Exciting Newses!

Before we start, please forgive the poor grammar in this post's title. It was intentional. (This might be why I'm not a copyeditor...)

So! I have news. There has been a LOT going on in the last twelve months. I give you: The List of Significant Things That Have Happened!

The List of Significant Things That Have Happened:

1) I wrote the pilot episode to a TV show I'd love to develop and get produced.

Seasonal Haiku

Recently, a writing group I'm part of posted a challenge to create some haiku poems during this time of strangeness, so I wrote my first ever haiku poems. Check it out:


1. (Of Haikus)

I'll write a haiku
To meet this virus challenge,
But I'm not a fan.


2. Distance

Alone in my room
Stranded far away from home
In Slovakia.


3. Self-Assessment

I'm eating chocolate
Clearly not symptomatic;
No lost appetite.

:)

Work, Stress, and Perspective

Earlier this week, I launched my first novel: Random Walk, Book One in the Fractured Galaxy series. Very exciting.

Also a little nerve-racking because, as my first novel, there's a lot riding on this project's financial success. I moved half-way across the country just so I could afford to live without a day job in order to write this book (and some other writing projects), and many friends and family gave generously of their time and money to help me bring it to fruition.

As such, this novel is theoretically a major litmus test for my future plans to continue not working a day job and writing pretty much full time instead. It's been a tad stressful to think about at times. As the launch of the book and, with it, the proof of the pudding approached, I found myself spending a lot of time in prayer about that. Here are a few things I've learned during this process:

Exciting News!

In case you were wondering what I've been up to lately...

I have exciting news!! I have been hard at work setting up an author website, and re-writing the draft of my debut science fiction novel, which I'm independently publishing - Random Walk, Book One in the Fractured Galaxy Series. 😃

At the same time, I've been planning a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo to ensure the finished product is sleek and professional. I launched the campaign this morning, and you can check it out here!

This project has been a long time coming. I first decided to indie publish a science fiction novel about a year ago, and I've been researching and writing since last October! The series is set in the near-present day and follows a team of US Air Force astronauts who unexpectedly find themselves in the far reaches of our galaxy. Cut off from Earth with no idea where they are or how they got there, they have to work together to find a way home before their life support runs out.

So why SciFi?

Believe it or not, I used to think I didn't like science fiction.* When I did find something I liked, I called it an exception. Stargate SG-1 changed all of that, and I soon blossomed into a veritable nerd. However, just like it took me until college to discover that I actually do like SciFi - a lot - it took me until last year to realize I could maybe write SciFi. Once the idea struck, I was hooked, and I'm so glad; I have been having the time of my life writing this first novel.

My initial idea was to write soft SciFi** because I'm no scientist. But much to my surprise this project very quickly became hard SciFi^ and I found myself up to my brains in scientific research. Thankfully, my oldest brother is a scientist and a born teacher - he's spent countless hours explaining concepts and providing feedback on my ideas. The result is a great story with great characters, that a physicist could read without rolling their eyes at made-up technobabble. Which was my goal. :)

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*I have no idea why.
**Aliens, warp drives, etc.
^Rooted in real-world science.

Writing on the Go: Tools of the Trade

Sometimes, you just need to get out of the house.

So you go to the park, or a local coffee shop, or your corner Starbucks, or a hotel, or a train, or wherever. So you pack for the journey: money for provisions, your spiral poetry notebook because you're behind in your Great Devotional Poetry Project, your devotional, a book for the next play you're researching, your phone, etc. And of course, your portable typing device.

In my case, it's a lightly used Surface gifted to me by my Aunt Mary a while back. This little tablet/computer is a gem. I keep it in desktop mode because really, what do I want a tablet for? It's super small and light, but it does all the things my desktop does except play DVDs and have a big screen, and it does them all just as well - when I was in school, I had Adobe InDesign,* Photoshop and Illustrator all downloaded** and simultaneously running on this tiny little workhorse and they worked great!

Writer's Tools - The Poetry Notebook

Ah, the pleasure of writing longhand. Even the Tok'ra Anise kept a journal because her host Freya enjoyed the "tactile sensation of handwriting.* I used to write everything by hand, then type it up later. I remember in high school I wrote a middle grade fiction book, all in notebooks, double-spaced so I had space to add or change things if I needed to. Obviously, that used up a lot of paper and a lot of time. Later on, I went digital and did all my writing directly onto the computer (unless I wasn't near a computer). Except for poetry. For whatever reason, I still hand-write all my poems.

What We Have to Offer

So there I was, pacing the floor in the middle of the night, having a rather intense conversation with God.

