THE FINAL "JUST WORDS"

I have always been a little embarrassed by this blog. My takes on writing are reasonably well informed, because I have been reading and writing for a long time. Other than one magazine-writing course in college, though, I have no formal training. So it is quite presumptuous of me to review the books of others or to suggest ways to write better to my peers.

I started this blog because Black Opal Books was kind enough to agree to publish my novel about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a doctor at a VA hospital. It is important that authors market their own books any more. In fact, most of the marketing is done by the authors, through a web presence, primarily. This blog was to be part of my web presence.

I’ve been fairly successful at writing and publishing, both fiction and non-fiction. Novels, though, are a hard sell. I have four finished novels that are quite good, but I can’t get an agent even  to look at them. One of the attractions of Black Opal is that they are willing to deal with authors directly, without an agent.

Since BOB accepted VETS, I assumed I could talk them into publishing the rest of my finished novels, and my WIPs, too.

My situation has changed, though. And it has not changed.

The part that has changed is that I don’t want to write any more novels. I have other things I want to concentrate on.

The part that has not changed is that I don’t like to market. I want to use my time in other ways. It would be unfair to ask BOB to publish my books if I’m not willing to help market them. I don’t want to work on a web presence, or any other kind of marketing presence, although I have enjoyed the book signings and speaking engagements that have come my way because of my writing. I am not a marketer, and I should not pretend to be one, any more than I should pretend to know how to tell folks how to write.

So, there is no need for me to continue this blog. Now I shall be free of the guilt of telling you how to write and what to read when I have no qualifications for doing so.

Best wishes in all your reading and writing.

Thanks for visiting the blog. You have been very kind to do so.

I shall continue my Christ In Winter blog, http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Words are Tools-a link to CIW

Today, in my Christ In Winter blog, I wrote of how words are tools. I think that fits here, too.

http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

WRITING WELL all THE TIME

I’m always a bit stymied when it comes to titles for my blog posts. A title should be intriguing, but also informative. As a reader, I resent a title that suggests I’m going to get a joke about a chicken but it turns out to be a political screed, as in “Why did the chicken cross the road?” but it’s really about some congresswoman who was not courageous enough, in the eye of the one writing the title, to stick to her position.

So I try to intrigue with a title, but also inform the reader what to expect.

That is easier if I try to write well ALL the time, not just when I’m doing something BIG in writing. I pay attention to the titles of emails, not just blogs or articles or books. I don’t just hit the reply button and go with the re: thing. It’s just an email title, yes, but I try to give it intrigue and information. I pay attention to the emails themselves, too. I use good grammar and a full vocabulary. Why? Because if I am sloppy in “little” writing, I’ll get sloppy in BIG writing.

Paderewski, the great pianist, said that if he failed to practice one day, he knew it. If he failed to practice for two days, the critics knew it. If he failed to practice for three days, everyone knew it.

It is important to write as well as we can EVERY time we write, regardless of the occasion or the form.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

A double post

So that is why COMMUNITY DOES NOT LAST did not show up in Christ In Winter... I posted it in JUST WORDS instead!

COMMUNITY DOES NOT LAST, BUT...

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

I have known Paul Unger for almost 60 years. Throughout those years I have often been dismayed at things he said. Well, okay, always. Most recently, though, I actually got a little angry at something he said.

“Community doesn’t last.” That’s what he said.

Well, sure, everybody knows that, but why bring it up? Isn’t it bad enough that so many of our friends are dying? And doesn’t that fly in the face of Christian theology, “for all the saints,” and “so great a cloud of witnesses,” and “neither life nor death nor…”?

He’s right, of course. All those dismaying times, or almost all, he’s been right. He’s especially right about community not lasting.

We want it to last, though. That’s why so many of us identify so strongly with institutions, like university, or church, or even nation, and why we mourn when the school or church we went to closes, or is absorbed into something else. As long as that school or church or town is there, our community remains. As long as our nation is stronger than all the others, our community is intact, we think, even though our friends and family, and even we, ourselves, are no longer a part of it.

