#PitMad from the Other Side

I participated in three different #PitMad Pitch Wars events (for Hunter's Moon) in late 2018 and early 2019. I honed my tweets based on the tweets I saw that got a lot of likes and comments. I figured out the desired pattern and followed it. Yet I never got a single like from a literary agent (which means they want you to query them, and gives you an advantage over unsolicited queries).

Of course, that makes some sense because at the time I had less than 3000 Twitter followers. I was growing my platform: naturally, organically, meaning slowly. (At last count, I just broke 4700! 😊) Most agents probably didn't even see my tweets in the huge swarm of them on pitch days. I did get a bunch of retweets and comments from non-agents saying stuff like "That sounds cool!" But not what I craved: a like from an agent.

It just goes to show how the publishing industry revolves around platform. No followers, no agent, no Big 5 publisher. Although it seems to make sense on the surface, it still hurts great writers, and the industry needs to evolve and be reformed.

Despite this disheartening setback, I did NOT resign myself to self-publishing. I'm not knocking that route, and I know it may work well for some writers and be their preference, but it does not fit Sarah Awa. I'm done being a lone wolf. I was one for most of my life (thanks, 13 years of bullies and mean girls) but sank into horrible depression and was looking at the world from a very wrong angle, through a lens of lies. PTL He brought me out of that isolation and skewed thinking, and my life has gotten better and better in the 8+ years since!

I'm the kind of person who NEEDS other people, perhaps more than others do, which I finally and grudgingly (at first) admitted. But now I embrace that fact and love it! My friends, loved ones, and I are so much stronger together! Synergy rocks!! After I got past the pitfall of comparing myself to others (which usually cast me in an unfavorable light, or gave me a giant ego) and learned to love who I am—warts and all—and understood much more deeply who I am, it freed me to relax and appreciate my own strengths as well as others'. As for my weaknesses, I'm working on them without beating the crap out of myself over them anymore. And I'm much more patient with others' weaknesses too. We're all human, and we're all just trying to survive this crazy life together!!

Anyway, back to my failed #PitMad attempts. … Just weeks after the third time I participated, in July 2019 a beautiful dream I didn't even know I had came true! Deborah (it was her idea first) and Jeannie and I decided to form our own publishing company, Thinklings Books. We resolved to be the kind of publisher that modern writers need and should have.

It was the perfect solution to my publishing dilemma! Both of them being experienced editors (who'd helped me polish up Hunter's Moon a LOT), Jeannie and Deborah deemed my book to be the level of quality* that Thinklings will publish, which of course gave me a great boost in confidence. We planned, researched, and talked to so many writers, and we've made so many changes and tweaks to Thinklings as we go along, but my book is still our second offering (after Deborah's awesome supernatural spy thriller) and comes out January 1, 2020, under a brand I can unreservedly endorse and be proud of! 😃

Deborah and I are really guinea pigs, in this adjustment phase, but that's okay with me. You see, I'm over the moon^ that I get to undertake such an important venture with two of my best friends. It has turned into something far greater than my initial desire simply to get my book published traditionally. Now I burn with passion to help other quality writers who are having the same problem Deborah and I had due to our lack of platform.

Michael Hyatt recommends that you have both a selfless goal and a selfish goal when undertaking entrepreneurial endeavors. I just spelled out the selfless goal (helping other writers), but all my life I've been taught not to be selfish. After thinking about Hyatt's statement for a while, though, I realized he's right. It's not wrong to want to make some money, and the human spirit can't handle working so hard for little or no pay. You'll soon burn out and quit. This mission of ours is too important to quit! That's why our business model is evolving and we're learning where the real money is made. (After all, quality costs money! We will never compromise our quality-writing standard.)

So I guess that isn't really selfish. I don't think it's wrong to want to make a bit of money and get a little enjoyment out of life (and pay off my medical bills and other debt!). It's not the money itself; it's what you do with it that's wrong or right. Will you be greedy, or will you share and give back?

… Once again, I digress from #PitMad! My brain always thinks of SO MANY things I want to say, so many paths this post could take, but the title of the post is "#PitMad from the Other Side." …

This past Thursday, the 5th, was another #PitMad. (It's held in March, June, September, and December.) I'd skipped the September one since Hunter's Moon now has a publisher, but this month I once again participated … from the other side! I am now someone (using the Thinklings Twitter account) who gets to invite others to query! And I did send several dozen invites.