You see, I was experiencing a bit of frustration. Surely, I thought, God would not have called me to write, and certainly not to leave my job to do so, unless he meant for me to actually write– to do something with it. Yet, despite my best efforts to figure out a way forward, and my not-quite-best efforts to “do the work,” progress was nonexistent.

I went to a conference once where the keynote speaker talked about failure, and how the only way we fail is if we don’t show up – our job is to write; the results are up to God. So what had happened? I’d shown up; I’d left my job, moved back to Oregon, self-published my poetry book, and attended writers’ conferences. I was doing my job, trying to write, but almost all of it was drivel, and not in a “you’re your own worst critic” sense. I know drivel when I read it.

It was drivel.

The day before the pacing incident, I’d made a solid attempt at two poems. They were horrible. But the next evening, I’d felt inspired. I was listening to Ginny Owens’ new album,** and I’d just gotten to the end of “The Fire.” I paused the music, picked up my pencil, and flipped open my notebook. I took a moment. I bent over the page. I began to write.

Joy Instead of Discouragement

Last night was the third meeting of Lake Bible Arts (if you count the first one, which nobody showed up to). We had a very successful event, although it may not seem like it as you read on.

Ekphrastic poetry is poetry written in response to a piece of art, usually a painting. I like the idea of applying that to all the arts, so when I sent the event reminder to my small email list, I asked everyone to bring something they had created, for us to respond to with new work. I myself printed out three of my poems, and brought a variety of other artworks in case anyone showed up without something.

I got to the church early to set up: I planned to give my testimony as an artist, so I put out a circle of chairs for everyone to sit in. I set up a table for the art everyone was supposed to bring. There were two additional tables for creating new work, one covered with a tablecloth for the painters. Both rested on a tarp to protect the carpet. A fourth table held snacks.

Everything was ready with time to spare. While I waited, I helped myself to some snacks and watched a few YouTube videos on my tablet. The time to start came and went.

Nobody showed up.

Conversations with Myself About Art

Because I lack an immediate, present artistic community (a perpetual sore point for me), I have no other recourse sometimes than to talk to myself. If I am in public, this is done in my head (although I can't help making occasional facial expressions), and if I am in private, this is sometimes done aloud. I had one such conversation tonight, sitting in my studio.

I had just read the most recent Slice of Infinity post on the RZIM website. Apparently I was thinking about the nature of that blog, the new RZIM Institute facility they're building, what Sara Groves said about the "space" to create art in her recent video, and who knows what else.

At any rate, I imagined I was seated at a table with the RZIM team - a big, oval conference table - having a discussion about something or other, and I ended up talking about the artistic process.

It was great to have someone to discuss it with.


Seriously, though.

For my part, the artistic process is synthesis. It's an osmosis of Stuff that gets synthesized into ideas and concepts and feelings and moods, and it gets solidified and defined on paper as a piece of writing. The osmosis comes naturally from living life, reading, and listening. The synthesis takes time and quiet and as much osmosis material as possible. The actual creation takes time and energy. Lots and lots of time and energy.*

It takes "space."


That space can be hard to find - I've got a lot of irons in the fire.

When I do find it, I often don't know what to do with it. Because I don't currently support myself through my writing, taking that kind of time feels wasteful. It feels like luxury; it feels lazy. Surely I should be doing something - anything - else. So I do.**

Because sitting at a table and just ... thinking ... is ridiculous. Going for an hour-long walk around the neighborhood not for the sake of exercise is a waste of time. Listening to that new Sara Groves album multiple times - really listening to it, no multi-tasking - is lazy.


But it's not. Those things are springboards for inspiration. Those things are necessary.

*This process usually involves or results in a lot of conversations with God, another activity we tend to mistake for a waste of time.

**When I find space and realize it, life is very, very, good. And I tend to not get any sleep.

Poetry Book Progress Report

This morning I finished editing my poetry book!

Before you get too excited, I should probably tell you that this is the third time that I've finished editing my book.

Self-publishing makes editing a delicate process.  You want to be ruthless but not paranoid; thorough but not obsessive.  I think I've done a pretty good job self-editing.  At least, I've done a lot of trimming and re-wording, and the poems are much better for it.

The hardest part for me is objectively looking at the organization of the poems. There are two reasons for this:

1) It's hard to organize a bunch of poems.  Understatement of the year.

2) Because of Reason #1, I'm reluctant to even approach the subject of organization.  If just one poem needs to be moved - just one! - the whole book could spiral into a chaotic Vortex of Death!

No.  No, I am not being melodramatic.

Early stages of poetry organization.

Anyway, I finished editing again.  Next, I will take a final look at the organization.  >shudder<

If I'm not back in two days, you'll know what happened.

