Writing Update February 2024
Hello subscribers!
I wanted to give you an update about my writing projects, what I’m reading, and what’s been inspiring me lately.
Writing Projects
The Lesser Light
Basics: Robots invade earth. One teenage boy has a book that seems to narrate his experience. He reads ahead to gain an advantage against the robots. Everything goes according to the book until the final battle—which is a complete disaster. My story starts here. How does he survive without the book telling him how to do it? How does he make his own choices? Eventually, he is told to rewrite the book, a process which brings all his struggles in life to the surface.
Update: I’ve started this novel several times over the last 7 or 8 years. Part of the issue is that I’m trying to solve all my problems before I write them. There are some big questions still lingering, but I’ve finally been able to get past my self-imposed obstacles. I haven’t made too much progress plot-wise, but I’m experimenting with a new style that allows me to write more freely. There may or may not be a time-travel element to this story, so I am writing short scenes with time jumps. A scene from the “present” (post-final-battle), then a scene from the past (when the robots first invaded), and back and forth. So far, this structure seems to be working. Last fall, I read Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison. In the book, Alison explores non-linear narrative shapes. I’m partly inspired by that, but mostly inspired by Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers (more on that below).
A Darker Travel
Basics: A bereaved father visits heaven in his dreams, each night picking up where he left off the night before. He is guided by a giant talking owl. The dreams will last for one year, and on the final night, he will get to see his deceased son.
Update: For the last couple years, I’ve written a scene here, a scene there. Since the dreams are episodic, I don’t have to write them in chronological order. Once I’ve written 365 nights worth, I can order them as I want. But I have built up momentum on this novel in the last week, starting from the beginning. I read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Robert Frost’s poetry collection A Boy’s Will in January, and iambic pentameter was rattling around in my head. I ended up writing a scene completely in iambic pentameter, with rhyming couplets. It certainly needs revision, but I’m proud of what I wrote. It’s a scene that will likely occur somewhere in the middle of the book. Why rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just a peculiarity of this character or a requirement in this part of heaven. Here’s a sample few lines:
ME: Wait—you can sleep and dream in heaven?
DREAMER: Aye,
to know it you were just surprised as I.
For sleep is foretaste of our death—and dreams
the winter buds foretelling growth. If ‘t seems
perplexing, know we dead have felt the same
when first to this eternity we came.
The next day, I reread the opening two scenes (which I wrote last year) and thought, “I could write another.” So I did. And a couple days later, I wrote scene 4. Here are some things I’ve learned by writing steadily on this project:
Insight into my own theology (and new insights) come through writing as much as by reading or thinking. Sometimes by writing, I work myself into what seems like a dead end and have to find my way out again. By putting myself in that position, I discover new insight.
It is true that sometimes you don’t know what will happen next. My hero (named Landon) and the owl guide were quibbling over the difference (or sameness) of accuracy and truth. I didn’t really want to spend too much time in abstract definitions. So I looked up the etymology of those two words. Turns out accuracy is related to “care” and “cure” while truth is related to “tree.” So I said, “They turned a corner, and there was a massive tree.” And the scene went from there, full of insight and possibility.
Getting my butt in the seat is necessary to be a disciplined writer. It’s easy to think about all the great things I’ll write, but it’s another to actually do the work of writing. I’m transitioning slowly into a better writing discipline. My problem is that I have a good writing session, and then I think, “Okay, that’s great, I’ll take the rest of the week off.” It’s like I need to be dissatisfied with my writing to be motivated to write more.
What I’m Reading
January’s Reads
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
One of my reading practices this year is to read one Shakespeare play per month, and then watch various iterations of the play. I read Hamlet in high school (and wrote a song about it called “Get Thee To A Nunnery”), so I already had some familiarity. After reading it, I watched two film versions: the 1948 Laurence Olivier production (with some major pieces of the play cut or redistributed) and the 1980 BBC production (with Patrick Stewart and Derek Jacobi). I also watched the 2019 remake of The Lion King, though that is more “inspired by some elements of the Hamlet story.”
Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers
In the last 6 months, I’ve become a Julie Otsuka fan. I’ve read three novels of hers, all of which are superbly written. In The Swimmers, Otsuka employs techniques from her earlier novels to great effect. She begins The Swimmers with the first-person collective “we” (as she does in The Buddha in the Attic): “We did this. We thought that. We knew this. We experienced that.” However, she breaks into third-person omniscient when introducing new characters. Slowly the novel becomes more and more third-person. The first half of the novel is about swimmers at an underground pool. Their routines are thrown off balance by the appearance of a crack at the bottom of the pool, which ultimately forces the pool to close. After the pool’s closure, we follow one character, whose memory is fading, as she navigates life without her daily swim. The novel switches to second-person, and the “you” addressed is the woman losing her memory. “You remember this. You remember that. You don’t remember this.” There are distant memories followed by recent memories. The present moment pops in from time to time: entering a memory care facility—wanting to leave. The second-person narration continues until the end of the book, but it shifts again. The “you” is now the daughter of the woman. The memories section inspired me to try time jumps for The Lesser Light.
I was always taught to pick one POV for narration (first-person singular or third-person omniscient were best) and keep it consistent. But Otsuka demonstrates that shifting narrative POV and even using “we” and “you” can be well-done, cohesive, and engaging. It adds to the texture of the story, and this is why it’s my favorite book so far this year.
Two non-fiction selections I audiobooked and would highly recommend:
Seirian Sumner, Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps
While bees have received a lot of positive press over the centuries (including as far back as Aristotle), wasps have usually been vilified. Yet, as Sumner shows, wasps are just as beneficial for our environment and well-being as bees are. Wasps are pollinators, pest-controllers, paper-makers, and socially complex. Read this book (or audiobook it! read by the author) and come to a greater appreciation of the much-maligned wasp.
