NaNoWriMo Approacheth

As many of you know, the novel I started last year kicked off with my attempts to join in on National Novel Writing Month. Every year, people around the globe try to write 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I started about halfway through the month, and fittingly finish about 25,000 words in that time. Since then I’ve been “working on it,” which basically means I put off, daily, touching the thing. While I’ve made some progress over the year, I’ve broken the promise I made to myself to not be “that guy who sits on an unfinished novel.”

After going back through my original concept for Biosphere 12, I’ve come to realize that part of the problem is that the story simply doesn’t stretch out to 50,000 words. The novel is meant to be a classic frontier narrative in a science fiction setting. Frontier narratives are typically of novella length at best. In light of that, I will be reworking Biosphere 12 in the future to fit with the original concept. So the question looms. Will I participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo event?

The answer is yes.

I will take another stab at embracing literary abandon and try my luck with another idea I’ve had kicking around for the past few years. Stay tuned to my facebook all November for word count updates and to my blog for my thoughts as I engage the novel writing process once more. As with last year, I request that everyone bug me as much as possible about how the novel is going. It’s become one of the most grating questions to me in the past several months, which is kind of the point. After answering that question 50,000 times, it should be no problem knocking out a mere 50,000 words.

God’s Timeless Consideration

For the past few weeks I’ve been reading through C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite books, a book that I will read again and again as my life goes on. The following is a excerpt from the chapter “Time and Beyond Time:”

“God is not hurried along the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along by the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.”

This is an encouraging thought. It shows us two things. First, more obviously, it is a demonstration of God’s love. The last sentence is critical. Christ died for you, just you, as much as He died for the whole world. God’s eternal nature allows for that kind of love. How small we really are compared to God. But how blessed we are that such a God could love us as He does.

Secondly, what does this say about how God answers prayer? God is infinite, timeless, and all-knowing. He’s sees our past, present, and future simultaneously. He sees how our actions affect us, those around us, and those a hundred years down the road. He knows every nuance of our existence. And when we pray to Him, He has an infinite, boundless, unmeasurable amount of time to consider our prayers. Every request we make, no matter how small, He considers more than we could possibly know. If I pray for guidance in my career, in relationships, or in any facet of my life, saying that God takes ten, a hundred, or even thousand years only scratches the surface of the surface of the surface of how much love, care, and consideration He puts into my request. This is a God that deserves all my trust.

How can any answer He provides lead me wrong?

Why All the Suffering?

This question is haunting to many. They see the suffering of the world. They see women sold into slavery and children begging on the street. They see families torn apart by war and common people turned into murderers. Wealthy rulers and titans of industry stand by and do nothing. Their millions go to waste while the oppressed cry out. Violence is everywhere. Poverty abounds. There is only one question to ask:

Why?

[ James 4:1-3 ] “What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don’t they come from the cravings that are at war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do no have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your desires for pleasure.”

[ Deuteronomy 15:4-5 ] “There will be no poor among you, however, because the LORD is certain to bless you in the land of the LORD your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance – if only you obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow every one of these commands I am giving you today.”

[ Romans 3:23 ] “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Sin. Sin is the cause of all the suffering in the world. Our transgressions, our faults, our selfishness, our lust, our greed, our desires, and ultimately, our pride. No amount of suffering is possible in a world without sin. No one on Earth is free from its effects.

If the question before was “why does God allow suffering?” Then the question now becomes, “why does God allow sin?”

[ Genesis 1:26 ] “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness.’”

We are created in the image of God. We are therefore creative, relational beings. If God were to have any relationship with man, he couldn’t simply program us not to sin. If we cannot choose to disobey God, what meaning does our obedience really hold? If we cannot choose to break fellowship with God, what meaning does our fellowship really hold? If God did not allow for the possibility of sin, the creation of mankind would be meaningless.

Through us a picture of God’s image is revealed. But that image is corrupted by sin. And God, being a God of justice, must deal with that sin.

So why hasn’t God wiped out the human race, rich and poor alike. All have sinned. All have fallen short. The oppressed peasant is just as broken and sinful as the rich oppressor.

[ James 2:10-11 ] “For whoever keeps the entire law, yet fails in one point, is guilty of breaking it all. For He who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder. So if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you are a lawbreaker.”

