Rachel Starr Thomson

I am considering some pretty serious changes to my life, mostly regarding how I spend my minutes. (Annie Dillard said that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. And if I may add, how we spend our seconds, our minutes, and our hours is how we spend our days.)

Here’s one area that needs to change:

(Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.)

Debbie wrote a whole post on her own struggles with Internet misusage which is worth reading. Like her, I’m not planning to go cold turkey and stop using the Internet entirely. Instead, I want to use it a lot more deliberately, with intent and purpose.

More about that coming …

Cross-posted from Speculative Faith.

(Someone once told me that “history” is called “history” because it’s HIS story, meaning God’s. Dunno if that’s true. But if it is, then my own personal story can be called “mystory.” In this case, I’m writing about the story of my stories, so that’s … “mystories”? But I digress. Ridiculously.)

I am a writer; in fact, I am a novelist. I get to call myself that, even though I do not have a single book published by a trade publisher, because I have been writing novels since I was 13ish. I’ve self-published five in various forms, and people read them, review them, and otherwise interact with them, so I figure that I’m doing what novelists do, and that’s good enough to claim the title.

In fact, this past week I finally finished a trilogy I have been working on for nearly ten years. In 2001 or thereabouts, I wrote a book called Worlds Unseen, which told the story of a handful of people who were curious enough — and gripped by longing enough — to explore beyond the boundaries of the world-as-they-knew-it and discover the truth about their history and future. As in our world, the truth is obscured by the machinations of evil. If discovered, it will set people free — but only if they’re willing to side with the ancient King and cast off the “safe” life they’ve always known.

Worlds Unseen helped me break through a few personal blocks as a writer, and I followed it right away with a sequel, Burning Light. I knew the story was supposed to be a trilogy. But back then I didn’t do outlines, and the third story wasn’t readily to hand like the first two had been. I was out of steam and content to let it rest.

So I did. Someday I would write a book called The Advent and finish the trilogy. Maybe.

In the meantime, I wrote a bunch of other books and became published as a freelance writer for various online and print magazines. In 2006 I entered the exciting waters of POD-enabled self-publishing, and in 2007 I looked fondly at Worlds Unseen and Burning Light and thought, why not? I have moved on to pursuing publication for other books. I could get these out into the world and start building readership. To the printing press!

This will have applicability to you shortly; keep reading . . .

Well, I did publish Worlds Unseen and Burning Light, and they began to accrue fans. They opened doors for me to get into all sorts of discussions with people about books and writing and my faith. They collected some good reviews. Worlds Unseen in its Smashwords-ebook form has been downloaded over 13,000 times.

But there was trouble. You cannot publish the first two books in a trilogy without eventually, someday, somehow, finishing the series. Readers made that clear. The third book needed to come out. And it didn’t want to.

The Advent turned into my life’s worst case of writer’s block. Dogged and determined, I wrote it. Hated and scrapped it. Wrote a different story with the same title. Scrapped most of it. Changed its name to Coming Day and kept going. Seven or so almost-complete rewrites later, I finally, finally wrote the book that finished the trilogy appropriately and in a way I could be proud of. It was like pulling teeth the entire way.

But now it’s done. I’ll be making it available to the world just as soon as the cover art is finished. And I can move on to new adventures, new worlds, new stories, and of course, marketing.

I share this bit of mystory with you because it highlighted two lessons for me.

1. Even when you think you know the cost ahead of time, anything you do will require commitment. Writing stories, like pulling a tooth or doing ministry or navigating a tricky relationship, requires a commitment that transcends how we feel at the moment. The upside of this is that commitment eventually yields fruit, and the fruit likewise transcends how we may have felt during the process.

2. Publishing, in any form, creates relationship and responsibility to readers. Don’t take that lightly. Like any relationship, it will cost something. It will require work and follow-through. And it will also create its own rewards. We are all, writers and readers both, engaged in one great conversation that truly impacts lives. And that is the best reason to pursue publishing in the first place.

I’d love to hear more about yourstories. Anybody?

P.S. If you’d like to read more about my trilogy, the website is www.worldsunseen.com.

