by Victoria -

New Adventures

I’m in a novel reading obsession again, learning about boudin and beignets and crawfish boils. Because I love reading authors who know how to set a mood and are masters at imagery, I’ve been enjoying James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novel series. I’ve read them before, so this time around I’m noticing more detail about the interesting people and unique setting he chose for these memorable stories.

Most of this series is set in Louisiana – New Orleans and New Iberia in particular – and he often describes the local food and appetites of his colorful cast of characters in detail. He’s one of the few authors I’ve read who can write dialogue with excellence. I didn’t know what boudin was, so I looked it up. That clinched it – I had to try some out.

One of my 2019 New Year’s resolutions is to do something new every month. As an old homebody by nature and nurture, I can become tightly entrenched in a rut of my own making. When I told Storm, my youngest son, my ‘new thing’ for this past June was to watch all 5 seasons of Leverage (which I accomplished, thank you very much!), he was not impressed.

So, because of his disappointment in his momma, I went online and found a Cajun restaurant close by my home, drove myself there (the whole 2 miles or so), and enjoyed some boudin and a crawfish cake Sunday after church. To make it more authentic, I took my Burke novel with me and read it while I ate.

I must say, the boudin balls were good – not as flavorful as I anticipated after watching a youtube video on how to prepare them, but the crawfish cake was excellent – the sauce was wonderful and the presentation was nice, too. In my inexperienced opinion, the ratio of rice to pork and other ingredients was too high. White rice doesn’t have much flavor on its own, so it’s a good thing the dipping sauce was full of zing.

My server was efficient, but I wasn’t very successful at getting her to smile or interact much with me. I think she was a girl. But I’m not positive. She might have been identifying as a boy, but the way people present themselves to the world by the way they dress and do their hair nowadays I’m not quite sure. I was considered a tomboy growing up (I know, old-fashioned term) but I never forgot I was a girl. I roughhoused with the boys, but when it was all said and done, a girl I was and have always been. And I like being a girl. Each gender has its advantages and disadvantages. That’s why we complement each other so well. Guys are good at certain things and girls are good at other things. It’s worked fine for many centuries. I don’t know why it’s suddenly bad. It’s as if today’s modern society has evolved to the point they believe they know more than God. Sad, indeed.

My server seemed inwardly unhappy or discontent, I’m not sure which, or both. When I see that in someone, it usually stirs up some inner desire in me to make them smile. I’d like to help make their day nicer. I asked her opinion on what was good and thanked her for her help.

I recently experienced the suicide of a friend who was struggling with depression I wasn’t aware of, so my spidey senses are heightened right now. I read some statistics about transgender people who have more tendencies toward depression and suicide, so when I noticed my server was not your typical smiling waitress/waiter, it kicked my maternal instincts into high gear.

Hopefully, I was able to accomplish making her less unhappy, if even in a small measure. I did give her a good tip, so I’m sure that helped.

For my next month’s new adventure, I think I’ll go for a helicopter tour. Yep. Sounds about right.

What new thing are you doing?

by Victoria -

Helping, Serving, Healing

The whole concept of helping others, serving others, healing others, grew in me as a seed is placed in humus-rich soil, and begins pushing out roots, growing toward the sun.

As you can no doubt tell from previous chapters, I, unfortunately, hadn’t given this important facet of life a place of prominence in my day to day journey. It was hardly on my radar for many years.

I focused on raising my children and running a household. I homeschooled them and, since we lived out in the country, always had a large garden to plant and harvest, chickens to tend to, and horses to curry. We did sponsor children from Compassion, and after more than twenty years I still have a child I sponsor whose name is Kim, from the Philippines. I think I’ve sponsored about six different children over the years. It’s a wonderful organization doing God’s work.

The real transformation began back, again, in Arizona. Through those three books I mentioned before, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Don Miller, Outlive Your Life, by Max Lucado, and The Walk, by Richard Paul Evans, God opened for me a desire to be used for something – I suddenly wanted to be remembered for a legacy of service to others. Not how much money I’d earned or how big my house was or how nice my things were.

You must remember, I’m an introvert and being alone is what I prefer most of the time. Serving others meant I’d have to actually interact with people and open myself up to feeling their pain and possibly not maintaining that so-carefully-groomed emotional control. Life was going to get much more complicated.