Every man, woman, and child on this Earth deserves punishment for the sins they’ve committed. That is true justice. That is the fate we all would receive, if not for God’s love.

[ John 3:16-18 ] “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.”

[ II Corinthians 5:21 ] “He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Why does God allow sin? Why does God allow injustice?

That fact is, He doesn’t.

Sin will be punished. Injustice will be punished. For those who believe in Christ, who repent of their sin and follow Him, that punishment is poured on Jesus on our behalf. For those who do not turn to Christ, who do not repent, that punishment will be handed out in full after death.

God’s justice and God’s love are both made complete in Christ.

This is the gospel. This is the very heart and soul of our Christian belief. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

[ Galatians 1:6-10 ]

About Me

It’s funny how I can find words to express complex ideas, to write long-winded essays about major works of literature, or to create a bit of literature of my own. But when asked for something simple, like a description of myself, all the elegance and grace I’ve been trained to infuse in my writing disappears.

Who am I? I am an introvert. I am a reader. I am a writer. I am a child of God. In my heart is a sincere desire to find and understand truth and then to spread that truth to others through meaningful conversation within meaningful relationships.

I am imperfect. I take time to get to know. I hope this blog can help you better understand who I am, what I am passionate about, and where my faults lie. Every time you read this page, you see another tiny glimpse of my personhood. I hope that those little glimmers show you a man who is earnestly seeking to become more like Christ, in whatever individual ways he is called.

This is who I am. I hope it is a person you would like to get to know. Talk to me, even if we don’t know each other that well. I promise that, in time, I will open up better in person. It just takes me a while.

Behind the Name – Adilyn Elaine Rice

As a writer, I consider the names I choose for my characters to be very important. It is a common trope in literature to hide messages in the names of characters or to give characters names that match their individual traits. In A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Susanna Centlivre practices this techinique masterfully. A more recognizable example would be Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Willy is, quiet literally, a “low man.”

As a Christian, I see repeated examples of how important names can be. Biblical names often reflect one’s calling in life. In some cases, as with Samuel or Jesus, God commands mothers and fathers to give their children particular names as a way of setting those children apart. In other places, God calls people later in life and changes their name as a sign of His renewed purpose for them. Abram, Sarai, Jacob, Simon, and Saul all saw drastic changes come over their lives after God rechristened them for His work.

So what about today? How much stock do we put in our own names? Is there some supernatural effect that naming has on our lives? Does it affect our personality and circumstances? Or is this significance only to be found realm of literature and Biblical history?

I’d like to think that when done in faith and with the intention of bestowing a blessing, the names we choose for our children do have an effect on their lives.

I thought I’d take a moment to examine the name of the newest member of my family, my niece, Adilyn Elaine Rice.

First Name:

ADILYN (sometimes spelled ADELINE), a diminutive of ADÈLE, which is the french form of ADELA. Taken from the Germanic “adal” meaning “noble.”

Middle Name:

ELAINE, an Old French varient of HELEN, which is the English form of the Greek name HELENE. Taken from the Greek “helene,” meaning “torch” or “corposant.” Possibly related to the Greek “selene,” meaning “moon.”

Last Name:

RICE, an English form of the Welsh RHYS or REES, meaning “ardor,” “fervor,” “passion,” or “zeal.”

Elaine, the only name rooted in a distinct noun, is taken from the Greek word for torch. Symbolically, torches represent enlightment, guidence, or hope.

If Adilyn’s name really does reflect on the kind of person she will grow up to be, then I have great hope for my niece’s future. She will be a person with great passion, tempered by a God-given nobility, providing guidence and hope for everyone she meets.

Lainey, whatever path you walk down, I pray that God will be with you every step of the way. May His passions be your passions. His nobility be your nobility. And may His light shine in you and through you in the many years to come.

Twilight Review, Overdue

Several months ago I started reading Twilight. It took me a long time to finish. I’d like to say that my busy school schedule kept me from finishing quickly. Unfortunately, that would only be half the truth. In all honesty, the book didn’t ever grab my interest enough to compel me to finish in a timely manner. In fact, after the finishing the book, I still didn’t find it interesting enough to write a review in a timely manner. I actually finished reading the book over a month ago. So what about the book repelled me so?

