But It's Not Fair!

This past Sunday, my pastor started his sermon by reading us the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). I'm very familiar with the story, but a funny thing happened this time around. As we were reading, I thought of it in a totally different way--a way that's very applicable to my state of mind of late. And then the pastor gave the same application in his sermon that I was thinking!


To refresh your memory, the parable is about a man who starts in the morning employing workers for his field. They agree on a day's wages and everyone is happy. But then in the afternoon, he employs some more folks and at the end of the day, pays them the same as the poor slobs who've been slaving away all day. So the first workers, who started out happy and thinking how generous their master was, degenerated into grumbling and complaining and feeling sorry for themselves. The master pointed out that they had been happy until they compared themselves to others. That he had given them a good deal, and that they shouldn't complain just because he wanted to be generous to the late-comers.


Of course, Jesus applies this to the Kingdom of Heaven. He demonstrates that all of us reach the Kingdom through his generosity, and that if someone accepts his gift at the end of their lives or late in the day, they'll attain it just the same as those who have been serving Him their whole lives.


That's the way I've always thought of that parable. The sermons I've heard about it took that approach.

But last Sunday, as I read, I thought about my grumbling and complaining about my so-called writing career. After writing and trying to publish for over 30 years, I have a hard time hearing about others who manage it almost immediately. (Lately I'm even jealous of people who have ONLY been at it for 10 or 15 years!)


I admit it, my attitude is lousy. I don't necessarily get jealous of people with nicer cars or houses or better-paying jobs. But show me a newbie writer with a publishing contract and I go into instant whining mode.


Even worse, some of those newbie folks write a lot better than I do! Talk about adding insult to injury. Why is it taking me so long to accomplish what they've picked up with hardly any work at all? (Add whimper here.)


Picture my surprise when the pastor made the same application to this story, pointing out our tendency to look at others' lives and rewards and engage in a pity party, rather than being grateful for God's generosity.

The parable doesn't explain why some folks have to work longer than others for the same reward. It just focuses on how generous the master was to EVERYONE that he employed, without exception.

My pastor urged us to make a fresh start in 2010. I'm game. Do I have any company out there? (Although come to think of it, most of you previously-unpublished writers who have been reading my blog over the months now have publishing contracts. But I love you anyway. You just might want to invest in earplugs to dampen the sound of the whining.)

Make-Believe Characters and Our Characters, Part 2

I recently purchased Jeff Gerke's e-book bundle called The Writer's Foundation, which includes How to Find Your Story (to help develop plots) and Character Creation for the Plot-First Novelist (self-explanatory). The character creation tools make use of a book called Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey, which has personality tests and information on the temperament types made famous by Myers-Briggs.


So far, this is a great help in developing more complex characters, but I've also found myself in Keirsey's pages. I took the test and turned out to be an Idealist (big surprise). One of the things that interested me most was this type's relation to story and characters.


Remember my recent post about how obsessed I became with TV and movie characters when I was young? And about the common thread I found in them--that all appeared to be ordinary folks but had some secret that made them larger than life? I wondered if that was a reflection of my desire to be discovered to be someone special, someone greater than the geeky kid I appeared to be.


Well, according to Keirsey, the Idealist's greatest desire is for recognition--not in the sense of gaining awards or commendations, but recognized for who they are as individuals. They want other people to look inside them and acknowledge what makes them unique.


There's a section on the four major temperament types as children. Here are some of the quotes about the Idealist child. "Idealist children want to be recognized as unique individuals...they often find themselves out of step with their classmates [and] take some comfort in feeling that they are like no one else, one of a kind, as if special or singled out."


And then Keirsey goes on to discuss their love of fantasy. "They are romantic in the sense that, as they look for their unique qualities, they are apt to identify with characters in stories...In elementary school, [Idealist] kids love stories of the medieval era, of knights and their ladies, of princes and princesses, of dragons and wizards."


Well, given my current Harry Potter fascination, I would say that doesn't end with elementary school. Although perhaps it should. Nah, it's too much fun.


But guess what? At the beginning of the series, Harry thinks he's just a downtrodden orphan, penniless and living off the scraps from his horrible relatives, the Dursleys. He always feels there's something different about himself but doesn't know what. Then he discovers not only that he has magical powers, but that in the wizarding world, he's famous! When he was just a baby, he was responsible for stopping the evil Lord Voldemort. He has a vault at the wizarding bank full of gold left to him by his parents. When he arrives at school, everyone has heard of him and his special story.

Sigh...obviously I haven't changed much over the years, have I?

