Personal Note

A few thoughts on writing very personal essays.

My own view is that, if anything, what is wrong with most memoirs and autobiographical poems is that they don't go far enough in their confessions; they myopically fudge the details, the close nitty-gritty of self-observation. ~ Phillip Lopate, Getting Personal

My essay "Memorial Day" first appeared in Relief Issue 2.3. Recently it was reprinted in the anthology Saying Goodbye, released by Dream of Things. It's a story that no doubt has confused some people -- the writing is likely fine, having been edited capably by Lisa Ohlen Harris, but I tend to get a certain reaction. "You are so brave," I will hear. Which translates in my mind to the unasked, "Why put this out there?" Or something closer to, "Could I, should I, share my greatest failures with the world?"

"Memorial Day" contains my tale of hurting my husband, Tim, in the worst way more than 25 years ago. The story of our near divorce is woven within a weekend of remembering in 2006, when Tim and I returned to the coastal town where our disaster had happened.

For better or worse I'm someone who tells these certain things -- not all of my life's private details, not even very many -- but the intense bits I believe I have learned from. Usually in person it's after I've known you a while. Doing so in writing is a long process; often it feels like bushwhacking a rough trail between my emotion-filled memories and the sense and sensibilities of readers' minds. As creative nonfiction expert Dinty W. Moore says in his book Crafting the Personal Essay, "The private essay hides the author. The personal essay reveals." I don't wish to blather about private issues no one can relate to. Rather, I want to reveal something of the deepest truths that have invaded my being.

The eyes of the me telling my "Memorial" story now view life with a spiritual appreciation that the early-1980s me could only spot as a glimmer. Part of my continuing closure became releasing the setting of my great drama, letting it sink, so to speak, into the ocean. But there's also a part of my ongoing way of life bound up in lessons from this past event. I'm a person of faith. For me that has come to mean putting together all the evidence I can regarding truth and seeing what it adds up to. Before I royally blew it that time in my twenties, I didn't understand what mercy might look like. While I could see others' need for forgiveness, I couldn't grasp my deficit. I was basically good; I made mistakes. But bring push to shove, and, hey, sure -- it's me, remember? -- I always chose the right path, the godly way. Until, of course, I didn't. Excuses no longer held up in my own mind for my actions. I reached a clear fork in the road and to go forward with belief meant accepting that I needed something more.

Would I recommend this form of writing for very many? Not really. I should likely say run from the awkwardness. Turn to fiction; find some creative alternative. It's certainly not a mandate for Christians. The style of "confessional" writing I'm striving to do isn't bound to particular theological perspectives. Though it tends to be about finding wisdom and truth, its focus is individual, existential.

If you can go there, and if you have to, then read and write the very personal. You may find yourself involved in what the amazing nonfictionist Phillip Lopate speaks of when he says, "I am endlessly interested in the wormy thoughts and regrets and excuses and explanations that people have for their behavior. 'Confessional' is, to me, a descriptive term, not a derogatory one....Honesty has been, for me, the one lodestar to which I never stop aspiring in print. I don't say I attain 'honesty,' but the very fact that I try to reach it gives my work, at least to my own eyes, a formal thrust, a dynamic, a topography."

Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief, and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com/stories-glimmer.

Winter Reading

While it's not officially winter yet, December is a winter month, so it's time to consider Winter Reading. Usually I set very lofty goals for myself that I rarely achieve, but I think my winter reading is much more attainable than my 2009 Summer Reading list. It may help that I've already started reading both.

Love Without Agenda: My Journey Out of Consumer Christianity by Jimmy Spencer Jr. Some of you may remember that I mentioned Love Without Agenda (LWA) twice before--once about a wedding and once announcing that Jimmy Spencer had just released the first chapter of his LWA book online for free. Well, not the whole thing is available in eBook form. For free.