Ultimately, Twilight was an amateurish, mediocre mess of a novel. The following is a quick list of reasons why:

1) As I stated in my first impressions of the book, any time Meyer delved into exposition or description the prose took a nose-dive in quality. Awkward sentence structure, longwinded descriptions, and poor use of imagery was a constant throughout the book. I found myself skimming certain paragraphs that were boring or unnecessary.

2) The characters of the novel were shallow and unbelievable. Meyer skirts around several plot conflicts that should come in a novel featuring vampires by making her protagonist strangely okay with the paranormal. This is directly addressed many times. Not only that, but Bella falling “completely and unequivocally in love” after knowing a boy only a few days is ridiculous. Edward, and indeed the majority of the supporting cast, is flat and uninteresting. No character is given any amount of depth outside Bella, who insufferable in her own right.

3) The plot, like the characters, was shallow and unbelievable. First, and most obviously, is the fact that the main couple fall in love in a matter of days. Modern writers learned long ago that this type of story is unrealistic, and yet it comes out in tv and movies constantly. I don’t need it in my New York Times bestselling novels as well. The majority of the book is dedicated to this budding relationship. Beyond that, Meyer writes herself into a corner with many of the vampires’ powers. Edward’s telepathy mysteriously doesn’t work on Bella, a convenient detail allowing Meyer to write a more normal love story. Meanwhile, Alice’s precognition is given a handy limitation of being affected by human choices. However, despite Bella making a choice hours in advance to escape from vampires Alice and Jasper, all it takes is a bathroom with two exits to succeed. Vampires who can run faster than many cars couldn’t catch a girl going out the backdoor. *facepalm*

Did the book have some good points? Yes, it did. It was eventually able to grab my attention through some dramatic tension and effective dialogue. Do those points save the book from being an amateurish, mediocre mess? No, they do not.

Don’t expect of a review of New Moon anytime soon. I’ve already looked up the plot for the rest of series on Wikipedia and don’t like what I see. Sorry, folks.

Run – by Hillsong United

Over the past few months, God has been teaching me to run after Him. So many of us have the tendency to simply call out to God to reveal His will, a tendency to simply expect a path to be lain before us. I’ve come to understand that many times when we don’t feel His presence or don’t see His plan clearly, He is simply waiting for us to run after Him. Rather than idly standing by, waiting for destiny to find us, He wants us to chase after His will and proactively seek the path He has prepared for us. These past few months have taught me a lot about faith, obedience, and prayer. We sang the following song this past week at Mosaic Community Church. I feel that it encompasses a lot of what I’ve been learning.

—

You were God from the outset
Powerful and creative
You who saw us here before you called
All the stars and the earth to existence

You are God you are Holy
History is you story
You, who was and is
And who forever will be
God we live for your Glory

So we will run
All together our hearts aflame
With a fire that can’t be tamed
Our God all Glory to your name
Jesus

You are God you are freedom
You’re alive now within us
You who saw us here before
You conquered the grave
And delivered on the promise

We will run
Our surrender to bring you fame
Our desire that you be praised
Our God all Glory to your name
Jesus

Excerpt: Biosphere 12 – Chapter I

Many of you know that I was writing a novel back in November. I got about half way through in the course of two weeks, burnt out, and haven’t worked on it much since. It has been my goal to complete a novel by the time I turn twenty-two (April 12, 2009). In keeping with that goal, I will begin work on the novel again next week during spring break. Below is the first chapter of the book, unedited.

Any feedback you have would be appreciated.

- 1 -

            My mother held my hand as we walked along the platform. To my left and to my right were crowds of people, some cheering and waving banners, others standing solemnly and watching quietly. I remember an old man in the crowd. He wasn’t too close and yet not so far away. It’s strange that after all these years I can still see his face as clear as day. I see the wrinkles on his cheeks. I see the skins hanging from his neck. I see his ruffled brow. I see the sadness in his eyes. His eyes stared into mine, like a specter from an untold time, warning me of the hardships to come, reassuring me of the happiness to found among the hardships, and beseeching me to appreciate that happiness when it comes. That man is the clearest memory I have of all the countless memories in my life. My mother tugs on my hand. We’re holding up the line.