Robin's Deep Dark Confessions: Total Lack of Observation

Jasmine Showers

I have both some good news and an embarrassing story to share with you. Which would you like to hear first? Oh, I know all of you. You're eager for me to humiliate myself for your amusement, aren't you? Well, fortunately I'm good at it. So here goes.


I've been trying for a long time to open an online shop on Etsy, a wonderful marketplace to sell handmade and vintage goods. I finally sat down a couple of weeks ago to do the deed. I had gathered enough of my handmade treasures to make a start and had even photographed them with the help of the lovely and gracious Felicia of Fluffy Flowers. (Who knew there was a macro button on my camera? Amazing!)

What I didn't count on was the fact that all of the shop names I had considered would already be taken. I was in my office mulling this over when I had a brainstorm for another shop name: Jasmine Showers. It sounds like springtime, bright and refreshing, just the sort of shop I'd like to browse in. Plus, since I dabble in a little bit of everything, it doesn't tie me down to any one type of item like beads or crocheting or whatever. Lastly, Jasmine Showers is a character in one of my novels, so this ties the "work of my hands" back in with my writing. Perfect!

I'm the type that may put something off for weeks or months, but when I'm ready, I'm ready. I had allotted time to set up my shop on a particular afternoon and by golly, I intended to do it. Trouble was, I needed a photo or logo for the shop banner. I had the perfect picture in mind: Jasmine blossoms with raindrops. But where to get it? I found some on the Web, but they were all copyrighted, or available for one-time use. I wanted to take my own pictures, so I could put them on business cards or bookmarks or t-shirts, whatever.

At this point, I need to make my confessions. First, I am the most ignorant person on the Earth when it comes to plants. Also dangerous. Any plant left in my care will die an untimely death. Sometimes this happens even when it's not in my care, just near me. When I worked at Delta Air Lines as a secretary, my bosses came up with the bright idea of putting a plant on my desk so people would see it and be cheered when they entered our otherwise soulless warehouse of cubicles and desks.

I warned them not to do it. I told them what happened to plants that got too close to me. They laughed. They pointed out that I wouldn't have to care for it. Someone with actual plant knowledge would do all that.

Within days it was drooping. Then dripping brown leaves. Visitors to our department started to look depressed.

So anyway, that's confession number one. I love the fantasy concept of flowers, but I'm not so good with the real thing.

Confession number two: my powers of observation are woefully inadequate. I once had a roommate who was gone to Florida for two days before I noticed she was missing. Actually, I never noticed. One of our friends pointed it out. (In my defense, she was sort of reclusive and kept her bedroom door closed a lot.)

Now we arrive at the Thursday afternoon when I was determined to set up my Etsy shop. I wanted to take pictures of jasmine blooms, so I decided to stop at Lowe's and see if they had any jasmine. It briefly occurred to me to wonder if we already had jasmine in our yard, but how would I know? (See confessions one and two.) My husband Dave is the gardener in the family, but he was out of town on business. Besides, I hear him talk about the gardening, and I vaguely remembered him mentioning things like roses, azaleas and camellias. And even in my ignorant state, I know when the gardenias are blooming by the smell. Wouldn't jasmine have a strong scent, too? Wouldn't I remember Dave mentioning jasmine?

No, I decided. We have no jasmine. So I paid a fairly big price for a bush at Lowe's that had two or three blooms on it, sprayed it with fake raindrops, and came up with a picture for my banner.

Then Dave got home. I pointed out the jasmine bush I had planted, and even showed off my new knowledge. "That's Confederate jasmine," I said. (I do know how to read a label.)

"I know," he answered. "It's all over the front porch and the back fence. I have to keep beating it back to keep it from taking over."

A few days later, it started to bloom. And here is just a small sample of what's in our yard.

Well...how was I supposed to know when it wasn't blooming yet? It was just leaves and...oh, never mind.

The good news is I have at least gotten my shop up and running, and I've made one sale! It's called Jasmine Showers as I'd hoped, and I'm pretty pleased with it.

I'd like to share the joy, so here's what I'm offering my wonderful blog readers. If you make a purchase from my shop between now and the end of May, you can take 30% off the most expensive item in your order. (Just mention the Dimensions blog in the "Message to Seller" at checkout. You can either go ahead and pay and I'll send you a refund, or tell me in the message that you'd like me to send a revised invoice before you pay.)

Tell anyone else you think might be interested. More than making money right now, I need to make some sales and get good feedback. Enjoy!

Robin's Deep Dark Confessions Part II

In my last post, I promised to let you in on what got me out of my creative slump last year. I told you that it might shock some of you. Here's a hint: it was nothing short of magic.