It's not just free though. It's honest. The first creative words that Spencer gets on the page, even before the preface, are, "I didn't write this book to prove to you that I'm right. I wrote this book to share with you that...you are valuable and beautiful just as you are." Immediately after that, Spencer introduces himself and the book very matter-of-factly. You know what you're getting into before the first chapter. I like that.

Oh, and it's interactive. The eBook has links to discussions, videos, and other websites. It's truly a book for the 21st century.

To download it for free, go to ebook.lovewithoutagenda.com.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger Everyone talked about this book when the movie came out. I did see the movie and thought it was good, but there was a close friend who kept urging me to read the book. And so I started it last week. And it's incredible.

What's been surprising so far is the amount of conversation about God. I'm less than 100 pages in, but there has been a lot of discussion between the main characters about free will and the role that God plays in the universe. Niffenegger seems as if these are all thoughts she's had in the past, and it reads as if she really has no answer for any of the questions that arise, only a series of steps that allow the reader to make his or her own conclusion.

Follow Up Be sure to expect a follow up blog when I've completed my reading. With my Winter Reading list so much shorter than usual, I will also see if there is more I can do with the books I have read. So expect to see a Relief Recommends in the near future along with a possible interview with one of the authors. (And by "one of the authors" I mean Jimmy Spencer.)

So what books are on your Winter Reading list?

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Ian David Philpot is the Web Editor for ccPublishing and the Web Content Developer for Willow Creek Community Church. He recently receive his Bachelor's in English at Northern Illinois University and spent one year in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing program. He writes fiction, poetry, and music. Ian prefers black to white, vanilla to chocolate, and only eats yellow cake.

Diner Recommends: Kevin Lucia

The revamped Diner blog is not quite ready for the public yet, so until then, I'll continue to post Diner related content here! * * *

The Diner recommends: Diner alumni Kevin Lucia's novel Hiram Grange and The Chosen One: The Scandalous Misadventures of Hiram Grange.

I'll admit. I didn't understand Hiram Grange at first. The fact is, he's a super cool dude with a bunch of flaws who doesn't necessarily want to do the right thing, but is kind of forced into it. (and which one of us doesn't understand that?!)  Each novel in the series is a stand-alone and Kevin's is a great (and sometimes gross) read. A little bit Lovecraft, a little bit allegory, and a lot of tension, the payoff at the end is superb.

Hiram Grange doesn't believe in fate. He makes his own destiny. That's a good thing, because Queen Mab of Faerie has foreseen the destruction of the world, and as usual... it's all Hiram's fault. He must choose: kill an innocent girl and save the universe... or rescue her and watch all else burn. Just another day on the job for Hiram Grange.

Kevin is giving a copy away here or you can purchase a copy here.

CNF in the Making

Relief reader Deanna Hershiser talks about the creative nonfiction coming in issue 4.2. One of my favorite parts of reading submissions is being swept along. Writing that lifts me is writing with a view to a room of my heart's experience, even when (as is usually the case) I haven't been through what the author is describing. I'm drawn to reading and writing essays for the joy of absorbing works made by wordy tools and lyrical recipes.

I was pleased this go-round that Relief's editors chose pieces I really like. They're stories of building boats and baking bread and attempting rehab. Seemingly insignificant facets of days -- a morning walk, an evening on the beach -- carry me into meaning, because they were recorded with patience and skill. Repeated returns to the work must have happened for each essay to become finished, ready. Such is the nature of our task. The same is true in "The Art of Work," where A. S. Peterson's craft-ful description reminds me that early in a process "it is easy to think the work nearly done. This is a deception."

As with the best writing anywhere, "finished" doesn't mean everything's tied up with a bow by the end. These essays retain questions. Their problems are ancient ones: What is art? Why strive in light of painful separations? What does perfection taste like? They give fodder for our processes, for the spiritual work each of us does to find meaning in our own little spaces and times.

