We all know the Golden Rule (Matthew 7: 12). But sometimes I wonder if we interpret it too literally. I’ve become convinced over the years that what Christ intended was for us to do unto others as they would have us to do. Most of the time, this is equivalent to doing to others as we would have them do unto us. But occasionally it’s different. For example, there are some of us who love surprises and others who do not. Just because we are among those who love surprises doesn’t mean we should plan a surprise party for a spouse who has told us sincerely and repeatedly that he doesn’t want one, or that he hates having that sort of fuss. Now you may know your spouse well enough to know that he would love such a party deep down despite his protests. But I’m pretty sure mine would not (he says there should no “pretty” about it). As another example, my husband thinks the “heel” of the bread is an inferior slice, and so he avoids it if making me a sandwich. In truth I prefer that slice, but I know he’s doing me an intended kindness by avoiding it. When my husband is ill, he likes to go to bed and be left alone. I like to have someone look after me when I’m sick, but that was harder initially for him to understand since he would not. To some extent, we become set in our ways as we grow older. But, with the Lord’s help and a lot of will and work, we can change and improve in our other-centeredness as we age. If you prefer to have lots of friends about you to commemorate important occasions while your loved one prefers only the immediate family, you may want to refrain from inviting “extras” when it’s his or her celebration. If you prefer to receive gift cards for Christmas but your sister prefers gaily wrapped packages, you probably shouldn’t give her a gift card. If you prefer board games but your husband calls them “boring” games as mine does, it may not be wise to assume he’s really itching for a game of scrabble. If no one but you can make your coffee or tea quite right, keep in mind that others might enjoy being waited on occasionally (even if there’s slightly too much or too little cream). A lot of these examples are pretty trivial, but trying to become familiar with the preferences of your loved ones can help make you a better friend and family member. After all, isn’t that what you would have them do unto you?
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In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” As a reader, I sometimes wonder why I can’t see more of the characters I’ve grown to love after the end of the book when the conflict has been more or less resolved. But I also know that conflict is what keeps me turning the pages. I grew up in a family that wasn’t all smiles and compliments. We had our share of laughter but also our share of tears. If my mom found fault with me, my sister, or my father, I know now that she did so out of a desire to make us the best people we could be. But at the time, each of us responded in our own way, whether it was tears and hurt feelings (my sister), anger (my dad), or rebellion and “acting out” (me). Perhaps every family thinks theirs is unique in some ways. I know I do. Though far less unusual or removed from the norm than Jeannette Walls (Glass Castle), I see boundless opportunities for writing inspired by my loving crew. Yes, mistakes were made (I’ve certainly made my share over the years), but love was bountiful. Figuring out what makes people tick is generally what my stories are about. As I look back, back, back—beyond my parents (and their generation), to their parents (and theirs), I see certain patterns. In my mom’s family, I see strong-willed women who made their voices and their opinions heard, who often ruled their households or at least managed to mold them to their liking. Most of the men went along, found jobs that took them away from the house for stretches of time, or created man-caves in the basement for themselves. In my father’s family, the men were the strong ones. The women were gentler, more compliant, relinquishing their own desires in favor of those of their husbands. My paternal grandparents, for instance, grew up in a farm community in western Kentucky. When times got tough financially, a lot of their contemporaries went to Detroit to look for work in the factories. My grandparents were no exception. My paternal grandfather was smart and hard-working, and he moved up the ladder quickly. My grandmother loved the social atmosphere of being surrounded by lots of talkative, friendly women her own age on a daily basis. She would have loved to stay in Detroit permanently, but my grandfather wanted nothing more than to return to the life he loved on the farm as soon as they had saved enough money. So return they did, and my grandmother devoted herself without complaint to the life of a farmer’s wife: cooking, cleaning, canning, freezing, gardening, sewing. A good life but a solitary one in many respects. When my parents came together—my dad from a background where men carved out the