DISQUS

I'm with you. About halfway through the 4th plot twist I turned to Jeanene and said, "It's too much. They tried to cram too much into it. The plot is a labyrinth and I'm having a hard time keeping up."

I guess I'm either simple minded, or other people are amused by explosions and the ins and outs of specific scenes. I'm kind of a story line guy.

This is a serious pet peeve with me. My mother-in-law recently said, "The thing that worries me about Obama is his connection to Islam."

I try not to get into it with them but I just couldn't let this pass. I had to say something.

"He's a professing Christian. He has publicly claimed to be a follower of Christ. AND, he's been a member of a Christian church for a long time."

She was still skeptical. Tragic. Look, when someone claims Christ, I do NOT want to be grieving the Holy Spirit by second guessing him. Unless he demonstrates that he is lying, then he is in the family. Period. And accorded all due respect and love and acceptance.

Ironically, Ronald Reagan was probably not much of a Christian, if church attendance and living a seeking life are any measure. I don't want to judge Reagan's faith either. But Obama has a life that shows he is more serious about his faith than Reagan was. Yet the right wing Christians loved Reagan and suspect Obama.

Hypocrisy.

Marcus,

I'm deeply into this. After dealing with Eerdmans with my first book, I published the second one myself (The Christmas Story). I mean, I bought the ISBN number and the bar code, and I formed a company (Consafo) and I printed the dang thing. The problem is classic. In order to keep the price where it needs to be, I had to print a LOT of them. So now I have about 1500 copies laying around. And I lost money. BUT, with blog distribution, I'll be selling these for the next several years. If I can print 2000 and sell them out in 5 or 6 years, why do I need anyone's help? Why should I give the rights and all the money away.

it's just getting through that first year that hurts. Cost me $1000

Still, I'm not going to a publisher with my plan for 7 Christmas Stories.

g

Look man, I don't want to play the "I have it worse than you" game, but did you notice that writers aren't even on the list.

That's because writers aren't even in the equation. We're raw material - a dime a dozen. Writers make less than editors.

Unless you are a writer with computer skills and can swing a couple of weird deals. ;-)

Dude, how do you find the time to find this stuff? ;-)

Hmm, I don't know that I've ever codified my method that completely.

I look for quirky ideas or better, something that shouts out to me - "write about this"

I gush and emote for awhile. Then I start hammering into some kind of shape. In that phase I'm working mainly with paragraphs, but obviously doing sentence and word editing/changing as I go. But my goal is a solid structure with the message in place.

Then it is nothing but polishing. Keep reading it until you can read it all the way through and not be stopped by something that sounds funny, or might be a little out of place, or is a little bit "off" logically, or is repetitious, or trite, or anything.

How many times to you go through it? If you ask, you're not ready! How many times? As many as it takes. Who counts these things?

Well, that's always the situation with classics, isn't it? You have to go back into their worldview to enjoy them. And that's fun, but probably not something I want to do with everything I read. Our best stuff will one day be classic, and it probably won't fit either.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. I'm going to keep an eye on it. (through you, of course)

That sounds good. sadly I'm pretty much done with parenting. My first is gone and I'm thinking of taking a pretty much hands-off approach to the next two.

Just kidding of course.

Your quick hard sell robs me of your nice, neat bullet-point summary. You know, the one that would let you do all the work and let me get the benefit?

Why don't you work that into the experiment?

;-)

gordon (rlp)

My thought: There's nothing any of us can do. There isn't anyone making these decisions. The analogy is a good one - very good. BUT, we should remember that there is no mommy and daddy out there to make the decisions. It's not as if traditional media have some kind of get together to discuss what is to be done with the love child.

So, the analogy is good, as long as we remember that what we are describing are social movements with vast intertia behind them. Things are shaking out, developing, changing, etc. And things are going to be whatever they are going to be.

Funny, we do the same thing with "the rich" and "the poor." We talk about them as if they were organized like a union. "Well, if only 'the rich' would stop doing..." or "If 'the poor' would just get off their..."

This is giving me an idea. I'm going to have to write about it. ;-)

If this turns out like most revolutions or serious changes to social structure, then no one can possibly predict the details of what we will end up with. I think you get on for the ride, try to do so in a financially conservative way, and then see what shakes out. If you're in the game, you're ready to make a move toward what turns out to be the reality of the situation. But if you bet all your money on a single outcome, you're likely to be in trouble.

Of course, getting in the game without spending a lot of money is itself, a difficult thing, right?

Oh, and dude, Your dad is a serious poet. I mean, I wasn't expecting him to be that good. He's brave too. Puts it out there.

Take er easy, young fella. We'll keep a light on for ye.