This is just a wee post to point out the return of the "Currently Studying" box in the sidebar. Yes, that's the sum of it; school has started again. I don't want to say I expect to be more or less sparse here or elsewhere. There's a lot more material to cover (most of it brand new), and I do expect to be quite busy learning it. But as far as schedules go, so far mine looks tolerable. It is not, thank God, a six-week course in microbiology.


For all that business about tolerability, things appear to be heading into the wrapping-up stage with alarming speed. This semester looks exceedingly short, and the next one even shorter.

All in all, as far as school years go, I think this one is going to be a grand ride.

I have fallen behind, but not without reason. There simply are not enough hours on a week's end for writing blog posts; the last few, I 'cheated' and wrote ahead. I was not so forth-looking this time because I thought, 'Ha! Favourite book? Quote? Easy enough! I shan't have to write a thing!' ...and then promptly neglected to do anything about it on Saturday. 'That's very well,' I told myself Saturday night at work, 'I shall just put quote and book together on Sunday evening and it will all make sense.' Well... yes. I don't generally blog on Sunday, either, except when I write ahead. And then yesterday we were canning peaches all day, which was much more engrossing than the prospect of smashing the last three days into one post. So I let it slide another day. But I'm ready to be moving on beyond this line of posts - ready to be done (much as I have enjoyed it). So here we go: the last three days, like tin soldiers all in a row.


It has been a very long time since I read a book specifically about writing in a how-to sense - and even then, much as I enjoyed my Rhetoric teacher's curriculum, I should not call it my favorite. Every book should be instructive as long as the reader is paying attention, but that hardly helps narrow things down. So I have chosen the middle ground: a book that does not necessarily teach grammar or style, but which delves philosophically into the motives and aim and source of the creative spirit of the artist - indeed, the creative spirit of every human being, though so many pretend their professions do not allow for it.

"I liked Dorothy Sayers at first because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation - as I like a high wind." -C.S. Lewis

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction."

"I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality."

"Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn't require his attention."

Of course there are a myriad of others by a myriad of others; you may have the pleasure of digging them up for yourself.

the fifteenth day - your favourite song to write to

Song? One? Yeah. Right.

• Surprise - Jars of Clay. I love the ebb-and-flow of this song. It feels like staring out of a window on a long but not-uncomfortable ride - which is perfect for writing.
• If You Believe Me - Relient K. This is more like blowing down the interstate in a convertible. The pace of the song and the pace of my writing are not so closely linked as the idea of Truth coming so directly head-to-head with what we generally find believable. My character undergo a lot of healthy self-disbelief (think not the conflicted Disney character, here...).
  
• Southbound Train - Jon Foreman. Another tide-like, train-ride of a song... I like quiet music. I'd rather not have my writing simply be the emotional effects of a song on my weak mind, and anyway I can get a hold of my thoughts better with these songs.
• A Lot of Life Behind Us - Murray Gold. Writing to soundtracks is the best idea since sliced bread, simply because soundtracks (at least the good ones) work with a story without dominating the senses. So...
  
• The World Has Left Us Behind - Samuel Sim. No, I don't write all depressing stories. Well, maybe a little. You can't totally depress the spirits with a piano, anyway - not without a lilt of the uplifting.
  
• Anything from my moderate collection of The Decemberists and U2, and my not-so moderate collection of Andrew Peterson. Hilary Hahn's Bach Violin Concertos are splendid; I intentionally write to those more than anything else, simply because they have no lyrics (really helps with processing issues) and yet are complex enough to keep me awake. 
• If all else fails, I take a hike with Thornton or Knightley.

Please note (ahem), I listen to a fairly wide range of musical styles, and I try to give them each a turn so that my music isn't directly feeding whatever I'm writing. There is no direct corollary between what I mean to write and what I put into my ears. I don't pick up a sad song when I need to write a sad scene; oftentimes, I'll do the opposite for balance - or I'll hit 'shuffle' and let it fall where it will. I don't stifle the influence, but I don't want to encourage it to the point of dependence. After all, those Venerable Greats from Days Gone By endured without earbuds. More often than not, I take a page out of their books (not literally) and find that silence is better than anything else.