lives they wanted and the women went along; my mom from the exact opposite—is it any wonder that the wills often clashed? As a writer, I find an abundance of material in their stories. In the first book I published (nonfiction, Pshaw, It’s Me Grandson) I delved into my father’s childhood. Readers told me they wanted more, so that is still on my agenda. But I’m currently working on the stories from my mother’s family. One of her cousins tells me he has traced our roots right back to Catherine the Great of Russia, who was German (my maternal grandmother was a Shultz). This resonates with me because I’ve always sensed a certain grandness, almost a feeling of royal birth or entitlement, in this side of the family despite their humble roots in the tiny farm community of Bell City, Kentucky. Catherine was a strong-willed woman married to a weak man, and she accomplished amazing things, leading Russia to unprecedented heights in art and literature, as well as economically. I see hints of this in my grandmother and her four sisters, though none has risen so high in ways visible to the world. Yet, within their families and their communities, the stories of these strong women are just as compelling, and I look forward to putting them on paper. Another theme—or perhaps it is really a variant of the same one—is how each of us is largely a product of what came before us. We often see in ourselves things we don’t like that are reflections of the very things we willed not to imitate. But there are reflections also of the good things. My maternal grandfather had enormous capacity for love. Although he died (pancreatic cancer) when I was quite young, I have vivid memories of the love he lavished on me. My dad married into this family when he was only eighteen, and I see in him the same devotion to family. I think he learned this, at least in part, from his father-in-law. This tremendous capacity for love and devotion to others is not just in our genes—it’s also learned from our environment. There are lessons about devotion I’ve learned (and hope to incorporate into my life) from my husband’s family. His brother Terry (who passed away recently at the age of 59) was damaged at birth by forceps being applied by an inept country doctor. As a result of the very difficult birth, he had a severe case of cerebral palsy. This means his brain was damaged in a way that made it impossible for him to control his muscles (he couldn’t feed himself, talk or do anything physically to take care himself), but his mind was untouched (my husband always claimed he was probably the smartest one in the family). Whereas some families might have sent him to an institution, my father-in-law cherished him his entire life. When he could no longer lift Terry to change his diapers (my father-in-law lived to be 94), he reluctantly put him in a nursing home. But he visited him three times each day (and then later twice) to feed Terry his meals, sit with him, and make sure the staff were treating his beloved son with respect and kindness. Some of my earliest memories are of the little country church I attended with my parents and grandparents. My grandmother was one of nine children in a little farm community in western Kentucky called Bell City. When she was growing up, there was no church nearby so they went to tent revival meetings whenever they came to town. Later, her brother and a friend who ran an orphanage in Bell City built the church I attended as a small child. I remember going on Easter egg hunts with the kids from the orphan’s home and being grateful I had parents and grandparents who loved me. My mother struggled with bipolar disease when she was younger, and the disease affected my sister, my dad and me. In my novel, The Ticket, one of the characters has this condition, and the repercussions are devastating. I’m so thankful that, with prayer and treatment, my mother’s condition has been controlled for many years, and that nothing so extreme has befallen us. Although she can be difficult at times—and has often tried my dad’s patience almost to the breaking point—she is also the one in our family who is the quickest to laugh and to forgive; and I’ve never doubted how much she loves us. Why I Love to Storyboard
by Debra Coleman Jeter I used to write in spurts, and I’d be untruthful if I claimed to be completely changed in this regard. But I have discovered a technique that helps keep me on task, even during those draggy days when I don’t feel remotely inspired. Every day I try to write, at a minimum, either: 3 storyboards or one scene. The storyboard can take a lot of different forms. The one I use consists of: Brief overview of scene Time/place Season/weather Senses: sound, smell, etc Images Relationships of characters appearing in scene Dialogue (I scribble a few lines here and sometimes the scene takes off at this point) Subtext Actions Point of view Climax Final image and/or last line I print out several copies of my storyboard headings (followed by a couple of blank lines after each), and