Hello world! Well, as much of you as actually come here and read this blog. I thought I should let you know that I am alive, I’ve not been raptured, I am in fact still here editing and writing and touring with Soli Deo Gloria Ballet and doing all the stuff I do.

The one thing I’ve obviously not been doing especially well is blogging. There is a reason for this. When I began my freelance career about five years ago, I thought, Nifty! I’m a freelancer; I can travel all the time and still work, because I can work from anywhere. That’s true. What isn’t true — and what was implied in my thinking — was that I can work equally well from anywhere. The fact is, traveling eats up a lot of time on the road, and when you’re actually visiting someone, the last thing you want to do is work. Or blog.

After an exhausting first year of freelancing, I decided to stop gadding about the globe all the time. But here is what my last couple of months have looked like:

August: California.

September: Florida.

October: Connecticut.

November: Ottawa and Quebec.

Throw in my usual double life between my home town and the Niagara area, plus Soli touring and one-off performances, and what you get is a frazzled freelancer who is WAY behind on all of her work. Plus, the school year started, and I found out that my editing business, which grew enormously over the summer, is now almost incompatible with my teaching. Even though I cut my students back to half this semester.

Gah. As they say.

I’m now almost finished digging my way out. Lord willing, if the cover is finished, Coming Day will be released tomorrow. My editing is mostly caught up and I’m almost ready to start work on a few projects that have been sitting in the queue far too long. My Thanksgiving vacation ends tomorrow, and I have a Soli performance at 2:00 p.m.–did I say I was almost dug out?

Life is crazy, but I love it. And I thank God every day for all the opportunities He’s brought into my life. On this American Thanksgiving weekend, I am grateful for fullness, for opportunity, and for having so many good things in my life that I’m going to have to start pruning some of them out. THAT is an amazing problem to have.

In an early scene of The Skin Map, Kit’s expectation of how ley travel should work results in disaster and lands him and several other people in a great deal of trouble. Expectations are funny things, capable of depressing or enhancing a reader’s experience — and sometimes of doing both.

My review of The Skin Map probably made it clear that I had expectations as a reader, some of which were not fulfilled and thus left me slightly dissatisfied. At the same time, it was other (wrong) expectations that made the ending’s plot twists so brilliantly effective.

In the first case, my expectations as a reader were based on my past experience of Lawhead’s work (including his amazing ability to bring historical places to life), on descriptions of the book that were released ahead of it, and of bits and pieces of my own notions from who-knows-where.

In the second case, my wrong expectations were craftily planted by the author, only to be turned upside down at the end by the same skillful hand. What we call “plot twists” are really just the manipulation of readers’ expectations, and as we all know, they are an essential part of memorable storytelling.

Books often lead me to reflect on life, and in this case, The Skin Map has me thinking about expectations outside of fiction. They can, as they do in fiction, depress or enhance our experience of life. They give us the thrill of looking forward, the kick of disappointment, and sometimes the twist of the unexpected, or of the expected turned on its head — of romance sought and then fleeting and then transformed, of self failing and renewed, of Jesus come and then crucified and then coming again.

Some expectations we get from God. Some come from past experience; some from some inexplicable part of our own hearts and minds. The best expectations, I think, are the ones God smiles and winks at and plans to turn upside down. If there’s a lesson I’m learning from all this, it’s to hold loosely to my ideas of where life is going. Because God is sovereign and He is good, in the end, the twists will be better than the plot I thought I foresaw.

I am writing today from the splendidly autumnal hills of Connecticut, where I’ve been visiting good friends since Tuesday. I titled this post “a change of scenery,” even though for the last few weeks there’s been so much changing scenery that I feel like it’s all blurring past my windows on fast-forward. Nor is it over. I’ll get home and spend a day with my family, then hop back in the car and travel again, travels which will not end for another week or so.

One thing I must admit: it is really hard to keep a regular, disciplined work schedule while I’m traveling like this! My first year as a freelancer, I figured I would enjoy my freedom of movement by traveling and visiting many people throughout the work year. What I discovered was that my focus got shot, I couldn’t really visit, and my work life felt like a never-ending game of catch-up.

I stopped traveling so much. These few weeks are an anomaly. I am enjoying the visiting immensely, but finding (again) that a change of scenery makes it hard to work. Funny creatures we are. We crave normalcy, but thrive on change.