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I thought this one was impossible. I know there is a list of five or so popular songs that mention writing books, but I don't listen to those songs and it seemed cheating to just go and link them for the sake of having one. At the same time, looking at the lyrics - well, they didn't seem to be about those things as much as they mentioned them. So I went back to the moderately limited pool of music that I enjoy. I found a few; they didn't altogether inspire me, and they were more about story-telling than books or writing. But as I looked at two in particular - Boy Like Me/Man Like You by Rich Mullins and Little Boy Heart Alive by Andrew Peterson - I thought of a third. It is a song about storytelling, and not about the writing of books specifically (it mentions movies, ironically) ... but, though I begrudge the Kindle its existence, paper and a binding do not a book make. Scratches on hardened pulp from a tree do not writing make. The essence of the book, the writing, at least as far as poetics are concerned - is the ability to tell a good story.

But what makes a good story? 



As far as I can tell, the best stories began not with the intention of the writer to create something profound or striking, but with simple snapshots. The author is given mere pictures: not grand plots, grand summaries, though those are being written as well, but enough to inform the author that there is something here that must be conveyed. And they will not always be pictures of knights slaying dragons or Frodo hefting the ring into Mount Doom (oh, wait, that didn't happen anyway...). No; with this snapshot-method, writing becomes less and less about concocting the most fantastical plots and the most striking heroes. It may accomplish those things, but in a roundabout fashion: by finding beauty and newness - or renewness, if you will - in the small, seemingly insignificant glimpses from everyday life of things as they one day will be.

The writer who begins with snapshots must surrender, as Chesterton surrendered (indeed, as Christ surrendered), the notion that only the things that seem great in our eyes are capable of great beauty, or worthy of celebration. On lowly ones He bends his eye... ordinary, even mean, things - worthy of extraordinary celebration: marriage, Christ feeding His people in the sacrament of communion, morning's light burning through clouds, the timeworn story of a hero swooping in to save the day... We have seen these so many times perhaps we begin to despise them, or think them insignificant or ordinary, forgetting their source. All these are as shadows, as silhouettes through a dark glass, of the same story - indeed, the only story that conveys real truth and beauty.

The snapshot-writer has got to see that - at least the beauty and truth, though many have done so and misappropriated the source. As redeemed snapshot-writers, there is the accompanying, unshakable recognition that these are not all that they are on this side of the world. These snapshots are a peephole into unutterable beauty and truth. Our feet are not strong enough yet, but someday we will be able to see all the reality behind the shadows - and oh, we long for that day! It is our job as writers not to contrive but to exploit that longing; to recognize those things on this side of glory and then - ah, the joy! - to struggle with words until they pull us along into that renewed perspective: Yes, this is a window into something glorious, and I am on the outside - but not for long - not for long...

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The most important thing is, there is no most important thing - nothing like "pay your commas well and don't overwork them." Your books are like people. Somebody may give you a piece of advice for dealing with one, and it may be good and sound advice, but the minute you wield it as The Solution, you reduce the story to a one-dimensional piece of triteness. Either you're in the boat or not; what happens thereafter isn't a matter to be handled with anecdotes. Purpose to with your writing as you do with people: committed to it because that is what God has called you to do as one created in His image. And then get in the boat and get on with it.

(This is so short because I've had better things to do than keep up with this, and because the only other two points I would make - read good books, and just write something - have been more than aptly made by Jenny.)


I love Jane Austen. I love Rosemary Sutcliff. I love all my aspiring author friends, the published and the yet-to-be-published. I love the lasses of my childhood: L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott (a grudging, half-withheld sort of love here), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Maud Hart Lovelace...

But really, if I could be one author - it would be Dorothy Sayers. Whether she is writing Wimsey with his walking-stick-sword and detectivating powers or plying her wit against the insipid churchisms of her (and our) day, she's fantastic. As a writer of fiction, of the poetic, she is charming. Straight philosophy comes trippingly off her tongue and falls with equal ease on the ears without tickling the intellect to sleep. Even with Chesterton, one has to do a good deal of slogging while he commits straight philosophy. Sayers contrives to be companionable and yet leaves the mind ringing with truth.

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A week's time after this challenge ends, school begins. The textbooks are ordered, the uniform needs to be dusted off, and I should probably start putting my immunization record together again. (They jabbed me twice - twice - for that TB test in March for work. No reason to do it again in August, thank you!)


I currently have two. The first one is a pseudo-parody of fantasy which is little more than a few pages and an audible chuckle every time I think of some new avenue to take the idea. It's difficult to describe the process, since I'm not doing much writing, but the story is still definitely alive and kicking. It grows in my mind - sort of like taking a ridiculous thing and finding new improvements on that ridiculousness - into further ridiculosity. The second one is my mystery-fantastical (which is the name I invented for it, ergo it sounds way cooler than it really is...)