Theresa MacPhail, Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World
Everything you think you know about allergies is likely not the full picture. That’s the main argument of this book. How do we define an allergy? Scientists are divided. What are the main causes of allergies? That depends. Why have allergies in humans (and other animals) been on the rise the last two centuries? Here are the theories, none of which is complete on its own. What are the remedies or solutions to allergies? Here are some options, each with pros and cons. As someone with many allergies, this book was a helpful survey of the current (published in 2023) state of allergy research. The writing is accessible and clear. If you want an entry point into learning about allergy science, this is a good book to start with.
Currently Reading
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
I am reading one chapter per day of this behemoth book. The chapters are fairly short, usually between 4-6 pages. Melville’s boisterous language is a joy to read, and it reminds me that art is a created thing—it’s okay to take risks and let my language be wilder.
“Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.”
Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition
I am slowly making my way through this book as I reflect on one of my words for the year: hospitality.
“While we might imagine sacrifice in terms of one moment of heroic martyrdom, faithful hospitality usually involves laying our lives down in little pieces, in small acts of sacrificial love and service. Part of the mystery is that while such concrete acts of love are costly, they nourish and heal both giver and recipient.”
Herbert N. Schneidau, Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition
I’m only reading the chapter on “The Bible and Literature” for now, which comes at the end of Schneidau’s book. Below is a quote that resonates with an aspect of my vision of writing.
“[Ezra Pound] insisted on the unsettling function of literature in way that reveals an essential continuity with the urgencies of the Biblical prophets. Good literature, he said, worries ‘lovers of order’: ‘they regard it as dangerous, chaotic, subversive,’ because its exactitudes show no mercy to society’s self-inflating tendencies. In other words, it shows us what idols we worship, and that they are idols. This is not a ‘natural’ act of man in society. Nor does literature’s exactitude mean reflecting back to us our preferred images. We tend to forget the hortatory emphasis of Hamlet’s ‘holding the mirror up to Nature.’ Mirrors … are meant to show us our faults—and our ephemerality. Inferior or merely popular art may avoid the task, but serious art must play Yorick’s skull.”
Carl Dennis, Practical Gods
This is one of my favorite collections of poetry. Every poem bears a surprise. Dennis has a gift for connecting the epic (Jonah, Odysseus, modern history) with the mundane (grocery lists, making a decision, daily living). And his words, his cadences, his turns of phrase, are accessible, delightful, and insightful. Here are the opening lines to my favorite poem in the book (and one of my top five favorite poems ever), “Not the Idle.”
It’s not the idle who move us but the few
Often confused with the idle, those who define
Their project in life in terms so ample
Nothing they ever do is a digression.
One Final Thought
In 2020, as I was finishing up my MFA program, I bought my first pocket-sized notebook (4.5 in x 3.25 in). Up until then, I had journals and notebooks of standard size, but nothing that could easily fit into my pocket. If I wanted to write while I went on a walk, I either had to carry a bulky journal or wear a backpack. The alternative was to not bring a notebook at all. In that case, I had to remember all my walk-insights so I could write them down once I returned home. My “memory success rate” was not very high. Finally, I found a notebook small enough for my pocket.
At first, I was embarrassed by the little notebook. I didn’t want people to see me pull it out and write in it. “What a nerd,” they’d say. (No one ever said this.) I quickly discovered, however, how convenient this notebook was. I could write down a thought immediately upon having it. And then I could forget the thought and think of new things. And everything would be in my notebook. (Some people have told me, “Use the Notes app on your phone.” But that doesn’t work for me. I have to search my notes to find the “right place” to input something, I’m more likely to type typos, and I can’t draw doodles and arrows, and cross things out and have multiple word options like I can in my notebook. So much easier and freer to handwrite these things down.)
I kept the notebook in the back pocket of my jeans. It soon acquired the moniker, “butt notebook,” a name I still use to this day. I’ve gone through several butt notebooks since 2020. It takes me about 5-6 months to fill one up. I keep stray thoughts, story ideas, and personal insights in it. I keep lists in it as well, mostly lists of word-patterns I notice (for example, words/phrases that can be broken into smaller words: literally = liter ally; abundance = a bun dance; camera shy = came rashy; sewage = sew age). I also keep a list of joke and cartoon ideas at the back of every notebook.
I’ve come to love a particular brand (Top Flight) of butt notebook. I would get a three-pack of them at my local Bartells, but suddenly they were out. I returned several times over a few months, and they were never restocked. I couldn’t find the tiny notebooks at any other store, and every Office Max and Office Depot closed in our area. I found other small notebooks that worked, but they didn’t hold up as well. Last month, I decided to order from Amazon. But Amazon didn’t have them either. There were several alternative cheap options, but they were from brands with garbled names that sounded more like strong passwords than actual companies.
So I went direct to Top Flight’s website. Turns out, the product is called “Mini Composition Notebook.” I started to order a three-pack (for $5), but shipping was $12. So I ordered 7 three-packs and got free shipping. They just arrived this week. Now I have 21 butt notebooks, a supply to last me about a decade.
It may seem silly that this purchase brings me so much joy. But for me, the butt notebook is part of my identity as a writer. Embracing the butt notebook means embracing the writing life. I can’t escape who I am, how God has made me and called me. I love writing, I love words. Having a notebook that fits in my pocket allows me to write whenever a word comes to me.
Thank you for reading! Your subscription to my Substack and your engagement gives a boost to my confidence as a writer. I appreciate your support of my work. Blessings on your own reading, writing, thinking, and doing.