            I didn’t like being told to keep walking. Walking meant watching where I was going. Watching where I was going meant staring into the legs of the man walking in front of us. The crowd was far more interesting to my five-year-old self than the black slacks of the tall man walking in front of us. The crowd was excited, excited to see us walk down this platform, excited to see us enter the big building to which the platform led. I didn’t know much about this building. I knew we were going to live there, and that it would be “just like home.” But at the age of five, with my whole life ahead of me, I never stopped to consider what walking into this building would mean. The crowd seemed to know what it meant, otherwise why would they be so excited?

            The sounds the crowd made did scare me slightly. The people didn’t seem to care that the small boy of five was clinging to his mother hand, trying not to be afraid of the “future” that had been unsuccessfully explained to him. The crowd didn’t seem to care that the boy had leave his toys behind, which were given to schoolyard friends, or that he had to leave his dog behind, who was left to the care of his grandparents, the grandparents who he would also never see again. Looking back, I don’t think I truly understood the implications of that fateful day either. I suppose I must have known I was leaving my life behind, but the scope of what “my life” meant was relatively unknowable. I had my mother. I had my father, though he was not with us on the platform. To a young child, that is all the world. Even now, I cannot the breed of that dog, or the branding on those toys I missed so much at that moment, or even the face of my grandparents, who I would never see again. In that way, looking back, I see that the boy and the crowd were both insensitive to the moment. Either way, I was slightly scared and clung to mother’s hand as she pulled along, keeping me from finding the old man’s sad eyes again.

            Another noise began to rise up from among the crowd. It overpowered their cheers and silenced them. It was the voice of one man, a man I could not see. I could only see the faded, slightly worn slacks of the man walking in front of us, and if I was naughty, the faces of the people in the crowd. He said many things I didn’t understand and spoke many words that I cannot remember now. Of course, his words are all a manner of public record. The speech was recorded, transcribed, broadcasted, and displayed for the entire world to see. I noticed impressive phrases like “marvel of engineering,” “new era for mankind,” “brave souls,” and “display of American ingenuity and resolve.” I don’t know why those particular phrases stick out in my mind, after all these years. Perhaps they reminded me of the grand rhetoric I used to hear my father spout on about.

            As the man continued to speak, we continued to walk. How much farther was it? My mother shushed me, not angrily, but out of respect for the moment. The crowd was now completely silent. The man said the words “honor those we leave behind,” and for the first time I caught a glimpse of where we were talking. The congested line of people ahead of us was being dispersed into groups. Husbands, wives, and children were directed together one way or the other. Single men, such as the man with the black slacks, moved more quickly and decisively, as if they knew already where they were going. When my mother and I finally reached the attendant issuing direction, I turned my gaze upon the crowd below once more. We were now quite high up. In the sea of faces, I searched for the old man with the sad eyes. Before I could find him again, my mother led me off to the right, taking my hand. Now I was walking behind a man with gray slacks. He walked with a slightly different gate than the man with black slacks.

            Suddenly the crowd cheered, far louder than they had while we were walking up the platform. This uproar startled my young, five-year-old self. I clutched at my mother’s leg, my fingers digging into her skin. For the first time that entire day, I heard my mother laugh. Gently she removed my hands from their grip, bending down to whisper soothing words into my ear.

            “It’s okay, Simon,” she cooed, “Soon we’ll be in our new home. Nice and quiet.”

            I nodded my head, finding comfort in her reassurances. The crowd was still cheering and I continued to clutch my mother’s hand tightly. The man over the speakers had finished his speech. There seemed to be nothing but excitement from the crowd below. All the solemn faces had joined the happy ones in their jubilance. Thinking back, I think this moment must have been highpoint for the people masterminding Biosphere 12. The public was beside them. The future looked clear. If there was anyone who disapproved of the project, of the choices people like my parents made for their children, they were silent. Even if they had spoken up, their voices would have been drowned in the celebration of the crowd. Ultimately all they could do was stare on, their sad eyes gazing upon the youth whose life would be forever changed upon entering the large domed building.

            At long last, after spending all that time walking, my mother and I approached our entrance. Another attendant directed us inside. The cheers of the crowd died as we walked through the dimly lit corridor leading to our new home. The people around me, my mother, the man with the gray slack, they must have been thinking of what they would do with their new life inside the Biosphere. For my part, I could only think of a soft bed, and seeing my father’s face, and why the old man with the sad eyes seemed so sad.

