Same Blog Time, Same Blog Channel

I hope you will permit me a moment of self-indulgence. This is my 100^th post.

Yay!

Cue the celebration!

100 posts . . . and, judging by the feed counter at the bottom of the page, I must be doing something right. This blog has grown in terms of page views, with last month racking up the most views so far.

So, what do I attribute to the success of The Semi-Great Gildersleeve?  Two things: the grace of God and hard work.

Grace Under Fire

I make no apologies about it, no equivocating, no qualifications. I believe in God. I am a Christian and I attend a Christian church. This belief is part of who I am. If that offends some (as it did an acquaintance earlier this year), too bad. Deal with it.

In an age when Muslims, Jews, atheists, and others rightly and openly celebrate who they are and deplore the unthinking prejudice thrown against them, Christians should not have to apologize for who they are and what they believe, either. 

Religion has become a hot-button topic in this politically charged year, with a lot of misrepresentations and stereotypes proliferating. Now, as we move into the holidays, a lot of posts on Facebook decry the so-called war on religion and bemoan how we are supposed to greet each other without offending those of different faiths.

To my thinking, those arguments obscure the meaning of faith.  

It is, simply, my belief in God which has led me to do what I do: to view writing as a calling and to rejoice in the fact that this activity, which is so pleasurable and meaningful to me, has value to others. Students shape their own worlds through writing, and writers of both fiction and non-fiction profoundly shape the worlds of their audience.

This ability to affect others in a positive way is surely a gift from God.

Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel

One thing I’ve learned while writing this blog is that nothing, not even a calling, happens by itself. Dreams require effort and education to bring them into the world.

Writers write, and writing involves discipline. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve published at least one post every week since starting the blog in March 2011. With few exceptions, each post has been published on Friday or Saturday morning.

Anyone who follows comics or watches TV knows the value of publishing a new issue or broadcasting a new episode at the same time on a regular basis. Your audience knows what to expect of you and when to expect it.

Education is also part of the hard work. Let’s face it: learning anything is hard. However, I’ve been blessed to learn from others who are doing what I’m doing. I’ve learned from their mistakes as well as their successes.

And education never ends. As our world changes, more and more tools become available to writers to get their work out there. Before starting this blog, I had never heard of SEO.

The Future’s so Bright . . .

There is still a lot to learn. The ads you see on your screen are supposed to generate revenue (a writer wanting to earn money from his words—whodathunkit?), but, so far, they haven’t. Very few readers, it seems, care to linger on the ads, much less click on them. 

I understand—I’ve never been fond of ads, either. But that’s how blogs make money, and learning to use them is part of this whole education thing we talked about.

Likewise, few posts have attracted comments. I’m still not sure why, as I’ve tried to model this site after the blogs of better established writers in terms of engaging readers. Perhaps it’s the fact that those writers are better established that leads to others wanting to leave comments. Or perhaps my audience is like the students who sit in the middle of the class, quietly absorbing lessons and acing the exams.

But comments or no, money or no, I couldn’t be happier with the success of The Semi-Great Gildersleeve. I’m grateful to all of you who have stopped by and continue to stop by. I hope you’ve gotten as much out of reading this blog as I’ve gotten out of writing it.

So, what does the future hold?

I certainly haven’t exhausted all I have to say about “writing, super-heroes, and this ‘n’ that,” and as I continue to learn more about writing and publishing books, I’ll share whatever bits of wisdom I glean.

However, I may scale back my posting just a tad, as I focus on a new blog I’m setting up. This blog will focus exclusively on my forthcoming novel, The Power Club™  ; therein, you can read character sketches, insights into the writing of the book, and the odd story or two. When that blog is ready to launch, I’ll announce it here. Stay tuned  . . .

100 posts is only the beginning. As one of my ministers is fond of saying, “Straight ahead!”

Is Your Writing too Vanilla?

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned recent political comments regarding rape and abortion and wondered if breaching such topics in a blog aimed at promoting a forthcoming YA novel was going too far.

