Keep on Writing

I was getting ready to leave for the Omega Writer’s Conference in October when I saw it—a call for submissions for a Children’s Picture Book Writing Competition. They were looking for “creative, winsome charming picture books that help parents instill an open-hearted, transformational, lifelong Christian faith in their children”. I did like the sound of that. Better still, the first prize was $5000.00. Whew! Not an amount to be sneezed at. There were no entrance fees either. I knew I must give it a go when I returned from conference.

Would it herald my big writing moment?

A week later, I came back refreshed and revitalised after a fabulous time in Sydney, having caught up with those of like minds, learning an abundance of writerly wisdom, being inspired by people and places and best of all, filled with God’s joy. Unfortunately, as it often occurs, a week of intense fibro pain and weariness followed my energetic week away, so it was only a few days before that all important deadline that I had sufficient energy to sit down to create my story.

My dear friend Melissa popped in on the Friday before and spotted our family's pet giraffe (yes, he’s alive …or so we like to think). She suggested I write a story about Raffy - what a brilliant idea! The day before the story had to be submitted, I sat at my computer, concentrating hard. It took hours to craft and refine my award winning picture book. The next day was a busy one. My body felt weak and weary but I persevered, working also on my author bio and the story’s synopsis. Finally, close to midnight and exhausted, I was ready to send in my three documents. Just before I pressed the submit button though, the competition’s terms and conditions popped up.

It was then my dream was shattered - a crystal vase smashed into a million shards.

The very first clause had my mouth open, while my jaw dropped a few kilometres downwards. Apparently, the competition was open only to US residents. I could have cried. I’d read the competition details many times over—but for some reason this vital fact had not been publicised. I could hardly believe it. How foolish I'd been!

I wonder what your writing year has been like. Was it filled with instant success, millions of books sold, a plethora of fan mail, TV appearances, a bulging bank balance and a celebrity lifestyle? If you are like most of us Christian writers, you are presently plodding away on your current story, a few drops of hope glistening in your heart, but perhaps also a little discouraged as to the number of writing dreams yet to be fulfilled.

In a few weeks, the curtain will fall on 2016 and we will be left with our memories of the past year. Whatever it brought you in your writing sphere and whatever the future holds for you, let me ask you three questions:

1. Has God called you to write for Him?
2. Have you strived to walk with Him?
3. Have you sought to be obedient to His call?

If you answered ‘yes’ to all three questions, let me shake your hand. Let me celebrate with you. Success for us comes not from the world’s yardstick of accomplishment. It’s simply getting up each morning and doing all that God calls us to do. Persevering. Learning from failure. Not giving up. Perhaps like me you've made a few blunders? No matter - God can redeem them all. He's good at that! So permit discouragement to fly out of your window like a captive pigeon set free. Congratulate yourself for all the writing you’ve done these past 12 months. Celebrate your conquests with a smile. And let your heart be quick to hear the sound of God’s ‘Well done’.

And now ... put on your writer’s shimmering cloak of joy.
And Keep On Writing.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14


Anusha Atukorala is a writer and speaker with music in her heart and a message to proclaim. The abundant love of a faithful God is her theme song. God’s call to writing in 2007 led Anusha on a Grand Adventure which continues to surprise and thrill her. Anusha loves to build the body of Christ and to encourage others through the written and spoken word. Her first book ‘Enjoying the Journey’ is comprised of 75 little God stories. She has twelve short stories published in Anthologies and plenty more books in the pipeline. Do drop in to say G’day at her website Dancing in the Rain. She’d love to meet you.

Is One Enough?

I have just downloaded Harper Lee’s 'Go Set a Watchman', which I’ll review in my next blog, but in order to prepare myself to do so, I decided to go back and reread To Kill a Mockingbird. I also watched the movie. It's a great story and I enjoyed it both on screen and in the book, though I suspect the manuscript might have been given another edit by today’s editors. I felt there was quite a bit of extraneous detail which slowed the story a little for me. It’s years since I originally read it and I’m probably more critical now, and I do read with one part of my brain analysing the writing style and trying to learn from it. I wonder how modern readers would react to it if it was published today. I’m guessing most of you authors will have read it and I would love to know what you thought.

However, I’m even more fascinated by Harper Lee’s story and so have done a little research about her as a person, and as a writer. Nelle Harper Lee was born in April, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. Her father was a lawyer who served in the Alabama state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate, Truman Capote, who would also become a writer. For most of her life, Lee’s mother suffered from mental illness, rarely leaving the house. It is believed she might have had bi-polar disorder. After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50). While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, "Ramma-Jamma". Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.

Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father. After writing several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month, she received a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."  Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor, Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. (It's not hard to see how her early life influenced the story). Published July 11, 1960, the novel was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal. Ms Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature in 2007. After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied her friend, Capote, to Kansas, to assist him in researching his bestselling book, In Cold Blood. Since publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has granted very few requests for interviews or public appearances.

Her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, was released this month, but the build up to it has been big news for a few months. When I think about the excitement around this novel, it raises some questions for me. Why did she not write again after so much success? Why do some writers, some books, get so much attention even after such a long break? I think To Kill a Mockingbird is a great story and I’m looking forward to reading Go Set a Watchman, but why is it a best seller before it even hits the bookshops? Perhaps I ought to keep it to myself but I don’t think I’m the only reader who fails to finish reading some books by authors who have won prizes, even sold millions? Case in point; I’ve tried reading Tim Winton’s books and find I usually give up after a few chapters. I’m not engaged, nor captivated by the writing style, which suggests I am probably a philistine when it comes to literary fiction, but I do find myself concluding that once a person has a success in writing, or begins by being a celebrity, they can write pretty much anything at all and will sell millions. It will be very interesting to hear about reactions to Go Set a Watchman.

Does all this discourage me as a writer? No. Does it make me want to continue to learn more about the art of writing? Yes. Does it make me question why I write? Yes.

Are we writers because we cannot stop writing? Because we keep dreaming of the day our novels will win prizes, sell millions, make us a celebrity? Because the satisfaction of completing a writing project is so great? Because some people, perhaps only a few, enjoy our stories, and encourage us to go on writing. Because we believe that some people – again perhaps only a few – will be inspired or challenged by our stories? Or perhaps our writing is not about us at all, but about what God wants to do through our writing when He calls us to follow His lead.

I didn’t start writing until I was in my fifties. I had no illusions about being world famous. I was just thrilled to have the experience of writing something I felt passionate about, completing the project and seeing it in print. I felt that God had not so much called me to write as invited me to use something I loved to reach out to others and hopefully draw them to thinking about their relationship with Him. It was a bonus to have readers who enjoyed my stories and were challenged by them. So I’ve continued to write, enjoyed the journey, been grateful to those who’ve helped; editors, publisher, readers. I can’t imagine having stopped after one, and would love to know why Harper Lee did. Does anyone know or have theories? Writing is a fascinating art, and the journeys, motivations and ambitions of writers equally interesting. I wonder if Harper Lee’s story provokes some reflection for you.  

Carol Preston   

Carol writes historical novels based on her family ancestry in Australia from the First Fleet. They include the Turning the Tide series; Mary’s Guardian, Charlotte’s Angel, Tangled Secrets and Truly Free. Her earlier novels Suzannah’s Gold and Rebecca’s Dream have been re-released by EBP. Her new novel, Next of Kin, was released by Rhiza Press in May this year. You can see more about Carol and her novels on her website.  

www.carolpreston.com.au

www.amazon.com/author/carolpreston

www.facebook.com/writingtoreach

Deception in Our Writing

Do you ever find yourself sitting in church, listening to the speaker, then have him (or her) mention a verse, and your mind takes off (or God takes you off) in a completely different direction?

That happened to me one Sunday recently. I actually can’t remember what topic the speaker was discussing, but my attention was caught by the command in Leviticus 19:11:

Do not deceive one another (NIV).

This was reinforced by my Bible reading the following week, from Colossians 3:9:

Do not lie to one another (NKJV)

Now, I know Leviticus is the Old Testament, the law, the old covenant. And I know that, as Christians, we are under the new covenant. When I looked up New Testament references to deceit, I found they had a different slant. Rather than telling us not to deceive others, they warned against being deceived by others, and deceiving ourselves.

This got me wondering: do we deceive ourselves? If so, how? And how can we stop ourselves being deceived by others?

Deceiving Ourselves

Do we deceive ourselves about the quality of our writing? Maybe. Do we deceive ourselves by believing our work justifies a five-star review on Amazon? Do we deceive ourselves when we sign a contract with a publisher that others call a vanity press? Do we deceive ourselves by entering vanity writing awards?

Sometimes we do.

I see authors who believe they must be good writers, because their manuscript has been accepted by a “traditional, royalty-paying” press, ignoring the nay-sayers who say it’s a vanity press and to be avoided at all costs.

Is this deception intentional? Do we really mean to deceive ourselves, or others, with our writing and publishing choices? I’d like to think not, but it’s a tough call. Which is worse: that we have been deceived by those around us, or that we are actively deceiving ourselves—and others?

