Rachel Starr Thomson

Today I drove forty-five minutes to a large barn full of holding pens (full of sheep, calves, chickens, guinea fowl, peacocks, and pigs), where I sat high up on risers overlooking a sort of caged platform, where a one-armed auctioneer sold livestock to a mixed crowd of immigrants, unwashed field-hand types, and farmers in plaid shirts.

I don’t often go to livestock auctions — this was my second. But I jumped at the chance to go, partly because I write, and the more new experiences I can gain — the more atmospheres I can soak in — the better my writing will get.

Writers don’t really come up with anything new; no one’s really done that since God created the world. Instead, we reflect on what’s already all around us. If you want to write well, experience as much as you righteously can of the world on every side. Go new places, and you’ll bring new life to your work.

It’s a beautiful day! I’m finishing a major editing project, enjoying my new laptop (which arrived this morning), playing with ideas for The Advent, and preparing to go outside and figure out our new sound system.

Yes, Soli Deo Gloria Ballet now has a sound system, a fairly complete one. Some of it is old. Some of it is in … mmm, slight disrepair. But it was donated to us by the South Niagara Life Centre, who we helped raise money for with Hiding Place, and it is a huge blessing and answer to prayer.

The problem is that my knowledge of sound is rather minimal. I’ve figured out what plugs in where, but the other night when I first tried to figure out the system I found I couldn’t get much volume out of the thing. This, I tell myself, should not be, for we have large speakers capable of blasting out much more sound than I was getting. And I really don’t know why.

It occurred to me yesterday (in a brilliant flash) that I’d really, really like to own a copy of Sound for Dummies. The really unfortunate thing? I can’t find out that any such book exists. If someone could please write one, publish it, and sell it to me later this afternoon, I’d be eternally grateful.

This is for you, Elisabeth :).

Tomorrow I get to play a bit of guitar, as well as singing and speaking, for our once-final performance of Father this summer — but we got a last-minute booking, so it’s no longer the final performance. We’ll be performing TWICE at the Welland Rose Festival on June 20. This is our first thoroughly secular venue, which makes it both really exciting and more challenging than normal.

In other news, my new (red!) laptop should be arriving today. I’m on pins and needles. I’ve been working on this Dell Inspiron 1200 for the last five years, and while it’s been a wonderful blessing, it’s time to part ways. Poor old Lappy has gotten so slow that I waste hours every week waiting for it to process my requests.

Writing of guitars and laptops makes me muse on the things in life I’m fond of, objects with special places in my heart — my car, my blue travel mug that says “I went everywhere today,” my guitar, this old laptop and probably soon to be the new one. It’s funny how we get attached to things. Of course that can get wildly out of hand, but kept in their proper place, things can add little bursts of joy to life. I think mine do especially because I realize how much they’re all gifts to me.

What things hold special places in your heart?

Of all the thrills in the world, few compare with that instant when all the lights go dim, the crowd hushes, and for a breathless moment the theater hovers between the face of the deep and “Let there be light.”

Yet, the real miracles happen backstage — in the theatre and in life. My musings on the topic are in “The God Backstage” on Boundless.org.

(This was written and published just after we hosted Ballet Magnificat! Omega’s Hiding Place in early May — I’ve just been too busy to get the link up!)

I read Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising Sequence over ten years ago, but long after I had forgotten the details, its mood still lingered in my memory. It’s no wonder, with atmospheric writing like this. In this scene from The Dark Is Rising, eleven-year-old Will wakes up in a time that is not his own.

Will went out onto the landing again and took a long breath, and he shouted with all his might: “Wake up! Wake up, everyone!”

He did not now expect any response, and none came. There was a total silence, as deep and timeless as the blanketing snow; the house and everyone in it lay in a sleep that would not be broken.

Will went downstairs to pull on his boots, and the old sheepskin jacket that had belonged, before him, to two or three of his brothers in turn. Then he went out of the back door, closing it quietly behind him, and stood looking out through the quick white vapour of his breath.

The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the outbuildings nor the old crumbling walls. There lay only a narrow clearing round the house now, hummocked with unbroken snowdrifts, before the trees began, with a narrow path leading away. Will set out down the white tunnel of the path, slowly, stepping high to keep the snow out of his boots. As soon as he moved away from the house, he felt very much alone, and he made himself go on without looking back over his shoulder, because he knew that when he looked, he would find that the house was gone.

He accepted everything that came into his mind, without thought or question, as if he were moving through a dream. But a deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming. He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that. Tomorrow will be beyond imagining . . .

from The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

Good writing is of course about words and meaning, but it’s also about rhythm. Just as a serious writer learns the meanings of words and how to weave them together for the greatest impact, he or she must also learn to listen to their sounds and weave them together for the greatest flow.

I’m re-reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, and I love the movement of her sentences. Here, she uses the rhythm of her sentences to mirror that in a character’s voice:

The rhythms of his voice, which had been rising and falling in an increasingly formal pattern, changed subtly into a kind of chanted battle cry; a call, Will thought suddenly, with a chill tightening his skin, to things beyond the great hall and beyond the time of the calling. “For the Dark, the Dark is rising. The Walker is abroad, the Rider is riding; they have woken, the Dark is rising.”

A young lady sent me a review of Worlds Unseen and Burning Light last week in which she paid me a very high compliment; she said the books were “like reading water.” I couldn’t be more honoured.

The best way I know of to develop an ear for rhythm is to read aloud. Read your own work aloud. Listen to it. Read the work of others. Feel the words on your tongue. Hear them in your ears. Read prose, fiction and nonfiction, and poetry.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(William Blake, “The Tyger”)

If you want to write, by all means develop your vocabulary, your grip on grammar, your powers of dialogue and description. But neglect not to develop your ears–the best writing will echo there long after the covers of a book are closed.