I'll finish this post with a Cyber Monday notice, fitting because Leslie Leyland Field's essay for 4.2, "Making the Perfect Loaf of Bread," is already available in the artful anthology, The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God. Leslie is the book's editor, as well, and she has gathered delectables (each essay includes a recipe) from the likes of Wendell Berry, Luci Shaw, and Nancy J. Nordenson.

Here's to making our way through Monday and into a month of attempts at meaning.

Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief , and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com/stories-glimmer.

Your Life Story in Six Words

A tenative tweeter takes a new look at condensed modes of communication after discovering SMITH Magazine's Six-Word Memoir Project.

As a freelance book publicist, I spend a lot of time using social media to get the word out about new titles, but I have to say: I am not a fan of Twitter.  I'm the kind of person who loves thick novels like Jane Eyre, excuses run-on sentences, and had to be taught the meaning of "succinct" by my 9th grade English teacher. So 140 character "tweets" are just not my thing.

Twitter offers a wealth of information for those who wish to seek it out, but to me it feels like an overwhelming sea of data, a roar of white noise. I also can't help but feel like it's a "short-cut", a way to cut creative corners and at the same time cater to our distracted attention spans.  140 characters is just long enough to snag our interest and just short enough to amuse us but not commit us.

But this past week I discovered a project in succinctness that impressed me.  Instead of 140 characters, try six words! The Six-Word Memoir, an initiative of SMITH Magazine, challenges writers to publish their abbreviated life story on their website.  Inspired by the belief that everyone has a story and deserves a forum in which to tell it, SMITH editors created the Six-Word Memoir Project to give people that opportunity.  With a click, anyone can publish their memoir on the website.  I found myself fascinated with some of their entries...

"Never really finished anything, expect cake." -Carletta Perkins

"I still make coffee for two." -Zak Nelson

"Asked to quiet down, spoke louder." -Wendy Lee

In just six words, people all over the world are telling stories with their own unique voice.  I spent half an hour reading through these memoirs and was amazed that such creativity could be condensed into so small a space.  Some are profound, some humorous, some confessional or bittersweet, but all of them possess a genre and a plot of their own as intricate as any novel.

It takes enough skill to be able to articulate your life story, drawing out significant themes and symbols, but to boil it down to six words and still give the reader a lasting impression? It seems to me that is a craft in its own right.  Perhaps Twitter, a cousin endeavor in brevity, is a higher art than I imagined.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com.  After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow.  She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.moodyfiction.com.

Friday I’m in Love

Happy Day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully you’re rested; that the Tryptophan has induced a good night (or half day and then full night) of sleep; that this Friday morning finds you anywhere but shopping at Target or Best Buy.

Don’t get me wrong: there are gifts to find. I’m just hoping you’ll find them outside the crowded box stores and teeming masses of mothers who will cut you for whatever toy is supposed to be worth its weight in violence this year.

This is no anti-capitalist statement. I’m not looking to end up on Glenn Beck’s socialist conspiracy chalkboard (though I’d wear that as a badge of honor and really be touched if he cried when he mentioned my name. I have attended churches that actively seek social justice, so I’m probably a candidate for his list, along with Olbermann’s Worst Person Ever distinction).

Actually, I’m more interested in encouraging people to go find something beautiful. Walk hand-in-hand with a spouse or partner they haven’t seen in awhile. Take their kids to the most beautiful part of the place they call home and actually stay still long enough to enjoy it. Be thankful in the ability we have, as fleeting as it may be, to spend a moment just spending a moment.

Recently, I attended a dinner with John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist and Anglican priest (and no, those are not mutually exclusive endeavors, but I digress…). Mostly, I spent the evening trying not to prove the academic stereotypes about creative writers true. But I was particularly intrigued by one of Polkinghorne’s assertions.

He said, to be a great scientist or clergyperson – and I read this as a great (fill in the blank) – one must “engage the aesthetic experience.”

In other words, really living means tasting the beautiful rather than gorging ourselves on material things that so rarely provide anything beyond the want of more material joy than they will ever provide. As a writer, these ideas are second nature. I’m just not used to hearing them from a guy who was talking about quarks in the next breath.