I also consumed other books with similar ideas. Books like Radical by David Platt and Love Does, Bob Goff’s first book, and a book I’ve been quoting from, Brennan Manning’s The Furious Longing of God. As I read and meditated on them along with the scriptures, I was astounded at what I had been missing out on all these years.

While living in Arizona I became involved with Operation Christmas Child, a branch of Samaritan’s Purse, run by Franklin Graham, and enjoyed the opportunity to be part of such a Christ-centered organization helping children around the world. Franklin’s book Rebel With a Cause helped cement in me the importance of what our real purpose here is.

Once I moved back to Michigan, I was spending most of my time serving my parents, but once I landed a part-time retail job so I could continue to make my car payments, I was able to find ways to plant seeds of the Gospel there as I interacted with customers. Sometimes I would have only a minute or two, but I planted the seeds anyway, and prayed that God would bring the increase.

Things really gained momentum when God moved me to Florida and I found myself attending Northstar Church, an imperfect group of Believers whose focus is ‘helping the whole world find and follow Jesus’. They are dead serious about serving their community and I’ve learned a lot about selflessness and sacrifice during my sojourn here. Their constant example of self-giving has been inspiring.

Something else that changed how I see others happened when my son was sentenced to prison. I was suddenly forced to look at and interact with other prisoners when I’d go and visit my son every Saturday. The Spirit was whispering to my heart – ‘I see value in them. Look at them with my eyes.’

These two settings, becoming part of a local church who loves its community, and seeing prisoners from God’s perspective, effectively adjusted how I view the world. We are all broken, and we are all loved by God who sent Jesus to die for not just those of us who are only kind-of bad, but for the really bad. The Apostle John meant it when he penned these words that most of us know by heart: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

He didn’t say ‘for God so loved the good people and the pretty good people and the people who keep their nose clean’. He said the world. That includes a whole host of goodness and badness.

So, you see, these were lessons I couldn’t learn in Arizona. I had to learn them in Florida – the perfect environment. I was drafted for a lead part in an epic drama and given my lines. I had to practice them over and over and become the character so that in the end the lines weren’t delivered by an actor, but by a true believer.

These next stories span many years. As I looked back on my life, there were things that happened I didn’t fully understand at the time, but now am able to clearly see the lesson behind the scene.

I’d like to end this introduction with a fairly lengthy passage from, once again, Brennan Manning’s masterpiece, The Furious Longing of God:

“Healing is a response to a crisis in the life of another person. It’s enough of a response, a satisfactory response to a crisis in the life of another. And wherever the word crisis is used in the Greek New Testament, it is translated in English as judgment. That’s right – judgment. Healing is a response that I make to a decisive moment in the life of a brother or sister; whether I respond or not, I have made a judgment.

Healing becomes the opportunity to pass off to another human being what I have received from the Lord Jesus; namely His unconditional acceptance of me as I am, not as I should be. He loves me whether in a state of grace or disgrace, whether I live up to the lofty expectations of His gospel or I don’t. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am.

When I have passed that same reality on to another human being, the result most often has been the inner healing of their heart through the touch of my affirmation. To affirm a person is to see good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not a Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful. When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation.” (pgs. 82-83)

by Victoria -

Lesson Two: Imagery – make your writing memorable

Maintaining my one blog post each week resolution.  Here’s lesson two.  Imagery is the magic in your writing.  Use it well.

What is the secret to great writing? In a word – imagery.

Imagery places your reader right where you want them so you can take them where you want them to go. They need to be able to see and feel what’s going on with your story.

For example, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart, written in 1956:

“Nothing could have been more peaceful. The sea loch itself was one huge bay, an inlet of the Atlantic, cradled in the crescent of the mountains. The fishing village of Elgol, backed by its own heather hills, was within one tip of the crescent; from the other soared sheer from the sea a jagged wall of mountains, purple against the sunset sky. The Cuillin, the giants of the Isle of Mist. And, locked in the great arms of the mountains, the water lay quiet as a burnished shield, reflecting in deeper blue and deeper gold the pageantry of hill and sky. One thin gleaming line, bright as a rapier, quivered between the world of reality and the water-world below.”

She could have said something like this: It was nice and peaceful. The mountains were beautiful, and I was glad I had decided to come.  See the difference? Huge, right?