The Christian hope, though, is not that community, one way or another, will last, but that it can be reconstituted. No, it does not continue forever. But in its very failure is the possibility of something new to replace the old, something even better. Christian faith is really about resurrection, not immortality, something new, not just the same old thing going on forever.

The basis of community is love, and Paul, the Apostle, does remind us that even death does not conquer love. [Romans 8:31-39] Love does not just continue forever. It does something better. On the ruins of community that does not last, it builds something even better.

That’s the Easter news.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

STORY PERMANENCE

I used to have on-the-fly arguments with a young English prof at Eastern IL U, when we would run into each other while crossing the campus, about whether Updike or Bellow was the best/most important writer of the 2^nd half of the 20^th century. He favored Bellow, I stuck with Updike.

One way I evaluate writers is story permanence. Can I go back after a month or year or ten away from the partially-read book and know where I am in the story? I read many books a page a day. I learn quickly which authors can get my attention so well that it stays on the track of the story after a break.

I read Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift over about 15 years. But I read the Rabbit series by Updike over a much longer period. Both authors are great at story permanence.

I am not a literary scholar or critic and have no credibility as such, but I know who holds my attention. I read an Updike book—the one about the old woman artist who is interviewed by a young woman who drives up from NYC—in which he describes for what looked like 3 pages but was probably only 3 paragraphs, the older woman making egg salad. I have no interest in egg salad or how to make it, but he described the process so well that I hung on every word. It’s like one of those New Yorker articles on water witching in Nowherestan. You haven’t the slightest interest in water witching or Nowherestan, but you are 8 pages into the article before you realize it. Not surprisingly, Updike wrote for the NYer.

Another way I evaluate is: how much do I skip? Elmore Leonard said that the key to good writing is to leave out the parts readers skip. If there is nothing to skip, that is good writing. I never skip a word of Updike.

There are a lot of writers contending for best of the first half of the 21^st century—Elizabeth Kostova, Donna Tartt, Jane Smiley, Marilynn Robinson, et al. I hope I run into some young professor crossing the IU campus [1] so I can argue with her about which is best.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] It is likely to be the IU [Indiana University] campus if this happens, since Helen and I are moving to Bloomington soon.

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

I hope you never need it, but in case you know someone with cancer…

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

NAMES & TECHNOLOGY

NAMING CHARACTERS 4: The Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

I once read something from Stephen King about how he changed the last name of a family in one of his books. He had chosen a good name for them. It fit. But it was long, and they were in the book all the time. He got tired of typing that long name all the time, so he shortened it to a one syllable, four letter name.

To young writers, that is so strange. Length of name is never an issue, in this age of cut and paste, and the “replace all” function on computers. But in the days when writers worked by hand, and then had to produce a typed manuscript, that was a real concern.

Technology makes a difference in writing. For years I did my first draft by hand. It worked nicely in any setting. You couldn’t sit in a coffee shop and type, even with a portable, because the clacking would make other customers crazy and they would react by throwing you, and your typewriter, into the watering trough. No one objected to a yellow pad and a blue pen, though.

Because I wrote so much by hand, that was the way my brain worked. I could not compose any other way. If I sat down at the typewriter at home, where they had to let me type, at least when others were not sleeping, I could not compose. My brain wanted a pen and paper. Typing was only for putting into legible form what I had already written. 

Then came computers. But they were big, and sat on desk tops. And their clicking sounded much like old typewriter keyboards. So I still used a computer just as a super typewriter, for final drafts, not for composing.

When laptops came in, though, and I sat with my stiff-back pad in the coffee shop and watched others use their laptops, and realized that when they got home, they didn’t have to spend the rest of the day putting into the computer what they had written by hand, I just bit the mouse and decided I would learn to compose on a keyboard instead of with a ballpoint. It was not as hard as I thought it would be. Once you get going, it’s nice to let the fingers fly. Bob Hammel, the great sports writer, says that when he sat at the keyboard and wrote, he felt like a concert pianist, notes flying from the ends of his fingers to compose a symphony.