Which is why, I think, I’m writing this. Crass consumerism has got nothing on a sunset over the Pacific or snowfall on Lake Michigan. And while Money Never Sleeps (I’m told), it’s no substitute for the time we lose chasing and spending it.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and 2.7 children.   

Happy Thanksgiving Friends

We're so grateful for you. Seriously, we couldn't do any of this without our subscribers and readers. Because of you, this adventure to bring "edgy" Christian literature into the world has meaning; these author's craft is not in vain because the work has an appreciative audience. We're all so grateful for you :)

My New Love...

Thanks to my participation in a faculty new media seminar, I have received a wonderful tool, a valuable gift to broaden my mind, an iPad. While I could write a great deal about how I benefit from the longer battery life and minimized weight, these traits do not approach the central question of the role of technology in our world and what would make me more able to provide a contribution to my communities, both large and small.

This reading for this week deals with the possibilities of rethinking how education looks and feels in the future. I know that Relief is not an education or technology venue, but as I think about the roles of writing and reading, I cannot but help to think about the impacts of these acts on those participating with informal education versus my students who engage in formal education towards unclear ends. The lack of motivation and direction of the "youth" has long been decried, but are things different now? Are there significant problems with the next generation of learning and learners, and if so, then what?

Well, in theory, the hope lies, for some, in technology, like online education, open universities, nontraditional education, and iPads, but the fears of thinkers like Jacques Ellul come to mind about the changes that the technologies work on us as we leave a "natural world" and more frequently inhabit a technological world of their own creation.

At least according to Ellul, this has a tendency to push us away from faith and spirituality, a connection to the transcendent because we become more connected with the Technique. I think that, to me, this becomes obvious in my use of the iPad. Sure, there are a lot of useful things that I do with it, including writing this post, but it tethers me while promising mobility.

I have an app for finding free Wifi spots wherever I am. We Rule and We Farm tether me in time and space as I ask, "Will I be able to harvest my eggplants and pet my llama?". I grow more and more "docked" with the technology, even as it promises freedom.

This week in my Graphic Novels as Literature class, we are discussing the graphic novel adaptation of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and what it is saying about consumption of media and the relationship between form, content, and the effect on the people engaged with form and content. This seemed, to me, to grow directly from the discussion we'd been having since we read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics at the beginning of term.

However, this is not what happened. The idea that form, content, and meaning might influence each other appeared anathema to them. "There's nothing wrong with Michael Bay films! I love them." "Yes," I answer, "There is nothing wrong with Bay as a singularity, but Bradbury is arguing about what happens when that's all there is, reaction and not contemplation." "But, what about Harry Potter?"

The fact that they struggle so much stems, to me, not so much from the ideas themselves but from the process of thought itself, and this lack of familiarity with depth, texture, and what Faber, in Fahrenheit 451, calls the "pores" in life comes from, at least in part, the technology and our assumptions about it. It will teach us, connect us, warm us, cool us, protect us, and solve our problems eventually in some lab somewhere. It's easy to see where Bradbury and Ellul might see this type of relationship between people and technology as a replacement of meaning, depth, and faith.

But, look at how cool my iPad looks on my desk with my monitor and laptop,

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in detective narratives.

Some Notes on Editing Fiction

This is the first in a series of entries on working to get the content ready for the next edition of Relief to go to press. Check back on Mondays for further installments.

Serving as the guest fiction editor for the coming edition of Relief reminded me of something.

Editing other people’s work is hard. Not difficult, hard.

At times, the decisions feel like chiseling off pieces of an already formed statue. In its initial form, the sculpture is complete and what the author wanted it to be when he or she put down their own hammer.

Being more of a writer than an editor made my work even less intuitive. Every sentence I suggested they cut or word I asked to be altered made me think of the sentences I’ve lost and words I’ve parsed for someone else in my own work. It’s never pleasant, even when I see how it is improving the story.