Vortex.

Uninspired and Addicted to Books

There is nothing inspiring about selling a house.

If, like my dad, you're good at landscaping, I suppose it could be an opportunity to create landscape art in the name of curb appeal.

If, like my mom, you're good at interior design, you could potentially flex your creative muscles in a bid to make the inside so welcoming that your buyers insist on keeping all the furniture and accessories (this actually happened once).

I have neither of those skills.  The height of my house-selling creativity has been applying touch-up paint to scuffs on the walls.



I've been taking refuge at Barnes and Noble whenever my realtor needs me out of the house, which is a dangerous thing to do.  I was there for a few hours yesterday, and I was absolutely determined to not buy anything except my lunch.  I was going to completely avoid temptation by not even looking at any books or DVDs.  I even took my netbook to work on a writing project so I wouldn't get bored.

Unfortunately, I brought the wrong cable and couldn't plug it in.

So I got bored.

I played it fairly safe.  I stopped by the reference section.  I glanced at the plays.  I flipped through a couple books about television shows.  I meandered over to the poetry section.  I picked books up and put them back down.  I read bits and pieces and set them aside.  I was doing very well.

Then I started skimming The Mousetrap And Other Plays by Agatha Christie.  And after that I saw the copy of Beowulf as translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, which I'd heard was coming out back in June at the Glen Workshop.

I didn't stand a chance.  I bought them both.

On the plus side, I did get an idea for a Beowulf-related story while reading that book's introduction.  So, basically, I can justify that purchase by calling it research.  As for the Agatha Christie volume...character study.  Yes.  You see?  Research again.  A legitimate, even necessary expense.



Don't judge me.  :)

How I Work

On one of the back burners of my brain, I've been thinking about how I work, by which I mean, the conditions I like to work in.  It all started when I read a Meme on Facebook (can you believe it?), and I started noticing little preferences I had about my workspace.  When I sat down to scribble (read: type) out a thought about this phenomenon, it quickly spiraled downhill into a blog post:

Where do I write?  Theoretically, I can write anywhere, especially here in the computer age.  And I have.  I’ve written at home, in various parts of my home.  At work (only a couple times, when it was slow).  In my high school math class (when I was finished with my work – see?  I’m a good kid – really!).  During breaks at a briefing.  On my computer, my laptop, my netbook.  In a restaurant.  At Starbucks, naturally.  At Barnes and Noble.  On a walk.  On the subway.  In the car (once #hazardous, #don’ttrythisathome #SoRidiculousI’veResortedToUsingHashtags).  On the train in Germany.  At my various residences prior to the current one.  In the park.  In the yard.  In hotel rooms.  Etc.

Still, when it comes to serious, intentional, prolonged writing, a good, specified work space is a beautiful thing.  In the past, this was B&N or Starbucks, because I didn’t have a good space at home, but one can’t go to these places and purchase food and hot chocolate and Nantucket Nectars every day.  One would go broke.  Thankfully, I now own a lovely house with some architectural character, and I turned the dining room into my studio.  I have surrounded myself with beautiful things – my paintings from Afghanistan and Jordan and various other travels.  A nice display case with the artsier souvenirs from my own travels and those of family members.  And of course, my writing desk.  It’s gorgeous, and I refuse to put a computer on it – the entire surface is available to me to sprawl my notebooks, notecards, papers, pens, pencils, highlighters, books, awesome owl bookends for my most treasured art-and-God books, and my elbows; underneath is also clear, for unrestricted leg room no matter what angle I’m sitting at.  It’s wonderful.  It tends to get cluttered.

Clutter is fine.  It can be remarkably satisfying to survey a nice, productivity-caused clutter.  But leave it that way, and I find myself avoiding the desk.  So, a lesson I have learned about myself: I need a clean, organized surface to start work.  If I’m to sit down at the dining room table (where I find myself doing all of my poetry editing), the entire table must be clean and cleared of any non-poetry related stuff.  To sit and compose correspondence or write something new, my studio writing desk must be neat and tidy.  Right angles and all that, with sufficient space for my notebook and elbow-room.  Although I enjoy organization in it's place, I’m not at all a neat-freak, so I find this very interesting.

And what about time of day?  I am my most creative from the evening to the middle of the night, but that could be as much a product of my work schedule as it is of my life-long night owl tendencies.  At any rate, a nice creative prompt can help alleviate this tendency; can pull the opening hours of reflection closer to mid-afternoon.

