partsofspeaking

I have noticed a lot of the traffic to this blog came here because of searches for "Living without cable and Internet."  I apologize somewhat because that was not what it was really about (that is, not a list of ways to do it).  I don't know how someone could live without Internet today because the default position is that anyone who needs something done legally, informationally, medically, etc., can "look it up on the Internet."  We are facing that with my mother now.  She is 83 and has resisted using the 'net, but I think I am going to have to teach her.  My brother, who passed away Sunday, helped her with those kinds of things and she depended on him. I don't think business, government, etc. have been fair to the elderly, the poor, undereducated, and minorities in going to the default position that you can "find it on the Internet."  The actual statistics on Internet access in this country is far, far short of 100%, and the people who are ...

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2011/05/schwarzenegger_strausskahn_and.html

In the last month I have experienced a lot of new things.  On the morning of April 28, I saw what an E4 tornado can do to a town.  On May 13 I saw the fruition of 22 years, my son graduating from college.  I spoke at my first writer's conference (and second) on May 7 and 21.  The last three days would add to that list.  On Saturday afternoon my mother called to say she was at the hospital with my brother, who had been in terrible pain.  She had called the ambulance.  She had been there longer than she should have without calling me, but in my family we tend to go it alone.  My son and I were there as soon as possible.  The ER doctor called in a surgeon; the news was not good.  My brother would probably not get through the surgery, and if he did, would probably not get through the night.  The surgery was done, he went to ICU, and never was aware again.  At 4:30 or so Sunday morning the ICU called my mother and we were there in...

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/may/7-levelslying.html This is a good essay on lying and truth.  We lie so much we don't even know it, and when we do, we find easy ways to justify it.  Sometimes we just lie by saying nothing.  Does a person who writes fiction lie?  No, because he/she presents it as fiction.  Even so, one can lie, in writing fiction, by not doing it well, by not writing honestly about the human experience, by "messing" with the reader, and for a Christian, misrepresenting God (which I contend The Shack does, as I've written about elsewhere on this blog.) I am coming up on 600 blog posts over the last five years.  My goodness. 

The following is a transcript of a talk I'm giving this weekend on epublishing.  Hence the talky nature of it.  Not typical of my writing. Now, about the self-publishing, epublishing.  We all think we are good writers, or we wouldn’t be doing this.  But publishing is a business.  Yes, we think, “they just publish people they think they will make money on.”  Of course they do.  And if they reject your novel or book, they just, in their opinion, don’t think they will make money on you and/or it doesn’t fit in the kind of thing they want to publish right now.  It may or may not have anything to do with the quality of your writing and story.   I have read plenty of traditionally published books that were just not good.  I rarely read light fiction or genre fiction, no matter who the author is.  Now, if you want to write light, funny Southern fiction, that’s great.  There’s a market for it....

You know, something as occurred to me recently.  Whenever we criticize a politician on one side of the spectrum for a character flaw, a sin, a black spot on his/her record, especially morally, the response from the other side is "Yeah, but what about . . . "  This hardly seems like an argument.

What I’ve learned from my first novel. Do not give books away hoping people will read them.   People do not read books you give them, unless they are super close friends, or they think the book has them in it, or they’ll read anything, or you dedicated it to them (I’m not sure that even works.) Of 100 people who know you wrote a book, maybe 2 or 3 will buy it.   Even fewer will put a review on Amazon. Don’t go to Amazon everyday to check the site and the rankings, etc.   That way lies madness. Even three years after I published the novel, people are saying, “I didn’t know you wrote a novel.”   We don’t listen well, do we? People will assume your first novel is autobiographical, or they will think certain characters are they themselves, or someone else.   They will be wrong, and it will be funny.   A friend had her daughter read it, and the teenager kept saying, “This is just like you, Mom,” even thought the charac...