It was super weird.

And super fun! Wow, people have such awesome, creative ideas!! I read so many pitch tweets about books with fantastic-sounding premises. We got a bunch of queries, and we're all excited, and things are moving along for our business! (Plus, I'm having a blast proofreading Thinklings' third book, which will come out in March. It's a comedy, parodying epic-quest novels. Reminds me of Monty Python and Spaceballs … I love it so much!! And we have our first British author!!)

Well, I'd best get back to household chores since it's Saturday. Gotta put up my Christmas tree and décor! Hope you're having a lovely weekend!


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* One of our bedrock standards and values, along with community.
^ Pun intended!! 😂

Enneagram

So I did the Enneagram personality test last week, at the behest of a friend. I'm more of a Myers-Briggs gal (I'm INFJ), but I have become pretty fascinated with Enneagram, which helps you dig deeper and address your fears and mental health better...something everyone should do. Spring cleaning for our brain/soul! Even though it's fall now with winter weather. ;P

p

Anyway, my results are scary accurate: 416 tritype, 4 being dominant by far. I always knew I was completely weird and don't fit in anywhere, LOL! Which at times is perfect and at other times sucks! Don't want to fit into the crazed, unthinking, mob-mentality, "sheeple" dark side of humanity; but would like to be understood by calm, sane people....

Also the perfectionism of 1 explains why I'm a good proofreader. The Philosopher is the general category with 4, 1, and 6 highest (in any order...146, 614, etc.) and I think it said this type is habitually looking for tiny details to nitpick?? XD ^_^;; Man, that'll slow down your writing...I need to work on that.

What else has been slowing down my writing lately? Having a million little things to do starting up a business! Heh. The devil is in the details. As I recall, my personification (referencing a Thinklings post from last month) is Details. Or, since Deborah says personifications are human endeavors, make that Attention to Detail.

At least some of the details are fun! Like finding awesome pictures on Pixabay to pair with book quotes, and making playlists on Spotify to drum up interest in our books! :D :D Job of my dreams in that regard!! <3 <3 (As a 4, I have a deep-seated need to create.)

Are you into Enneagram? Care to share your type?

Contrasts, Foils, and Time

Today, as I do on occasion, I looked to the calendar for writing inspiration. I don’t know whether a lot of other writers do that or not, but it has helped me many times. Today it was simply for a Facebook post—and the calendar reminded me that one of my characters has her birthday around now. But while I was writing Hunter’s Moon, I found myself checking the calendar frequently, for plot reasons.


You see, my book involves werewolves, and their changing at the full moon means they have to be very time-conscious. They have to be aware (hehe, a “were”!) of what moon phase it is, what time the moon rises, what day/time they should leave for their hideout, and what days they need to take precautions against humans discovering their identity—like wearing dark contacts a few days before and after the full moon, lest their eyes glow yellow.


Each chapter is labeled with the date(s) and moon phase(s), and sometimes individual scenes have the date, phase, or time of day marked. The day of the week is also important, since my main character, Mel, is a student with an academic schedule to work around.


Keeping such careful track of time may seem mundane and tedious (at least when your life/career/etc. doesn’t depend on it), and maybe such super-specifics aren’t your thing. Growing up, I was never one for journaling daily or following any kind of regular schedule; I didn’t have strict parents forcing me into a routine—outside school, of course. However, as an adult, I’ve been forced to develop a pretty structured work schedule (we’re talking at-home, self-employed), especially since founding Thinklings Books with Jeannie and Deborah. It’s good for me, but it has been somewhat hard adjusting. (Better late than never, though!)


The funny thing is: the more meticulously (i.e., normally … or “boringly”!) I have structured my life, the more extraordinary my life has become! Giving details on that would be another full blog post, so I’ll just say:


The structural aspect of both my life and my book shows how the mundane and the tedious serve to highlight the extraordinary, the odd, and the fantastical. … After all, I consider my job as COO for a revolutionary publishing company to be pretty fantastic!


We in the writing community call this contrast a foil. “Foiling” is a literary device in which one person, place, or thing in a book sets off another person, place, or thing because of the pair’s complete—or very strong—differences from each other.


