Cute is Not What I Want

As a writer, I tend to collect bits of advice on writing.  Some of it is good; some of it is not.  (I’m sure you’ve noticed that people like to give advice, even when they don’t really know what they are talking about.)  Those of you who are writers are probably familiar with some of the things I have heard.  “Show, don’t tell.”  “Write every day.”  “Expect rejection.”  And, the subject of today’s post, “You are your own worst critic.”

Things like this wouldn’t be repeated so often if they didn’t have some truth to them.  I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work.  I remember the long period before I judged my sci-fi novel to be “finished”.  Every time I spoke to my mother, who had read the draft, she would demand that I just send it to a publisher already.  She judged it to be just fine the way it was, but I wasn’t satisfied.  I still get ideas on how to improve it and have to stop myself from going back and tinkering with it. 

But where my writing in general is concerned, I’m not entirely sure that I am a harsh critic.  Rather, I wonder sometimes if my work can ever be fully appreciated by anyone but me.

That sounds a bit big-headed of me, doesn’t it?  Let me clarify.  I am currently working on a fictional blog written from the viewpoint of an angel.  After a few weeks and ten posts, I have three followers, one of whom is myself, and I average a whopping one view a day.  That’s all right; I know how big a place the internet is, and how easy it is for something to get lost there.  What does bother me is the feedback I am getting.  Friends and family call it “cute” and “charming”; they say that it makes them smile.  That’s nice, but it does have the kind of undertone of someone looking for something nice to say.  And I can see where they’re coming from.  It’s still early days for the story, and what I’ve posted so far does not have much depth.

The problem is the whole story is based on an idea that I don’t know how to explain.  If my narrator knows how the world works, and supposedly his readers know how it works, why would he tell them what they already know?  I have a deep hatred of info-dumps, and I’m not Disney; I can’t put all my exposition into a charming song.  So I’m left with passing references to the big questions of what angels are, why they do what they do, how they are divided and structured.  Someday I will get to that, but I’m not sure my readers will hang around that long.  It’s frustrating, because I have this beautiful idea that speaks to human nature and the moral evolution of our race, a story about a war fought in the souls of women and men, an intricate tale of free will and choices that can change the world.  And readers call it “cute”.

I live with my stories every day, and not just with the events and the timeline, but with the backstory, the history, the culture.  I have entire worlds living and breathing in my head, and my writing is a constant struggle to put everything into order.  But it’s a task at which I could spend my entire life, and short of unhinging my skull and turning my brain inside out, I’m not certain I will ever be able to show everything.  There will always be some crucial detail left out, or else the words will be wrong and my readers will not understand.

Maybe this whole post is a self-indulgent wallow that proves more than ever that I am my own worst critic.  Maybe I’m on to something here, and if so I might as well never bother to share my work again.  But despite everything, despite my struggles and my failures and my perfectionism and the banal compliments, I do believe that I have something to say that the world might want to hear.  So I will keep posting my work into the echoing silence, hoping someday I might get a blip in reply.

Gun Control Means Using Both Hands

Today, while driving to work, I glanced at one of the cars passing me on the highway.  The license plate and model made me think that it was a young mom behind the wheel, one of those cool moms who always keeps her hair styled and always wears shoes that are both sensible and attractive.  Yes, I do spend much of my time imagining such things while driving. 

Then I saw the bumper sticker on the back of the car: “Gun control means using both hands.”

This disturbed me.  I am decidedly anti-gun, and so the addition of an AK-47 to my pleasant image of the soccer mom in khakis and sweater vest was jarring.  It made me wonder about all of those who insist, in the face of all the gun violence that happens and keeps happening in the United States, that owning guns—and not having that ownership restricted in any way—is a basic human right.  Why does it make so much sense to them, when it makes so little to me?

Comic borrowed from the Baylor Lariat

Well, I’m beginning to see their point.  With all the violence in the world right now, it’s common sense to have a plan as to how to protect oneself and one’s family.  You only have to watch some of the many videos from Trump rallies to see exactly how vicious humans can be to one another.  I understand that, and I sympathize.  But does your self-defense plan really require a weapon that will allow you to end a human life from far away, with just a twitch of your finger?  To me, that is drastic and horrifying, and it should be to you, too.

But then I had an epiphany, and not a very pleasant one.  The people who resist gun control are afraid.  They are terrified by what is out there in the world, by the cruelty and violence that still run rampant throughout this world.  They have no trust in the human race in general, and so they close themselves into little mental bunkers, armed and alarmed and ready for any twitch of movement on their grounds.  I doubt even with all these defenses that they would feel truly safe, because it’s not something external that they’re afraid of.  The capacity for violence is in everyone, and they not only see that, they feel it.  Kind of makes me feel sorry for them, to be honest.