To come to terms with the work that needed to be done, I finally came to the following resolution: Venus De Milo would be far less beautiful with arms I didn’t have to imagine.

Sometimes you edit a part of a story to make it stronger. Sometimes you alter an element that works against the purpose of the piece. But most of the edits I found myself making were not about change. Rather, they were addition by subtraction.

Increasingly as I worked with these stories, I found myself excising lines and sections that got in the way of the author’s best work; the places where their voice was audible; the moments where their prose was at its most unselfconscious; the scenes where the world they brought me into ceased to exist through mere ink and paper.

The more I edited the more I saw myself cutting away background noise so that the silence left behind would cast the rest of the sound in clearer tones.

I found myself clearing paths so that the quiet moments of loss and strength like the passage below could more definitively mark Zach Czaia’s character Gladys in “The Wonderful Thing about Forgiveness.”

“Jorge said other things, made apologies, touched her arm briefly. These gestures she waited out. It could have been five, ten, a whole half-hour of minutes Gladys waited before finally hearing him rise from the chair, shuffle heavily out of the kitchen, open and close the door to the front porch.  Only then, after she was sure he had gone, did she lift her face from the table and bring it back into the light.”

In Michael Cocchiarale’s “God She Could Tolerate,” I worked to help clarify the utter disconnect that has grown up between Maddy and her husband John; a disconnect that rings in Maddy’s thoughts after he comments on how beautiful the afternoon is.

“At least he didn’t say ‘Lord.’  He didn’t say the Lord had anything to do with it, and for that reason Maddy decided she could tentatively accept the proposition, even if it reeked a bit of sentimentality.  To be charitable, she was even going to say “indeed”; but then, the silly fool, he kept on going.  ‘Forty years,’ he said, turning to her with moist, dung-like eyes.  ‘I don’t think I have ever taken the time . . .’”

Even in Margot Patterson’s “Catholics,” a story I mostly tried to avoid getting in the way of with the changes I asked for, I found myself pruning away lines and scenes so readers will run head first into passages like the following: 

“Now as I wait for Edward to call me, the cold of that day whistles through me, a draught that blows its cold breath on my hands and my heart. Before me, the long fall towards nothing. Within, a crazy, inextinguishable hope I’ll discover wings on the side of my body.” 

In a way, all of this feels a bit like the first and most vital tenet of the Hippocratic Oath, which is a pledge doctors make to help others using their skills and knowledge without harming them. Seems like a good way of looking at someone else’s writing as well.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and 2.7 children.   

Relief News Tuesday 11/9/10

As we said last Tuesday, exciting things are happening behind the scenes at Relief. One of the biggest developments is that we are adding to our editorial and support teams in preparation for 2011, which could be the best year for the journal so far.  One thing has become clear to us over the almost five years we've been in print: Even more so than funding, bandwidth, paper, and ink, the most critical resource we have is the amazing staff of volunteers who put their time and talents behind our efforts to publish the best spiritual and faith-based writing. So it is with great pleasure that we introduce our new Editorial Assistant, Stephanie S. Smith. Stephanie graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com.  After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow.  She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.moodyfiction.com.

If you are interested in helping out with Relief, check back in for updates on open staff positions, or go ahead and send a resume to editor@reliefjournal.com.

Relief News Tuesday 11/2/10

Relief News Tuesday is making a comeback! And we have a lot of news to share in the coming weeks. Today, we're excited to report that some great people have been printing some very nice things about us:

Relief Love from Sojourners

In their November issue, the good folks at Sojourners have included an article called "The Borderlands of Christian Publishing" which features Relief and our Founding Editor, Kimberly Culbertson. The article, subtitled "Writers who want to let both their faith and their creativity run free are finding a home in the Christian literary underground," captures and celebrates Relief's story and vision.

