Know Jack #395 True Lies

 “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful.”

George Orwell

I think fiction writers would do well to have a touch of politician in them. Making a web of lies sound true enough to draw the reader into it, well, that’s what we are all about. The difference is that fiction writers presume their audience knows they are lying. Moreover, readers will not tolerate lies that are too outrageous or that contradict earlier statements of fact. In fiction, a writer can only stretch reality so far before it breaks. So, the writer has a disadvantage not shared by politicians.

I haven’t ventured into the creation of new worlds often. Only once springs immediately to mind and that story is yet to be put into print. However, when I did venture off this planet, I felt compelled to make a world familiar enough to require little explanation without being completely earthbound. I didn’t realize back then that I worried needlessly about using “male” and “female” rather than “man” and “woman” to describe non-humans.

As politicians might tell you, one way around unpleasant truth is to use a very narrow spotlight and shine it only in places that fit the storyline. Let’s face it no one wants to read about a romance between a working stiff with a beer gut and plain Jane who works at Wal-Mart. While I advocate cramming as much reality into a story as possible, that’s too much reality.

Like voters, readers don’t want to hear about their rather ordinary lives, they want the lifestyles of the rich and famous. My characters are harder to convince that a rougarou is real than are my readers. My readers want the rougarou to be real and so do I.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting fiction writers to tell fabulous lies to entertain people. Mr. Orwell, a master of fiction himself, has a different take on politicians horning in on the genre.

Lost Crusader #185 Making a Living

 “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?”

Ecclesiastes 1:2-3

The Preacher has an important truth to share. What good was his wealth, his throne, and even his wisdom? Long after he was dead the sun would still rise and set, the wind would still blow, and the rivers still run to the sea. All his labor invested in a thousand endeavors would not change that. It was all in vain.

He tried everything “under the sun” and his opinion concerning the vanity of life remained unchanged—until he discovered that there is in every person God-shaped emptiness that is vain to try and fill with anything but God. With that discovery, he learned how to reckon profit and invest in things that endured.

At the Judgment Seat of Christ, the works of all who stand before Him will be tried by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Some things will endure while others are destroyed. Jesus (the Judge at this trial) once posed this question to His hearers.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Rather than allow people to guess, He supplied the answer.

“Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life…”

That’s not very specific, is it? He once claimed doing the will of God was meat. But honestly, that’s still not specific. The Holy Spirit that Jesus left to guide people into the truth offers this word on the subject. In the fifth chapter of the Book of Galatians, there is a list of actions/attitudes that ends with this thought: “They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God”.

It is followed by this word: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance: against such there is no law”.

One more word about the judgment of Christ. Innocence and guilt go beyond words, and beyond actions (no matter which speaks louder) down to the thoughts and the intent of the heart. It is not enough to do right. The thought behind the action must be equally pure.

Enduring riches cannot be labored for and can’t be earned. They can only be given away.

Maranatha

Know Jack #394 Write What You Know

 Write what you know, every writer has heard it over and over again. I’m searching for a word here—a word that means you say and believe one thing and do the opposite. It eludes me at the moment. Never mind, I’ll think of it soon. Anyway, it’s a word that writers should become familiar with.

I suppose it’s fair to ask how well we should know something before presuming to write about it. There are a great many things, so I’ve been told, that the color of my skin or my lack/possession of certain body parts precludes me from ever knowing or forming a valid opinion about.

I purposely left my lack of education out of that list, because as a famous songwriter once said, “I can read the writing on the wall”. If this modern line of reasoning is objectively true, then the scope of my characters and settings of my writing must, of necessity, be extremely limited.

I don’t mind that too much. Being a dinosaur and a rebel, I ignore such thinking and break the rules anyway. However, I do have a couple of objections to this interpretation of the write what you know rule.