What they don’t realize is that violence is not the answer to the problem of violence.  I spoke to one of my coworkers about the subject today, and his justification for keeping guns was that he had been threatened by a gun once, and it was scary enough that he got one of his own.  But then he became that frightening figure for someone else, who probably went on to arm himself and threaten others, and so on and so on.  It’s a vicious cycle, one that could continue in a downward spiral until no one feels safe enough to leave their house without a 9mm tucked into their belt.

The only solution I see to this problem is not to allow yourself to live in fear.  I have lived most of my life in rural Virginia and never once laid a finger on a gun.  What’s more, I’ve never felt the need.  My family didn’t lock our house at night, and we were never robbed.  More recently, my roommate left her wallet in her car for a night and a day, sitting clearly on the front seat, and it was still there when she returned for it.  I’m well aware that there are dangers out there, that I may one day be threatened or hurt or even killed, but I've never felt that fear.  Even if I did, I would never want to save my own life at the expense of someone else’s.  That would only make me the aggressor in a crime I did not want or choose, and that would be harder on me than being the victim.

I choose instead to put my faith in humankind, knowing that while there is risk in this choice, there is also hope.  If more and more people make this choice, then the dangers that we see in one another will grow less and less, until maybe someday, no one will be so afraid that they need to keep a murderous weapon behind the front door.  Maybe someday, we will be brave, and those around us will look less like targets and more like people.

Nonviolence Just Got Harder

Among the many things that have kept me busy the past few weeks—including something resembling a social life, which is very strange for me—I have been working on an online class in religious literacy.  (I highly recommend it; it is out of Harvard and free to audit; see here for details.)  The first module is an introduction to the method that will be used to explore the five major world religions in more detail in the following months.  Part of that method is Johan Galtung’s typology of violence, which describes three kinds of violence found in society today.  There is direct violence, which is the kind we think of when we hear that term: behaviors that threaten life or safety, or else deny or restrict basic human needs.  Murder, assault, rape, bullying, and emotional manipulation all fall into this category.

There’s more, though.  The second form of violence Galtung lays out is structural violence, which is violence of a different kind, enacted on people by the systems of authority in the world.  These can include legal strictures such as apartheid or the Jim Crow laws, or they can be less official, such as the restriction of healthcare for certain groups.  Galtung submits that these laws are an act of violence in that they keep certain people from meeting their most basic needs.

Most worrying for me, though, is the third form of violence: cultural violence.  This is the most subtle and most pervasive form.  It is defined as social norms that make structural or direct violence seem acceptable.  My reading for the class lists the old belief that Africans were intellectually inferior to Caucasians as its example, and it’s a good example—even Abolitionists used this thinking in trying to help slaves, saying terrible things and thinking them nothing but the truth.  But I can name a few more examples, most of them coming from an outspoken man behind a campaign podium.  He’s not prejudiced against immigrants or refugees, he’s just trying to protect the American people.  This kind of excusing cruelty is, in itself, a form of violence.

I’m not trying to make a political statement here; I just want us to take a look around and see whether we’re guilty of violence more often than we realize.  Sure, you may have never hit someone in the face or harassed them into tears, but have you ever supported a law that might hurt someone else?  Do your own opinions narrow your views so that you might not see how much someone near you is hurt by what you say?  When you tell your children your thoughts on what is happening in the world, are your ideas really worth passing on?  Or might they be taken in a way that you don’t intend, a way that might make something wrong seem normal and fine?

This is a hard, violent world, and cruelty is spread in many different ways.  It will take many open-minded and careful people to change that, and I hope I am always one of those people.  I hope you are, too.

A New Endeavor Coming Soon

Happy Leap Day, everyone!  This is a day for making up lost time, for taking chances that don’t come around very often.  In that light, I am very pleased to announce a new project to be launched on March 21: my very first online publication of fiction, “Tales of Love from the Stolen Earth.”  The website may look like an ordinary blog, but don’t be fooled.  I am running it entirely in the persona of a very special entity: Asa’el, principality cupid, probationary first wing, north-west quadrant.  That’s right—in just a few weeks, I will be getting my wings.

Asa’el lives in a world where angels are not the primary warriors in the battle against the Enemy.  Angels, having no free will of their own, no uniqueness, do not have the same power that humans do.  With that power invested in us comes risk, however, as we can choose to use it wrongly.  Angels, then, serve as guides in everything we do.  There are Fortunes who guide the good and back luck in our lives, Justices who watch out for right versus wrong, Guardians who protect us from physical and spiritual dangers, and yes, Cupids, whose role it is to protect love in all its forms.