Incidentally, this picture is already in the sidebar on the right. Yay redundancy!

(That's not the real title. Or maybe it is, and nobody told me. It's a moderate joke that threatens to stick; let's put it that way.)

The story is told from the perspective of an aspiring young writer who works in the office of an investigative agent. It features a few detectives, a notorious outlaw, a missing lady, the elusive scent of an impending murder, and the lingering, sinister figure of a corrupt sociomoral-somethingorother. And it's not really about any of those. Yeah, some writers know what their story will mean beforehand. And then there's the riff-raff - those of us who totter along behind our characters, pretending to be writers and pleading feebly behind our hands to our characters when we hope no one's looking: "What are you doing with this thing again?"

...well, I suppose I could tell you oodles more if I wished; the trouble is, one feels a certain awkwardness about these things. It's sort of like the whole literature textbook thing: at a certain point, you have to stop reading books about books and just read the books themselves. And if you never get to read my book in particular, it will hardly help you to hear me yodel on about it endlessly. If you truly (or falsely; the sincerity of your feelings mean little enough in this instance) care to know more about various aspects of this story, you can find hints and gleanings and outright tellings here, here, here, and here. I know, I'm probably not playing by the rules - but there are no rules, and anyway - well,  I daresay, in a year or two, you'll have got over it tol'rably.

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Once again, I am not exactly sure what this challenge is asking for. My guess is it means something mildly instructional. And I've always been rather disdainful of instructional videos as far as writing and reading are concerned. I'm sure they have their place, but I feel that rather than listening to someone talk about writing or reading, the more instructional thing would be to go do them myself. You cannot make a reader of someone by talking to them about books; they must read for themselves. Similarly, simply explaining how to "write well" does not make someone a good writer; they must get out there and actually write. But the best way to read or write well is to read well first, and so I offer this humble, moderately-instructive exposition of the grave importance of book-reading.


Because, you know, there's a Julian Smith quote for everything.

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Someone asked me about this not too long ago, and I realized I really didn't know. Any one sample of my writing at any given time would probably fall sloppily in between two or three genres. I wrote one story that would belong mostly in the genre of fantasy, but that was far from my favourite. To remedy this - and to be able to give an answer to this question - I have coined my own genre: what I [would] like to read.

That may seem rather self-centred, but I think most authors follow that rule. I write what I admire most in a book: the ability to be fantastical without being strictly fantasy. That is, rather than saying "This all took place in a world called Idle Mirth in the Kingdom of Ethelfrythwyrdd where the good king Elbordir of Ethelfrythwyrdd ruled..." That would be closer to strict fantasy, and also largely a rip-off. As mentioned, I have dabbled in a little of that (the fantasy, hopefully not the ripping-off), but the fantastical is more to my taste.

It is difficult to describe the fantastical, but I'll try to summarize it as I see it in my own writing. As far as I can tell, it involves taking relatively modernish settings and intertwining them with the ideas (if not the literal figures) of the fantasy novel: heroes and monsters, kings and peasants, bards and jesters. Sometimes this comes complete with the swashbuckling duels; other times it carries the almost jarring note of the modern, tedious business of pulling out a gun and plugging someone.

Of course, even with the loose boundaries of fantastical to work within, things tend to seep across the boundaries into other realms. My current full-blown work-in-progress blends the swashbuckling with the tedious, but it also behaves as if it is a mystery novel. So you see, the old question of genres is still not an easy one to answer. But I think it is safe to say that when I write, the element I am striving for most of all is that element of the fantastical, the fairy-tale, the moderately unbelievable. If there are not dragons, there are the sort of characters that would be educated enough (having read the right sort of books) to know what to do if there were, and brave enough to venture to do the same. Chesterton advocated the necessity of the fairy tale in the ordinary; I should like to do that, though not as directly.

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It is at this time I must confess: I don't have a bucket list. Such lists are made for items like "go skydiving" and "hike through Europe," and while I would not be outright averse to such things (well, perhaps my stomach would raise some serious objections to the former) I have been instilled by a measure of whimsical practicality from my father's side of things. This says I shall have eternity to experiment with those things (in a new, perfect, resurrected body on a new, perfect Earth) and I might as well enjoy where God has placed me now rather than wishing for the far-off places in a broken world. (I understand and sympathise with the desire to explore and travel; I am merely deferring mine on a larger scale for another time, and indulging it as much as I can in my own backyard for the present.)

