlin to say something funny just because he is a clown fish. Marlin attempts to tell a joke, but botches it because he is a poor storyteller. He can’t remember how the joke goes, or what the punch line is.

Because my writing style is along the lines of the vignette, I have become a student of the art of storytelling. I pay attention to how stories are told in all mediums. In music, for example, good song writers convey a story, or a world view, or an opinion in three minutes. How do they do that and still account for repeating verses?

Storytelling can take on many forms. For instance, many comedians are story tellers. I remember listening to Bill Cosby’s comedy routines many years ago, mesmerized by the stories and waiting for the punch line end to the story.

Dane Cook is a contemporary comedian that I love listening to because he is a great story teller. He will weave elaborate tales with many rabbit trails in between, and I’m always dumbfounded by how he keeps track of all the balls he has in the air at one time. Very little of his routine is joke/punch line based, but rather it’s the story itself that is funny, with enhancement through the words he chooses to enunciate, and the theatrical way he contorts his body, and his use of a simple stool as a prop.

Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion is a great storyteller. When I listen to his deep, soothing voice on NPR Saturday afternoons I pay particular attention to his stories from Lake Wobegon because he brings his characters to life with intricate details of their personalities and quirkiness. He captures the everydayness of Lake Wobegon. The simplicity. From him I learn how to build a character – and not only out of a fictional person, but out of an entire town, a setting. The town of Lake Wobegon is as much of a character in his stories as the Lutheran minister is a character.

I read a book many years ago titled, ‘A Short History of a Small Place’ that also weaved intricate characters together to form a quirky little town. It very much reminded me of Garrison’s storytelling.

Movies are obviously storytellers. But I think since I’ve become more prolific at shooting and editing my own videos I better understand the role of an editor in the movie making process. When I created the video of Zoe’s parents I had probably 30 minutes of data to choose from – I could have taken just about any direction I wanted to, as long as it fit within 5 minutes. Through editing we set the tone of the story; we manipulate it.

From television I enjoy LOST because of the unveiled nature of the show. The writers reveal things subtly, and one has to pay close attention. Much room is left for guessing and predicting. It is intelligent. I also enjoy Brothers and Sisters because of the intricately woven family dynamic. There is the drug-addicted son, and the co-dependent mother, and the older sister who shoulders responsibility, and the break-out sister with differing political views, and the gay son who picks up the slack, and a little adultery thrown in the mix. The relationships are complicated, and they are given their due complication. Conflicts are not resolved easily or quickly, Cosby style, but rather are deeply planted and difficult to wade through. There is no good guy or bad guy. Rather, there are individuals who are, as Faulkners says, in conflict with themselves.

The body of work I intend to write will likely be a collection of essays on a theme, and my stories will need to be concise. Each essay will be one piece of the entire puzzle.

What are your favorite stories? Your favorite storytellers? Why?

Disappointment

I was hoping to be sitting at my local coffee and wine bar, sipping on a pinot and writing to my heart’s content. I have looked forward to this afternoon all week, and even now I notice that last Tuesday afternoon from the wine bar was the last time I posted.

I have decided that, with Ruthie in preschool two mornings a week I have plenty of time to run errands with just Thomas, and was planning to dedicate my Tuesday afternoons to writing. I am thrilled with this arrangement as it relieves some of the anxiousness I feel when I can’t find time to write. “Tuesday is coming!” I think to myself. “I can hold off until Tuesday.”

Until Tuesday afternoon arrives, and rather than showing up at my door the babysitter is calling me on the phone. She can’t make it today. School commitments prevail. She apologizes, and we reschedule for tomorrow.

My heart sinks, and suddenly I feel trapped. I can’t leave because the kids are sleeping, and what’s worse – I’m out of wine. This was supposed to be MY time, and now I’m being robbed of it. My mind immediately goes sour and I struggle to avoid crying or screaming into the phone at the sweet teenager I adore.

But it gave me pause to notice how much I allow circumstances to dictate my attitude. I was in a great mood today – productive, cheerful, patient. I enjoyed the time I spent with Ruthie as she doodled on my tablet pc, and then as we snuggled before a nap. But as soon as my hopes of escaping were dashed, my heart went bitter.