A new cupid, Asa’el is journeying to the Stolen Earth—the Garden claimed by the Enemy in the Fall—to begin his first assignment with a human couple.  He is a great lover of stories and information, and believes that he must contribute to the Repository—the heavenly collection of universal knowledge.  For this, he has chosen a human method, and thus, his blog recounting his work to his fellow angels.

I’ve been very interested lately in viewpoints of humanity from outside of humanity.  The main character of my science fiction novel, Youngest, is one of those; now Asa’el is another.  It’s been refreshing to work in his voice, which is much more cheerful and humorous than Youngest’s.  Trust me, though, it isn’t going to be all hearts and roses for our newest Cupid friend.  He will face discrimination, miscommunication, sin and pain, disappointment, and a very challenging redheaded woman.

I’m very excited about this project, and I hope you will be, too.  The first post will go up on the first day of spring when a new year of love begins.  Stolen Earth is my first foray into the world of online publication, and I’m leaping in.  Here’s hoping my Guardian is with me!

Note: I owe thanks to Rob Mening for assistance in setting up the blog site.  If you’re also looking into starting something new online, definitely check out his free online guide at http://websitesetup.org/.  It was an enormous help for me!

Happy Love-Is-Expensive Day

Image credit iMore.com

This weekend included a very special day: Valentine’s.  The annual celebration of love, companionship, and mandated gifts passed with very little fanfare for me, which is a good thing, seeing as I am single.  I am used to disappointment and depression on this day; being surrounded by bright advertisements encouraging me to show the one I love how much I care inevitably reminds me that I don’t have anyone I love—not in the respect the ads mean, anyway.  And a “galentine” is not the same thing.

This year, however, I noticed that many of my non-single friends were not enjoying the holiday very much, either.  A dear friend was upset that her boyfriend’s plans didn’t line up with her expectations, while another couple’s romantic hike into the woods was snowed out and considerably more frigid than romantic.  One more recent pair was anxious for a week about what to get the other for their first Valentine’s, and I’m not sure they even saw each other for more than an hour or so.  High expectations, high standards, miscommunication, and the stress of long anticipation can make the holiday into a disaster.  So I can’t help but wonder—if the holiday makes this many people unhappy, why have it?  Whose idea was this, anyway?

I believe in starting at the beginning in most of my endeavors, and so I’m going back all the way to 269, which according to catholic.org is the year that the man himself was martyred (of course, it might also have been 270, 273, or 280).  St. Valentine of Rome is the patron saint of love, young people, and happy marriages (also bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, travelers, and plague, but those are less relevant).  Not much is known about this man; one story is that in response to a judge’s test of his faith, Valentine healed the man’s blind daughter, restoring her sight and gaining the judge’s conversion to Christianity in the process.  He was later imprisoned in Rome for aiding Christians and performing marriages, both serious crimes according to Emperor Claudius.  Apparently Valentine and Claudius met and even became friends for a while, until Valentine tried to talk the emperor into converting.  At that point all bets were off: Claudius sentenced Valentine to death if he didn’t renounce his faith; when he didn’t, Valentine was beheaded.

This, or varying accounts of the same, is all that’s known about Valentine.  Interestingly, the Catholic church removed Valentine from the calendar in 1969, citing too little information on him, though they still acknowledge him as a saint.  Given as I am to thinking of Valentine’s Day as a secular holiday, I thought that might have been the time the flower companies and Hallmark might have co-opted the day for their own profit, but it turns out Valentine’s Day is a lot older than that.  In the usual habit of the church carefully placing their holidays to take in pagan celebrations, St. Valentine’s Day was declared to be February 14 by Pope Gelasius, who was probably trying to stomp out Lupercalia, a Roman fertility festival.  The festival involved a kind of love-lottery, with eligible men drawing out names of young women from a big urn.  A few centuries down the line, in the Middle Ages, the assumption that mid-February was the beginning of birds’ mating season cemented the day’s association with romance.  Written valentines began to appear after 1400, the oldest we know of being a note from a prisoner to his wife in 1415.

Valentine’s Day began to be celebrated in Great Britain around the 17^th century, meaning that the American colonists brought the custom along with them.  For today’s elaborate Valentine industry, however, we can thank a woman named Esther Howland.  Howland’s father owned a book and stationery store in the 1800s, setting her at an advantage to make fine cards out of lace and fine paper.  She started her own business out of it in the 1850s, setting a trend in America for the next thirty years.  Back then the cards were elaborate, usually hand-made, and not usually expensive.  These days about 25% of cards sent through the postal system are valentines.