That is not to say I do not want to experience specific things while I live. There are many things I want to accomplish and share; they are simply not trivial enough for me to forget them without an organized list, and I do not think most of them would fit onto paper anyway. I know I should say "I want to get published." That is the sort of thing one puts on a bucket list - even a nonexistent one, I should think. The fact of the matter is, I don't write to be published. That is not to say I don't intend to, someday - but for the present, I want to write because writing is good for my soul. It is part of being who God created me to be. The process of getting it onto paper is just as relevant and irrelevant as the process of my fingers typing this post: utterly necessary, and completely not the centre of it all.

Right now, immediately, all I want specifically is to finish Miss Brewster's story, and be able to show it to at least one other person and hear them say "I see! I see it too!" - not with the shock of one who sees something previously foreign for the first time, but with the renewed joy of viewing a familiar thing from a new and more beautiful angle, the worn and weary lines of the ordinary suddenly cast in golden hues. And then I want to edit Miss Brewster's story, at least once, and iron out all the wrinkles that I am trying desperately to file away 'til after the initial writing process is through.And then... I will rub my aching wrists, and pick up and begin it all again. Or maybe I'll take a break and try out some Dickens. That's the charm of the nonexistent bucket list - anything could happen. It was always going to, anyway.

Thus ends my rather dull little spout. I'm afraid I was much more interested in the next subject; it lends a rather pruneish aspect to this one.

The pictures make it look so easy... {source}

 May I just say that there are few things worse for the temporary state of mind than working nights. One of those few things is thinking one is going to work a night and then being put on call. This throws one's tenuously-regular sleep schedule into further depths of Weird and Insane. All this to say, if my brainwaves seem to vacillate in terms of general coherence and cohesiveness, do me the undeserved favor of chalking it up to sleep patterns.

Heigh-ho, we strike the third-way mark! I think I am not alone when I say that this one gave me an inordinate amount of trouble (as a matter of fact, I know I am not; Jenny has already posted hers).


The trouble with this question is, I am (in general) a hideous optimist when it comes to people. Characters are people. Therefore, I don't generally stop in the middle of any story and think, 'Man, this person is just the limit!' Furthermore, I think the only people who can hate or even genuinely dislike their characters are people who hate writing.

'Wait!' you say. 'What about villains? Surely you can't like a villain - there must be something said for principle here!' Well... an author can hardly be principled in the usual way of likes and dislikes, and let me tell you why. A character the reader classifies as unlikable for the sake of villainry is, to the writer's eyes, filling his or her function in a plot as ... unlikable characters. This allows us (as writers) to like them insofar as they fill a role, and fill a role well. Oftentimes, they even make us laugh or give us a small amount of pleasure by virtue of their being Interesting. My experience as a writer is not broad (much less universal), but I think it must be difficult for any writer who enjoys his craft to dislike any of his characters, provided they tell the story along with him and it is a story the writer finds worth hearing.

Where do unlikeable characters come from - characters that belong on the "Unfavourite" list? Could it be when characters don't do what we mean them to do? Oftentimes, when characters step outside the scope of the role we give them, the frustration of that does not make them unlikeable because of the added joy of seeing the story develop in ways we did not foresee. The true frustration - the tedious, slow, weight-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach sort of frustration - is when everything goes as planned, and the flaw is in the plan. This is when the author irrationally turns to the character and says "It's all your fault!" and decides that character is her least favourite to write. And if that is how we take least favourite to mean, I have one character who comes pretty darn close.

I actually did make this one, though the background doesn't belong to me.

This is the recalcitrant hero of last year's NaNoWriMo novel. He was meant to be mediocre, honest, and a little shabby - the sort of fellow who doesn't intend to do anything great, but by working an honest job and being faithful in little things turns out the greatest of them all. But there didn't seem to be any way past the first part about never doing anything great, and he became a rather shifty and lazy chap.

To worsen his plight by contrast, he kept making fascinating friends, while he himself remained tedious and mediocre. He had a fascinating cousin who went to university, and then he made a hilariously dour friend who traveled the country by jumping trains - but would he take a hint? No; he just sludged on through like so much proverbial dull slime. The moments that should have captivated my heart - moments of emotional fire and mental lucidity - only made things worse, because they were contrived and not part of him. Perhaps the worst thing was that I had made him that way on purpose, meaning to Make Something of him, and it turned out my hand was not equal to the task.