Right after I realized that I had lost interest in my writing, I reached another nasty conclusion. I had even lost interest in reading!

Well, that was just going too far. Maybe I could give up writing and live a somewhat normal life, but do without reading? I had always been the type that reads obsessively. Once I started a book, I had to finish it. I would stay up until the crack of dawn, make myself late coming back from lunch hours. Yes, I've even been known to sneak out a book in class and surreptitiously read it under the desk while the teacher lectured. Even if I could manage to separate myself from a novel physically, my mind tended to drift back to that world.

But not anymore. Not only was I apathetic about the stories I was making up, but I wasn't all that excited by what the pros were writing, either. I was still reading books, but I was having to schedule reading sessions like a chore. Even if a book seemed fairly enjoyable while I was reading it, I had no trouble ending the session and moving on to the next activity. Reading was okay, just sort of ...blah.

Something had to be done.

It didn't take me long to realize that a major problem was my selection of reading material. There was nothing particularly wrong with any individual book, but they were all pretty much the same. I was reading mostly genre fiction written in the past couple of years. I was choosing books because they were popular or were selling well, so I read them to try to learn from them--under the theory that then I could be popular and sell well, too. The voices and the stories began to sound the same. It was time to shake things up a bit.

A few weeks before my mid-life creative crisis, I had been to the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference. A big topic of conversation there (and at the library where I worked, and almost everywhere else in the world) was the release of the last book in the Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). I didn't necessarily care what the rest of the world had to say, but I was fascinated to hear Christian writers and editors so passionate--and so divided--over a work of fiction.

I heard a good Christian woman denounce the series as unhealthy interest in the occult while another lady behind me was bouncing on her seat, wanting to protest. I sat at a lunch table where the subject came up, and one conferee said he liked the Harry Potter books but really wished there was more religion in the world that Rowling created. The editor at the table, someone I admire very much, declared that Deathly Hallows was in fact a very Christian book in its themes.

Now, I had spent years avoiding the Harry Potter books. I figured that a series about educating children at a school for witchcraft was not for me. But now, I at least wanted to take a look.

I started checking out the audio books from the library, and in about ten minutes was hooked. Seldom have I ever encountered a fictional world so inventive, so full of wit and humor and fantastical detail--and yet so homey. How was it possible to create a school of magic set in a medieval castle, with unicorns and centaurs in the forest and mer-people in its lake, that felt so familiar? Probably because that castle was filled with people I was sure I'd known in my own life. People so real that I raced through the entire seven-book series to see what would happen to them--because Rowling's world can also be a very dangerous place, particularly by Book Seven.

I still understand why some folks want to avoid books that have witches and wizards as the main characters. I myself wish Rowling had used some other terminology, but other than that, I didn't find characters any more offensive than Glenda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Somewhere during the experience, however, I did rediscover my own imagination.

Not only did I have fun imagining what was coming for Harry and friends, but I found myself daydreaming, starting to rewrite my own stories in my head. For years, I'd been caught up in things like point of view shifts and short paragraphs and active voice. Now, I was finally getting caught up in my stories, in my own little boys and their heartaches and struggles and magic. I started getting excited about making my own worlds so magical and homey, so dangerous yet sunny. And as far as genre--well, editors and agents have battered me for years with the rule that I've got to pigeon hole my stories into one genre and its guidelines. But Harry? Where does he fit? Book One is a children's book, Book Seven? Whoa!

Again, I'm not telling you to read Harry Potter or anything like it if you're uncomfortable with the idea. But I'll always be grateful to J.K. Rowling for helping me get my own magic back.

Oh, and what does all that have to do with why I started this new blog? Well, a couple of things.

First of all, I not only fell into the Harry Potter trap myself but I took Kristi along with me. We had so much fun going through that series together (with me a few books ahead)! I think that series sparked both our imaginations, and led us into discussions that turned up fascinating and important questions for a hopeful novelist and a Little Fish about to try her luck in the motion picture industry.

How can a serious Christian discern what they should or shouldn't read? Watch on TV? Act in?

How can our imaginations be used to point readers to God and glorify him? Why did C.S. Lewis think that our desire for fantasy reflects a desire for the eternal? How could we learn to write works that will reflect God's truth while tapping into those desires?

And so we started this blog. And that, as they say, is the rest of the story.

Or at least, it's the beginning.

Robin's Deep Dark Confessions, Part I

Little Fish Kristi has been busy telling you about herself and her plans. I've been sort of lax about that, so I thought I'd better introduce myself to those of you who don't know me. For those who read my other blog, I wanted to tell you how I got here.