I like to put links to interesting articles.  Here is one from hermeneutics blog: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2011/05/the_real_outrage_of_lady_gaga.html I have never understood the cult of celebrity, why normal people are so dragged into personalities:  Oprah, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beth Moore, and then male preachers, the Osteens, etc.  Is it a meaninglessness we see in our own lives, poor "self-esteem," boredom, too much time on our hands (I know of a soup kitchen you can work at)?  Do we just watch them, fascinated that someone can live a life so self-promoting, so in a fishbowl, or do we really admire them, want to be them, fantasize about a similar lifestyle?  Is it just the money, the servants (not doing my own laundry and yard work!), or the adulation we want? Now, some would be angered at me that Beth Moore is in the preceding paragraph, and I don't put her in the same category morally or theologically with Oprah or Lady Gaga, of course....

I will be speaking (for a little bit) at the Chatanooga Writers Guild Spring Workshop on May 21 at John A. Patten Recreation Center in Tiftonia.  Aspiring writers may want to attend this; it looks like a good line-up.  Here is the website:  http://www.chattanoogawritersguild.com/0/

Someone who I plan to meet in a few days wrote me this email.  It made me happy. I finished your book, Traveling Through , tonight and loved it.  I was hooked from beginning to end in a real fast read.  And I'll be there to recommend it . . .  I hope you can come and present  at a . . .  The only Christian books I've read have been preachy, but your book showed a powerful silent side of Christianity that is not often explored, and that was inside the characters. I easily identified with Carlie,  her struggles for independence and the right to have a mind of her own as well as her commitment to doing the right thing.  She is the universal 70's woman. As the book ended I wanted to know more about Josiah, Emily and Jeff. At the same time I wonder about Carlie's birth mother.  In any sequel will there be any hint of who she was or what her life was like?

That title is silly, but I just picked a number randomly to distinguish it from previous book reviews.  Last night I finished The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove.   I read this book because it was the second one of Susan Gregg Gilmore.  I had read her first one, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, which is about the town I live in, Ringgold, Georgia (well, I have a note below on that one).  I liked the first one; also, I met Susan a couple of weeks ago and liked her, too.  She is now living in Chattanooga, again.  Finally, I wanted to support another writer, especially one who comes to my college or with whom I appear on a panel. I liked the book very much; I read it in a day or so, really, which is a good sign.  She creates a believable world and believable characters.  This is not light stuff (which I am not a fan of); it's serious writing.  I have to say it didn't go in the direction I expected it to, but why read a book that does...

All my Christian life I have heard the phrase, "Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," which is quoting Colossians 3:17.  And I let it sweep over me, as if it were a cliche that was tossed around by well-meaning but non-thinking people, and as if I were so smart I didn't need advice like that, and as if it were not Scripture.  But this week I got to thinking about it. What does it mean?  First, to do something under his authority.  That assumes we are not the authority deciding whether something is within the realm of his authority, but we are listening to him.  Too often we make ourselves the arbiters of whether something is under his authority instead of just placing ourselves there and waiting for clear direction.  Second, it means intentionality.  How much of my life has been habitual, instinctive, intuitive, haphazard, seat-of-the-pants, let's just go with it, and not intentional.  Intentional doesn't necessarily mean planned, but ...

OK, I  will admit it, although some will immediately stop reading this blog as soon as they read this.  But, normally, I vote Republican.  Not because I am in love with Republican politicians.  I'm not, but because I am closer to Republican ideals (little and big r) than those of the Democratic party (not even sure what those ideals are, except a vague kind of inclusivity.) So I have to say I am disappointed that Mike Huckabee has decided not to run for president, although I hardly blame him.  The office of the president has "evolved" to such a point, largely by the efforts of certain bigger than life presidential characters (Roosevelts I and II, Wilson, Johnson, and Reagan) that only a megalomaniac would consider running for it and could survive the ridiculous media scrutiny and lies.  No one half way normal, no one with any moral center or ethical boundaries, could do it.  Huckabee is too good a man.  He also is too easy a target for the evil ...

I will be the first to admit that there are major gaps in my education, especially in terms of literature and specifically in terms of non-American literature.  I try to correct that by a reading regimen that includes one fiction for every two nonfiction books I read (those mostly for academic purposes).  I have a huge pile I am working on, but my most recent fiction read was Madame Bovary , or at least an English translation by Francis Steegmuller.  I had heard this was the seminal novel, so it was time.  I firmly believe only people who read great writing are permitted to write (although that is an unpopular view).  It is a great novel; whether it is the greatest ever written I don't know.  I thought The Brothers Karamazov was more profound and Dickens more encompassing.    What makes a great novel (or movie, or symphony, etc.) is that one can experience it many times and find something new in it each time, and yet the first time one is ...

