Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings you some exciting news.
Issue 2.4 on It's Way!
We've been notified that Volume 2, Issue 4 is being shipped. In just a few days, we'll be mailing them to your doorsteps! I must say, this is my favorite part of the process :-}
Christmas Sale Coming Tomorrow
Know someone who would love to receive a subscription to Relief for Christmas? We've got a holiday sale coming tomorrow! Stay tuned, because for one week we'll be offering great deals just in time for Christmas. Order a subscription for yourself or someone else, and we'll make sure we ship the first issue in time for Christmas! AND, for this week only, anyone who orders a subscription will also receive a free copy of Coach's Midnight Diner! We'll also have single issues of 2.4 on sale for $12.95 and Coach's Midnight Diner on sale for only $8.00!
Relief SOS Campaign
In September, we posted a Relief SOS, explaining Relief's financial needs for the coming year.
So far, we've received 12 donations totalling $774.00. (The ChipIn to the right says that we've received $575, which reflects the amount donated through the ChipIn. We've also received two donations via mail, totaling $199. Since we aren't able to edit the amount that has been donated on the ChipIn, we've reduced the amount needed from $2000 to $1801 to reflect the additional donations.) We still need to raise $1226 to ensure that we'll be able to meet our needs for 2009.
Please consider donating even a small amount or subscribing to the journal. For those of you who have already donated or subscribed, THANK YOU! Your contribution has already helped to keep Relief up and running!
Relief Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson follows up on Last Wednesday's blog "Relief Recommends Rest."
Thanksgiving, Unplugged
So This is What Rested Feels Like. Ben and I spent the Thanksgiving weekend in the north woods of Wisconsin without cell phones or computers. Instead, we filled the weekend with family, conversation, games, dining out and sleeping in—we even completed a puzzle. It's been at least five years since we've spent four straight days without an Internet connection, and while there were moments of technology withdrawal, it was without question the best thing we could have done for ourselves.
I can't remember the last time I felt so relaxed and rejuvenated. I woke up today energized and excited about the day. This is going to be a wonderful week!
Rest and Returning
A few weeks ago, I came across this verse from Isaiah, and I found myself thinking about it again this weekend:
For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” But you would not, And you said, “No, for we will flee on horses”—Therefore you shall flee! And, “We will ride on swift horses”—Therefore those who pursue you shall be swift!" —Isaiah 30:15-16
Rest and returning, quietness and confidence. When we find ourselves stressed, scared, and exhausted, it's easy to look around for the fastest horse, to work harder and longer to get the work done. But returning to the Lord and resting in Him, rather than depending on our own strength, helps to create that peaceful confidence in our spirits that brings out the best in us. I have no shortage of things to be grateful for, but this holiday, I'm most thankful for the quiet confidence that God is creating in me.
Kimberly Culbertson is the Editor-In-Chief of Relief. She also writes fiction and creative nonfiction in her spare time. Unfortunately, that last sentence is more of a punch line than a reality since Relief was born, but she can dream.
Short story author and playwright Stacy Barton continues her series on writing her first novel.
Last time we talked about how I managed to create my first draft and the delight I felt over actually birthing a piece as long as 23,000 words – a huge accomplishment for a short story author like me! But I believe I also mentioned that while I had created some intriguing characters, a curious setting and some interesting conflicts, my novel wasn’t working.
So I thought what any writer thinks when faced with failure, “What was I thinking!” Of course it wasn’t really failure, it was simply the next step in the process, but try telling that to the writer who’s just bled thousands of words on the page!
At first I couldn’t even figure out what was wrong with my story, let alone how to tackle its problems. I had critiques from others and ideas myself, but they rolled around inside my head like bumper cars at a ten-year-old birthday. So my first draft sat in a digital drawer for months until I had the insight and the courage to begin again.
Focusing the Second Draft
I had a few false starts, but I really began in earnest once I determined that the focus of my second draft needed to be structure. In the first draft, I had told my story in two parts; in Part One my protagonist, Lily, was a ten-year-old girl and in Part Two she was a seventeen-year-old young woman. This might work in a jumbo epic piece, but it was too much for my little novella. I needed to choose ONE story to tell; I had to choose whether to follow the young Lily or the old Lily in my second draft. I chose the 17-year-old Lily because hers was the more active story and because I thought I might still be able to use some of Part One as background or flashback.