I may stare at one for some time before I write a thing. Eventually, though, I begin to fill in the blanks. I tell myself it doesn’t matter what I write as it is just a storyboard. Often I get going and turn the page over to scribble more ideas for the scene on the back. The following day I select one of the storyboards and instruct myself to write at least five pages. Since I’ve already put a fair amount of thought into it the day before—I have my storyboard in front of me—the scene often seems to write itself once I get going. I don’t always fill in every blank on my storyboard. I often scribble other ideas that don’t really fit the storyboard. For instance, if an idea for the opening line comes to me, I jot that down. If this line leads to a complete paragraph, even better! In some ways writing a storyboard is like writing a story. I let the words take me where they want to go. The main purpose of the framework is simply to get myself thinking and get my pen moving. Some writers may not need this tool, but I’ve found that it helps me immeasurably. For some works—whether short or long—I use outlines but not always. When I do, the outline may be very detailed or quite brief. Some storylines seem to lend themselves better to outlining while others take more of a free form path in my mind and on paper. Yet somehow I keep coming back to storyboarding, regardless of whether I’m working with or without an outline. I don’t always heed the words on the storyboard, however. Sometimes I find that I’ve written an entire scene without reference to any of the senses. When this happens, I usually push forward if I’m working on a first draft. Later, in the editing process, I may come back to take a second look at the storyboard for a scene to see what I had in mind. I even use a code on occasion for each page of the manuscript, some variation of the things I need to keep in mind as I edit. For example, I may use A for actions, I for imagery, AV for active verb, V for visuals, SM for smells, SO for sounds, etc. Of course I don’t need all of these on every page, but it helps me avoid going for long stretches without actions or sensory details. I don’t want my writing to drag and bore my readers. Glancing back over what I’ve just written, I may be at risk of boring you so I’ll stop! Never, never give up—and happy storyboarding! As you might guess from the title, The Amateur Marriage deals with a marriage. Like every marriage, it has good points and bad ones, happy occasions and sad ones. In some ways, Michael and Pauline are mismatched. He is plodding and conservative; she is impulsive and romantic. Because the couple come together just before Michael goes off to war (1941), they rush into marriage without knowing each other as well as they probably should.
Despite the impact of this wartime setting on their decision, their marriage is far from unique in this regard. Many couples head into marriage for a host of reasons, not all of them wise ones While Anne Tyler leaves it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, my own take on this novel is that every marriage is imperfect and perhaps the worst injustice, or saddest outcome, is giving up too easily. I don’t mean to suggest that couples should never divorce. There are abusive relationships, and I don’t limit those to physical abuse—nor is it always the husband who is abusive. But I do think many couples give up too easily, and may ask themselves later in life why they did. Of course we sometimes see individuals who make a go of a late-in-life marriage after having gone through one or more divorces. But I wonder if this is often because the individuals have mellowed and learned to prioritize their relationship, or to have more realistic expectations. Michael and Pauline have a child, their eldest, who leaves home, falls out of touch and into drug problems. This trauma is one that can befall virtually any family, I suspect, from those with obvious problems to those that seem to have it all together. I don’t want to tell too much—I hate spoilers—so I won’t go into more detail. Suffice it to say that this novel was one that made me smile at times, cry at others, and made me think. For me that’s one of the real tests of a good novel. As a writer, I stand in awe of Anne Tyler’s ability to enter the minds of very different characters and leave you feeling as if you knew them well. I also admire a novel where every character is flawed (as all humans are) and exasperating at times, but ultimately presented in a way that causes the reader to care about them and feel glad when things go well and sad when they do not. When it comes to marriage, aren’t we all amateurs? There are certain topics, certain words, and certain aspects of life that are rarely, if ever, addressed in Christian fiction. Anything sexual is typically avoided, and definitely anything explicit. When I started writing The Ticket, I was not planning to break this taboo. But as the novel unfolded in my head and on paper, it took on a mind of its own.
