The Rights of a Writer

This is a subject I do not approach lightly, for there are many people who have opposing views. But it is a subject close to my heart. Call this my little "Soap-Box Moment" if you will.



The other day while browsing through some old posts on different blogs I follow, I came across one with an interesting subject matter: it had to do with the "burning of" or "banning of" certain books and it showed a clip of the old TV show "The Waltons" which backed the author's point of view on the matter. Personally, I love watching that old TV show; my whole family does. We'll sit down to watch 5-8 episodes of "The Waltons" over almost anything on regular TV in the evening (though it's been a VERY long time since we've done that lately). It's set during World War II way out in the country, in a mountain home that houses… I think a family of 8 kids, the parents, and the grandparents, if I remember correctly. And to make matters even better, the Waltons' oldest son, John-boy, is an aspiring author striving to see his first work in print and working at going to college. I can so relate!



The clip was set during the time when Hitler was burning books in Germany – including the Bible – and replacing God's Holy Word with his own book. In the clip, the Waltons' church had found a copy of Hitler's book and planned to destroy it along with a bunch of other German books in a ceremonial burning. As you can probably imagine, John-boy went ballistic. Rising from his seat, he rushed to the pile of books on the ground and told the people staging the burning that it wasn't their right to destroy books just because they were German; the Germans had a right to read and write what they wanted to just as much as anyone in the states. He then picked up one of the books and, fondling it in his hands, stated simply that he wished someone could read German to them. An older woman hesitantly stood and joined John-boy in the center. She gently took the book from him and began to read it aloud. John-boy stopped her after a few sentences. "Could you please read it to us in English?" he asked. And with tears misting over her eyes, the woman lifted her head higher and began to read:



"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light.'"



John-boy had made his point: those who had planned to burn the German books were just as hypocritical as those who were burning books in Germany. Those who so strongly opposed the desecration of books had very nearly burned the Bible, the very book that they held so sacred.



After reading and watching this post, I ended up posting an extensive comment about how I agreed with John-boy, and when I had finished writing I thought about what an interesting subject it was to explore.

What are the rights of a writer – especially one that writes speculative fiction? And, for that matter, what are the rights of a reader?



What are they truly?



It is indeed a delicate subject to broach. Many people have different opinions on the matter and are not afraid to try and influence writers and readers towards their opinions. Indeed, many writers and readers have been influenced. It isn't always a bad thing, but sometimes it can be difficult to fight.



For example, I am a Christian Fantasy writer. As soon as people hear of this, there is immediate speculation. It's not uncommon for Christians to worry about reading Fantasy and Science Fiction. With the popularity of secular speculative fiction on the rise, and with the booming recognition of books like Harry Potter and Twilight, the church's hackles have risen and many people are on the watch for new pieces of fiction with underlying "evil intent", thoroughly convinced that only bad can come of reading such things. The Harry Potter books have all but been banned from many churches, and even from certain private schools because they are believed to be evil.



And why are they believed to be evil?



Because they have magic in them. And wizards. And even some witches. And because these characters are made out to be "Good" and even "Wise".



Now, I am no fan of witches, but for anyone who's ever read "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Dragon Keeper" series, the concept of good wizards isn't exactly new. Nor is the concept of magic. (think of Narnia, for instance.) My personal opinion is that the author had no real intention of writing evil into the books except for in the form of her villain. The rumors that give the books a bad name came from the outside. True, I haven't read any of these books yet and I don't know if I ever will, but I'm not about to judge them by their cover… or their author… or their author's intentions. People can read what they want to into anything they want, but I doubt that Mrs. Rowling regrets writing the Harry Potter books, or that she ever will.

How does this effect Christian Speculative Fiction Writers?



I would think that was obvious. Fantasy and science fiction have been given a bad name, and because of this many people refuse to give it a chance. While the amount of Christian Speculative readers (and writers) has grown drastically over the last few years, it still seems that there are more people against it than there are for it. Which is a real shame.