It’s not pleasant to think we might have been deceived by those around us, especially if we trust them as spiritual advisors or personal mentors. However, whenever we surround ourselves by like-minded people, we run the risk of being the blind led by the blind (to rephrase Matthew 15:14). In short, we are being unintentionally deceived by others, who don’t know or don’t understand that what they are recommending is deceitful, unethical—or both.

While part of me can accept (almost) this kind of deception, we live in an age of almost unlimited information, and there is no excuse for authors who don't undertake proper research before making a decision that will cost them thousands of dollars. The magic of the interwebz means anyone with a computer can research any person, organisation or award with a few clicks.

There is no excuse for not doing the background research. 

Hint: use the word “scam” in your search, as in “Publish America Scam”. This will dig out the critical information, which is the information that will help you determine whether a contract offer is an offer from a genuine publisher, or a vanity publisher marketing themselves as a “traditional royalty-paying publisher”. And remember that Publish America has undertaken the time-honoured method of fixing a bad reputation: they've rebranded themselves as America Star Books ...

Being Deceived by Others

Deceiving others is often found in Christian groups where people believe in being “nice”. They follow the dictum that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. The implication is this attitude is good Christian citizenship, and saying anything not nice is somehow unchristian. I wonder what these people think of all those nasty things Jesus said about the moneychangers in the temple?

Because it's deceptive to not tell someone their writing needs work. No, it might not be "nice" (although we should still make every effort to be kind), but it is truthful.

Do people who believe in the doctrine of "nice" realise they’re not quoting Jesus, but the Disney Corporation? Yes, that’s what Thumper’s parents impressed upon him, in Bambi:

Too much emphasis on "nice" leaves ups open to being deceived by others ... which can result in us deceiving ourselves.

We need to examine our motives, and surround ourselves by people who seek God, rather than seeking "nice". God disciplines those He loves, and we discipline our children, teaching them to seek God's will and obey Him. Why don't we exercise that same discipline in our writing?

God calls us to obedience. 

Obeying Him might lead to fame and fortune, but that’s the result, not our motive. Our motive should be to seek His heart and obey His voice. Yes, easier said than done.

We are sons and daughters of the Most High God. We don’t need to seek approval from others through extrinsic recognition like winning an award or gaining a publishing contract. God loves us exactly as we are, and your (and mine) book will be exactly as successful as God plans for it to be. No more, and no less. His plan for your book might include a fantastic publishing contract with your dream publisher, and a Christy award. But it might not, and we need to learn to be content with that, and not to deceive ourselves.

Do we leave it all to God? Not entirely. If God has called you to write, He has called you to learn how to best honour Him in that writing, by having a teachable spirit and working to learn the craft of writing and the principles of marketing. If you are writing to God as an offering, you need to present the best offering possible, which (yes, again) means having a teachable spirit, and learning the craft of writing and the principles of marketing.

Then we can rest in Him, knowing we have been obedient, and knowing that He loves us no matter what.

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest  or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2000.

I Wanted to Sigh

Last month, I wrote a post about vanity publishing, "I Wanted to Cry". Today's post is kind of related, but also links to another subject which has been on my heart over recent months, and one that makes me sigh in frustration.

Authors who are unintentionally deceived about their writing.

I recently came across this post in one of the Facebook author groups I’m a member of:

Today, i want to quit! I feel so discouraged right now that i am ready to throw in the towel. 

I have someone who i know who bought my ebook and had informed me that she had found so many grammatical errors she had to put it down. Yes,i had an editor go over it, 4x’s, i have read it over twice since releasing it and i have had several people read it without a word. Either she doesn’t like my writing style or i know a lot of people who have no clue. Tips?

Let me say that it doesn’t bode well when an author with this many errors in a post is claiming her book has no errors. Even my phone autocorrects “i” to “I”. I checked out the Look Inside on Amazon, and soon found my fears were well-founded. The critical reviewer was right. There were numerous issues, even in the first five paragraphs, which leads me to suspect this authors friends—and editors—have deceived her regarding the quality of her writing, albeit unintentionally.

First, there are some technical issues with the book. The line spacing isn’t even, there are some over-wide spaces between sentences, the first-line indents aren’t even, and the first line of the Prologue is indented (“real” books don’t indent the first line of a chapter or scene). These issues are easily fixable and should be addressed because they give the overall book a less-than-professional appearance.

Then there are proofreading issues, like ensuring the punctuation is correct and consistent. For example, the comma at the end of a passage of dialogue should be before the closing quotation mark, not after. It certainly shouldn’t be after the quotation marks in paragraph three but before in paragraph five (this indicates a lack of attention to detail on the part of the editor/s. If you are going to be wrong, at least be consistently wrong).