If you don't know, for about two years I had a blog called The Queen of Perseverance. I laughingly gave myself that crown and dared people to challenge me, because I figure I've been writing and trying to publish a book longer than just about anybody. As a matter of fact, I sometimes feel that my whole life has been about God teaching me patience. I've become an expert in waiting.

For example, I didn't get married until I was thirty. I used to fret that Mr. Right would never come into my life, but finally he did. Then we started waiting for the babies to come. That never did happen.

As for writing, I knew I wanted to be a novelist when I was seven. When I was eighteen, I sent away my first novel manuscript. Now here I am, still on that elusive road to publication thirty-two years later. (Yes, you can do the math. I don't mind.) After thirty-plus years in this game, I figured I had a lot to share about writing and waiting. I had discovered things about writing that I wish I had known earlier. And as I learned those lessons, I finaled in a contest, drew encouragement and support from two well-known authors, and signed with an agent.

God had also shown me so much about the process of waiting. He taught me that sometimes you hold on and keep persevering--and sometimes you let go. I know now I'll probably never have children. That was one of my dreams I had to relinquish.

When I was younger, I knew a lot of people who wrote or painted or did all sorts of creative things, but their dreams fizzled out. So I started The Queen of Perseverance to share and to encourage other people to hang in there with me through those long dry spells.

But a sad thing happened. The more I wrote about persevering, the less I seemed to want to hang in there, myself. Here's something I wrote and almost posted about a year ago:

Last week, I ran completely out of perseverance. Not because God isn’t good or he can’t energize you. I just flat out wasn’t interested anymore. And it’s hard to write a blog and try to encourage everyone else when you don’t even want to be encouraged yourself.

I was really stuck. When I did grab a moment to sit down with my writing, I wanted to scream. I stared at the same sentence on the screen, with that stupid cursor blinking at me. I would pull up the blog and couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “I want to quit.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I figured that wouldn’t be very encouraging. So there I was, stuck.

This feeling came to a head last week, but it didn’t start then. Oddly enough, my desire to quit started growing right when I started this blog labeling myself the “Queen of Perseverance.” Does God have a sense of humor, maybe?

I think there’s a Scripture that warns you to be careful of setting yourself up as a teacher—or thinking you’re very strong in a certain area and don’t have to worry about temptation coming from that direction. Because that's exactly where temptation will come from. It will catch you off guard. I seem to be living proof of this.

I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was seven years old. That’s approximately 42 years ago. I’ve thought about writing and publishing a novel every day since. I couldn’t imagine not being a writer.

In fact, sometimes I was afraid that I was too obsessed with writing—not only with my publishing dream, but with my characters and their worlds. Every now and then I would panic and think, what if God asked me to give up writing? Maybe I’m placing too much importance on it, even placing it before him. But how could I possibly give it up?

I finally managed to pray the words, at least in my head: if you want me to do something else, just show me, and I’ll stop writing.

The story of how God kept me writing during that time is, I think, pretty amazing. But for now, let me return to the current crisis, which is completely different from anything I’ve experienced before.

For the first time I’m not sure I want to be a writer. Instead of telling God I’m willing to quit, I’ve been praying for him to let me quit.

Stories no longer fill my head. The only time I think about my stories is when I sit there in front of that blinking cursor, forcing myself to think about them. And finding time and energy to sit there in front of that computer screen gets harder every week, not easier. I find myself asking, “Why exactly are you torturing yourself? You’re the one who started this. No one is making you do it. In fact, all your family and friends would be happy if you quit, because you might actually have time for them.”

I decided that this year is going to be sort of “my year of the fleece.” I’m laying a fleece before God, that if he wants me to keep writing, he will show me in some definitive way this year. Hopefully this will involve some kind of encouragement. I’ve sort of committed to my agent to finish two novels this year, so I want to try to do that. But after that, if nothing has changed, I’M TAKING SOME TIME OFF. This does not necessarily mean I’m quitting. But it will mean a big change.

So there it is, the sad state I was in about a year ago. Fortunately, I didn't post that whiney little diatribe, although I did tell my readers that I was trying to make some decisions about my writing. When I ran across the draft of that post a few days ago, it shocked me. Had I really reached such a low point in creativity? Had I really been that angry and frustrated?

Because here I am, a year later, itching to write. I am no closer to publication, no more successful, but for now at least, my passion is back.

It's always good to end on a cliff-hanger, so I'll tell you next time what happened to get the creative juices flowing again. I'll have to confess something that may shock some of you, but I've decided to go for it. So tune in for more of my Deep Dark Confessions.