Someone recently pointed out that, based on my blog posts, it appears I am unhappy in my role as a mother about 80% of the time. I didn’t really have a rebuttal to that, because I think maybe it’s true. But my unhappiness has little to do with my children. Rather, it is a symptom of a much deeper cancer of discontentment within my heart, a cancer that I feel is spreading throughout my body. I fear that I am so indulged in my discontentment that I will not find my way out until I have missed all the joy of parenting small children.

This is a cancer of the heart that I believe only Christ can heal. For me, discontentment and rage are closely linked, because both are triggered by my desires not immediately being satisfied. I am selfish and impatient.

The normal person in my position might say, “Darn. That’s a bummer. I was looking forward to getting out, but at least I get to go tomorrow.” But I attach way too much importance to my own desires, and do not trust God that he is able to meet my needs. God loves me, and he values my time, my sanity, and my talents. He wants me to be healthy and have time to myself. He is not some trickster god like Anansi, who pulls out the rug from under me.

It is faith, hope, and trust in God that I crave – that I NEED in order to be delivered from this cancer of rage and discontentment. I pray for the restoration of my heart, that I might default to Joy again.

From the dark basement of my home, this is Jen signing off.

Spilling the Beans

Tonight I followed a trail of links to an article on writersdigest.com titled, Spilling Secrets, and it articulated the dance I do whenever I think about the book I REALLY want to write. Even writing this post makes me nervous. I’ve written and rewritten three paragraphs already, trying to address this subject in the least controversial way possible.

My whole family does the dance, it seems. We all talk to each other about the elephant in the room just fine, but nobody dares to address the elephant itself and says, ‘Hey, elephant – why did you do that? What you did hurt me.’ We just continue to talk about the elephant as if he weren’t there, and try to find healing amongst ourselves.

I am a split personality. My gum chewing sassy bad self says, ‘Fuck it if they don’t like it. I must speak!’ I’m exhausted from 25 years of dancing around the subject and just want to TALK about it, already. And NAME it.

But then my sensible fragile conflict-avoiding self says, ‘Whoa – but I still have to eat a TURKEY with these people once a year.’

I am grateful I did not hastily pen a memoir in my twenties. For one thing, I was a terrible writer back then – horribly dramatic and without Voice. But also, maturity of years has tempered my perspective. I see things differently, more graciously. I’m gaining insight into person, motive, human nature.

And Recovery has humbled my perspective. I no longer see myself as better. Or holier. Or exempt. I’m on the same Crazy Train as everyone else. What I write now will not be finger pointing, and for this, I am grateful. I no longer want to blame. I just want to understand.

Lately, the question I have been asking myself the most is, ‘What is my point?’ Is self healing a good enough reason to expose the family secrets? I know I will find healing for myself in the process. But at what cost?

Deep down, I know it will come to me. I know there is an angle, a theme, a point. I know that once I start writing down the memories, the conversations, and begin to piece them all together, I know there will be a Meaning. But I must trust the process. I must write, or it will never come to me.

Keeping It In Check

Today during the kids’ naps I drafted an essay, read some blogs, and bookmarked several posts, thoughts, and insights that have inspired me. I feel I am constantly battling time, because at the moment I’d much rather finish my thought than empty the dishwasher. This is the point when discontentment can creep in if I don’t keep it in check. So I remind myself that I may not have been able to finish my thought, but I DID write 450 words today. And that’s not bad for an hour’s work.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I am 35 years old, and that is TOTALLY okay with me. At times my body feels old and decrepit, and I’m chubbier than I want to be, but I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a friend, and there’s nothing more, really, that I need on this Earth. All the rest of it is gravy, as they say, though I prefer to think of it as chocolate sauce because gravy is, well, not chocolate.

This has been an introspective year for me, what with the anger problem getting flushed out and the blogging taking off. I’ve spent a lot of time deconstructing Me and telling You all about it. But the good news is, I’m running out of things to say on that front because I’m getting my shit together.

[Can I hear an amen?]

So now you get to hear more about my writing projects, though I promise to continue peppering my posts with cute antics of my children, and descriptions of my toddler-like tantrums (I’m not perfect yet), and reports of What I Did Last Week. Because what would a blog be like without such narcissistic subject matter?

Thank you, dear readers, for your love and support of this blog. Thank you for coming back to read me. Thank you for your kind words about my writing. Thank you for supporting this writer as she comes of age on the internet.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

More On Writing and Why I Want You To Care

Ever since that crazy post I wrote on getting serious about the business of writing, I’ve been battling the voices in my head that tell me I’m not interesting, that I have nothing to say, that I’m not a good writer. This is not me fishing for compliments or platitudes, by the way, but the reality of my brain.