It was mostly the wrong sort of thing to try to develop during the rush and bustle of NaNo - that wasn't his fault. Barnabas needed to be grown slowly, and I couldn't afford slowness then. I've set that chap aside 'til I'm ready to let him make his own story; I'm not capable of forcing that kind of plot, which is why it really was nothing short of a moron's game to try it for NaNo. I squeezed past the fifty-thousand-word mark and collapsed in a state of relief at not having to force myself to slog along with my poor, underdone hero. Ah well; live and learn - and I do mean to try his tale again. Slowly. A few sentences at a time. For the sake of the fascinating cousin, if nothing else.

"The goal of the award is to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers. The rules of the award are:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have fun!"

Abigail, my good friend over at Scribbles and Ink Stains and author of The Soldier's Cross (and many other as-of-yet unpublished works), stuck my blog on her list of five for this award. Of course, under-appreciated translates to (as the description of the award details) not very many followers. I do not feel under-appreciated in the slightest, and I don't know if I did that more than two-hundred followers would change that. A few thoughtful comments will cover miles where thousands of "likes" will collapse after inches.

Nevertheless, I give you a list of five blogs that I think ought to be read more. Some of them have not been updated for a little while, which is very vexing - but maybe if people flood them, something will be done about it. The trouble is, I have too many blogging friends whom I think well-worth a read. I am an avid reader of most of those on Abigail's list, and took the liberty of using her selection of them as an excuse not to mention them (dur, that's exertion, wot?). After I had chosen two or three, I noticed that I knew them all in "real life." Inspired by that realization, I decided to finish the list off with folk I have met, or meet with frequently. But these are by no means the extent of my recommendations; if I may point out the list of links on the sidebar currently to your right, you will find reams of good reading material there.

Without further ado, in no particular order:

1. A Vapor In The Wind. These are the musings of a musician, a tale-spinner, a dreamer, a sometime-photographer, and (most importantly) a bearer and magnifier of the life of Christ within her. She is also incidentally my next-next-younger sister, and we can talk for hours - so I may be a bit biased when I say I always enjoy reading what she has to say. Nevertheless, her blog is a pretty thing.
   
2. The Everyday Miracle. Here are the tales and musings of one possessing a much sharper mind and wit than my own! If you don't fancy reading all of her past posts, at least go to the description of the blog (the extra page, on the top bar) and read that. It catches me all around the throat and chest whenever I do. (This is my older sister, and now I promise I am done with plugs for family members. :)
   
3. Logbook 98. This is my celebrated literary-genius of a friend. (Her comment, if she comments, will be in the emblem of a verbal scowl now that I've said that.) She's into just about everything beautiful and grand: Old English literature, Sutcliff, poetry - and then she's learning French. No, seriously, she has an eye for beauty and a pen for describing it, and her tales are always delightful, whether she is climbing mountains or purchasing a car.
   
4. winged writings, feathered photos. I don't know how I manage to hobnob with all these artistic folk, since I am so limited in this area. But here is yet another dreamer, tale-spinner, and photographer - talented in all, but especially the latter. She calls herself the Odd Fish, but she certainly seems to have her ducks in a row (she needs to post, though!).
   
5. Define "Weird". Yet another photographer! Where do I find these folk? ...well, I know this chap through the interwebz, but he is of Jenny and Abigail's crew and we jostled each other's elbows a little in June, so he now belongs to "real life." (I know all life is real, but it's supposed to eliminate confusion.) And he really is a stellar grapher of photos, and he needs more people to nip at his heels so he'll get out and increase his stash of pictures.

I have posted twice today. I shall now go collapse from the strain of it all.Adieu.

Source for image and contest are contained herein.

I consider myself a fairly well-read person. I consider myself a fairly sociable person, too, and I suppose in this matter people and books are very much alike: that is, no matter how far and wide your scope of acquaintances may roam, there will only be a few that are close enough to be friends, to sustain a marked and lasting influence on your life. So with people, so with books - because after all, the source of influence is not mere words on paper, but those words as an expression of the experience of a person, of a human soul. It is not such a surprising thing that people are such close kin to books.