Reading is the best prompt, because just about any genre can get the creative juices flowing, as long as it’s not on a computer.  Computers are distracting and screens are unimaginative.  Hard-copy books are portals.  Some movies or other multi-media can be very inspiring, as well, but most are just brain-suckers - great for relaxing, not inspiration.  Music can be very helpful, depending on the style, content and volume.  And listening to a good sermon, for example, can give lovely insights that may be applicable to what I’m writing, or just get the brain ticking, which is always good.  Reading the Bible does much the same, besides also having an unmatched ability to restore the mind and soul, among its other qualities.  And prayer.  Prayer is one of those things that seems intangible until you get a direct answer.  I find it very helpful to pray about my writing – I may not pen something five minutes after praying, but it always makes me open, which leads to writing sooner or later.

These are some of the things I’ve noticed about my habits as I turn my attention more and more toward serious writing.  I'm curious if others have such finicky preferences.  Somebody should do a study...

Self-Publishing: A Few Lessons Learned

If it's been a while since I've blogged, it's because I've had a lot going on.  Work has kept me busy, I switched to night shift a couple times, I got a stomach bug, etc, etc.  And of course, I'm working on my book!  It's been quite the process, and I thought I'd share a few things I've noticed about the self-publishing process, as I have experienced it thus far:



1.  It takes FOREVER.  However long you think it's going to take you, times it by 10.  Or 100.

2.  Being professional means making time and money commitments.  Authors these days are active on social media, so I must be as well.  Authors need professional photos, so I had some taken.  A free-lance author must market their own work, so I have been doing research.  The list goes on.

3.  Better get lots of eyes on your work and be as self-critical of your writing as possible.  You want to ensure that the best work you are capable of creating (without the wisdom and assistance of editors) ends up for sale, not just some hodge-podge that was "good enough".

4.  Know your work and what you're going for, and stick to that ruthlessly.  Be decisive, and be confident in what you're doing.  My poetry book has a theme, and it's important that all the poems in the book are related to that theme.  It's also important that all the poems are of a similar quality; you don't want a really good poem you wrote a few months ago right next to a truly awful one you wrote in high school.  I've had to take poems out, add poems in, and make edits, all in the name of consistency.

5.  Don't be shy.  Talk to people who have self-published.  Send your stuff out there.  Let people know you're Creating Art.  Completely buy into your new endeavor.



I'm still learning all these things, but those are my top five lessons so far.  I'm sure there will be more...

Quick Update

Here's where I'm at with my poetry book:  I have almost finished whittling down the poems I want to include in the book.  I thought I had finished, and sent it out to a few friends and family for feedback, but the very next day I was thinking, "That one doesn't really fit.  And that one isn't very good.  This one I need to work on, but then it should be good to go."  And then, three days ago I wrote a new poem that fits the theme of the book, so that one will be added.  The process is clearly on-going.  As I am waiting on feedback and still making changes, the book will also clearly not be ready by the end of the month.  Instead of projecting out another soft deadline (because I'm making the deadlines, I get to move them, and for me, the quality is more of a priority right now than speed), I'll just be posting updates until it's finished and ready to go.

Some basic information about the book:  The working title is To Do This Right.  This is taken from one of the poems that will definitely be in the collection.  I have decided the type of cover art I want, and I may have decided the exact cover art for the book, but I'm still looking around.  The basic theme of the book is the joys and struggles of walking with God in a season of uncertainty.  The poems form a kind of a scatter plot around it - some of them are about exactly that, some less so, but they all have a basic unifying feeling that relates to the theme.

If you've read the rest of my blog, you know that I tend to write poems that rhyme.  All but one of the poems in To Do This Right are rhyming poems, at least at present.  I will say that I recently bought Horoscopes for the Dead, a collection of poems by Billy Collins (which are not at all morbid).  These poems are all free verse, and having read the whole collection, I wrote my first truly free verse poem yesterday.  And I liked it.  It will not be in To Do This Right, unfortunately, because it has absolutely nothing to do with the theme of the book.

I also took the important modern authorial step of creating a Twitter account.  I had one before, but I never really did anything with it, so I deleted it some time ago.  I have created a new one, @rmlulich.

So there's my update.  Considering that I work full time, volunteer with Civil Air Patrol and at church (by singing in the choir), and currently have a rather wretched cold, I'm happy with my progress.

The Power of Art

The habit, very prevalent today, of dismissing words as “just words” takes no account of their power.

                ~Dorothy Sayers

Usually when I write a poem, it’s because the first few lines have popped into my head.  I’ve been thinking about something, or I see something, or I’m feeling frustrated, or a Bible verse is demanding my attention.  I always try to write those first lines down right away so I won’t forget them - nine times out of ten, I end up writing the whole poem right then.  In such cases, I usually write the poem in order, that is to say, stanza by stanza, and more or less even line by line.  I make changes as I go, of course, and more when I ‘finish’ and read over the whole work, and again when I type it up.