Sojourners is an excellent print magazine (they focus on faith, politics, and culture) but they also have a lot of great content online at sojo.net, including this article. To read online, you'll have to give them your email info, but the read will be worth it. Check it out and then leave us a comment to let us know what you think!

Want to read more? Kimberly has also blogged about seeing Relief celebrated in print. Click over to her site to check it out.

Of Phones, Motherhood, and Miracles

In his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond comes to one of those inverse conclusions that seem so interesting given the degree of change that happens in such a small linguistic alteration. After looking at the development of various cultures in history, he writes that the old adage “necessity is the mother of invention” is actually more correct when reversed. Technological advancement happens because invention creates the sensation (reality?) of necessity.

A crude analog: give up your cell phone.

When the cramps that idea creates in your stomach subside, think about it. About a year ago, my then six-year-old daughter heard me mention a wall-mounted phone and asked what exactly that was. We’ve never had a home phone in her lifetime, so I gave her the best description I could, feeling more and more that this is exactly how sci-fi writers create new technology from old. Her response sounded a lot more like when I give my college freshmen history lessons about the 90s.

“So, wait,” she said, her face twisted in a thinking frown. “You called a place and the other person had to be there? What happened if they were gone?”

“You called back later,” I said.

“Did you at least leave a voicemail?”

“For a long time, none of my friends had that. And the ones who did had what was called an answering machine separate from the phone that taped what the person calling said.”

“That…is so…weird,” she said, then whistled, then turned and looked silently out the window. Later, she told me that she needed “time to fit the whole phone thing into my head.”

In this, Diamond’s idea seems pretty spot on. I got along just fine before the phone moved from the kitchen counter to my pocket. Sure, it was a pain to miss the call I was waiting for, or to get a busy signal when I finally worked up the courage to call some girl (who most likely left the phone off the hook for just that purpose), or when I stroked in a six rather than a seven on the rotary dial and had to start over.

But now that I have a cell phone, the idea of not being able to call other people on their corresponding always present, always on wireless seems absurd. In fact, if I hadn’t been in grad school the last four years, I’d be writing about how foreign the idea of living without an iPhone is. And this, as most things do, got me thinking about writing.

There are many aspects of my writing process that remain (thankfully) hidden from me. One of them is what exactly drives an idea from invention to necessity. After I’m done, I can see the evidence in the sum total of the story I’ve wrangled. But in the moment, it’s never that apparent.

Some say I shouldn’t worry about trying to understand that; that the analysis will ruin the magic. In some ways, I agree. There are so few miracles left (we’re told anyway) that we should protect the ones we still have. But miracles are miraculous because they are rare, and that’s why I can’t quite leave the one most common to me as a writer to sit uncelebrated.

I can’t chalk up the times when meaning happens rather than is created to the firing of neurons intersecting with the various and sundry contexts and conditions shaping my experience. The science of the intellect does a lot of things well – inspiration is not one of them.

In a sense, the moment of the creative breakthrough is the realization that I’ve become attached to my cell phone. All along, the mechanism of the story (and telling it) has carried its own logic. I learn and internalize the rules of the world I’m expressing to the point that I carry them around with me like the Motorola in my pocket. Only later do I see where something beyond any abilities I possess intervened to make something less than usual out of it all.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction, as well as a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. His wife and two children are currently preparing for a different type of deadline – the birth of a new brother and son in February.     

So I've decided to Nanowrimo...

If you've never been introduced to Nanowrimo, the word is shorthand for "National Novel Writing Month." The idea is that a participant will write at least 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. It's intended to be a crappy first draft that you write while banishing your inner editor, something I'm not sure I can accomplish, but here we go anyway. November 1st marks the beginning of this adventure.  Coach Culbertson, the Founding Editor of The Midnight Diner (and my husband), created a video course called Write A Book in 30 Days, and I'm about to try it out. If you're giving Nanowrimo a go, you might want to check it out, too. There's a little bit of pre-work that you can do in these last two days of October, so click over it out right away :) 

Novel Journey Interview

Mike Duran, Diner Editor alumni, writes for Novel Journey, one of Writer's Digest's 101 Most Valuable Websites for Writers in 2008 and 2010. Recently, he asked to interview me about The Diner 3.  I think you might enjoy reading how things came together. We discussed what kinds of stories the Diner does (and does not) look for, whether or not "Christian Horror" is an oxymoron, things that happened during my first year at the helm, the gorgeous cover art, and

a secret.