First Impression: Twilight

I finished reading the first chapter of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight a few hours ago, and it has prompted me to create this new series of blog posts. After reading the first chapters of various books I’ll give my first impressions here. I will then revisit the book once again when I’ve finished reading.

I’ll start my impressions of Twilight by saying this: Stephanie Meyers does not hold a candle to J. K. Rowling as a writer. I know some may think this is an unfair comparison, but with so many of the Harry Potter fanbase moving to Twilight I think it’s a point that has to be made. While Rowling’s narrative was fluid and immersive, I found myself being constantly pulled out of Meyers’ work by various quirks and oddities in the prose. Little illogical sentence constructions litter the pages of the first chapter. Also present were a number of attempts at cleverness that seemed forced and a couple of veiled tropes and cliches.

I found the first half the chapter mildly irritating, and put the book down a few times in annoyance. I wasn’t looking to dislike the book, but I couldn’t help but see a certain inexperience on Meyers part. One red flag that I was watching for early on was the exact height of the protagonist, Bella Swan. Describing a character by their exact height or weight generally doesn’t give the reader any real sense of the character’s physical appearance, a fact that many young writers don’t grasp. After reading the first physical description of Bella I thought I had, at least, dodge that bullet. Unfortunately the “five feet four inches” description crept its way in later. This does not bode well for the rest of the book.

As the chapter moved on things improved. As the narrative moved away from description and exposition and into dialogue and action there were less and less irksome sentences. I’m hoping that once the plot gets underway and the characters are established I will have less to cringe at. I actually finished the chapter interested to see where things will go, but forced myself to stop in order to write this blog post. 

One final note. I sent my brother this text message midway through the chapter:

“Reading the first chapter of Twilight. Each of the past 4 paragraphs have had something that irked me.”

He responded with this: “[My wife] said the same thing! But she ended up loving it.”

 Hopefully I’ll be back with a positive review to write when it’s all said and done.

On Drafting

I’ve never put much stock in drafting my academic papers. Many teachers over the years have encouraged classes to do rough drafts. I never have. Every year I have at least one class that does workshops for papers. I never attend. Over the years drafting for me has basically boiled down to doing a last minute proofread before hitting the print button on Microsoft Word. This system has worked fairly well for me throughout college and high school. I rarely get less than an A- on papers.

This semester my viewpoint on drafting has shifted considerably. I took the class ENGL 379F: Writing About Literature, a class that forced us to draft our papers as a homework grade. While I freely admit that I did not attend every workshop and meet every deadline (homework grades are commonly meaningless in English classes), I did find the experience of revising rather enlightening. Being forced to go over my own ideas and being able to hear what a group of other students thought of them cracked my papers wide open, allowing deeper and more complex thoughts to come to the surface. It was actually very rewarding.

One danger did present itself, however. On our second paper this semester I was encouraged to flesh out my conclusion with fresh ideas, to introduce a stronger “so what?” to make my paper stronger. I ended up adding an extra paragraph that expanded my conclusion. I remember in ENGL 301 being told that your conclusion should introduce a new idea that makes your reader think more deeply about the subject. This is what I tried to do. I ended up getting a B on the paper because the ideas in my conclusion weren’t introduced in the body.

What did I learn? If you are going to draft, you have to go the whole nine yards. If you don’t, you could end up with more dangling threads than you had when you started. While my new paragraph was certainly smartly written, it was not foreshadowed. New, complex ideas must be woven into the fabric of the original paper, not stitched in at random. It may mean rewriting the introduction or adding new elements to the body, maybe even rewriting the entire paper. But when you come out the other side you’ll have expressed a much more valuable and worthwhile set of ideas.

Is this much work worth it if I can just get an A- with a slightly less deep, more compact paper? Academically, probably not. But as an intellectual exercise, drafting should a necessity. As a writer, I will never reach my fullest story-telling potential if I haven’t properly exercised my skills in understanding the works of others. Depth doesn’t come automatically. My readers will only find as much depth as I am able to understand and express. If I am to grow as a writer, I must also grow as a reader. I must always push myself beyond what is comfortable and easy. 

I have one semester left of being forced to write English papers. I’ll try to make the most of it.