I received no comments on that post, which is not unusual, yet November was my most successful month ever in terms of page views (835!), so I must not have offended too many readers.

So, here I go again.

My intention is never to directly offend anyone; however, writing, if it is to matter, must occasionally risk offending some. Writing that does not stick its literary neck out can become bland and boring—vanilla, to borrow a term from a work-in-progress belonging to a member of my writer’s group (thanks, Rachel).

What’s wrong with vanilla?

Nothing, really.  I like vanilla, but I also like chocolate, orange, lemon, and other flavors. A strict diet of vanilla—in either ice cream or writing—is safe and predictable. Writers who create a vanilla world in which their protagonists never face controversy or risk offending segments of their audience do their readers—particularly young readers—a disservice. Readers (whether you want them to or not) will look to your characters as models for how they are supposed to be in the “real” world.  

Characters who never have to deal with difficult problems give the impression that the reader shouldn’t have to, either.

What prompted this line of thinking was spending last night on Facebook. Far from being an addictive waste of time, as some claim, FB has become a valuable sociological experiment. People from diverse backgrounds all across the globe “friend” each other and interact. Most of the interactions are silly or conversational, but occasionally real discussions take place.

And any time a real discussion takes place, disagreements are bound to ensue.

The other day, I posted a link to a petition that’s been making its way around the Internet. The petition seeks to urge the government of Uganda not to proceed with legislation that would criminalize homosexuality. Regardless of whether you believe homosexuality is natural or not, a sin or not, no one should condone imprisoning or executing people because of their sexual orientation.

Yet the FB friend of an FB friend responded, “not our country . . . not our problem.”

In our discussion which followed, the poster claimed he was not apathetic. He just didn’t care about what went on in countries other than the U.S.

I resisted the urge to post a link to Merriam-Webster’s definition of “apathy” and let the conversation drop. After all, he makes a valid point. It’s certainly his right (and anyone else’s) to care or not care about a particular issue. And there’s nothing wrong with focusing his attention on battling intolerance in this country (which he claimed he would do).

But his attitude represents, I think, a rather narrow definition of “us” and “them.”  “I only care about us,” this attitude proclaims. “Us” can be defined in terms of national borders, as in his case, but it can also be defined in terms of race, sexual orientation, politics, gender, social cliques, and any other distinction one cares to identify with.

In other words, the “us and them” attitude promotes a vanilla world in which all of “us” are the same.  

But in a world which is becoming increasingly connected through technology, trade, and travel, there is no “them.”  There is only “us.”

I differ with my new FB acquaintance in that, where he sees division, I see connections. Our signatures on the petition may have no effect on a government half the world away. Yet hope and a desire for a better world (not just a better country) compelled me to try. Assuming the government of Uganda wasn’t prompted “merely” by hatred of homosexuals but rather by a desire to protect its society from something it perceives (wrongly) as a threat, then making our opinions known may educate others who have more influence.

There are also connections between “the real world” and writing.

So, you want to write escapist fiction or fantasy? Great. So do I. But even escapism is a product of the real world and reflects that real world back upon the reader.

It all boils down to this: Do you want to immerse your reader in a vanilla world, or do you want to open her palate to other flavors?

"The Story You are Telling is Your Own": A Real-Life Power Club Story

This is going to be one of my most personal posts ever.

“The story you are telling is your own”—another nugget of wisdom (spoken by executive coach and bliss mentor Cyndi Daugherty Swall) from the Business of Writing – Success workshop earlier this month—has stuck with me.

To me, it says that all writing to one degree or another is autobiographical—even my novel-in-progress, The Power Club™. 

The story of Damon is, in some ways, my own.

Sure, I never had super-powers, but I wanted one. I wasn’t greedy. I would have been happy with the ability to fly or run at super-speed. Motion is important to kids.

But The Power Club reflects my life in other ways.