You can read the interview here.

Our God Is...what?

I started my new job at Willow Creek Community Church about four months ago, and it's great to be soaking in the culture of a new workplace--especially one that is faith-centered. One of my new coworkers is Aaron Niequist, Willow Creek's Weekend Worship Leader. He is a very creative and intentional guy, and he posts to his blog several times a week. One of his more recent posts, titled "Did We Just Sing That?", really hit me. It zones in on a lyrics from a popular worship song that seems very boastful. I had the similar thoughts the first time I heard that song, and I'm glad that Aaron was able to write his opinion. You can check it out by clicking on the blog post name above.

Another Notable Mention for a Great Relief Author

A. Trevor Sutton's essay "Modern Love: The Findings of a Sorority Chaplain" (Relief 3.1) has been selected by Robert Atwan as a "notable essay of 2009" in the Houghton Mifflin Best American Essays 2010 anthology. Trevor's essay is the second to receive notable mention in this anthology, and as I've already told him, nothing makes us happier than seeing our authors get the recognition they deserve. Since Relief is (for the time being) not able to pay for publication as we would like, we do everything we can to promote our authors and see their work anthologized and honored beyond publication in the journal. In our less than 4 years of publication, we have been thrilled to see 6 of our authors receive honorable mentions in anthologies such as Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and The Best Spiritual Writing.

So a special thanks and congratulations, Trevor. You've done us proud.

Relief Recommends: D. S. Martin's Kingdom Poets Blog

Relief author D. S. Martin is doing some interesting things at his blog Kindgom Poets , which serves as a resource for anyone interested in Christian poetry. As he describes it, "The Kingdom Poets blog is a resource of poets of the Christian faith, regardless of background; there is no attempt made to assess orthodoxy, but simply to present poets who speak profoundly of faith in God.

Mr. Martin is a returning author who has two poems appearing in the upcoming Relief 4.2.

Ultrasonic Creativity

I wish there was an ultrasound for the creative impulse.

As I write that, I disagree with myself. Allow me to play devil’s advocate for my own idea.

Point: Recently, I was sitting in the doctor’s office with my wife and two external children looking at their half-done brother on a screen and it occurred to me that it would be really helpful if every once in awhile I could hook my imagination to a sensor and get a look at what’s going on in there.

I’d even put that nasty gel on my forehead to do it.

Counter: The point of art is the discovery. Knowing what is at present unknowable completely destroys the mystery that causes humans to seek. To hope. To wonder.

Hooking up to a machine to juice that system would only make a medium that can struggle with predictability even less impacting. What if the question inside my head that I can’t answer is supposed to be presented as just that: a question worth wrestling with an angel?

Point: Now, I’m not advocating a wholesale push to scan my way into ruining the beauty of the revelatory experience. I like finding out what’s going to happen as the story unfolds in my own work as much as I do in others.

I’m also not convinced that prolonged contact with whatever electrical signals are being sent out by a machine that could see into a part of a person’s psyche would be medically advisable, not to mention the increased use of said nasty goop.

But there are times when I can’t wrestle out something I know is there. I write it as many ways as I can think to and the character won’t take shape. The dialogue won’t stop sounding like a beer commercial. The conflict won’t stop sounding like it came from a Lifetime movie.  

In these instances, I think a mental ultrasound would work like Metamucil.

Counter: Really? A laxative for your head? There are just so many ways that metaphor hurts my feelings. I’m thinking that writing through the issue would work more like Actvia with Bifidus Regularis (you’re welcome Jamie Lee Curtis). Over time and with consistent use, the writing process will either fix the issue or provide the context that the author’s perspective on the idea they cannot articulate is what needs fixing.