All this to say, I may read far and wide all I wish; when asking personally about the authors and works I love, the smallness of scope and inescapable overlap is painfully obvious. In my post on Chesterton, I hope it was obvious how much that author has influenced me in terms of style, plot, characterization... But Chesterton is too big for this post; it will not contain him. Chesterton has shaken my ways of going about most things, not just writing. Most of the people I read - and love - are that way, but I thought to highlight one that has most obviously and directly had an impact on style. That, after all, is what the question asks.

It is impossible to find a picture where this fellow doesn't look dour. Source.

You probably know him as "A.A.Milne," if you are fortunate enough to have read him or heard of him at all. He is the man responsible for crafting the fantastical tales of Winnie-ther-Pooh. Allow me to insert a caveat, or a commendation, or a desperate plea: If you are only familiar with Winnie-ther-Pooh as a result of (unfortunate) exposure to various Disney productions, STOP. I have seen the type of trivialized nonsense that those hideous rip-offs have become, and they are not on par with Milne's writing. When I speak of being influenced by Milne, that is nothing remotely close to being influenced by the Disney children's series. I am sure they are very good sorts of movies in their own way, but they have run down the road of the Slapstick and the Stereotypical. Eeyore is now a symbol for the Cutely Emo... buh. I am sorry if I am insulting anyone's childhood favorite; it is just that your childhood favorite (the movies) insult mine (the book). I will not try to talk you out of your appreciation of the films, but please - go read the original stories. Hilarity and wit abounding in a children's book in ways that we have lost (since children, apparently, are supposed to be incapable of rational thought nowadays).

He's probably so tight-lipped and sour-looking because he just saw a Disney adaptation. Source.

Onwards! How, you ask,does reading Winnie-ther-Pooh influence somebody's style? Well - two things. The first is the clever way of writing for children while writing for adults. Milne's writing grows with the reader. One may read it at six, and find it funny; come back at ten, and find it funnier still; return yet again at sixteen, and realize one's ability to breathe has been replaced by one's compulsion to laugh. This practice of writing at so many levels that one cannot distinguish where they begin and end, one only knows that they are enjoyable at them all - I cannot say it has influenced my style to the point where I can emulate it perfectly, but it has certainly compelled me to write children's stories in such a way that they read "upwards."

On another utterly-non-fangirlish note, doesn't he look like Wimsey from the good adaptations? Source.

Secondly, Milne's prose is funny, and it isn't simply because he's cracking jokes all the time. The way he uses words - period - is hilarious, with that sort of unconscious hilarity that children have. Perhaps this is why children may laugh at it, and be content to listen to it, and yet never fully get it until they grow up. Only Milne's humor takes a new depths, because Milne knows just how funny he is being - and yet he goes on, quite seriously, talking about Woozles and Heffalumps and Pooh and Piglet stumping round and round a tree counting their own tracks multiplying... It is this ability to make fun of oneself in an innocently self-deprecating fashion that seized my attention when I read him years later as a writer. The idea that one can be funny in a roundabout way by using words a little carelessly, but with intention - it had never struck me before. The only unfortunate side of this is that when I am most aware that I have been writing in this way, that is generally the time that somebody marks the section and adds "Badly written. Sounds really pretentious." ...and my response is, "yeah, I kind of wanted to - I mean, it was supposed to be funny..."

The older-age genres, apparently, take themselves far too seriously. But the ability to say things with charming simplicity - seriously, with the quirk of a smile about the eyes, and those undoubtedly the frankly eager eyes of a child - takes great humility and great courage - and such are the things we only outgrow through tragic presumption of being 'too old.'

Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. Source.

By way of a general disclaimer, I think that the truly great authors, once read, cannot be entirely recovered from. (This is doubtless true of insipid literature as well, but I think it takes a more persistent battering of exposure, since insipid literature is mostly influential by passivity.) If you have never read A.A. Milne, or found yourself (heaven forbid!) incapable of enjoying him as an adult, you will probably not like my writing - or you will find parts of it stupid and tedious when it means to be funny in a moderately self-deprecating way. Similarly, if you have ever read Chesterton or Lewis, you will probably read my writing and say "Ho! Cheap imitation." Though I can identify a few areas in each where I would wish to be able to emulate that particular point of style, it is not a matter of trying to write like anybody. When it does happen, I can't seem to help it, and neither can you, if you read good books and pay attention while you do so.

"And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself, "it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said, "Which it is," he added, "So there you are." 

Credit for the image and contest belong here.

Oh, good. The keyword is 'attempt.' We can take that word rather loosely.