Years ago, when I was still writing and e-mailing out the essays known as Letters to a Samuel Generation, I decided to write a series on the Lord’s Prayer. The resulting nine articles were some of my favourites — they just expressed so much about who God is to me and what it means to be a believer living God’s purposes in the world. Eventually I compiled them into a little book called Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer.

The year after that, my best friend Carolyn and I were tossing around ideas for a small-scale ballet production, and we realized we could use narrations from Heart to Heart, choose songs that reflected on the themes of the Lord’s Prayer, and create a whole performance around that. So we did. It’s called Father, and right now, we’re touring it in Southern Ontario for the second summer in a row.

In churches, schools, and other venues, I get to stand up and share words that come from my heart with people. And afterwards, I’m so blessed to hear the impact they can have. It’s a surreal experience for me, a writer with all the typical loner habits and instincts. But I love it.

Tonight, we’re going to share Father with a community that desperately needs to be reminded of the love of our Father God, of his kingdom coming, and of the promise of deliverance from evil. In this community, a little girl was recently abducted from her school and murdered. The killers have been caught. But that doesn’t stop the hurting.

The church that’s hosting us will be holding a funeral service tomorrow. Tonight, they’ve invited hundreds of people to come and see Father. In the audience will be teachers from the little girl’s school, and others who knew her — who have been so deeply affected by this tragedy.

Moments like this remind me that nothing is all about me. Not writing, which sometimes feels so insular. Not performing, which can tend to focus attention on the performers. No — even these things are about community. They’re about the powerful messages God has for us to share and the love He wants us to give to others. They’re about mourning and healing and hope.

You can pray for us tonight — and join us in praying. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”

Calling all teen authors: If you have (or can write) a manuscript of 20,000 to 30,000 words that’s aimed at 8-12-year-olds, check out the Tweener Time Chapter Book Competition! The competition is looking for “a work of fiction that’s fast-paced, action-packed and values-oriented and written for a ‘tweener’ audience.” You can find guidelines and more details at www.TweenerMinistries.org.

I really encourage you to check this contest out. I had the privilege of serving as a judge last year, and in February, our very own Inklings reader Jessica Erksine won third place in the Tweener Time Cover Art Competition — designing a cover for last year’s chapter book winner! I’ll be reviewing some of the Tweener Time winning books in the next few months as well, beginning with the 2007 First Place Winner, Journey to the Homeland by 16-year-old Hannah Stahlhut.

The first-place winner is awarded a $20,000 college scholarship, a $1,000 cash prize, a book contract with Baker Trittin Press, and royalties on book sales. The other awards are pretty amazing too, and I remember writing up detailed comments for the authors whose books I judged last year — so you have a chance to receive professional feedback on your work as well.

The contest deadline is July 1. Check out the Web site — and I wish you success!

Good afternoon, gentle readers! Today (not yesterday, because tech problems prevented me from getting online), we shall learn more about that merry little buttonhook of a punctuation mark, the comma. Judging from the comments left by readers on this particular series of writing tips, the comma tends to wrap itself around the brain of the average writer and constrict, like a boa constrictor choking its dinner. Today we shall loosen the bands with the following proclamation:

Commas are not restrictive.

In grammar there exist two categories of phrase. One is called a restrictive phrase. As Chicago puts, a restrictive phrase is “essential to the meaning of the noun it belongs to.” It restricts that noun, giving it a very narrow meaning. Restrictive phrases do not use commas.

In this sentence, “dog” is the noun and “with its ears perked up” is the restrictive phrase. It restricts the noun, not allowing us to confuse this dog with any other, less perky pooch:

The dog with its ears perked up belongs to me.

But in this sentence, “with its ears perked up” is nonrestrictive — it is telling us what this dog is doing, but it’s not really essential to the meaning of the noun. With or without its ears perked up, the same dog would still be walking down the street.

The dog, with its ears perked up, walked down the street.

A nonrestrictive phrase always takes commas around it. It is not essential to the meaning of the noun it describes. It’s essentially an interruption, and interruptions almost always take commas around them.

Here are a few more nonrestrictive examples. Note the commas setting off that interrupting — but always interesting — phrase:

My brother, swearing revenge to the skies, hopped away on one foot.

The unicycle, rusty pedals and all, wobbled down the street.

Our conversation was interrupted by a fine gentleman, dapper as a May morning on the golf course, who tapped me on the shoulder.

Until next time, fare thee well.

Due to an age category mix-up on my part, Aaron F.’s second-place win is now shared: congratulations to Andrea B., Age 12, for her review of “The Phantom Toolbooth.”

Congratulations also to Aaron, Cameron, Raynie, Bethany, and Elisabeth, our other winners — and many thanks to all of you who sent in your book reviews. This contest has been a lot of fun, and it’s been my privilege to share your writing with all of my readers.

Contest winners have been awarded their choice of e-book (for second place) or print book (for first place) from Little Dozen Press or our donors, Christina and Felice Gerwitz and Jessica Erskine.

If you’d like to see more about the prizes, check them out at these links:

Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/books/theodore/
Bible Battles: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/2009/02/contest-prize-bible-battles/
The Missing Link: Found!: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/2009/02/contest-prize-the-missing-link-found/
Worlds Unseen: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/books/worlds-unseen/
Burning Light: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/books/burning-light/
Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/books/heartily-homeschooled/
Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/books/heart-to-heart/
Letters to a Samuel Generation: http://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/books/samuel-generation/

Until next time, keep reading, thinking, and writing!