School, routine—regular things you don’t think about too much—contrast with how “the moon waits for no wolf” … a phrase I just made up. The moon, like honey badger, don’t care that it’s finals week. It’s either reschedule your exams or miss them and (probably) fail.


A “ticking clock” also serves to up the tension in your book, but that’s a topic for a different post. Actually, the post I linked to is perfect and doesn’t need me to add to it. ;)


Another foil in Hunter’s Moon is a character-based one: Pam and Jocelyn. Both friends worry about Mel and are trying to figure out what’s going on with her. But whereas Pam is very emotional and prone to panic, Jocelyn is calm and rational and calculating. Classic Myers-Briggs high F versus high T. Thinking of MBTI (which I love, if you couldn’t tell), I would peg Pam as probably ESFJ and Jocelyn as INTP. True opposites.


Well, that’s all I’ve got right now on contrasts and foils. Back to work!! Tick-tock…

Puns and Me!

Okay, I promised I would do a post on this, so here it is!

If you know me personally, you probably know that I love wit, wordplay, and especially puns. I got that love from my dad, no doubt. "The worse they are, the better they are!" he and I always say.

All those puns that Thinklings tweets? Yeah, those are mine. :D (Never in a million years would my teenage self have imagined that I'd be making puns as part of my job. It's the best!!)

In high school, two friends and I made ourselves superhero personas—we created a whole cartoon, with several episodes, using PowerPoint—and I was the PUNisher.

As you can guess, that cartoon was jam packed with wordplay. My character's "power" was knocking people out with terrible puns. I'd make a pun (or two, or three...) and it would somehow do damage to the bad guy, stun them, and then they could be captured and brought to justice. Heh heh. Yes, super cheesy and oh so nostalgic. It's really the only thing I miss about high school.

So that's my mini history with puns. Read my book (Hunter's Moon) carefully, and you'll find some puns in there too. Even in chapter titles. :)

I like to think I'm still the PUNisher, just an evolved form of her. ;D

For funsies, post a terrible (i.e., wonderful) pun in the comments!

P.S. - Check this out: Tosca Lee, one of my favorite authors, gave me a black belt in puns!!! Highlight of my career thus far! :D :D :D

Be a Giver

I’ve had the most amazing week! Thinklings Books did our soft launch, and I’ve been all over Facebook and Twitter spreading the word. I interacted with so many people (from the comfort zone of my office), shared my heart, discovered/developed skills I didn’t know I had (mainly, social skills!), and everyone I talked to was so supportive and positive, I just … words aren’t adequate to express my elation. Best week I’ve had in years! In fact, it inspired me to make this meme:

I’ve also been reading Michael Hyatt’s book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. I’m skipping around to different chapters that apply to me, like the Twitter ones (since I’m tweeting for Thinklings), and in that process I discovered—and really love—his “20-to-1” rule. Hyatt writes:

One important word about building your brand via your platform: this is not something you should see as an opportunity to blast your message out to thousands of followers—for free!—and sell them stuff. 

A thousand times no! Twitter, Facebook … and other social networks are relational tools, not transactional ones. Contrary to what many think, social media rewards generosity, other-centeredness, and helpfulness.

These tools are vehicles that appeal to our deep, (I believe) God-given desire to connect to others. They work when there is trust. When they become just another form of spam (violating people’s trust), they fail to be effective. …

[Chris Brogan] practices digital generosity [Hyatt had described how Chris provides helpful recommendations and rarely asks his followers for anything]. As a result, when he does ask for something, his followers and fans respond.

This phenomenon is what I have come to call the 20-to-1 rule. It represents a ratio. It means that you have to make twenty relational deposits for every marketing withdrawal. This isn’t science. I don’t have any hard, empirical evidence to prove it.

But I have observed that if you just keep asking people to do something—buy your book, come to your conference, sign up for your cause—without making adequate deposits, they will begin ignoring you. …

No one wants to be spammed. Not today. There are too many alternative sources of content. If you want to build a social media platform—one where people listen to you—then you have to be a giver, not a taker.