So here is what I did. I went through the entire manuscript (young Lily and old) and divided everything up into “scenes.” Some of these “scenes” were really sections with multiple scenes, but if they hung together nicely I left them as one. As I divided the manuscript on my computer, I created a new document for each “scene,” named it and saved it.
Using 3X5 Cards
Once I had cataloged the scenes and sections of my first draft, I took a stack of 3X5 cards and wrote the name of each “scene” on a card. Then I shoved the coffee table aside and spread them out on the floor. I kept all the cards from Part One in a pile to my left and spread Part Two first. Then I began to add in cards from part one, where I could. Sometimes I put a scene in knowing I would have to change the perspective to a 17-year-old, sometimes it served as narrative or memory.
I was amazed at how much of the original draft I was able to use. Having the cards on the floor also allowed me to get a sense of the arc of the story, showed me where the conflict was, where the action rose etc… So I moved the cards around and around until a new structure emerged. Then I numbered the cards, stacked them in order, got up off the floor and went back to my computer.
With numbered scenes and sections in my hand I did a giant cut and paste on the computer to create my second draft. Rough around the edges to be sure, but a place to begin. It had dropped to a mere 12,000 words, there were holes that needed to be filled, entire scenes and sections that had to be added to this new piece – because it was a new piece all over again – but I had the bones of my second draft and I was thrilled.
IN TWO WEEKS: Wrastlin’ the Rewrites
Stacy Barton is a short story author and playwright who is currently slogging through her first novel. Her debut collection of short stories, Surviving Nashville, was released in 2007. Her stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary magazines including Potomac Review, Relief, Ruminate and Stonework and her fifth stage play, an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, premiered in Orlando, Florida in 2006. In addition to short stories, plays, and poetry, Stacy is the author of a children's picture book and an animated short film. She is currently a free-lance scriptwriter for the Disney Company. Visit her at www.stacybarton.com.
Michael Stevens continues to explore the use of food in literature. Food is fundamental, a place to start from in thinking about human life. And generally one of the first rules to learn and enforce regarding food and drink is that they not be wasted. This turns into something of a mantra as the parenting years evolve, but it is troubling to see how much gets chucked down the garbage disposal, in the trash can, into the compost bin (well, there the conscience is assuaged a bit). But since I’ve been reading Dostoevsky with my Russian Literature class this past several weeks, I’ve developed a semi-hypocritical spirit. Why? Well, because of Dmitri’s recklessness in his pursuit of the elusive and dangerous lass Grushenka.
A Pleasing Profligacy
When The Brothers Karamazov opens, the untoward competition of the son, Dmitri, and the father, Fyodor, for the affections of Grushenka (herself the kept woman of an elderly merchant) is already well underway. In fact, Dmitri has already taken money from his lawful fiancée, Katerina, in order to spend a drunken day and a half with Grushenka, complete with Gypsy girl singers and champagne by the case full, at an inn out on the highway. Many aspects of the deed make Dmitri seem despicable, but we are not fully persuaded of that. There is a bold and noble root to his decadent tree—or at least we hope so. Certainly we pray that he’s not like his thoroughly debauched father, but their tactics are troublingly similar. And so, when Dmitri decides to head for that same inn a few weeks later, having heard that Grushenka has sneaked there to meet her first lover, a Polish gentleman, our anxiety for the situation is piqued. Remembering the prior event, wherein Mitya “had drowned the cloddish peasants in champagne and stuffed the women and girls with candies and Strasbourg pate,” the merchant has already packed a preliminary box with “half a dozen bottles of champagne and ‘all sorts of indispensable starters,’ such as appetizers, candies, fruit-drops, and so-on,” with a huge wagon load to follow to the inn. As he departs, Dmitri cries out, “Too late, devil take it! My whole life has been disorder, and I must put it in order. Punning, am I?” Our hopes that he might, by some homeopathy of wildness, somehow curb his disorder are shaky at this point, and we likely agree with his companion Pyotr Ilyich’s comment “You’re not punning, you’re raving.”