Copyediting

There are also a lot of copyediting issues, like:

• Missing punctuation (“Tickle me daddy” should have a comma and a capital D).
• Incorrect hyphenation (laid-back, not laid back).
• Use of numbers (three, not 3)
• Using a spaced hyphen when an unspaced em-dash should have been used (so—not - ).
• Dialogue tags the wrong way around (“he said”, not “said he”).
• Incorrect words (“nine and a half years”, not “nine in a half years”).

Line Editing

Next come the line editing issues. The line editor edits on a line-by-line basis (surprise!), picking up things like the fact that eight sentences in the first two paragraphs begin with the word “He”, creative dialogue tags (stated Aaron), and noting that dialogue can have a tag or an action beat, but doesn’t need both.

Developmental Editing

Finally, there are developmental issues. The general advice is not to begin with a Prologue, to show not tell, and not to kill off point of view characters (the challenge is life, not death). This book begins with a Prologue that is mostly reminiscing about the past (telling), from the point of view of a character who dies at the end of the Prologue. On the plus side, the author maintains a consistent point of view, although it could be improved with the use of a deeper perspective.

Note that I’ve actually addressed these issues in the reverse order they should be addressed: the developmental edit should come first, as there is no point in ensuring the spelling and punctuation is perfect in a manuscript that requires extensive revision and rewriting.

Was this book even edited?

Either way, it concerns me that this author claims she had an editor go over her book four times. It concerns me less that the author also claims to have read it over twice herself since it was published: no one ever sees their own mistakes, which is why we all need editors (and note that beta-readers are not the same as editors).

This is what bothers me: her editors clearly haven’t explained the writing rules she has broken, to enable the author to learn from her mistakes, and improve her self-editing skills. This explanation should be in more detail than I have given above, and should be referenced, so the author understands these are real rules, not just some annoying personal preference of the editor.

I have serious reservations about the competence of the previous editor/s, who have allowed this author to unknowingly publish substandard work, and have inadvertently hurt the author by not telling her the book needs at least one more round of editing, possibly more, before she can justify offering it for sale.

It's a form of deception.

It’s a difficult issue, partly because the authors who most need editorial assistance are least able to afford top-level editor, and (it seems) are least able to recognise whether an editor is competent. The best advice I can give is:

• Pray.
• Read widely in your genre, especially good books, so you learn what good writing (and good editing) looks like.
• Read craft books, including books on revision and self-editing for fiction writer. James Scott Bell, and Renni Browne/Dave King are good authors to start with.
• Join a writers group.
• Ask trusted writer friends for editor recommendations.
• Ask for sample edits from several editors before making a decision (hint: the editor who gives you the most feedback is almost certainly more competent than the editor who complements your writing a lot but doesn’t give many concrete suggestions around how you could improve).
• Pray some more, specifically that you won't be deceived.

I'll be back next week, talking more about deception in our writing. Have you come across similar examples?

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest ... or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2000.

How do You Define “Success”?

I’ve recently read two Christian romance novels which looked completely different on the surface, but ended up both addressing two issues we all have to grapple with. I then read an article on Writer Unboxed which addressed the same issues, although not from a Christian perspective. This got me thinking … if it came up three times in a day, it must be important.

The first novel was The Doctor's Return by Narelle Atkins, where Megan has to decide between chasing career success by pursuing an advanced degree in the city, or staying in her hometown and marrying her high school sweetheart. Towards the end, Megan says:

I don’t need to chase academic accolades to feel like I’m a success.

I’ve spend twenty years working in a corporate environment, and I’ve seen a lot of people chasing career success, whether measured by the degrees they hold, the promotions they are awarded, the position title they hold, or the salary they earn. Yes, we all need to work, and many of us are lucky enough to be able to earn a living doing a job we enjoy. But degrees, money or position shouldn’t be our sole source of recognition, our sole measure of success. As Christians, we have a higher calling.

The second book I read was Too Pretty by Andrea Grigg. This is the story of Ellie, who meets the gorgeous Nate about ten minutes after declaring a six-month moratorium on dating. She realises that in the absence of her family (serving as missionaries in countries such as Papua New Guinea and Uganda), she has been turning to a succession of loser boyfriends to fill the void inside. She decides:

I want to allow God to fill up those spaces, not boyfriends or even my family.