Be a giver. A great rule for any area of life, really. So that’s what I resolve to be! I set myself the goal to like, retweet, and comment on Twitter, at least a few tweets per day whenever I can. And also to start liking and commenting on more Facebook posts, especially in the writer/reader groups I joined. It doesn’t cost me much! Just a little time. (Hopefully I won’t become a social media addict and spend too much time in there!)


So far I’ve seen pretty awesome results: after the first day of implementing my strategy, I gained two dozen new Twitter followers! Jeannie, Thinklings’ CMO, was quite impressed, and she pointed out that my attitude of sincerity also plays a role in winning people over. I was super pleased when she said that, because sincerity is a quality I highly value. (The Japanese character for sincerity is tattooed on my arm.) It drives me nuts when people pretend to be something they’re not, or act a certain way only to get what they want from you.


Be authentic! Relax, be yourself, and open up. Share your heart. Show (don’t tell—as per the rule of good writing) who you are, and others will be attracted to that. Affirm the worth of other people; show them respect. Just be positive! :) Right now that is so easy for me, since I’m on fire with passion to promote my new company, because of its mission to help other writers, which is near and dear to my heart. After 36 years on the planet, I’ve finally found my vocational calling.


And I’m miles and miles away from where I began. Years ago, I was a very withdrawn and negative person who shunned most socializing. I’d been bullied so much in school, K–12, that I built up walls to prevent myself from being hurt any further. I clammed up. But isolation hurts like hell, and with me it turned to suicidal thoughts and drifting in a dark abyss for half of my twenties. And let me tell you, I did not climb out of that pit on my own. I wouldn’t have been able to.


But in 2011, I had an “awakening.” I won’t go into detail because that would make this post too long, but I got connected with a church group that was just so wonderful—they showed me acceptance and love I never dreamed of feeling, and they helped me realize people aren’t all bad (a lie I’d been swallowing). On top of that, within months I met the man I would go on to marry. My goal wasn’t to find Mr. Right, but that was a side-effect. My goal was to get connected to the body of believers so I could grow in my faith, and boy, did that happen to a degree I’d never imagined it would!


You see, God is a giver. He is relational. He is also, I believe, the happiest Being in the universe; I can’t imagine the state of perpetual bliss He must live in, but this week I think I’ve come closer to imagining that! Anyway, God has made so, so, so many “relational deposits” in my life and has never been forceful or demanding. He’s been so gentle, and He knows that I really need people to be gentle with me since I’m a sensitive person.


As I said in a previous post, Jesus came telling stories. Telling stories is worlds apart from being preachy. He spoke in parables, stories that mainly point to who God is and show His character. He is a loving father who welcomes back prodigal children. He is a king who cancels a servant’s debt that was impossible to repay. He is a shepherd seeking and rescuing one little lost lamb.


So to be more like my Father, in one way, I endeavor to make my stories (and my marketing plan) the opposite of preachy and pushy. I just want to show who I am and what I’ve been through and how awesome things have been in my life. Just doing that, regardless of results, has given me a stellar week, and hopefully many more to come!


Much love to you! <3

Finding My Sweet Spot

I can be very childlike sometimes. Then again, I am also an old soul. (Completely confusing, I know! To myself too. Just go look at some INFJ memes on Pinterest for more on that.) My mom has told me a few times that I should write children's books. As in, "baby" level. Well, I have a couple of very undeveloped ideas but never quite work up enough interest to write at that level. I naturally gravitate toward reading longer books and prefer to write them too. I get so absorbed and enthralled in a good story, I don't want it to end! I crave series and sequels!

I tend to read a lot of YA (young adult) books and just love them. Harry Potter, Shannon Hale books, Madeleine L'Engle, Julie Kagawa, Clare Dunkle ... I'll stop there because you get the idea. And then one day I realized: that's my sweet spot. In the middle of the range from birth to old age. With YA, you can use bigger words and have longer plots, while still retaining youthful topics and tone.

Plus, I had a terrible time as a teen, and I still have hauntingly fresh memories that plague me from that worst phase of life. You couldn't send me back to that part of my life for a million bucks, but writing about people that age or near that age can be somewhat therapeutic. (Seeing as how I can't afford a real shrink! Heh.)

So I think I will stay in my sweet spot. At least for a while. Hunter's Moon and its sequels are YA, so you'll be getting at least three YA novels from me. And another story idea I have also fits the age group.