I think I’ve written every single poem on paper, with a pencil.  In the margins of those pages are scribbled lists of words that rhyme with whatever I’ve already written – some poems have many scribbles, crossed-out words, and erased and re-written portions, and some don’t.  It’s a process, and some poems are harder in the writing than others.  In the end, though, I have written the poem – I have chosen which words to use, and what structure; I have shaped the poem to fit an overarching idea, which often becomes more clear to me even as I write.  The process in its entirety is exactly as described by Dorothy Sayers in The Mind of the Maker,[1] though she uses the example of writing books and plays:  Where she discusses controlling free-willed characters to fit together with the plot,[2] my ‘characters’ are rhyme, meter and stanza, and my ‘plot’ is what I’m trying to say.

Because the process is the same, so are the results.  I have ‘predestined’ my poems to be a certain way; I have controlled their formation.  The structural elements have a ‘life of their own’, which is their free will, but as long as I keep them bound to the overall concept, they will conform to it and make the finished poem something altogether independent of the author.  This is a wonderful thing to experience as a writer, and is half the blessing of doing the work – as much as a person may be moved by someone else’s creation, its creator is privileged to be moved by it first.  This independence, however, is also very troublesome for someone like myself – I hesitate to share my creations with strangers, lest they ‘over-analyze’ them.[3]

But there is a difference between introducing foreign ideas and gleaning truths that were hidden.  Here again, Dorothy Sayers[4] has things to say, reassuring me that, just as the poem exerted its free will to result in something I could not have entirely preconceived, so also the free will and unique experience of the reader can see things in it that I didn’t notice.  This is, again, because art connects with us at the soul-level.  There is Power in the Word, and there is Power in words; neither return empty[5] when there is Power in the soul.

Ultimately, the artist and the feeling he puts into his art don’t matter; it is what the consumer receives from it that is important, and this is why our creations outlive us.  If the consumer is affected in a way that is consistent with the work, he will either love or hate it, just as people respond to teaching and prophesy with either joy or derisive laughter; sackcloth or stones.  It is not the job of the artist to try to control this reaction – that is impossible.  It is the artist’s job to create a conduit through which God may choose to speak to the soul; to use his gift to “profit all.”[6]  It is the consumer’s job to approach the work in the right spirit – to see what it is meant to say to him, and not what he wants it to say.[7]  Those who approach art otherwise may be surprised by some revelation, but usually they will walk away content to talk about brush strokes.[8]

Consequently, there are three aspects of a creative work:  There is the artist who rendered it, there is the consumer who responds to it, and there is God,[9] who inspired it and infuses it with the power to engender that response.  Herein lies the power of art:  That God may use it, as He will, to provoke within us not just an emotional response, but a spiritual one; not just feeling, but action.  That is why various institutions have been wont to treat art and its creators as dangerous, flinging insults like ‘subversive’ at them like rice at evil spirits.  Of course, the irony is, art and its creators are dangerous; not in the way those institutions tend to think, but in the same way that C. S. Lewis’ Aslan is not a tame lion.[10]  There is Power in the Word, and power is dangerous, because it can effect change.  I mentioned what is not the artist’s job.  What is the artist’s job is to ensure that what he is creating is of and for God; there is plenty out there already that is not.

-RML

---

[1] Chapter five, Free Will and Miracle.

[2] Characters who nevertheless have enough free will to interact with the plot in ways that surprise the author.

[3] I was an English major, and I was always frustrated by that when it occurred in my classes.

[4] Chapter eight, Pentecost.

[5] Isaiah 55:11

[6] 1 Corinthians 12:7

[7] It seems prudent to note that, in order for a work of art to have its full effect, the consumer must also approach it with the understanding that if it has anything to say to him, it is probably about his own state, or about God, and not about the artist; once the piece is finished, the artist is nothing, though we can’t help but sense the piece of him that is in his work.  In the same way, we don’t read the Bible to study the men who wrote it.  We will, of course, learn something about them, but the primary purpose must be to learn about God (and our relationship to Him); and that not as we would make Him, but as He is.

[8] In all of this, I am differentiating between the spiritual interests of a consumer, and the technical interests of a student.  I am only concerned with the former, for whom the actual making of the piece has no real import; for the latter, the brush stroke is a legitimate focus, though the student is still unlikely to 'hear' anything from such an approach.

[9] This statement is related to, but not the same as, Dorothy Sayers’ brilliant analogy of the Trinity in The Mind of the Maker.

[10] The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.