When all my travels are over, I’m hoping that the changes in scenery will have added something to my writing, my editing, my work–new perspective, renewed enjoyment, or just the sheer appreciation of uninterrupted work time. Ultimately, that’s what most change offers us. Challenges, sometimes even hurt, but ultimately renewal.

So I’m still working at revisions for Coming Day. Still endeavouring to have this book released next month, thus wrapping up a trilogy that began nearly ten years ago. I don’t feel old enough to have begun a series ten years ago . . .

Before I began all this revising, the basic plot arc of the book was finished. We got from Point A to Point B, with all the furor and tribulation and triumph that comes in the middle. But so much was going on that there were few quiet moments–few places just to breathe, get to know the characters, add depth to the story.

What’s interesting is how much that affects the resolution. We can go flinging headlong toward the climax, everything can come together, but without that underlying depth, no one is actually going to care.

I leave that to you to apply to your own work, and maybe even to your own life. It’s definitely challenging me.

I had originally intended to post “Light Isn’t Boring” today, but I messed up on scheduling and accidentally posted it two days prior to when I actually wrote it. I was not alerted to its active presence on my blog until a friend posted it on Facebook for all the world to see. Jolly :). So instead, I’m resurrecting a related article, one of my favourites from my first year writing for Boundless:

In these dark days, we desperately need Christian artists who will love God with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength, and who will pour that love into unique creative expressions of truth that have the power to bridge into the souls of others.

This is my charge to them, to you, to myself more than anyone.

Go and meet with God. Seek Him in your relationships, your circumstances, the creation around you. Immerse yourself in scripture. Pray with your whole heart. Let His Spirit fill you with light. And then do what God has asked you to do — be a candle, a burning light, a city on a hill blazing with truth and shelter for those who are lost in the darkness. Use your art to do it.

It is such a dark, dark world. Is there light in you? Then hear my call to you, and to all in whom truth is burning.

Oh Christian, please paint the light!

Read the whole article here.

PW’s Genreville recently posted “In the Dark of the Shadowy Dark Shadows,” an entertaining piece on the prevalence of “Darkness” in fantasy titles (I note, with satisfaction, that of my three fantasy books, two involve light). But they went into the thematic importance of darkness in recent titles, too:

Particularly in paranormal romance, darkness is both evil and enticing, the source of both fear and power. Light tends to get a bad rap by comparison, of the “Evil will always triumph because good is dumb” sort. No one actually wants to be on the side of right and good. It’s boring. So dark ends up being cast as antagonist and protagonist and plot device all at once, and that gets boring too.

No surprise here–one look at a bookstore’s YA shelf clearly displays this troubling attitude toward moral and spiritual darkness. But comments like the above inspire me all the more to write books that display light–in all its dazzling glory. As Christian writers, we should never be guilty of presenting the True Light in such a way that it’s seen as “dumb” or “boring.” (E. Stephen Burnett wrote of one famous end-times novel that it “presented such a boring world, it may have even turned me to an opposite end-times view. I hope it didn’t also turn some readers away from the real hope of the New Earth!”)

Light (and the things it represents–goodness, faithfulness, glory) is not naturally boring, and we can’t afford to paint it that way in our story worlds. Light isn’t boring in the elves of Tolkien’s world; it isn’t boring in Narnia; it isn’t boring in Susan Cooper or Madeleine L’Engle or L.M. Montgomery or George MacDonald or Lloyd Alexander or our real human history.

So what does it take to represent it well? Imagination, unbridled. Passionate belief–a conviction in our own spirits that goodness is to be vaunted, admired, celebrated, rejoiced in. Knowledge of the real ways goodness and truth play out in our world. This is what we’re here for–to shine the light, on and off the page.

Someone once asked me why I write fantasy instead of (pardon me) real literature. This person wondered from a particularly Christian standpoint — shouldn’t Christians be more concerned about the real world?

I’ve given the question a lot of thought over the years and summed up some of my answers in my “Apologetic” essay on WorldsUnseen.com.

