Reading to Impact Your Writing (And Can Watching Movies Be a Business Expense?)

This is the first in a six-week blog tour series for the Northwest Independent Writers Association. I will be hosting five other indie writers here, introducing you to their thoughts about their craft, the books they’ve written, and their websites.

Most writers I know read voraciously, pausing only when they are in the final throes of getting their next work published—editing and re-editing, hiring beta readers, formatting and re-formatting to please our Kindle Direct Publishing masters, trying to figure out what the error message “Your fonts are not properly embedded” means. The list seems to go on forever. But until that point, writers READ.

Sometimes we read in our own genre, “to check out the competition.” I remember that once I had created the fictional Oregon coast town of Driftwood for my mystery novels, a friend said I should read Scott William Carter’s The Gray and Guilty Sea. I did, and I came away thinking, “Wow! He nailed it. I hope I can write like that when I grow up.”

At a book signing not so long ago, I shared a table with Chris Patchell, who also writes mystery and suspense novels. I bought her book, In the Dark, and was blown away by the breathless quality of her prose. I decided I wanted that in my stories as well.

We often read other genres, especially with an eye toward pacing, character development, and style of writing. We make decisions about what to emulate and what to avoid, what works and what doesn’t, how best to show, rather than tell, making conversation sound natural, and managing point of view.

Sometimes the books we read have an unconscious effect on our writing. Remember Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and her sentences that went on for a half-page and more? I was busy with a volume of short stories at the time, and when I went into editing the second draft, I was aghast at how long the sentences were in my story, “The Porthole.” That had not been intentional and I was thankful to have caught it before I published it.

Reading can have another, long-lasting effect on our writing, one not so much stylistic or structural, as “constitutional.” The reading I did in my late teens and throughout my twenties changed the way I think. Back then, I had immersed myself in existentialism, devouring books by Camus and Sartre, and their precursors, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. Those philosophical works have shaped me, for better or worse, and influence the way my characters think and move. Acts of will, decision-making, spiritual and ethical motivations are a part of my characters and make them more real (I hope!).

While we’re at it, what about movies and how they impact our writing? I love movies, all kinds of movies, from dainty, art-house oeuvres to slam-bang shoot ’em ups. It’s a vice I swear I inherited from my mother. And the effect? I want my stories to be visual. I want my readers to say, “Reading your book was like watching a movie, except I could feel it and smell it and taste it, too.” The challenge becomes involving all the senses in the story, so the descriptive parts are not just atmospheric, but transporting. I find myself thinking in terms of scenes, rather than chapters, listening to my characters as they strut their stuff, wondering what they’re going to do next. Yes, often I don’t know what my characters will say or do next, and before you decide to call a shrink because I’ve gone over the edge and need a psychiatric evaluation, stay tuned for a future blog when I will talk more about my approach to the writing process.

“I am not crazy!” he insisted to no avail, as the EMTs strapped him onto the gurney and wheeled him out to the waiting ambulance…

Watch for the next post in this series by me:

“Advice for New Writers” — at https://conniejjasperson.com/

Next week I’ll be hosting Joyce Reynolds-Ward, who will be sharing her thoughts on “Self-Editing, Grammar, and Beta Readers.” Stay tuned!

Christmas 2019

Dear Family and Friends,

Truth be told, I didn’t want to write a Christmas letter this year. As you know, 2019 has been a terrible year for me. My son died suddenly, at the age of 42; my dear son-in-law’s father died after a long, debilitating illness; my former mother-in-law, the mother of the mother of my children, died. A Trifecta of tragedy.

I know St. Paul tells us not to grieve as do those who have no hope, but I have found that very hard to do. I’ve raged at God for many weeks. In fact, I may not be finished with that yet. I’ve read books on grief. (They didn’t help.) I confess that I rather liked one book for its raw honesty: Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved), by Kate Bowler.

I haven’t really prayed or worshiped much in the last six months. I cry or get choked up every day. When Sharon isn’t home, I’ll scream a string of profanities to the empty house. I do read a chapter of Scripture daily, and I attend church every Sunday. I tell myself it’s for the discipline, but maybe it’s just an old habit. That said, I’ve found the messages during this Advent season to be profoundly disturbing. More than once, I’ve heard the pastor encourage the congregation (and me—right between the eyes) to let go of anger and bitterness, to surrender the rage and confusion and doubt. Then last Sunday, I was reduced to tears just before the communion service.

I’m not schizophrenic (at least, not yet!), and I don’t usually hear voices, but it felt as though God were speaking to me. “You had your son for 42 years. My son had only 33.”

I suddenly realized something that’s quite cliché, but that I had never really appreciated before. Everything—all our relationships and all our possessions—are on loan to us. Spouses, children, grandchildren, parents, siblings, friends are on loan to us, and we don’t know the term of the loan. As a pastor friend told me at breakfast last Tuesday, “Do you want to be bitter about the years you won’t have with your child, or rejoice in the ones you did? Choose now.” I want the latter, but it’s an excruciating, uphill battle. And as I write this right now in the Red Fox Bakery in McMinnville, I’m reminded of the origin of the term “excruciating”—”from the cross.”

So if you’ve left for work, and you had an argument with your spouse on the way out the front door, stop now. Turn around and go back home. Kiss him or her and open your heart. If you’re not on speaking terms with a sibling or a parent or had a shouting match with your son or daughter, fix it before you do anything else. It’s your last chance. After all, we never know when the term of the loan is coming due…

I raise a cup of coffee to you now—and later today, a glass of wine—to family and friends near and far. In tears of sorrow and joy, Sharon and I wish you a blessed Christmas and a better New Year in 2020.

