Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression

Mon: Editor's Blog

Written by Kimberly Culbertson

Monday, 25 August 2008

Helicopter Parenting

In a facinating article, O Magazine recently examined the roles of parents in their children's high school, college, and even adult lives. In "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Supermom!" (July 2008) Amanda Robb reported that the trendline is on the rise for "helicopter parenting," a term coined in 1977 by Jim Fay and Foster Cline, cofounders of the Love and Logic Institute. The term labels parents who "hover" over their children so much as to be involved in the minute details of their lives.

Robb notes that "In a study of 60 public universities and colleges... 40 to 60 percent of parents engage in some type of helicopter parenting, such as helping with academic assignments, and as many as 10 percent actually write their children's papers for them." I find this amazing, as my parents were thrilled to have me away at college and certainly never offered to do my homework for me. And yet, the parents discussed in the article drove hours to do their college students' laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning. They contacted teachers and possible employers to discuss assignments and benefits. They emailed and phoned daily to advise, and found ways to be assured that their student was taking their advice. One parent even had the password to her son's email account so that she could read any emails from professors and ask her son about why he missed appointments or failed assignments. On another strange note, the students studied in Robb's article did not mind, and even appreciated their parent's uberinvolvement.

George Kuh, PhD, who conducts the annual National Survey of student Engagement to measure what conditions make for the most eneficial college experience, admits that students with involved parents tend to succeed more, but states that there is "a tipping point between beneficial contact and the kind that stunts personal growth." Not to mention how the people around these spoiled students must just want to pound them...

I share this story for two reason: First, I really am just facinated. My parents were involved and accessible while I was in college, but certainly did not hover. In fact, I'm pretty sure I helped with laundry in grade school. It's hard for me to imagine wanting to stunt your child's development by doing everything for him or her. (But then, I do have background as a teacher.) But second, as I pondered the article, I began to make the easy connections between writing and parenting. And I began to wonder if this phenomena doesn't exist in publishing, and especially in Christian publishing.

Helicopter Authoring

I have lost count of the number of authors who correlate submitting their work to Relief with "sending their baby out into the world." Before I sound too pretentious, I'll admit, I've had similar feelings. You work so hard to shape a story (or a poem or essay or picture or...) but eventually it has to make it in the big world and you just have to hope you've done enough. But there does come a point when you just have to let go, and trust the story to survive without you.

And after that point, some of us just keep on writing.

We explain to the reader exactly how to read the story. In doing so we smother any subtlety in the piece and insult the reader. We're so afraid that he or she will miss the point or that the story isn't good enough to make the point on it's own that we throw in the "here's the moral" section toward the end.

Here at Relief, this "helicopter authoring" is probably the fastest way to get a rejection note. Former fiction editor J. Mark Bertrand once mused to me that every once in a while a story can pull off the moral-at-the-end trick, but it better earn the right to do it. So, like a parent who's not quite ready to trust her child in the big world, when we feel the urge to hover, we might ask ourselves if we're really helping the story, or just trying to reassure ourselves that we've done a good job.

Oops, that might have been a moral... oh well ;-}

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2008-08-25 17:07:54 Ha!

2008-08-25 15:56:11 Did the article list the names and contact info for said parents? I have a build...

Issue 2.3 to Print!

Written by Coach Culbertson

Monday, 11 August 2008

It's done. Issue 2.3 was put to bed last night, or I guess I really should say this morning, at 1AM. Thank ya Lord is all I can say about that. The cover is awesome, the content is awesome, it's all awesome.

So since we're all tired (but good tired, not bad tired) and all, instead of listening to me ramble on incoherently, why not go read Michael Snyder's really nice post about us over ChristianWriters.com ? It's pretty neat!