Just before my sixth birthday, I moved into a new neighborhood, a block and a half from Sherwood School in St. Joseph, Missouri. More importantly, I lived across the alley and street from kids who were around my age.

I have a photo of some of these kids attending my seventh or eighth birthday party. There’s Tim, shoulders hunched up as if the camera had caught him off guard. There’s Scott, looking away from the camera and watching Tim’s antics. There’s Steve, grinning directly into the camera. And there’s me, the birthday boy, dreaming hazily and looking like I’m praying. Next to me stands my younger brother, Mark, his arms folded in apparent imitation of me. We are surrounded by our parents and grandparents, but the focus of the photo—and of the party—was clearly on us kids.

Mark and I shared numerous adventures with Tim, Scott, and Steve, plus Steve’s sister, Mary, and another girl named Jeannette. They were our “gang” (though Mark recently told me they were more my gang than his). When we were younger, we played The Archies—with Mary (a blonde) and Jeannette (a brunette), we had a natural Betty and Veronica. (I was Jughead, the guy who wore the crown!) As we grew older, we talked about forming a basketball club and starting a haunted house, though we never did either. At one point, Tim and Steve formed a “rock band,” miming to records. (I wanted to join their band but was relegated to “audience”.)

We could be anything we wanted to be—including super-heroes. When I discovered the Legion of Super-Heroes, I shared them with my gang. Tim liked the feral Timber Wolf the best (in part, I’m sure, because of the similarity of their names). Steve liked Colossal Boy’s costume with the headgear and shoulder harness but was disappointed that his only power was the ability to grow to giant size. Scott admired Ultra Boy’s muscles. My favorites then were Lightning Lad and Sun Boy.

The girls didn’t seem to care much for super-heroes. I remember describing the female Legionnaires to Mary once. With her blonde hair, she would have been a natural fit for Saturn Girl or Princess Projectra, I thought. But we were all entering that age when boys do not play with girls and vice versa.

And then, like kids everywhere, we grew older and our interests changed. We hung out less and less. The older guys, Tim and Scott, became interested in cars and girls. Mary and Jeannette did . . . whatever girls did. And Steve wrestled me to the ground and refused to let me up until I cried “uncle”—a way of asserting his superiority, perhaps, but effectively ending our friendship.

Still, I always expected they would be part of my life forever. At age 10 or 11, it’s hard to conceptualize the idea of other kids leaving your life. Adults, yes. They sell their houses and move away or they grow old and die. But with kids—you attend the same school and live in the same neighborhood. You can’t get away from them even if you want to.

And then, the summer before I turned 12, Steve, Mary, and Tim all moved away.

I visited Steve and Mary in their new home once. Steve had no interest in playing—he was sitting in front of his stereo, listening to a new song I would later recognize as “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Recalling the days when our interest in music consisted of Three Dog Night and The Sweet, I couldn't understand why he was listening to opera!

Tim dropped by to visit a few times. After he turned 16, he showed up in his new car and took my brother and me for a drive. Mark, who had long since ceased trying to imitate me and had found his “social legs,” monopolized the conversation (something he’s been doing ever since!). Feeling relegated to the back seat in more ways than one, I responded in my usual fashion: I sulked.

Although Scott and Jeannette continued to live in the same neighborhood, I saw little of them. They were a grade ahead of me, so they entered middle school and then high school before I did. And then I switched schools. My teen years became a complicated mess of trying to fit in and failing, so I withdrew into the world of comic books—a world they had long since outgrown.

How much of this real-life story makes its way into The Power Club, I’ll leave for the reader to decide—when the book is actually published (which, given a few recent setbacks, could be in the next few weeks). But I’ve drawn several lessons from writing this book:

 

• People are going to leave your life, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
• One of the painful contradictions of life is that we need each other to survive, but we also need to be independent of each other. 
• We need family and friends, but relationships are often temporary constructs—training wheels, if you like, for the next relationship.
• Appreciate each other while you can, for you never know when your next encounter with someone will be your last.