I first attempted writing when I was five or six. I have forgotten my plots and characters but not, I think, because of the distance of time. I forgot because the plot and characters did not matter much to me then. But I remember well certain other elements of the experience of writing. I can still experience the shiver from the magical act of putting notepaper in a three-ring-binder and making my own book to scribble things in (a blank book! I have never recovered completely from the delight of an scribblin' book). I can find myself, as plainly as yesterday, sitting at a little table in the red room across from Elizabeth and writing with great solemnity, because to write was surely a great and solemn thing then. And while I do not remember much about the people or storyline who populated those pages, I clearly recall a setting with a gate and a waterfall and a rainbow. I so badly wanted to have a waterfall and a rainbow in my own backyard then, you see, and having it live in my own little book of scribblin' was proverbial balm for this thorn in my side.

There were others later, of course: the adventures of Tom (who built a remote control car that terrorised a stewardess), Mark (I don't remember much about him), Joelle (of the infamous crowns-in-the-oven), Elena (who fought bravely in the battle of the Mashed Potatoes) and Anna (who cleaned a castle in a day using a trolley and a bucket); the ramblings of Bertha and Belinda (whom we liked to scorn simply because we had given them such hideous names); the questionably violent tales of Lucinda, Jane, Beatrice, and Sally (with their youngest brother John... I believe law enforcement on the whole was greatly misunderstood in that one); a rewritten script for a Cinderella play (we crocheted all the dresses for our American Girl dolls... including great flouncing, ruffled ones for the step-sisters); the Nancy Drew diaries (full of scathing wit for that poor cliche-of-a-heroine)... But though the names and faces escape me, I shall always remember the waterfall and the rainbow as the first.

I like challenges. ...perhaps that is not true as an overarching, general statement about life - but certain challenges, yes. I like ones that make me write blogposts. I like ones where I missed the boat on the first few steps so there are no expectations left.

Oh, look! A challenge that will make me write blogposts - and I've slept through the first day already! How convenient!

(Yes, this is like... Anna-steals-from-Jenny month. Or something.) 

At any rate, the thing is for writers - it covers fifteen days - and the general idea, as far as I can tell, is to make writers write about bookish things.

Source for image and contest both may be found here. :)

Since I missed the first day, I'm going to lump them both together in this post.

Original photo of Benedict Cumberbatch belongs to the lad himself.

This is my Outlaw. The word for him is dappled, which is hilarious because when I first wrote this character I wrote him as a horse (talking, of course, for he was part of a small girl's childhood, and the good creatures are able to talk there), and he wasn't literally dappled at all. But that is how I see this character, and perhaps why I love him best: seriousness dappled with mirth; rough manners dappled with chivalry; an outlaw dappled with princely jewels... and it's the fact that he keeps it down to this smattering of brightness that make him so splendid. It's a humility that veils without venturing into deception.

I am still not sure how far the humility has taken him; I do not know where he properly belongs, the things he has sacrificed and the reasons he has for losing them. He is not my chummiest character; I have played with some that were far more sympathetic and agreeable. Unearthing his secrets is far from the point of this story, but I write it with the wistful half-hope that it may be one of its by-products. That's the thing about dappled things: like the sunshine smattering the floor of a forest, all his best traits are impossible to pin down - yet they are undeniably there, and their presence reminds us that someday we shall burst out from under the dark ceiling and find our faces fully bathed in the sunlight.



...this question has a malicious ring of impossibility. Basically, everyone I read (with two or three exceptions) are men. Call me a literary tomboy (or a literary misogynist) if you will, I'm afraid it's mostly men: Lewis, Tolkien, Dickens, Collins, Lawhead, Blamires, Wodehouse... to say nothing of the Greek poets and Puritans and sundry theologians that make up the odd mixture of "what Anna likes to read." So I am only looking within the scope of authors who mix the roles of poet, philosopher, and just-plain-darn-good-story-teller. This basically leaves... Lewis, Blamires (less of the poet on that one), and the author I've selected, whom you should have recognized would be my favorite when I left him off the above list.

Figuratively speaking, I'm the one on the right. Source: http://gkc.co.uk.

 When I was twelve or thirteen, I took an online Logic course. The instructor wrote the textbook himself, and (being a literary chap) he loved to weave literary things throughout his curriculum. Thus it was that I was provided with a link to an online cache (probably over at Project Gutenberg) of short stories called 'The Father Brown Mysteries.' It made sense, really; taking a logic course and reading mystery stories. So I tried the first one: The Blue Cross. 