This Saturday afternoon I am sitting in my bedroom.  Outside a neighbor is cutting grass and sunlight is sparkling off the elm tree in my front yard.  My little dog is curled in my lap, making it difficult for me to type.  But my husband gave him a half an antihistamine pill to see if it helped his itching, and the dog is very sleepy, as I always am after an antihistamine.  The dog doesn't even respond to his name. We are waiting for our son to return from college.  He graduated yesterday; I brought home most of his belongings and he wanted to spend one more night there celebrating with friends.  We are proud of him.  He stuck to the plan, finished in four years with no debt and a solid gpa from a rigorous college.  The ceremony was very nice, but outside and two-and-a-half hours long, resulting in a pretty wretched sunburn on my arms.  I'll have to wear long sleeves for a while, since I'm two toned.  I feel that I am entering a...

On Wednesday, April 27, 2011, Ringgold, GA, my little Southern town, like many other little Southern towns that day, met the reality of a E-4 tornado.  Because the core of the town is very close to Interstate 75 about ten miles south of Chattanooga, the damage is very visible to all on their way to or from Atlanta or Florida.  But what is visible from the interstate is nothing compared to what is about a mile deeper into town.  I just saw it all for the first time yesterday, and I am speechless, wordless.  Sure, I could use all "d" words--destruction, demolished, disaster, devastation--but those have all been used.  I have never lived anywhere that experienced that kind of natural disaster, and any times I visited sites such as this, it was well past the time.  I saw Katrina areas three years later; I saw Cayman Islands a year after Ivan.  Not the same. Houses and business in piles, with circles of orange spray paint on the wall that is left, some ki...

The day after bin Laden’s “capture” (I mistakenly called it that in class, and a student corrected me—yes, I said, they captured his dead body) a debate, or more hissy fight, broke out on Facebook between what I call the realist and the overspiritualists.    One side, in my view, was honest about their feelings—a mass murderer is dead and justice has been done.   The other side felt guilty about their feelings and felt the need to hide and find proof texts for that need:   The Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.   I am a Christian before I am an American.   I cannot celebrate that a soul is in hell.   I cannot rejoice over the death of anyone, even my enemy (quoting Dr. King.) Obviously, I am in sympathy with the first group.    I feel the second group misses the overriding message of scriptures.   That governmental authorities exist to punish evildoers.   That justice is more i...

Back in the ‘60s there was a commercial for margarine, I forget the brand, that said, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”   I feel like nowadays we are being told that we are not fooling but abusing Mother Nature, and that she is fighting back.   The first response on the news about the tornado outbreak was, “Is this due to global warming?”   Thankfully, the metereologist I heard address this question said it was not answerable.   So Mother Nature used to be a funny character in a commercial; not she is real and a feminist and a mean one at that. Nature is not a mother—a mother is kind.   What do we see in nature that is kind?   Do people really think that nature has only started striking back with floods and droughts and storms in the last thirty years (so typical of this generation—it thinks it’s the first to experience anything, like menopause and old age!).     Nature is further not a mother in that mothers are personal, and nature...

This is a great book, written by an accomplished academic but accessible to anyone who is concerned about thinking, education, and the faith.   His famous first line:   The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no mind” is often quoted.   The problem is that evangelicals are not excelling in academia and related area; the cause is that we have not life of the mind; the root is the doctrines of dispensationalism and to a lesser extent, creationism,   and that evangelicalism sold out to the American system in the early days of our republic.   Now, saying this is a great book does not mean I buy it hook, line, and sinker, to use that old cliché shamelessly.   I do share his concern (in Noll’s case, it really is much deeper, almost a hatred) for dispensationalism and premillenialism.    I do agree that evangelicalism is too tied into American exceptionalism, and I have studied this connection quite a bit; however, I don’t know if that c...