First of all, if I adhere to the rule and write only what I can know as a white, male, heterosexual, Christian, then I will be criticized for not being diverse, inclusive, and equitable. On the other hand, if I venture into writing from the viewpoint of “persons of color”, women (real or make-believe), homosexuals, and other religions/cultures I am appropriating or more accurately misappropriating a fountain of knowledge that belongs solely to those who identify as one of those groups. Thus, dooming my writing to be styled as paternalistic, monochromatic, monoculture, and worthy of being banned.

This seems strange to me because I frequently read writers with no real experience or identity as a member of my faith who write stereotypical characters of that faith. Do they really know what they are writing? Or are they playing on approved stereotypes with impunity?

Should I write a character wearing literary blackface will he/she meet with the same acceptance as the hypercritical, bigoted, homophobic dullard Christian of modern literature? I mean we all know one of those characters springs from racist attitudes and the other is amusing and insightful.

In a world where “My Truth” supersedes reality, does anyone really know anything for sure? Choosing the pronouns for my characters might be offensive not only to them but the reader.

In a world that does not revolve around the sun, but around each of the billions of individuals that inhabit the planet, not only does everybody know everything, but no one knows anything. Write what you know then takes on a whole new meaning.

Maranatha

Know Jack #393 A Question of Balance

 “To learn as we grow old, The secrets of our soul…”

The Moody Blues

When I was in nursing school, I was asked by a classmate how I worked as a nurse aide all night and went to school all day. For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to answer. In a way, I really didn’t know. It turned out that I didn’t have to answer. One of my instructors was standing nearby and spoke up for me. “When you want something bad enough,” she said. “You do what you have to do.”

I admit there were those in class that thought I had bewitched the instructors. I don’t believe it, I’m not that charming. Blessed, yes. Charming, no. I think they valued daring. By that point in my life, I should have known better than volunteer—I didn’t. Rarely did I reach the double-dog level.

I still haven’t decided if I’m unafraid of failing (again) or just a fool. I lean toward the latter. That particular attribute often comes in handy. As a writer, there are times your want-to is put to the test. If you want to write badly enough, you just do whatever it takes. You stay up late and get up before dawn. You follow rules you don’t want to; you turn criticism into strength; and you exchange privacy for publicity.

The things that seem to satisfy our natural desires are not always the things that satisfy our souls. It is a shame that, too often, such knowledge comes with age. However, it does come. Attaining one’s dreams has more to do with listening to the soul and paying the cost than it does with talent or good fortune.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #184 Ignorant Grownups

 “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

1 Corinthians 13:11

Before I became a Christian, I was an extremely well-informed biblical scholar. I acquired this knowledge through a type of osmosis. I absorbed it from the Christianity floating in the atmosphere. I picked up more from conversations in which other bible scholars, like me, were involved. I read about it in textbooks. However, the surest source of my knowledge came from “reading between the lines”. This method calls for the assumption of a hypothesis, never testing it, and validating the conclusion by how well it agreed with the assumption.

The one source I steadfastly ignored was Christians. I mean everybody knew they were bigoted hypocrites deluded by an unprovable idea. They couldn’t even live it themselves. Mine was a nice, neat world of enjoying whatever I wished to do, thinking what I would, and absolutely content in the fact that I was as good as the next guy.

Then, quite by “accident”, I encountered a group of Christians. They spoke a language deeper than the likes of Samuel Clemens or Captain Stormfield dared explore. I didn’t hear one children’s Sunday School story. I found out why they weren’t the perfect creatures that I demanded them to be. More importantly, I found that they possessed something I did not—an adult encounter with a very real God.

My life has been radically altered since that time. I don’t know nearly what I used to know. Whatever I think I might know, I continually scrutinize, question, and test. In the course of doing so, an entire universe of things I have never considered has opened up. I find it strange that one who knows so little is often asked to teach.

I still do what I want to do, think what I will, and am content being no better than anyone else. It’s true I have exchanged my desires and my thoughts for new ones. It is my hope that over the last forty years, I have become more childlike and less childish. I know I’m not the best judge of that. However, I am willing to submit the final decision to the Best Judge and accept His conclusion.