(It also doesn’t help that I’m reading the blogs of some amazing writers, which TOTALLY puts me in a They Should Be Writing a Book, Not Me kind of mood.)

One of those amazing writers, Jen Lemen, linked to this post the other day about an extrovert’s struggle to be comfortable in the solitude of writing.

I don’t struggle with extroversion. In fact, I’m the opposite – I’m very energized by spending time alone. But her thoughts made me realize that my struggle with the voices in my head is part of the process of writing. And writing about the process of writing could be very beneficial for me in pushing through the insecurities of sharing my art with the world.

I know it seems strange that I would feel vulnerable at the thought of exposing my process of writing. I mean, what HAVEN’T I talked about on this blog, right? But this writing project I have in mind is different. At least in my mind it’s different, and perhaps this pedestal I’ve placed it on is the first obstacle for me to overcome.

It’s just writing, right? And I do that everyday, right?

(500 words – can I hear an amen?)

For me I think the vulnerability comes in the invitation of participation. As Notes to Self says on her writing blog – it is a place to “test-drive poems, and a sketchpad for fleshing out ideas. A place to talk about the creative process.” – I too hope to test drive essays and flesh out story ideas and work through my creative process. I will be welcoming feedback and critique on work I have created.

And maybe that’s the real difference. In my regular blog writing, when I describe the edge of the cliff I’m standing on at the moment, I welcome the community of discussion, but I don’t necessarily ask for critical feedback on my grammar or writing style. But in my posts on writing I hope to hear from you regarding what works, what’s moving slow, what’s unclear, etc.

So if you want your name to appear in the ‘acknowledgments’ section of my book when it’s published, I suggest you speak up when I ask you for feedback [wink].

In the meantime, to beat back those voices that cause me to freeze, I remind myself that I am a constant student of other writers. I pay attention to cadence, and style, and voice, and use of punctuation, and other, more creative ways to say, “I like guacamole.” And this reminds me that even if I am not a great writer at the moment, something inside me is driving me to learn more and dig deeper into myself so the natural ability in me can be dusted off and polished.

Lauren Sandler’s, Righteous, Illustrates that Hatchet Jobs Sell Books

Dear friends of mine agreed to be interviewed last year by Lauren Sandler for a book she was writing – the just released, Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement. The interview was with Ted Dietz, mainly, but following the interview Ted and his wife, Sarah, my best friend of fifteen years, invited Lauren and her husband over for dinner…

…TO BE NICE.

What was just released this week is a gross twisting of fact and reality, and a sad distortion of the lives of two women – my friend, Sarah, and another gal I know, Judy. These are lovely, strong, educated women who have made the choice to be married, to raise children, and to stay home with their children while they are young.

Their lives and the choices they have made are currently being mocked and scrutinized and debated on the reputable salon.com, and in blogs across the internet. Lauren has portrayed both these women as shallow, trapped, sell-outs who left behind great careers and a fabulous life of partying because they bought into the brainwashing tactics of a tennis shoe wearing, cool aide drinking pastor.

You can read an excerpt of the book here at salon.com. If you know Ted and Sarah as I do, you will be disgusted at how they are portrayed. If you don’t know Ted and Sarah, please know that what is printed is not fact, but rather an attempt to shove a size 10 foot of reality into the size 8 shoe of Lauren’s agenda.

When Bryan and I were talking last night, and I was flying off the handle with expletives and threats of dismemberment, he reminded me of Jeffrey Overstreet’s hilarious story on his Looking Closer blog – the one where he was contacted for an interview on whether he thought the media was anti-religious. As he was preparing his response, one that called out the media’s tendency to cover the most arresting stories, which also tend to be the extreme voices in religion – the Jerry Fallwell types who blame terrorist acts on homosexuals – the media source called him back to cancel, determining that Jeffrey’s voice was not extreme enough for the interview.

“I can’t think of a punchline good enough to end this story,” he said in conclusion.

Ted and Sarah are balanced, salt of the earth people. What they lacked in extremity, Lauren fashioned with words in a James Frey Million Little Pieces sort of way. But hey, a little augmented reality never hurt anybody, right?

It certainly sells books.