That explains cards.  What about the other two gift clichés—flowers and chocolate?  Both of those as Valentine’s Day gifts go back to the 17^th century as well.  Roses were the flower of choice then as they are now, as they symbolize love in all forms.  Chocolate, aside from being delicious, was soon discovered to be an aphrodisiac, which explains itself, I am sure.

The rest—teddy bears, jewelry, fancy dinners—evolve out of attempts by businesses to capitalize on the holiday.  Though it’s common knowledge that one cannot buy love, the media and the economy sure do want us to try.  That’s not my problem—that is what the media and the economy are supposed to do, after all.  What bothers me is that modern customs of Valentine’s Day are obscuring the traditional sweetness of the holiday.  Fewer and fewer hand-written cards are being sent in favor of terse emails or texts, while most people have forgotten that once Valentine’s Day was a chance for someone to express an anonymous attraction to a person to whom they are not (yet) attached.  The day now seems to be reserved for existing relationships, to the icy exclusion of those of us who are alone.

I vote that we put a little more thought into this holiday, putting a bit more sentiment into it and a bit less cash.  Instead of making expensive reservations, maybe try to remember whether they’ve paused to look at a certain item in a store more than once.  Instead of a mass-produced card with a not-anatomically-correct heart on it, maybe just write them a note saying something you would be embarrassed to say aloud.  After all, the important thing is not how much money you spend, but how much you think about the person across the table from you.  And those of us who are single, stop worrying about the commercials or the sales.  Spread a little love to friends and family, or take this opportunity to say something to someone who doesn’t know how much you think about them.  And definitely hit up those candy sales on the 15^th.

Sources:

"St. Valentine."  Catholic Online.

"History of Valentine's Day."  History.com.

"Esther Howland: Mother of the American Valentine."  Victorian Treasury.

"Valentine's Day History."  Borgna Brunner, infoplease.com.

"The History of Valentine's Day Gift Traditions."  Streetdirectory.com.

"Valentine's Day is Over-rated."  Pauline Wallin, PhD, About.com Mental Health.

"Call Me Unromantic, but Valentine's Day is Grossly Over-Commercialized."  Alexander Chancellor, The Guardian.com.

2015 in Retrospect

Happy New Year!  As to my lateness…all I have to say is yikes.  In my defense, though, I have spent the past two weeks on holiday, so I’m really only three weeks or so late.  In any case, here is my usual runthrough of the previous year.

January began with a bout of responsibility.  I arranged a formal family portrait with siblings in three different states, hosted a dinner with friends (that this dinner consisted of mac and cheese does not, in my opinion, diminish the maturity of this act), and even visited a doctor for a long overdue checkup.  February followed in a rush of snow, effectively wiping out that responsibility as I spent a good portion of it at home in my pajamas, glad that I didn’t have to go to work.  In March I was sociable, having a sushi picnic with an old friend (it was rather cold, but we managed), lunch with another, and many, many pots of tea shared with others.

April was the first notable date, as I set off with a friend into New York City.  I’d never been, and it really was a treat to go and see it.  We hit the highlights: Times Square (we tried to find one another there at one point, and let me tell you, Waldo would be right at home in that place), the Empire State building (102 floors of standing in line), the Met (that’s the museum, not the opera, unfortunately), Central Park (briefly; it was cold), bagels (the BEST food that we had the whole trip, I promise you), the Statue of Liberty (though we failed to plan ahead and so could only wave at her from a boat), and even Broadway (checked Les Mis off my bucket list!  Though I am so sure I will go again).  Through it all I had an irascible redhead trailing me, teaching me first that it’s a good idea to discuss what exactly each member of the party is interested in seeing, and second that it’s all right to split up occasionally, especially if you are both responsible adults and capable of making your way around a strange place alone.  (Then again, that might have been called into doubt with the two of us.)  All in all, it was one of those places where even as I went through, I was compiling a list of things I will want to see when I go back, as I certainly will.

I have to add one more note to April: two weeks after my return from NYC, I had the amazing chance to go and see Jane Goodall speak.  One of the most well-known people to come to Hollins since my attendance there, she packed two buildings to standing-room-only.  I was absolutely starstruck: she’s a wonderful lady and such an inspiration.  One for the grandkids, someday.