In particular, I introduced a middle-aged sexual predator who, in my first draft, merely made a couple of inappropriate remarks to my main character, a fourteen year old girl. When this character appeared again in a later scene, it began to feel like the proverbial gun on the shelf—if you see it in an early scene, you expect it to be fired at some point. In my final draft, he lures the girl into his car on the pretext of giving her a basket of practice tennis balls. When I write, I try to get inside the head of one character and feel, see, taste, hear, and smell exactly what she’s feeling, seeing, tasting, hearing, and smelling. As a result, this brief scene proved shocking for some readers. Many others, however, have been very supportive. We all know that bad things can happen to good people. But do we want to read about them? Readers of a particular genre grow to know what to expect, and there’s a certain comfort in that. Yet the books that stay with us long after we finish them are often the ones that veer into an unexpected pathway. Sexual abuse in its varied forms is way too common in our society. The victim may suffer repercussions throughout his or her entire life. Are we better off by pretending that our family is exempt from this risk, or by opening a dialogue about how to react if it should ever happen to our family? In The Ticket, fourteen-year old Tray doesn’t tell her parents about the incident for a long time. This incident leads her to tell a lie that haunts her for some time. Feelings of shame—or fear of being viewed with skepticism or pity or, worse yet, of blame being transferred to the victim—may keep young people silent. Reading and discussing some of the bad things in life before they happen could, I hope, serve a purpose if the inconceivable should ever become the conceivable. I don’t mean to give the impression that only bad things happen to Tray in The Ticket, or that the controversial scene lies at the heart of the novel. In fact, The Ticket is about a family that wins the lottery. While the win itself doesn’t provide the happiness they long for, good does come to Tray in various ways. A new girl at school turns out to be Tray’s dear friend. A boy she has a crush on begins to pay her some attention. Her relationship with her dad is strengthened. And, little by little, Tray becomes a more confident young woman who believes in her ability to survive the tough things that sometimes come our way in life. There’s a lovely poem about prayer by Grace Naessens you’ve probably heard. It begins: I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day, I had so much to accomplish that I didn’t have time to pray. Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. “Why doesn’t God help me?” I wondered. He answered, “You didn’t ask.” The poem ends: I woke up early this morning, and paused before entering the day. I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray. I love this poem! What Ms. Naessens writes is so true of prayer. I have found that for me, it’s also true of writing. Before starting The Ticket, I had been writing off and on for years. My writing came in spurts. Sometimes I’d go for long stretches without writing a thing, except for the writing of the exams, class notes, and academic research papers demanded of me as part of my job as a professor at Vanderbilt University. At other times, I might start a short story and write obsessively for a few days until it was finished. It wasn’t that I believed I had to be inspired to write; it was just a pattern I inadvertently fell into. I observed one truth about myself: I was generally happier in my personal life and more productive in my academic career when I was doing some outside writing. When I started The Ticket, I decided to write at least one draft of the novel from start to finish in one year. I resolved to break my habit of writing either nothing or too much at once, rather like a person who crash diets and then binges on her favorite sweets. This time I was going to write steadily week-in and week-out until I had a decent draft. To aid in this process, I used Robert J. Ray’s book on writing, The Weekend Novelist, to provide a structure. In it Ray describes a fifty-two week program designed to produce a finished novel writing only on weekends. I didn’t follow his plan exactly. For one thing, there were often weekends that didn’t lend themselves to any extensive writing. Stuff comes up. Fortunately, my hours as a professor are fairly flexible. This allows me to start the day on certain weekdays by writing at least a couple of pages, although I aim for five pages. I can make up for this by doing my class preparation late at night, right before I go to bed. Second, I skipped a few of the steps in Ray’s plan, but found that some of the others took me two to four times as long as he allowed. Third, I discovered that, by the time I got to the “key scenes” outlined by Ray and drafted by me early in the process, some of them no longer worked as I intended. By then the novel had taken on a life of its own. Still, using Ray’s book gave me a structure and kept me moving forward when I might otherwise have stalled. One of the challenges I faced in writing The Ticket was getting past inertia at the start of a writing day. For me, the first sentence of the day is almost always the one that comes hardest. The more I tell myself I need to get on with it, the harder it is to make my pen move (yes, I write the old-fashioned way using pen and paper). I didn’t discover any magic tricks here, though I tried copying a passage from a favorite novel a time or two. What I avoided was giving up for the day. Instead I would tell myself that I could always trash the pages later if they stunk, as I often suspected they would. Then I’d force myself to start moving my pen. As a part-time writer, I didn’t feel I had the luxury of waiting until later in the day. Usually, after the rough start, the words would start to flow. But not always. Some days I’d have to grind out every word. Later, though, I discovered surprises in both directions. When I would reread what I had written, the stuff I wrote when I felt inspired sometimes turned out to be lousy; and some of the most painfully written pages turned out to be pretty good. When I was writing The Ticket, I got totally absorbed in my characters and their lives. As a part-time writer with lots of other demands on my time, I learned to scribble thoughts on anything and everything whenever a sentence, a phrase, or an idea struck. It might be on a napkin in the middle of a business lunch, or on a scrap of paper in my handbag during my commute (not a recommended strategy, from a safety perspective), or on an order of worship during a sermon. I can’t always explain where or why an idea comes to me when it does, but I tried to take advantage of every one if at all possible. If I’d wait, thinking, “I couldn’t possibly forget this one,” I might surprise myself. Finally, I tried to turn my status as a dual career person into a strength. The initial idea for The Ticket actually came in part from one of my colleagues at Vanderbilt University. As I fleshed out my characters, both externally and internally, I had ample opportunity to draw on my observations of men and women around me at work on a daily basis. I could listen to their patterns of speech, watch their mannerisms, observe their body language, and so on. Now that I’m in the stage of trying to promote the novel, I find that most people in the workplace are interested and more than happy to help spread the word. Since writing can be a fairly solitary occupation, those of us with a second job face challenges but also have the benefit of unique opportunities. There is one scene in The Ticket that some readers have found controversial. This is a delicate subject, and the last thing I want to do is to offend anyone. So feel free to stop reading at any time.