(No previews here because by the time I finish the Wolves of Wellsboro trilogy and actually write that book or books, it/they will probably be vastly different!)

What's your sweet spot in reading/writing, and why? (It doesn't have to be age; it could be topic or etc.)

What I've Been Up To

Well, I haven't posted in a while because . . . I've been super busy starting a business! Two friends (Jeannie Ingraham and Deborah Natelson) and I saw a great need in the publishing industry and decided to do something about it ourselves! Stay tuned for more info about Thinklings Books, LLC. I'll link to our website once it's up and running.

One assignment I'm working on is creating all kinds of written content for Thinklings, like blog entries, and my social media biography, which took me a few tries to get right. I'm new to the business side of writing and publishing--thank goodness my friends are not! (And we've hired a couple of expert consultants in marketing and design.)

Here's one attempt at my social media biography that I really like--and so did my friends--but it's supposed to be one paragraph, so I had to chop it and smash it together.

Hope you enjoy learning a little more about me and the role that books and writing have played in my life!

Sparks: My mom had no idea what she had set in motion simply by reading to her tiny firstborn. By the age of two, I’d memorized all the baby books and had my grandpa thinking I could read already. (I couldn’t, actually, until the age of four.)

Embers: My third grade teacher couldn’t have known that her assignment to fill the pages of a blank book with a story would write something on the pages of my life. (I imagined an adventure my gerbils had while I was out of the house.)

Flames: The awkward, self-conscious girl who was graceful enough to navigate high school hallways with her nose buried in a fantasy or sci-fi novel, and still avoid collisions, didn’t dare to hope that a book of her own would ever be published. (I crafted tales about space voyages, and about a vortex that sucked a group of teens into a magical land.)

Conflagration: The college student who came out of her shell enough to join the newspaper staff, and to help manage the literary magazine, hadn’t a clue that grammar class would someday help her earn money as a proofreader, and sublimate her habit of nitpicking. Neither did she foresee that friends and mentors would open the door to an even greater career path. (But first I would be plunged into fiery trials of mental and physical illness, enough to extinguish my writing for a few years.)

Phoenix: The woman who rose from the ashes burns with a new passion. Kindled by kindred spirits, writing skills refined, vision blazing, she embarks—with two friends—on her greatest adventure yet: to revolutionize the publishing industry.

Join with Thinklings Books in helping our emphasis on QUALITY literature spread like wildfire!

Dead "Darlings"

Stephen King’s book On Writing contains, among other helpful pieces of advice, this gem: Kill your darlings¹. Sounds very King-esque, right? What he means is that you need to chop out scenes or sentences or paragraphs that you are especially proud of but that don’t advance the plot or help the book in any way.


It could be a particularly evocative or cleverly phrased description, or a bit of backstory or exposition that slows your pace or contains information not crucial to the story. In earlier drafts of Hunter’s Moon, I had written some scenes from the “bad guy’s” point of view that my editor told me to cut because they gave away too much. (That’s one way to shorten a long book!) The vital-to-the-plot information those scenes contained, I had to find a way to sneak into other scenes, and I replaced some villain scenes with good-guy or neutral-character POV scenes.


Still, although I have learned to trust my editor (she is amazing!), I usually find it incredibly hard to kill my darlings. I love my little pets, and I want to stroke them, pet them, massage them . . . anyone getting the Tommy Boy reference? J But you have to take those naughty pets and rip them up! Your editor says chop them, and you sit there scowling at her note in the margin, and you mentally argue with it, and you’re in denial and then anger and then bargaining and the other stages of grief. You know, deep down, that your darling is already deceased. The dreaded knell has sounded. And now you have to bury that little pet in a separate document for deleted scenes.


You keep one of those, don’t you? You don’t just cut those darlings from your manuscript without saving them somewhere? Well, I do because I’m a pretty nostalgic person.²


I have a document for each of my novels, containing “darlings to resurrect.” I will try and sneak these paragraphs or scenes or descriptions back into the story somewhere else if I can. I’m almost never able to, but with Hunter’s Moon I did pull off one significant resurrection—editor-approved! It’s the scene with Erickson in the diner, talking to Joelle the waitress. Its earlier manifestation got cut, as it wasn’t too relevant to the plot. But later I found a way to make it fit in and work! Now it provides a character with motivation to make a choice, instead of just listening in on his thoughts.