I’ve consciously made Damon a bit more assertive than I was at his age. And his story, in many ways, does not parallel mine at all. (Hey, it is fiction.) Likewise, the other characters in The Power Club are not direct analogues to the kids I knew way back when. There are surface similarities—but the most fascinating aspect of writing a book is watching characters grow and take on lives of their own.

But all fiction (or at least the best fiction) is grounded in reality. Every writer from Mark Twain to Bill Cosby draws upon his or her own experiences to craft worlds of imagination for others to share.

In that respect, The Power Club™ is both a love letter to some old friends and a "thank you" for being part of my life.

How does your story reflect your life?

Be Authentic: Should Writers Be Themselves?

Be authentic.

This advice became a frequent theme at the Business of Writing – Success workshop last Saturday. Several presenters encouraged writers to be ourselves—even if we’re boring! Such advice is very appealing. After all, many of us became writers in order to express ourselves.

But being authentic carries risks. What if no one likes you? What if you don’t like yourself?

These questions keep resurfacing as I sit in a restaurant, chowing down on breakfast, and listening to old tunes piped through the intercom. Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” played earlier. If you know the song, you know how it begins:

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack

I went out for a ride and I never went back

In a sense, Springsteen glorifies a man who abandoned his family. Yet the song was a hit precisely because it exposes an authentic feeling we all share: the hungry heart that can never be satisfied, not even by the traditional avenues of love and marriage. Being authentic means being real, which means admitting we’re not perfect. We’ve let ourselves and others down, and our hearts are still hungry.

But being authentic can be dangerous. Just look at the state of U.S. politics these days. 

Probably the most authentic public statement made this year was uttered by a Missouri politician. He asserted that women who are raped have a way of "shutting down" their bodies to prevent pregnancy. The assumptions and rationale behind the statement appear to be as follows: If a woman gets pregnant from rape, she must have wanted to be raped. Therefore, rape is not a valid reason for abortion.

To be clear, this was a reprehensible statement from someone who was a) ignorant of biology, b) trying to justify a black-and-white view of abortion, or c) both.

But was it an authentic statement? Almost certainly. It's hard to imagine anyone—much less a candidate for the U.S. Senate—saying it without believing it. The fact that he stuck to his guns and refused to withdraw from the race amid criticism from his own party supports the theory that he was being authentic. (He lost the election, by the way.)

It’s easy to pillory someone who makes outlandish and ignorant claims. Yet should we not admire him just a little for being so honest, so . . . authentic? 

Well, no. Peddling stupidity is never to be admired.

And yet, as writers, we can be just as ignorant at times. We create fictional characters to dress up our own notions of how the world should be or how we think it really is, and those notions can be built upon any number of false assumptions, painful experiences, and comfort zone observations.

In being authentic, we risk exposing those notions—those cherished aspects of ourselves—to painful criticism. Worse, being authentic means looking in a mirror and judging what we see.

The tightrope of authenticity becomes even thinner when one writes for children and young adults. Certain subjects are considered very risky when writing for a young audience. By mentioning rape and abortion, for example, have I crossed the line?

I don't think so. The kids who will be reading The Power Club™  live in the same world in which politicians make controversial statements and in which their parents and other adults in their lives choose sides, debate, and sometimes divide over such issues. Kids are not stupid. They can see what's going on in the world and form their own opinions. They can see that there really is no wall between the fictional worlds we create and the real world we seek to understand. Each realm mirrors and informs the other.

Which brings us back to being authentic. If you are authentic, you reveal who you really are in your stories—warts and all. You risk being criticized for your warts, both by those who want to help you remove them and those who want to feel better about their own warts by making you feel bad about yours. You risk appearing stupid, hateful, ignorant and foolish because, let’s face it, you are all of these things some of the time.

But you also recognize the good in you—and in others. And that some risks are worth taking.

How do you manage authenticity in your writing?

 

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