A sexual predator exposes himself to my protagonist, Tray Dunaway (who is fourteen years old), at the tennis court. Tray does not tell her parents for a long time. She tells herself that this is because she’s afraid they won’t let her go back to the tennis court. But there could be other reasons. Deep down she might be afraid that she did something to provoke him, or that other people might think she did. She may feel ashamed. The Ticket deals with some tough, realistic issues. The situation referred to in the controversial scene is one that arises all too often, and I think it’s important for young women or boys who might face something like this in their lives to know that it’s not their fault. They are not alone. They should not feel ashamed. Ideally, I’d like for my book to open a dialogue within families about how to handle such a situation should it arise. Let me assure you I do think long and hard about the scenes to include or not to include, both with respect to how a particular incident advances the plot and how it might affect readers. There are many things in this world that I’m uncomfortable with. When I was the age of my protagonist, Tray, I was incredibly naive. Fortunately I never experienced anything like what happened to Tray, and I have no idea how I would have handled it if I had. But, unfortunately, many young people do. I know many of you have followed the recent revelations in the Duggar family. I think this highlights the fact that no one is exempt. Maybe it’s something we should open a dialogue within families about—how to respond, what to do if it should ever arise. I would like to invite anyone interested to attend my online book launch on Tuesday, June 9, from 6:30 to 8:30pm CDT. I will post details of how to find the website when I know them. The first shipment of copies of The Ticket arrived yesterday. Then, late last night, I received a phone call from my sister, Jana Little, who had just gotten two copies in the mail and sounded almost as excited as I was.
On Tuesday, June 9, I'm planning to launch the book officially with an online party. As I 'm totally new to all of this, I'm very excited but also more than a little nervous. Please come! It's at 6:30 pm CDT and should be over by 8:30 pm. You can come for some or all. There will be give-aways for certain questions, and a drawing of everyone who attends for a bigger prize. The plan is that every time someone enters a comment, he or she gets another entry in the drawing. Should be fun! Please join my launch team and spread the word. I thought I'd blog a bit today about who I am and what I like to write. Since I'm still trying to sort out who I am, I'll start with the latter.
I like looking at issues from multiple angles so I'm drawn to multiple points-of-view as a writer. As a reader, though, I know it's sometimes off-putting when you're just getting immersed in the story from one perspective and the author suddenly changes point-of-view on you. I like mystery but not who-dun-its, more the mystery in life itself or the "why" behind human behavior, which can be at times so inexplicable. This includes the "why" of mysteries; that is, what motivates the criminal mind? I have one work in progress in which a child jealous of a sibling and feeling slighted by his mother goes on to become a killer who -- like all killers -- finds ways to justify his actions. (No, it's not the one about my grandmother. This is a different one, and this one is fiction.) More often, though I like to write about the "lesser" sins that plague most of us. I like to write about characters who are flawed but not beyond redemption. I like to write about, in the words of William Faulkner, the human heart in conflict with itself. I like to write about the ways in which we both are, and are not, the product of our upbringing, our past , and even the past of our parents and grandparents. As for who I am, isn't that what we're all trying to figure out? I think this is the greatest mystery of all, and perhaps the foremost reason I love to write. Maybe, through my characters -- who always contain a piece of me, whether it's the hero of the villain -- I hope to gain insight into myself, the foolish things I so often do, and the occasional glimpses of something noble. |
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