For funsies, here’s a little (non-spoilerish) snippet that wasn’t able to be worked back into Hunter's Moon:



[from chapter 1, showing the girls camping before their night hike]


The sun had sunk below the tops of the trees by the time the girls finished their dinner of hot dogs, chips, and lemonade. Mel and Pam lingered on the picnic table bench, gazing at the peaceful scenery and enjoying the feel of wind brushing their faces.


“Look,” Mel said in a low voice, pointing to the edge of the woods. A raccoon slinked out of the underbrush. It loped over to the rusty trash can at the empty site next to theirs, stood on its hind paws, and sniffed. Then it scratched and scrabbled its way up the can and dove inside. A hollow, metallic thump rang out when it landed—the can must not have been very full. Mel couldn’t help but grin at the cute critter’s antics. “Better luck elsewhere, little buddy.”


The family across the circle had retired into its camper, and the RV remained a silent monolith, dark against the darker woods. Even as Mel wondered about its occupant, she gave a contented sigh and said, “It’s so nice out here.”


“Mm-hmm. The air is so fresh.” Pam drew in a deep breath. “I love the scent of pine.”


Somewhere nearby, a cricket began to chirp. “Whoa,” said Mel, “they’re not that loud back on campus.”


“Yeah, thank goodness. It’s hard enough for me to get any rest when you keep talking in your sleep,” Pam said. She snickered.


“Do I really do that?” Melanie put her hands on her hips. “You always tease me about it, but—”


“Oh, you do. Almost every night. And you say all kinds of strange stuff, like ‘Where did you put my potato?’ One time you laughed—it kind of freaked me out.”


Mel couldn’t help but giggle, even as heat crept into her cheeks. “At least I don’t snore.”




_________________


¹ Apologies if this post's title is triggering. I can empathize: My baby brother died when I was 14. As if adolescence wasn’t already torturous enough, and then that happened, throwing my mom into the deepest pit of depression for years right when I needed her the most. She went to a professional counselor for about a decade, and fortunately the tragedy didn’t rip our family apart but brought us closer together.


² I also still have in my file cabinet the series of (very short) books I “published” when I was about 8. I wrote them in marker (a different color for each book, in rainbow order—skipping yellow) on 8.5x11” pages folded in half and stapled together. (No, I will not be showing those in this blog! ;-P )

Why Stories?

Some months ago, while I was on a Madeleine L’Engle reading (and re-reading) kick, I came across a fascinating quote about fiction. Two of L’Engle’s granddaughters wrote an Introduction that is printed in newer editions of the Austin family books. Here’s the part of their intro that resonated with me, and that I’ve been ruminating on:


“All of Madeleine’s writing, fiction and nonfiction, was an example of how all narrative is fiction, and all fiction can be true. She wrote and lectured extensively on the difference between truth and fact, arguing that it is through story that we human beings approach the truth, not through facts, which can only get us so far. [They would see their grandmother in her various characters, like Meg Murry and Vicky Austin.] . . . At seventeen, we were cynical about the blur between fact and fiction, and thought we could read our grandmother as if she were a book. In our mature adulthood, we recognize how rich and complicated our grandmother was, and that fact can be the springboard for fiction, and fiction can inform who we are and tell us about ourselves.” (emphasis mine)


Sometimes, “Just the facts, ma’am” is required and appropriate, like with legal matters. But while facts do contain truth, they do not have a monopoly on it.


I am naturally drawn to Platonic ideals—unseen realities being greater than the seen/physical realm. I’m a very intuitive and spiritually-minded person. Otherworldly, you might say. (Or maybe bonkers. Haha.) I do read non-narrative nonfiction—it makes up a lot of what I edit—and find it to be helpful and enjoyable. But I am most drawn to narrative and outright fiction works. I absorb truth from them in much larger and more impactful amounts.


For example, take Ted Dekker’s The Forgotten Way vs. his A.D. 30 and A.D. 33 books. They go together and have the same message. All three spoke to my soul, but the two fiction books (the A.D. ones) much more so. In those books, we travel and suffer and learn with the main character, Maviah, an outcast who rises to become a queen. I saw glimpses of myself in Maviah—desires and character flaws and the need to learn the same lessons. I felt her agony when her son was killed, or when she languished in prison. I’m not saying non-narrative nonfiction is without emotion (it can arouse that in me too) but it goes so much deeper with fiction/narrative.