I have an older friend whom my family has known for years. I absolutely respect her and her advice, except for on one little matter; she believes that all "magic" is evil, she hates "The Chronicles of Narnia", despises Lewis for writing it, and believes I am desperately sinning by writing fantasy of any kind.



I absolutely disagree.



I believe that we were created in the image of the Creator of the Universe, and that he gave us an imagination so that we could use it and follow in his footsteps. My idea of magic isn't that of demons wreaking havoc in the world and those who try to harness the demons' power; rather, I believe that "Magic" is a term people stamp on to any fantastical happening that they have no explanation for, be it good or bad. Enchantment is rather a different story, but I won't get into that now. Do people in fantasy books use magic? Well… some readers say so. So what? "Magic" can be anything from a simple trick to something totally supernatural. People in today's world are too focused on the reason for things. If we don't understand something or it seems supernatural, we immediately have two options: God did it, or the devil did it. There's no in between. But where's the mystery in that? Who wants to know the source of every problem or the source of every answer that comes into their life? "Magic" is the source of wonderment in a fantasy book, and yes, some of it is supernatural… actually, most of it is. And in Christian spec-fic there are only two options for the source of magic: God or Satan… but we don't have to say that. We just say "Magic" and the context explains the rest. Are we really so different, then?



The point of the matter is that I can decide for myself how I am going to write something, why I write something that way, and what I do and do not believe. I am entitled to my own opinions; they are no one else's but mine. If I am influenced by someone else's opinions, well, that just means they touched me in some way. But I know what is right and what is wrong, and I can choose for myself which is which because God gave me that knowledge and I have his Word to guide me. I don't need somebody else to tell me that something else is right and that I'm a sinful person because I write a certain way… shoot, I know I'm a sinful person! We all are! But for goodness sake, take the beam out of your own eye first.



Another guy that I know believes that ALL fiction, no matter the kind or genre, is pure evil. When I asked him why, he said that it was because God wants us to search out truth and God made what is real. Therefore, what is real is truth, and if we read or write things that aren't or couldn't be real, then we are reading and writing lies and thus purposefully and willfully disobeying God.



I obviously don't believe this. But the matter of fact is, he is entitled to his own opinion and I won't try to sway him. Why should I? He didn't change my mind on the subject, and by trying to convince him otherwise I would knowingly be telling him that I sin on a regular basis (in his mind) and that I would like him to sin as well.



Another friend I know says that he believes Christian Romances are actually evil because they put certain ideas and desires into women's heads, awaking feelings (or something of the like) that should not be awakened. Ok, admittedly I almost laughed at this one; for one thing, I've read some Christian Romances and I don't ever recall have any type of "feeling" awakened in me that was wrong in any way, shape, or form. But I didn't try to tell him otherwise. That was his own outlook on the subject, not mine. If he believes that reading Christian Romances is sinful, then he doesn't have to read them, but my outlook is quite different. It is NOT a sin to me.



So my question is, what are the Rights of the Writer? What are we entitled to? Who must we listen to?

And this is what I came up with:



We are entitled to our own opinions and are under no obligations whatsoever to be influenced by other outside voices unless we wish to be.



That means, don't just throw good, solid, righteous advice out the window because you don't entirely agree with it: listen to what others have to say, but do so with discretion. God gave you your own brain for a reason as well as the freedom of choice. Use his gifts wisely – read his word, and pray, and don't forget to listen carefully for what he might whisper in your ear (it's always good to follow His advice. :D) But when allowing others to voice their opinions about a subject, listen with an open mind, yet remember who you are in God and be confident in what he has shown you; you can't go wrong that way.



Besides, we can't please everybody no matter how hard we try.  So if we just write for ourselves and for God, we'll know inside that we are doing something right.


*steps down off of soap-box*



So, what are your thoughts on the matter?

Those Feisty Little Things We Call Prologues

The publishing world is full of interesting questions, and authors tend to ask them the most: should I query that agent or shouldn’t I? What will that publisher think of my book? Does it really matter if my socks match in my Author’s Photo? Where on earth did I put that pencil?