The Profligate’s Prayer
But Dmitri stays in our affections precisely because he is so unguarded, so forthright about his affections. On the carriage ride to the inn, where he will fling himself over the brink of every propriety in order to let Grushenka know the depth of his love (and his inclusion of a pair of pistols in his retinue shows that this might be his final act of fealty), he unexpectedly begins to pray. And such a prayer, deep and wild and tear-jerking in its confession (and maybe a little absurd as well, which by no means invalidates it!): “Lord, take me in all my lawlessness, but do not judge me. Let me pass without your judgment…Do not judge me, for I have condemned myself; do not judge me, for I love you, Lord! I am loathsome, but I love you: if you send me to hell, even there will I love you, and from there will I cry that I love you unto ages of ages…But let me finish with loving…finish here and now with loving, for five hours only, till your hot ray…For I love the queen of my soul.” A reckless prayer, a reckless love, even a reckless menu, but we shall see in the next blog what becomes of this earnestly reckless soul… Michael R. Stevens is an associate professor of English at Cornerstone, where he is in his twelfth year, teaching American and British Literature, many of the core courses in the worldview sequence, and occasional courses rooted in the work of Wendell Berry. He and his colleague Matt Bonzo have written Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life, coming out with Brazos Press this December. He is married to Linda, and they have three kids (Ethan-11, Julia-8, and Gabriel-6). He is unashamed to admit himself a virulent New York Yankees fan (not a good thing this year) and Buffalo Bills fan (a good thing this year).
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson plans on being thankful for a break this Thanksgiving.
On Monday, Ben (Coach) blogged about taking a break the hard way. So as we sat in Church last night for the Thanksgiving service, I considered just how much we've been pushing ourselves these last few weeks (Though anyone who knows me might laugh at that estimate and say "years" instead...). We've been working into the wee hours of the morning and sacrificing sleep to battle the to do list. This week, the stress caught up with us both, and we've had to just give in and leave items undone in order to crash and recharge.
In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, this four-day weekend can easily become more stressful than restful. Entertaining, cooking, and shopping can easily take center stage, but the weekend shouldn't go by without some pause to be thankful and relaxed. Now, last year I had my first experience with 4am Friday sales, and I must say that I'm a little bummed that I'll be missing them this year. But given the exhaustion I've been battling, it's probably better that I skip the all-nighter anyway. So we're headed up to northern Wisconsin for four days without wifi (Which I'll admit, is not exactly a selling point for Ben, but luckily the woodsy environment is).
Appreciating the Sabbath
God gave us the sabbath, and commanded that we take it:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. --Exodus 20:8-11
And yet, how many weeks do we go through without ever taking time to breathe? There are many reasons that people brush off this commandment. But there really is no excuse that doesn't sound like just that--an excuse--when I write it into this blog. Do we think that if God really understood the culture of our society, he wouldn't ask us to rest? Do we think that we are stronger than the people for whom God intended the commandment? Does God understand just how much we're trying to fit into the weekend? I know that I often have a list of things that need to be accomplished before I feel I deserve to take a break, and the list often bleeds into the sabbath.
We Really Do Need the Break
Jesus knew enough to take time to rest and to take care of Himself and His connection with God. I bet that didn't always go over well. I can imagine a grumbling crowd asking, "Why is he sitting alone in the wilderness when all these people still need to be healed? Can't he see that the work's not done?" But I think he knew the cost of not taking the time to recharge and recenter. I too am learning that the cost of physical, emotional, or spiritual exhaustion: I am less productive, I am less capable of loving people well, I don't have time or energy to listen, I am less creative, and my work has less impact. So as Ben mentioned on Monday, we're both going to start this "New Year's Resolution" early: to take this sabbath thing seriously--because it's not about whether we deserve the rest, it's about realizing that we need it, even when we are able to talk ourselves out of it.
So here's to a restful holiday season. Let's enjoy the hustle and bustle, but make time for the weekly recharge.
Kimberly Culbertson is the Editor-In-Chief of Relief. She also writes fiction and creative nonfiction in her spare time. Unfortunately, that last sentence is more of a punch line than a reality since Relief was born, but she can dream.
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings you some exciting news.
Short story author and playwright Stacy Barton continues her series on writing her first novel. 
Michael Stevens continues to explore the use of food in literature.