Probably a big part of it is showing vs. telling. We fiction writers constantly hear the advice: “Show, don’t tell.” It is much more gripping to be given examples in story form, with characters who face obstacles and make choices, than to just be told: “Don’t lie,” “Don’t steal,” “Help your neighbor,” etc. Think of Jesus’ parables, Aesop’s fables, or stories like the boy who cried wolf. They stick with us. We see what happened to the little boy after he repeatedly lied.


Stories also have heart. As an INFJ, I walk a fine line between preferring strong emotion and cold logic. (We’re the biggest thinkers of the feelers.) Sometimes I want all the feels, while at other times I need a break from them. But for something I read to truly make an impact in my life, for it to compel me to make a necessary change, my heart has to be in it. I have to “feel it in my jellies,” as Detective Pikachu says. Story/narrative/fiction touches the heart more deeply than, for example, a biology textbook ever could. I learned a lot about biology in high school and college, and I enjoyed the subject (except frog dissection); but I majored in English, without being fully aware of it at the time, for the stories. And those stories—Chaucer, Beowulf, Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, etc., etc.—are what I remember the most clearly from all my lessons. They penetrated to my heart.


My life is a story. Your life is a story. The history of the world is a giant, unfolding story. Christians also believe that Truth is a person, Jesus—who came telling stories. Smaller stories, written stories, become truer when we read them and they make a difference in our lives, give us an “aha” moment, or simply cause us to smile and feel a connection to a character. Don’t undervalue pure entertainment.¹


So write your story with heart, and always with honesty. Even if you write fantasy with dragons and sorcerers, if you let the truths deeply ingrained in Story saturate your work, you will be writing something that matters. You will connect with your readers. And you will participate in one of the greatest ventures mankind can undertake.





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¹ It is part of what anchored me, kept me on this earth, through the blackest depths of depression. I may write a post about that later.

Refracted Light

I’m a huge fan of fantasy. I grew up on J.R.R. Tolkien books—first, The Hobbit in seventh grade English class, which I adored (the book, the class, and the teacher). As soon as we finished that unit, I grabbed my mom’s copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and quickly devoured it. Then I gobbled up the other two books in the trilogy, racing my friend, à la Legolas and Gimli, and beating her by a few days.¹ By eighth grade, I was perusing The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales behind my textbook in algebra class. (That teacher was another favorite. . . . I wonder if he knew/cared what I was really reading, since I was making an A.)


Sometime during high school, I discovered The Tolkien Reader and came to understand more about why I love fantasy so much. His poem in the essay On Fairy-Stories especially resonated with me:


Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seeds of dragons—’twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we’re made.


Tolkien’s coined term sub-creator means we cannot create new things ex nihilo, like the One whose image we are made in does, but we can—and have every right to—produce beautiful, colorful arrangements of words and ideas that already exist. So even though “there is nothing new under the sun,” we can still invent imaginary worlds that are unique and have never been thought of before.²


No one has ever pressed me to justify my writing of fiction . . . probably thanks to Tolkien. But my own inner critic (I’m such a perfectionist) has niggled at me from time to time, asking whether I ought to be undertaking this (ad)venture I so immensely enjoy. Whether or not I ever make money off my writing, I do believe crafting fiction—maybe someday high fantasy—is worth it on a higher level. A spiritual level, I suppose. We are made to love and enjoy God forever, as well as imitate Him. Sub-creating glorifies Him. I consider it a great honor that He gave me some writing talent, and I aim to hone that ability and never misuse it.


An additional reason I enjoy fantasy is because I’m a very high N (iNtuitive) according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. My head is always in the clouds, and I love to ask “What if?” . . . But that’s a topic for another post.


Keep refracting, my sub-creator friends! As Owl City says, “Life is cinematic.” But I would also add: “Life is prismatic!”






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¹ Yes, I know, they weren’t competing for speed but rather killing orcs. We were killing chapters and pages. ;)


² After all, there was once a time humans didn’t exist—we were like a fantasy way back then. I wonder if God told stories of us to the angels before He made us!