The answers to some of these questions we may never know.

But there is one question that authors around the world have asked, and keep asking, and then ask it again just one more time:

“What should we do about Prologues?”

Prologues are a touché subject when it comes to the publishing world. Many think that prologues are just a way for the author to “put off” the actual beginning of their story.

“If they were any real good at writing,” these people argue, “they would just start their story at the first chapter and leave out the extra frills of a prologue.”

And maybe these people are right… to some extent. Some prologues do seem to only put off the actual beginning of the story, and can become really annoying (though I tend to attribute such annoying-ness to bad writing or a plot that wasn’t thoroughly thought through.)

Yet even with so much against prologues, many writers continue to write them. Why is that, do you think?

As a writer (though as yet an unpublished one) I have taken note of some of the advantages linked with prologues, and perhaps it’s because of these advantages that so many writers use them.

For one thing, while it’s true that a lot of people argue that Prologues just “set up” the real story, if the story is set in a fantasy world, what is wrong with “setting it up”?  It is most likely that people have never visited this fantasy world before (if this is your first book, or if it is set in a different world from other books you've written) and the problems associated with its inhabitants would be completely new to any potential readers.

What if your story is actually the memory of an elderly person looking back on his/her younger years? The question would then become, is it important that the reader knows that this character is elderly? If the answer to that question is ‘yes’, then it might be a good idea to use a prologue and an epilogue in order to make the story a “frame tale”: that is, a story told within a story. One of my books is set up something similar to this.

A prologue can even be something as small as a poem or a Prophesy just before the first chapter; perhaps it is only a short journal entry by one of the characters. Depending on the contents of the poem or journal entry, this type of prologue could be a very valuable part of your novel; a cryptic riddle for readers to unravel as they get deeper and deeper into the tale.

Above all other reasons, though, there is one reason that stands out to writers everywhere: Prologues allow the reader a glimpse of the story behind the story.

Allow me to give a few examples.  This first one I call the "Accidental Main Character" example, and I'm going to use the book "Eregon" to show you what I mean.

I was immediately intrigued with Paolini's prologue. In “A Shade of Fear”, Paolini used his prologue to have Arya send Sapphira’s egg to Eregon (by accident -- she was trying to send it to Brom), thus making a character who would normally be as uninteresting as the dirt that he farmed, become an extraordinary Main Character. If Paolini hadn’t used a prologue, the fact that Eregon found a strange blue stone in the woods wouldn’t seem nearly as significant to the reader.

The second example  that I’m going to use I like to call the “Reason for a Main Character” example, and I’m going to use “Song of the Daystar” to show you what I mean. (Yes, I know it’s my own book: bear with me here.)

In Song of the Daystar, the prologue is set in a forest with seven old men gathered to pray: a stranger comes and gives them a stone before dying, and we learn that these seven old men are in danger from the king. They call on the aid of Curron (my main character), to help them.

Because the Elders are intentionally calling on Curron for help, the fact that Curron becomes my main character is no accident, but it does provide a reason for my character to leave the relative safety of his home and set out on a dangerous journey. Why does he need a reason, you ask? Because his personality would never allow him to leave his job as a stable boy without some outside motive. If his personality was the “go-get-‘em, fight-‘em-all-one-handed” type of personality, he wouldn’t need an outside reason, thus I would not need a prologue.  And, because my prologue is not told from the point of view of my main character, I felt it would feel strange and rather disjointed from the story if I made what is now the prologue into the first chapter.

However, a writer should know that there are other problems tacked onto prologues, the biggest being the fact that many agents/publishers plain and simply don't like to take the time to read them.  This is a real shame in my mind, because I know how valuable prologues can be.  Knowing both of these facts, I have taken the time to go over my prologues and make them interesting and important enough for agents/publishers to see their potential.

Here are the three steps I use when deciding whether I should or shouldn't write a prologue:

1) before you write a prologue, check to see if the information is important enough to the story not to be left out of it entirely.

2) If it is important, then check to see if it can’t be woven into the story in some other place where it might fit better and, perhaps, feel less awkward.