And then another example from Chapter 4 of James Lee Burke’s 1990 novel A Morning for Flamingos:

“So I sat on an iron bench in front of the cathedral in Jackson square and watched the moon rise in the sky. The air was heavy with the smell of camellias, and the magnolia and banana trees that grew along the piked fence behind me made shifting patterns of shadow and light on the cement. A wind came up off the river, and it started to mist; then a shower clattered across the banana leaves in the square and blew in a spray under the lighted colonnades. I walked home on a quiet street, away from the noise of the tourists, keeping close under the scrolled iron balconies to avoid the rain.”

Or he could have said this: As I sat on a bench outside the moon came up and it began to lightly rain so I headed back to my apartment and tried to keep from getting too wet.   There’s just no way I would have kept reading this book. What about you?

Both authors used imagery to not only describe the scene but put a feeling in it as well. This is, in my opinion, artistry in writing.

Think about these words Mary Stewart used in her arsenal: ‘cradled, and soared, and jagged wall’. I especially love the phrase – ‘locked in the great arms of the mountains.’ You can see the place, right? And hear the humming peace? I feel like I’m there.

And then James Lee Burke’s description of not just where the character was, but his state of mind. You can feel the uncomfortable misting rain and the melancholy of the character as he sits outside on a hard and uncomfortable bench. Consider these words and phrases: ‘iron bench, piked fence, shifting patterns of shadow and light, a shower clattered.”

Imagery is crucial to setting a scene so that your reader is part of the story. You want them to see and feel and hear, taste and touch everything the character is experiencing.

This is how to keep your reader reading.

Here’s one of my attempts:

The glossy leaves ripple in the wind, dancing on their stems to a gentle song. The beautifully proportioned stately pines, tucked in closely together, create a natural barrier muffling the outside world, granting much wanted seclusion. Cast-off brown needles carpet the ground, softening any footfalls, halting sound.

The warm summer afternoon turns to evening, and as the sun slides toward the horizon, bats emerge to float on the wind for their supper. The blue of the sky changes by degrees to orange and red and then black. The sun’s last light halos the few remaining clouds as a final goodnight. Stars make their grand entrance, showing off for any who choose to gaze on them. Their luminescence in the country-black sky commands you to look and dream.

Peace permeates the scene, like a soft sighing, causing the lights inside the home to appear softer by comparison. Two rocking chairs sit on the deck, with two occupants creating, by their body language, intimacy in the setting. Music drifts through the open door. The two rise and dance slowly, feeling the heat, as it emanates from their skin, awakening their mutual desire.

I’ve read, or attempted to read, books where the author never bothered to describe any of the characters. I didn’t know their hair color, eye color, whether they were tall or short, whether they had an accent, or even where they were from.

Without descriptions and context, the reader can’t imagine with any degree of accuracy anything about your story, and they’ll probably close the book and put it down.

Let me give you one more example. For this short story I was introducing my character to my reader:

He was a well-dressed older gentleman. You could tell his clothes, at one time, had been nicely tailored. They were filthy and ripped now. The fire in the pit had long gone out and the ashes were cold. He had taken a clay pot and thrown it on the ground, its shards scattering. He was sitting in the middle of the ashes searching among the shards. He found one apparently to his liking and picked it up. He stretched out his legs, one at a time, slowly and painfully.   Hiking the cloth up past his knee he began scraping open the boils, releasing the pus. His face contorted in a grimace of agony, a groan escaped his parched lips, and tears tracked through the grime on his unshaven cheeks. His breath raggedly caught in his throat and he rocked back and forth, eyes closed, riding out the anguish.

To write with emotion you have to go there in your mind and experience it. Picture yourself in that scene. What does/did it feel like and sound like and smell like? Does/did it make you happy or sad? Angry or determined? I usually close my eyes and imagine myself as the character and then write what I ‘see’ and what I ‘feel’.

I encourage you to pick up a few good books by different authors and begin to dissect them. Do they describe the scenery and the characters? Is there a lot of good dialogue that moves the story forward and reveals more about the characters’ personalities? How did the author make you like or dislike a character?

Here’s some homework for you – pick a scene, something you know really well – and write a descriptive paragraph or two. Let it rest overnight, go back to it, then use the previous lesson’s editing ideas:  Writing for Dummies and Smarties, tightening it and making it sing.

Before long, you’ll be writing memorable stories. Stories your reader will want more of.

Have fun!