I’m sure we all remember that girl at high school, the one who always had a boyfriend, and managed to acquire another one within days (hours?) of breaking up with the previous one. And we’ve all seen the photographs of the ageing lothario with a beautiful new wife young enough to be his granddaughter. It struck me this is another way of chasing success: instead of searching for identity and success in work, some people seek to find their identity in their partner or spouse. They don’t consider themselves successful without the right man (or woman) on their arm.

Writers (and probably other creative types) have a third issue: the weight of expectation, the temptation “for our self-worth to become wrapped up in our commercial performance”, the hope or dream that this will be the “manuscript that validates me in the eyes of my family, my friends or my peers”. While the writer isn’t a Christian (as far as I know), it strikes me that many Christians experience this same compulsion to seek validation, to chase success.

Why?

We know the verses. God has a plan for my life. God shall supply all my needs. God will grant the desires of my heart.

But will He?

Yes. And no.

Whether we are writing as a calling from God or an offering to God, I believe he will honour that sacrifice as long as we are being obedient to Him and to His plan for us. To obey is better than sacrifice. We are deceiving ourselves if we believe anything else.

There can be a fine line between writing (or doing anything else) to serve God, versus writing to serve ourselves, and the emphasis on marketing ourselves can make it hard to see that line (like the log and the splinter). There is a danger that we can turn our writing into an idol, that we measure “success” by the number of sales, or blog comments, or website hits, or Twitter followers. We look for external validation rather than seeking to obey the author and perfecter of our faith.

We are called to be His disciples: that means disciplining ourselves to follow His plan. Not our own. God can’t bless our writing unless it’s His plan for our lives. And His plan for our writing might not be that we sell it for megabucks. It might be that we give it away (like on a free blog!) … or it might be that the “audience of one” you are writing to help is actually yourself.

Where do you seek validation for your writing? How do you measure success? Through God—or others? I’ll be back next week showing how easy it can be to become deceived, even by well-meaning Christian friends.

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest ... or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2000.

Honouring the Least

Who doesn’t love a hero/heroine? Don’t we all look for the hero in the stories we read, and build one into the stories we write? I find this a challenging task as a Christian writer. Usually heroes are those who rise to the top, who conquer, rescue, who win others over with charm, achievement, chivalry, strength. Yet if we want to write a story which mirrors the teaching of Scripture we are faced with honouring very anti-cultural values.

In Biblical stories we see that God chooses the powerless, the weak, the little ones, in order to show His power. From the very beginning, God uses unlikely figures, and in one way or another, they are always unable, inept, unprepared, and incapable. Sarah and Abraham, Moses, Rachel and Rebecca, David, Jeremiah, Job, were all ‘powerless’ in some way. Being at the bottom, the edge, the outside, is the privileged position spiritually. This is where God seems most often to choose to work. Those at the centre of God’s stories are those who fail, who run and hide, who are outcast, often unlovable or weak in human terms.

Throughout the Gospels, we find numerous
teachings promoting downward mobility. "Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave." Matthew 20: 26-28). Jesus consistently honoured the least, the outsider, the sinner, and the handicapped. None of these images are glamorous, nor the most desirable place to be, but Jesus challenged His disciples to find greatness in being a servant, to die to self and put others first. 

In the Old Testament we love to see how Daniel, David and Joseph persevere through enormous struggles and end up in privileged positions in their society, but still the real success was in their inner changes. Many of the characters central to biblical stories have sad ends to their earthly life. The only real hero is God, of course, and the glory goes rightly to Him. But how often are we tempted to make our heroes into figures that many readers will be attracted to; those who rise up from lowly, broken, powerless positions, to places  of strength, achievement, success, and of course, happiness? Don’t we want our readers to aspire to be like our heroes? Don’t we write stories in which we at least hope to emulate our heroes and heroines? Don’t we all want the happy ending?

I think it’s difficult to write stories where the heroes are truly heroes in the spiritual sense, where their greatness is seen in servanthood, where their strength is shown in self-sacrifice, and their success and charm is portrayed in the way they honour others above themselves. I’d be really interested to hear about the heroes you love to read and write about.  

As I’ll be on my way home from Africa when this is posted, I’ll look forward to responding to your comments a few days later.

Carol’s novels are based on her family ancestry in Australia from the First Fleet and include the Turning the Tide series; Mary’s Guardian, Charlotte’s Angel, Tangled Secrets and Truly Free. Her earlier novels Suzannah’s Gold, and Rebecca’s Dream have now been re-released by EBP. You can see more about Carol and her novels on her website.

 www.carolpreston.com.au

Or on  FB      www.facebook.com/writingtoreach

Her novels can be found at EBP   www.evenbeforepublishing.com

                                                     Or Amazon  www.amazon.com/author/carolpreston