3) If it’s important and yet doesn’t fit anywhere else in the story without feeling awkward, that is when you write a prologue.

And if you do it right, the prologue could be a valuable addition to your story, rather than a hindrance. :)

The Curse of a Perfectionist

The other day I was reading “Song of the Daystar” to my dad (who is not really a reader to begin with) and asked him what he thought of the story. His words to me:


“Well, it seemed a bit flowery; I couldn’t get into the story.”

"Flowery?!" I thought, "After all I've done to make it perfect, now it's too flowery?  I thought it was done!"  :(

Now, granted, my dad is not a reader: “NOT” in all capital letters unless, maybe, it happens to be the Bible. And he’s certainly not a fantasy reader: Heaven forbid he pick up even the “Chronicles of Narnia”, let alone ”LOTR” or “Through the Looking Glass”.

BUT…

It raised the question in me about whether or not I really was making my prose sound too flowery. Was I getting right to the point? Or was I taking too much time trying to describe everything, just sort of dancing around on point-shoes like a magical pixie to make everything seem wonderful?

Well, knowing my dad, if it doesn’t say something out right then it’s just a nuisance. I love him, but that’s just how he is. He likes the idea of second, hidden meanings, but he would much rather get right down to solving those second, hidden meanings than get all the clues first. He’s an artist, but in my opinion he’s more “straight forward” than I am.

Does this mean my writing is not good enough? Could this mean I have to go back and rewrite?

Well, no. No, it doesn’t. I do have to go through it and edit, check for grammatical errors and spelling typos, but I don’t have to rewrite.

Some of you may be asking, “Then why on earth are you posting on this subject?” But my reasoning is simple. Many writers take any advice given by any random person and immediately apply it to their work. These are the ones who want to please everybody.

I am one of these.

I’m probably at the top of the list.

You see, writers are automatic perfectionist. In real life it may not seem like it: we may leave clothes on the floor, not comb our hair a certain way, leave stacks of books lying around, or not care all that much whether everything is organized on our desk or not. But set us down at a keyboard and we immediately start criticizing ourselves. We don’t want to let our stories go until they are everything they have the potential to be. They must be perfect.

“Perfect!” we scream. And we type, and the keyboard starts to smoke, and eventually the smoke detectors go off, and then at last we have to get up to turn off the screaming buzzing noise that is wracking our concentration. But then we are back at the keyboard, changing things, rewriting, debating with ourselves, trying to make everything “perfect”.

The sad truth is, no matter how hard we work on it, it will never be perfect. It will never be finished. And perhaps, the most gulling fact of all, we will never be able to please everybody.

Never.

Once, while reading an interview with one of my favorite authors, I read this quote: “My book will never be finished until my publisher pries it from my fingers, and even then I’ll keep working on it”.

Unfortunately, it’s a truth. I will probably do the same thing. Writers seem to have this need to please everybody, to make everybody happy, and prove to themselves that they are not the computer loving weirdoes that many people think they are.

But we are. Oh we are! And the only way we’ll be able to ever be satisfied with our writings is to come to grips with the facts that we can’t make what we write please everyone.

I seriously thought about what my dad told me. He was only trying to help me, I know. He didn’t mean for his words to sting (even though they did.) I thought about what he said. I considered it. I went back and read over the manuscript.

But you know what I found out?

I liked the manuscript the way it was. I ran it through several critique groups and they enjoyed it as well. I let random people read the prologue and first chapter (which was all I read to my dad). The random people seemed pleased. A few of them made suggestions which I took into consideration. But I don’t need to change the entire book just to please my dad, who doesn’t like reading that sort of stuff in the first place, let alone the fact that his daughter writes it.

Yes, I am a perfectionist. I want my book to be perfect. But I can come to grips with the fact that it won’t be. As long as I’m happy with it and know that I have taken it as far as I can, someday I know that it will sit on a book shelf and people will pick it up and read it: the people who do like what I write. It doesn’t have to be perfect for everyone.