It was a sound like Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin. -P.G. Wodehouse, 'The World of Mr. Mulliner' 

I was not, at that time, acquainted with the likes of Dorothy Sayers, and so had never experienced a mystery story that actually cut deeper than the brain. What I found in Chesterton bewildered me. It wasn't a mystery... not in the strict sense of the word. It wasn't the sort of thing that inspired you to try to figure it out as you went. Father Brown was a priest. His stories were simple, but far too complex in their characters for mysteries. (What's more, he tended to think meanly of Protestants and portray them very unflatteringly.)

At a time when Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot came readily enough to hand, I shouldn't have fixated on the wanderings of this British priest. But there was a mystical, otherworldly quality to Father Brown's work - and all he seemed to be doing was taking an honest and thorough peep at humanity. It seized at my soul; probably because (though I did not realize it at the time) the characters themselves had souls, and (unlike the odd characters that inhabit most mystery stories, even the well-written ones) those souls mattered. I couldn't stop reading.

It baffled and perplexed me at the time, but I haven't been able to shake him ever since. I am not an expert on what makes good literature, and my rough idea of the definition of a 'classic' isn't really the point right now. My intention is to simply give a few selfishly personal reasons why I like Chesterton. (I have a blog. We've already established that I'm basically narcissistic by virtue of that fact. So are you. Get over it.) 

Plainly put, Chesterton's style is gorgeous. His manner of description has a precision lacking in spareness, a rich quality that is free from overindulgence or verbal gluttony. He is a craftsmanship, his skill extending (to my reader's palate) beyond the reach of even the genius talents of Lewis and Tolkien. Don't get me wrong; I adore both of the latter, and find their writing styles quite enjoyable. But Chesterton is a master of description. He is never trying too hard; he merely sees for the reader, and what he sees is beautiful.

The winter afternoon was reddening toward evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. (The Complete Father Brown)

Furthermore, Chesterton has a brilliant way of writing a story in layers: he never surrenders the position of masterful storytelling for the sake of making a point. My suspicion is that he simply wrote about people, and the grand statements of truth and beauty couldn't help slipping in. It is only fairly recently that we have begun to view all novels as belonging to the more tedious, cheaply-written class of mystery fiction - where the plot is made of a problem that needs a solution, and each character can be summed up in a simple, equation-like statement of what they need or don't need - and if there is a 'Christian' point, it can only be expressed in terms of an overdramatised conversion scene, or at least showing a nice Christian citizen in a favorable, reasonably intellectual light. If people are people, there will be complex profundities - no man is anything less.





Because Chesterton's characters are truly people, their stories are as much the stories of humans living in relation to each other and God as they are the stories of political and judicial conflict and resolution. This, I think, is why they are so compelling. Chesterton is the only author I know who can write a story that is totally driven by a love story between a man and a woman without cheapening the story by making the feelings between the man and the woman the point. The plot would not happen without the love story, but the love story is only a small fraction of the plot. I don't know how Chesterton accomplishes this, except by being realistic. They are much more than the stories of a man who likes a woman; they are two people living in right relation before the face of God - they are the simplest and the profoundest people on earth - and of course, somehow, in whatever they do, simple and profound things come bursting through their stories.

"That is it," she said, nodding rather strangely. "Through the worst one could imagine comes the best one could not imagine."
 "I'm afraid I don't follow," said the Junior Partner.
 "You go through the worst to the best, as you go through the west to the east," she said, "and there really is a place, at the back of the world, where the east and the west are one. Can't you feel there is something so frightfully and frantically good that it must seem bad?"
 He stared at her blankly, and she went on as if thinking aloud.
 "A blaze in the sky makes a blot on the eyesight. And after all," she added, almost in a whisper, "the sun was blotted out, because one man was too good to live." 

(Four Faultless Felons)

That's really all there is to it: Chesterton is hilarious and profound, poetic and insanely straight-forward, full of simple complexities and heavy mirth, the reconciler of contradictions (or, rather, the exposer of false contradictions). It was he, the master of characters who are so bizarre that they can only be practically and absolutely human, who taught me to love the beauty of a paradox - the beauty of the human soul. If you have not delved into his stuffs, or you only dabbled with three-halves of separate chapters from Orthodoxy as part of a tedious British Literature textbook in high school - get thee hence and thence.