Dear Family and Friends,

As I begin this, the sun has broken through deep gray clouds and is shining on a beautiful December day. The chill, like the Werewolf of London’s hair, is perfect. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to traditional Christmas songs and carols from the British Isles, struck by how melancholy many of them sound. None of that saccharine sentimentality we hear bleating from speakers in our shopping malls. It’s as though they anticipate the complexity of the events that have been started in motion by the birth of Jesus.

Then I thought about Luke’s Gospel and the prediction that Simeon makes to Mary, Jesus’ mother, when she presents her newborn baby to him in the temple: “Behold this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed—and a sword will pierce even your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

What’s going on? Where did “We wish you a merry Christmas” go? Recently I visited with a dear friend whose toddler daughter had just undergone another of what will likely be many surgeries to correct a dreadful anomaly. He spoke about how his heart breaks every time she shrieks, “Don’t touch me!” at the rehab therapist trying to improve her range of motion. Rehabilitation, before it brings healing, brings much pain, and my friend is helpless to prevent it. “I would do anything for her, if only I could,” he laments. Therein lies his agony—the piercing sword.

I believe God feels like that about us as well, knowing we need “rehabilitation,” but painfully aware we will refuse him and yell, “Leave us alone!” when he sends his son to heal us. Matthew tells us that Herod was so desperate to destroy the infant Jesus that he had his soldiers kill all the children two years old and younger in and around Bethlehem , a massacre preserved in the deceptively beautiful lullaby, the Coventry Carol.

From the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus is seen as a threat to the established order of things. Religious people hate him. Politicians regard him as an odd curiosity. Both groups think that killing him is the only way he will leave them alone, once and for all.

Fortunately for us, God doesn’t leave us alone. He is determined to save us in spite of ourselves. Because of Easter, Christmas is worth the “rehabilitation pain” it inaugurates. We become Resurrection People, newly alive, charged to love as we have been loved. Jesus tells us, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But we need reminders. The world has a way of beating us up. Often we want only to “burrow in,” pour that glass of wine, and lose ourselves in a book or a television show. Not that there is anything wrong with “recharging our batteries,” but the point is just that—restoring ourselves so we can restore others. Christmas is our yearly wake-up call—at once a call to to arms against the evil that would ensnare us, and a call to minister to those wounded in the ongoing battle. We become God’s paramedics—his EMTs—healing the pain of others, furthering their “rehabilitation,” speaking truth in a world of lies and bringing comfort to those who need it most.

Christmas is our annual reminder that we worship a God who “takes a bullet for us,” and we are called to do likewise for our families, our neighbors, our communities. It’s the war room for planning strategy before the battle resumes, the locker room at half-time, when our Commander/Coach fires us up to go back out and fight even harder in the second half.

For all of us, may this coming New Year be a time of courage and compassion—a renewal of mind and heart and spirit. May God’s unique call to each of us be heard above the din of the trite and the trivial. May we, as God’s paramedics and rehab therapists, become the healers he wants us to be.

Love,

Bill and Sharon

Every Easter season I take time to think about why I’m a Christian. I ask myself if I’d be a Christian had my parents not raised me in the church. And I think I would. The Christian myth speaks to my heart and my mind. Now before you object to my use of the word myth, let me explain. I use that term not in the sense of something untrue or something we tell only children about, like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. I mean it as explanatory story—in fact, the story behind all stories. For me, it is the story that makes the most sense of the world as I experience it. It is true in the deepest way a story can be true.

I put in my time as an atheist—about twenty years, as I recall. When I left the Catholic seminary after eight years, I chucked it all—felt I had been duped by a patriarchal religion. I immersed myself in Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus. Later I studied Eastern thought, especially Zen Buddhism, which doesn’t require a god. I hummed along OK until my divorce. That broke me. I didn’t go back to “Christianity” (or Christianism, as Gore Vidal called it) with my tail between my legs. I met a woman who introduced me to the Lord, slowly and gently. That relationship made all the difference.

I know that some say God is a crutch—a belief people cling to because they need assurance of an afterlife. “How can you face death without belief?” they say. The answer is heroically. My best friend Frank remained an atheist till the end. He said he could never find enough convincing evidence to believe otherwise. His oncologist found his bravery so inspiring that he came to his memorial service to share it with others. I understand that Carl Sagan died the same way. So no, life without God is not hopeless or impossible. It can be lived courageously.

So what is so captivating about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Some say that stories of the death and resurrection of a great hero predate the Christian story by thousands of years. They claim that the Jesus story borrows from them. I see it the other way around. Those other stories prefigure the Jesus story, where they meet their final revelation, because the hero’s journey (or heroine’s journey, as the case may be) is hard-wired into us. Joseph Campbell was on to something. Why do stories like the original Star Wars, Gladiator, the first Matrix resonate so much with us? I think they’re in our DNA.

During Holy Week, I’m reminded what compelling drama the last days of Jesus’ life are. Betrayed by a dear disciple with a kiss, no less; abandoned by all the rest of his friends (only the women were brave enough to hang on to the end); tried by a kangaroo court; sentenced to a death so horrific that a new word had to be invented to describe that kind of pain (excruciating—from the cross).

And then the resurrection. No bombastic special effects as we might see in a movie. Quiet, thoughtful. Again it’s the women who find out first. One hugs him. The men are still hiding out. (“I never knew the guy,” as Peter had said.) What is Jesus’ first act as a risen savior? He asks his friends for a bite to eat. Later, he appears on the beach and cooks breakfast for them. And what does he ask us to do? Not an arm-long list of do’s and dont’s as a religion might. He tells us to love one another as he loves us. And remember him in the bread and the wine.

The simplest, most prosaic elements of life are imbued with cosmic significance. And the result? As C.S. Lewis said, “We are surprised by joy.”

Happy Easter to all my family and friends.