May was busy, as it usually is, with weddings and graduations.  Fortunately, they didn’t happen all in the same weekend, as was the case the year I graduated from college.  I attended my friend Sarah’s wedding the weekend before the graduations at Elon and Hollins Universities.  Those two did happen the same weekend, but on different days, so I managed to make it to both, though it was a lot of driving.  I enjoyed both ceremonies, though.  Graduations always make me think about what I would talk about, if I someday get to the point where people might want my advice.  I haven’t come up with anything good yet, to be honest.

June’s item of note was an old friend walking into the restaurant with her parents, completely unaware that I worked there.  We both screamed aloud at sight of one another and made a bit of a scene, but I hope that most humans wouldn’t mind that kind of scene too much.  It was lovely to see her—she used to be my shadow, and now she’s grown up into a beautiful young lady.  Towards the end of the month, I took on a long-term housesitting job, which was actually rather enjoyable.  The first night in someone else’s house is always difficult, even a little creepy—you feel like an unwelcome addition to the place, and the sensation of not belonging is very marked.  But once you get used to being in the new place, it can actually be quite novel and refreshing.

Starting in July, I began to take on a bit more responsibility at work, moving up into a part-time management position.  This involved a trip out of town to take a ten-hour certification course in food safety (a thrilling subject, to be sure, though I’d recommend whoever takes such a course to have a strong stomach).  The trip was eventful in some of the worst ways and none of the best.  Trouble with the wifi meant that only half of the class could test at a time, and I was not in the first class.  Then, on the way home, there was a vicious storm, and I’m fairly certain I thought I was going to die.  Thankfully, I didn’t, but I’d be grateful never to have to repeat the journey.

August took me in a new direction, as my roommate Kathryn and I prepared to move out of our apartment (affectionately dubbed Tookbank).  We wanted to find a house to rent, for more space and more privacy, and while we had a bit of trouble at first, we managed to find a small place not far from where we were, but in a much quieter area.  We took most of September to accomplish the move, which was expensive, but so worth it.  Now we are comfortably settled in a little white house we call the Southern March, so that we can be the hermits of the same.

The other notable event of September was the first party I have ever helped to plan.  It was a very special party—every guest was assigned a character, and these characters were given a murder to solve.  I helped write the “script” for the characters, and I was responsible for supervising the role play, which culminated in a daring rescue and a proposal which was happily accepted.  It was a blast, and now I have another wedding to attend this coming year.

October and November were filled with settling into the new house, which seemed to take forever even after all of our things were in the same place.  Putting up shelves, hanging pictures, transferring internet services and figuring out gas heating…  The house didn’t really become a home, however, until after the arrival of a motherless kitten whom we decided to name Calypso. 

I did have one distraction from playing house in a new commitment to the Roanoke Symphony Chorus, a volunteer choir attached to the local orchestra, which really is an impressive group.  It was such a pleasure to be part of a choir again—I hadn’t been in a real choir since graduation.  Our performances all went well, and I am back again this spring.

December always lends itself to Christmas, which was filled with the usual—family, food, and idle days.  Thanks to a bit of confusion in my schedule, I had six days at home rather than four, which was a pleasure.  My sister and her boyfriend came down from New York, my brother was up from South Carolina, and we were all relatively civil to one another.  In all seriousness, though, it was a beautiful holiday and a lovely year. 

That being said, 2016 is the year I turn twenty-six, which just so happens to be my lucky number.  I have high hopes for this year, and I intend to go out and get it.  Wish me luck!

Make Some Music

Just over a week ago, I had a privilege that is not found in the modern-day.  Maybe a few hundred years ago, it was normal for a lady to have musicians playing a concert just for her, close enough that she could touch them.  That kind of intimacy is impractical today, and more than impractically expensive.  I was lucky, though—I didn’t have to pay a dime.

Of course, there were some other people at my private concert.  When the Roanoke Symphony Chorus and attending string quintet performed at Calvary Baptist Church on November 21^st, the house was full.  But I wasn’t a member of the audience.  I was in the front row of the choir, seating within feet of the cellist.  It really was the best seat of the house, and I imagined that the music was for only me. 

Music has always been a huge part of my life.  I’ve been singing since I was a little off-key toddler who only knew two lines of a song, and I’ve been in choirs for almost as long.  In the past few years, however, I’ve been unable to sing in a large group, and I’d almost forgotten what a blessing it can be.  Almost.

It wasn’t just the performance of the quintet that stunned me, although they were exquisitely talented, all of them.  It was the full performance—the way many voices can become one, the way the struggle for weeks with the not-quite-perfect becomes something transcendent in performance.  Music can put you in your place in the best way possible: the self is forgotten, and the sound connects you with everyone else, because this appreciation is something we can all share.  This experience, the true beginning of my holiday season, reminded me that the very best way to love music is to participate in the making of it.