Point: Here’s the thing: before we went to see the doctor for the scan, my wife was worried. She couldn’t tell if she was feeling the baby move or imagining it, a fear made worse because we hadn’t seen a doctor for a couple months courtesy of switching jobs, states, and insurances. She worried that there might be something wrong with him.

And then the ultrasound tech poked Judah with the scanner a bit harder than he liked. Soccer-ready, our boy kicked back. Later, Heather told me being able to feel the kick and see his foot moving on the screen made all the times she’d doubted whether or not he was actually moving disappear into certainty.

I imagine a similar certainty about the detail that eludes us in a story might clear a lot more of the paths we want to walk than just that particular piece of the puzzle.

Counter: Or, certainty robs the expecting parent of their faith during the waiting and the author of what makes their work even remotely original. And, how incredibly invasive would that scan be? I’d wager the experience would be more embarrassing than those full-body scanners that show you naked under your clothes to the groping eyes of TSA.

Either way, just imagine the types of things we’d see in images of our imaginations…Or don’t.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction who appreciates a good laxitive metaphor as much as the next guy (and probably more than the next girl). He teaches at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California where he lives with his wife and 2.5 chidren.

(Un)Suited

A week ago, I wore a suit to work. And a tie. And a vest.

This is not cause for alarm, except for some of my new students who felt compelled ask why I’d done it. Backing up a bit, there are three cultural assumptions at work here.

First: Writers don’t look like “writers” unless their outfit was picked up off the bedroom floor, shaken out, and put on quickly enough that one of the buttons in the shirt is in the wrong hole (if the shirt has all of its buttons to begin with).

Second: People who just completed a Ph.D. don’t have enough money to own a suit that makes them look like they could be a teller at the local Bank of America branch.

Third: Being that my new university sits right on the Pacific Ocean, I should apparently deliver my lectures in shorts, sandals, and with a liberal use of the term “dude.”

The intersection of all these ideas is exactly why I wear the suit. Call it a fashionable object lesson.

The more I write and the more I work with other writers, the more convinced I am that the greatest obstacle standing in the way of originality is not our practice of making cultural assumptions and then extending those assumptions into stereotypes. Rather, the problem lies in our inability to identify those assumptive forces within ourselves. In writing, this is deadly.

I know, this isn’t rocket science. Then again, the rocket scientists I’ve known more often than not suffer from the same blindness.

We can’t see within ourselves the systems that guide our opinions and actions when we decide what is and is not acceptable, desirable, and worth pursuing. And when we can’t see them, we can’t challenge them.

In critical theory, folks like Foucault would point to our blind spot for the control of systems outside of us as the culprits for this blindness. We are enmeshed in overlapping, intertwined mechanisms that create the internal latticework of opinions and attitudes that “guide” us.

I tend to see humans as more autonomous than that, but I’m not as smart as Michel was. And yet, I’m pretty sure his ability to theorize about those systems (and my subsequent assumption that they are there) means I can’t lay back and blame everything outside of me for my internal blind spots.

If I’m going to be a writer, I must identify and own the places where I lack sight. Not only that, I need to wallow in them and then make them public. This is the mirror artists hold up to culture. And a mirror is only effective if it reflects clearly (unless you want to avoid your blemishes, in which case I’d suggest taking stock in why you are so afraid of yourself).

So sometimes I wear a suit. That way, when people’s stereotypes are challenged, I can talk about it with them. Hopefully those conversations will lead me and others to a more refined understanding of the forces at work within us and a broader vocabulary with which to talk about them.

Michael Dean Clark is a writer, teacher, and former Southern California ex-patriot in the Midwest. Currently, he is at work on…nothing. His new job as a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University has left no time for stories of his own. He hopes that is not the case for much longer, otherwise people may begin to question his qualifications for said new job.