Well, at least I’m still trying to convince myself of that.

Where Oh Where Have the Good Books Gone?!

It is a shame. Really, it is. In a way, I feel completely let down by the bookstores of today. Do you want to know why? I am disappointed with the itty-bitty amount of good Christian reads that large chain stores such as B&B and Borders allow on their shelves; it’s almost a crime.


Oh, don’t get me wrong: they associate themselves with some Christian books and publishers. If they didn’t they would lose a very large audience and of course they don’t want to do that. But they’ll try to get by with putting as few real and printed books as possible on their actual shelves and the rest they leave to E-sales.

I am ashamed. I knew it was bad before, but what can a person do, right?

I went into a Border’s store today and went to the “Religious” section hoping to find a good Christian Fantasy read (because, as many of you know, I enjoy reading fantasy above any other genre). In my personal opinion, a better name for that section would have been The “any-type-of-remotely-religious-looking-book-that-we-can-manage-to-fit-onto-a-single-shelf-and-not-be-called-bias” section.

I am totally serious here.

There were books on every religion from Budism to Wiccan stuffed on a single shelf and that was what they called the “Religious” section. Now, I admit that Christian books dominated that poor and lonely shelf, but more than half of these books were sappy western romances (and I apologize to those of my readers who enjoy western romances; I’m just not very fond of them). The good Thriller and Fantasy reads I could find, I already had and had no desire to re-purchase.

There was one new book I discovered: “Raven’s Ladder”, third (I think) in a YA series by Jeff Overstreet. That was it. And as much as I hate starting a series in the middle or near the end, I bought the book. Why? Because it was worth it. Not only does it look like a very good and intriguing read, but the Bookstores need to see that readers want these books, and we want the stores to sell them – not just on the internet, but IN THEIR STORES! I mean, let me see a show of hands: how many of you out there prefer going and sifting through the shelves and pages of a physical bookstore over clicking a link on the internet?

*waves hand frantically in the air, jumping up and down and shouting “me, me, me!!!”)

Christian fantasy writers, publishers, and readers really need to stand up. We need to. They’re not going to get the message otherwise. We want more than just a single shelf dedicated to every type of religion the world can throw their way with Christian stuff mixed in there somewhere. If they can dedicate an entire huge section to vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and demons and call it YA, they can give us the good, wholesome, Christian Fantasy we want to read!!!!

If you agree with me on this, let’s make sure that others get the picture. All I ask is that you post about this subject on your own blog, or else link to this page. Let’s get the message out there; we want the “good books” back!!!

Writing on Easter Sunday...

Happy Easter everyone! Today we celebrate the wonderful thing that Christ did for us when he allowed himself to be killed, and then rose again on the third day!

I've just been checking out all of my favorite writing hot-spots, trying to keep on top of things. While visiting the Writer's Digest forums, I started to ask myself: why do so many writers feel self-conscious about their works? I mean, we write, then we re-write, then edit, then rewrite again… then we post it somewhere to see what others think, get the feedback, go back and edit again, post again, rewrite again… after awhile wouldn’t you think we’d have it as perfected as we can get it?

So, ok, nothing’s perfect. That’s just the cold hard truth. In my opinion though, every new writer believes that in order to make it to the shelves, they have to pull out the next bestseller. This just isn’t true. I mean, I sure wouldn’t mind finding out from someone that my book had hit the New York Times Bestseller list, but it probably won’t happen for me on the first time around. Personally, I just enjoy the writing, and when I finally see my book in print, that will be like the icing on the cake. (Notice I said “when” and not “if”. First step to achieving your goal: think positive.)

So to all of you young or new writers out there freaking out because you just aren’t sure if your poem or song or novel is quite good enough and you want to please everyone: STOP! Take a break and think about it. You’re never going to be able to please EVERYONE with what you write; what’s really important is that you write it to your own standards, make it the best it can be, and be happy with it. (I speak to myself as well.) If you’re not happy with it, no one else will be.

Ok, time to get off of my soap box and go take my own advice. :D