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Thoughts on Avoiding Cliché

Written by Brad Fruhauff
Monday, 04 August 2008
Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff shares his advice regarding cliché. I don’t blame people for slipping into the cliché—I find myself fighting it often enough in my own writing. In the TV series, Dead Like Me, George’s English professor father gives a lecture on Shakespeare’s sonnets and notes that a line about his heart and a tree feels cliché. But he goes on to suggest that clichés are the things that stick, the ideas or phrases that capture a phenomenon so well for so many of us that we can’t say it better ourselves. There’s something to that. Cliché is the idiom of the exceptional, a street jargon of mots justs for everyday use. But we know that in writing we’re not supposed to be using language in its everyday application (trust me, this goes whether you write realistic fiction or poetry). That’s because they’re so available, so common, that to use them looks like a cop-out, a failure to put something into your own words. The word cliché comes from the French, “to click,” and refers to “the striking of melted lead in order to obtain a proof or cast” (OED); it’s related to stereotype, which was a metal plate used for printing. It’s what “clicks,” but what clicks over and over again. The trick with avoiding cliché, I think, is to recognize one when you see it. This means attending to your language and to your ideas and sentiments. When you notice one, ask, “Is this meaningful here?” Some clichés are probably admissible in those places where they continue to signify, but what makes them cliché is that they’ve ceased to glow for us, and we tend to just gloss over them as we read. You want every word to mean something. But don’t overdo it. Word usage can be cliché, too. Adjectives, for instance, are overused because people think they are intrinsically poetic and a way to avoid cliché. They’re not either. In fact, next time you want to use a lot of adjectives, think of Lunch-lady Doris making horse-meat chili: “More testicles mean more iron!” (That ought to put a funny taste in your mouth.) More adjectives do not mean more iron. Tend to your nouns, first, like exercising your “core” muscles or adjusting the macro focus on your camera (notice my metaphors don’t work for an automatic age). Bring in modifiers to tweak and add a meaningful zest to your words. You adject wisely when you judiciously adject. Be aware that when you try to describe some event, emotion, person, idea, etc., the first thing that comes to mind will probably be something cliché, so be wary and try to come up with something else. Once you’ve done that, ask whether you haven’t just come up with something meaningless, forced, pedantic, or cutesy. By cutesy I mean the kind of writing that tries to play on words or ideas and to be self-consciously ironic about it at the same time. This is actually hard to do, and most people end up sounding like they’re trying to initiate the reader into some special club that “gets it,” only the reader thinks it so obvious that there’s no one who doesn’t get it, and so the author just looks foolish. You don’t want to look foolish. One last thought—a dangerous thought, perhaps, but I stand by it. Bible verses and hymns can be cliché, too. Just because you quoted a psalm doesn’t mean you’ve shared a spiritual experience with your reader. Many poets can reference or quote Scripture powerfully, but it becomes cliché when you rely on it to do the work you are supposed to do as the writer—which is the main point about clichés, after all: they don’t work if you’re not working, and you have to work hard to make them work. Write comment (0 Comments)

Some Congratulations

Written by Kimberly Culbertson

Friday, 25 July 2008

Announcing the Editor's Choice Winners

We're about to announce our complete author list for the upcoming issue, but before we do, let's congratulate our Editor's Choice Winners for the upcoming issue:

Brian Spears, for his poem "Hall Raising"
Melanie Haney for her short fiction "The Last Thing Before Dirt"
Mike Duran for his essay, "The Ark"

Don't miss out on these, folks. Click over to the store to purchase your subscription , or order a single issue in a few days once Coach has announced presales :)

CNF Anthology Nominations

Each year since 2006, Creative Nonfiction Journal has sponsored an anthology of the best creative nonfiction from the calendar year. Editors of both print and online journals may make nominations from their own publication. Editor Dinty Moore makes selections for the anthology, which will be published by Norton.

I sent off our nominations from Relief a couple of weeks ago, and I did so with great satisfaction. Whether or not they are selected for Best of Creative Nonfiction. Vol. 3, I am so proud to have these essays representing Relief’s work before Dinty and his readers. Two of our three nominations are pieces forthcoming in the next couple of issues. Watch for them. Here’s a sneak peek.

From issue 2.2

“The World I Breathe” by Karen Miedrich-Luo

Coming up in issue 2.3 (August/September)

“Letters Home from Sunshine Mountain” by Jill Noel Kandel

Coming up in issue 2.4 (November/December)

“Dead End” by Jessica Belt

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2008-07-26 17:19:16 I\'m excited to read each of these. Thanks for your support of good writing!

Call for Submissions

Written by Lisa Ohlen Harris
Monday, 21 July 2008
For those of you still looking for more places to submit your hard-boiled detective story, here's a call for submissions we stumbled upon: For fiction writers (especially you Diner types) Chicago Overcoat: A Print Anthology A print anthology, coming in late 2008 Submission Deadline: August 1, 2008 1,000 – 6,000 words No reprints Simultaneous submissions considered Fill in the Blank: “Hard-boiled detective” meets __________. More than anything, submissions should focus on noir. Since the term Chicago Overcoat is taken straight from The Big Sleep, the stories in this anthology will be as new and adventurous as its inspiration material was back in the day. For complete submission guidelines and tips from the publisher, go to http://susurruspress.com/COgls.htm Write comment (0 Comments)