So technology makes a difference in how we write, including what we can name characters. Or it used to. Not anymore. With computers, you can name someone the longest bunch of syllables in the language, and all you have to do is use an abbreviation and then do “replace all.”

But wait. Be sure that abbreviation is not something that would normally appear in other words, though. For instance, if you name a character Norman, and just call him Norm, or Nor, as you write, when you do “replace all” later, the word “normal” will come out as normanal, and north will be normanth. If you decide that Nat needs to be Tom and do a “replace all,” national become Tomional, and nature becomes Tomure.

There was a church where the secretary did the bulletin for funeral masses on the computer. It was fast and efficient, since the mass was the same every time. She just replaced the name of the deceased from last time with the name of the current deceased, via “replace all,” which was fine until the name of the last deceased was Mary, which is why the new funeral bulletin kept referring to “The blessed virgin Edna.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

Baseall season is almost here. If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

The World Until Yesterday- a review

Why review a book of social/biological science [NOT “sociobiology”] in a writing blog? Because this is HIGH CONCEPT, that’s why!

Also because Jared Diamond writes so well.

There is a big difference between information and communication. Many science writers only do information. Diamond does communication.

Personally, I prefer his GERMS, GUNS, AND STEEL, perhaps because I read it first, several years ago, and usually an author’s first book, the one you read first, remains the favorite, because it was new to you, and opened up new possibilities, but THE WORLD UNTIL YESTERDAY: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies is definitely worth the read. [Viking, 2012] And for writers, there is a very interesting chapter [10] on language.

This is not a Luddite anti-modern screed, but a thoughtful look at traditional societies and the things we can learn from them, about child rearing, elderly care, war, and all the other major concerns of human society in any age.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

In 150 pp, Something Should Happen-a quote

“If I’ve read 150 pages, I have a right to expect something to happen!”

Helen Karr McFarland

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Should You Inform An Author You Have Used Their Work?

In my other blog, Christ In Winter, for 3-11-15, entitled “Send Your Cousin to a Conference,” I told the story of how someone took the ideas I wrote in an article and turned them into a lecture series and a book. He acknowledged me, but did not inform me. I would not have known about it had not my cousin been at the conference. The question arose for authors, which I asked in that CIW blog, Do we have an obligation to inform someone whose ideas we have used? If you are looking for an answer, you probably won’t find one there, but it’s sort of an interesting story to read.

http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/2015/03/send-your-cousin-to-conference.html

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

PASTRIX-a review

I’m not sure about reviewing Pastrix here. Nadia Bolz-Weber subtitles this “memoir” as the cranky beautiful faith of a sinner and saint. Religious people may find it more cranky than beautiful, for Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor and founding pastor of The House for All Sinners & Saints in Denver, uses a lot of profanity, in the book as well as in her preaching, and she accepts into her church a lot of folks who do not fit the usual description of religious. She is much more into grace than works, to use the Lutheran definitions of those words.  Non-religious people may find it interesting but be put off by her commitment to religious acceptance in the midst of any chaos.

This is a blog about words, though, and she uses words so well. Not surprising, I suppose, for someone who made her living as a stand-up comedian while she was rebelling against her strict, fundamentalist, anti-woman upbringing with a life of booze, drugs, and promiscuity, what conservative Christians call “building a testimony.”

If you love words and good story-telling, this is well worth the read, even if you are not interested in Nadia’s move from fragmentation of life and soul to a shaky but defiant faith. The stories are so well told, and the people in them are so interesting.

Published by Jericho Books in 2013.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I write of my personal reaction to reading Pastrix in my Christ In Winter blog for Feb. 11, 2015. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/2015/02/pastrix-past-tricks.html

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.