I look back on my youth, as old folks tend to do. I usually do it with a sense of wonder at how I lost so much knowledge and discovered so much of value on the road to ignorance and an adult kind of faith.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #183 The Will of God

 “Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

2Thessalonians 1:2

Whether or not you’re a Christian, there may have been a time in your life when you wondered about God’s will. Just what does God intend for us on this journey called Life? Though the choices may seem endless, the truth is both plain and simple. Simplicity is a familiar criticism of Christianity. In a way, that’s understandable. After all, the God who designed and created a complex multiverse must be as complicated as His creation.

The problem with such thinking is that it comes from a human perspective. The multiverse that seems so complicated to us may, in fact, be very simple to God. In the same way, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are mind-boggling for us to comprehend, they are simply how God is.

Paul who penned the remark above told the Romans that Christianity produced a personal transformation in people’s thinking that proved the “good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God”. But we need not go that far. In every epistle he wrote he opened his writing with the secret to the will of God—and you may have read it to start the post. Or as is often the case with his letters, people skip right over the introduction.

The will of God is for everyone to experience His grace—His unmerited favor that accepts us into His fellowship. Grace is a gift from Creator to creation. It is not extended to us as our due for a particular self-identification, nor does it originate with us. God gives it of His own free will because He loves those He created and wants them to be free from the guilt and shame we experience as imperfect human beings.

It is also the will of God that we live in peace. Peace with ourselves and one another to be sure, but first and foremost at peace with God. Until we experience peace with God, no other peace is truly attainable or sustainable. Peace with God ushers us into His presence where there is fullness of joy. Peace with God flows from His grace.

So, if grace and peace are the will of God, then why don’t we experience them? Well, there are those who are experiencing God’s grace and peace at this very moment. They are not members of a particular church denomination nor those who shun denominational labels. They are not inherently more holy than anyone else nor can they achieve such a feat by sheer force of will.

Grace and peace, as the scripture above states, comes from the Father and Jesus Christ. If you want them, you must go to the source and ask for them. Then after having asked, receive them, and follow them to their transformative end under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Now, I have made this sound simple, and it is. However, it should come as no surprise that it is easier said than done. It is also more certainly true when done than said.

Maranatha

Know Jack #392 Lying to Myself

 I’m not a multitasker. So, when I go off into my fictional worlds to visit my imaginary friends, I’m there. Sometimes my touch with what’s going on around me becomes tenuous. There is some debate as to whether this is actually my normal state and my writing is nothing more than a walk deeper into the dark unknown. Generally, I’m ambivalent about the whole thing.

My hope in doing this is that all the trendiest influencers and positivity guru vibrators are on to something. If quantum theory can say that our mind creates an undeniable reality, who am I to doubt it especially if it makes my fictional people and places sound real?

The trouble is, I’m not a smart man—I can employ all the positive thinking I’m capable of and I can still tell reality from fiction. Even Hemmingway’s admonition to “write drunk, edit sober” isn’t able to blur the line enough to think my fictional world has become real.

If I were a better writer, I could make up an alternate reality that not only would I believe it was real but everyone else in the universe would be compelled to believe it too. I see writers of this caliber at work, and it boggles my mind.

Personally, I think their stories are wasted when confined to writing legal briefs, op-ed pieces, and media sound bites. I mean think of the literary masterpieces that could be written by someone with male genitalia who has all the world agreeing he’s a woman. Now that’s fiction that really sells.

I thought about trying that as a writing exercise, but then my inability to accept fiction as reality reared its ugly head and I was back writing about rougarous again.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my fictional worlds. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t spend so much time righting the wrongs in Zion or chasing werewolves across north Texas. In my worlds, I get to be the hero (the villain too if I want to). I can be the drop-dead handsome, billionaire Mensa member, with doctorates in philosophy and physics, who gets the gorgeous girl. What’s not to like about that?

Well, the answer may be that it’s just not true. I checked the mirror for confirmation. Yep, not true. No matter how hard I try or who I share this identity with—no one believes it. My hope is that with AI making the writing scene, I can become a transwriter, sort of like the $6,000,000 man.

Maranatha