Some people are confused by [speculative fiction]. Others think it’s downright wrong-headed (or worse, downright evil). Others get it. They just get it. They know why authors would choose to write Middle-Earth instead of downtown Manhattan. They know why we care about dragons and elves, or about stars and alien civilizations, or about warriors and far-away, dangerous, beautiful things. They know why writing about those things isn’t just “escapism,” but can be a powerful act of creation that helps us grapple with our day-to-day existences in better ways.

They get it. That’s why they read it. Randy Alcorn said it really well: “When we get excited reading [fantasies by Tolkien or Lewis], it’s not our sinfulness that arouses that excitement. It’s our God-given hunger for adventure, for new realms and new beings . . . God has given us a longing for new worlds.”

The rest of the essay looks at three elements of what I write: “fiction,” “speculative,” and “Christian.” It comes back to the real world after all:

I wrote earlier that fiction allows us to experience a story in a subjective way. You can call this escapism if you like. But at the same time, that subjective experience allows us to come back and look at our own lives with greater objectivity.

So there is a chance that when readers escape into a speculative world designed by someone who is immersed in truth and relationship with God, they might just experience truth or encounter God in a way they have not done before — in a way they can bring back out into the “real world” to make an objective difference. Aslan has truly deepened readers’ worship of Jesus. Middle-Earth has really made us long for heaven.

“Remember how I followed you and Adrian like a little puppy until I was eight?”

Jason grinned. “I remember. We didn’t mind. We needed a fair maiden to rescue whenever we stormed the sand castles.”

“Well, I always knew you’d be a warrior. Remember what I used to say when we were getting ready to wade across the Elbon?”

“I remember. ‘Lead the way, warrior.’”

“Those were good days.” She hooked her arm around his and sighed. “I feel like they’re back. I’m a little girl again, a maiden rescued from a witch hunter.”

In yesterday’s interview with Bryan Davis, I asked about the magical elements in Starlighter — the mysterious gifts possessed by Koren and Elyssa. The gifts add to the appeal of both characters, by making them fascinating in their own right and placing them both in peril — Koren because her power is coveted by evil rulers, Elyssa because people with her gifts get burned at the stake. Yet both believe that the Creator has endowed them with their powers, and both seek to use their gifts in His service.

Controversy could enter, however, as it does so often with Christian speculative fiction, because in our world Koren and Elyssa’s gifts would probably be demonic at worst and anti-biblical at best (for example, the title used for Elyssa, “Diviner,” calls to mind Scripture’s admonitions against divination).

In the interview, Bryan revealed his process for dividing reality and fantasy:

Since the Dragons in our Midst series takes place in our world, I had to draw the line between reality and fantasy very carefully, more so in that series than in Dragons of Starlight. In Dragons in our Midst, I adhered to the realities of our world and added the fantasy elements without violating the truths of the Bible’s revelations of the spiritual world. I have the real God, and I mention the real Jesus, which established my story as one that could not trespass lines drawn by the Bible. So all my heroic characters never use magic or other powers that Christians in our world would consider demonic or as arising from forbidden sources.

Starlighter . . . takes place in another world. The characters have inherent abilities that would be considered demonic in our world, but in this world, they are endowed by the Creator. Just as the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to humans in our world, God does the same in the Starlighter world, but some of the gifts don’t match those in our world . . .

I realized when I wrote the story that some people would challenge these abilities as demonic. That’s why I created the persecutors who chase Elyssa and characterize them as dark-ages style inquisitors who are blind to the possibility that God is able to endow people with gifts they don’t understand.

Bryan’s answer touches on something Christian fantasy writers understand: powers or abilities are not evil in and of themselves; it’s the source of those powers or abilities — and the way that we access and/or use them — that make them good or evil.

In another world, the rules could very well be different than they are here. By exploring these possibilities, fantasy writers can turn a mirror on our own world and our attitudes and responses to people, to events, and to things we don’t understand. It’s this transferral of the familiar into the strange that gives fantasy its emotional and spiritual power: taken out of our usual surroundings, we’re forced to see life differently for the duration of the story, to ask questions of ourselves and challenge our assumptions.

The best fantasy will give us a vision we can take back into the real world with us — not blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, but equipping us to see through the outsides of things and into the heart a little more clearly.