Rachel Starr Thomson

I have now been home from Vancouver for three days, but balk every time I think of blogging. Reason being: there is too much to blog about!

For example, Jeffrey Overstreet’s latest book in the Auralia Thread, Raven’s Ladder, was released on February 16, and it is amazing. He was good enough to send me a (signed!) advance copy, and I have written a review which will be posted here and at BlogCritics.org shortly. Best book I have read in quite some time. I’m very sorry I missed the release date, but I was really busy in Vancouver, which brings me to

another thing I need to blog about, which is the trip itself. I will go into more detail in the next few weeks, but for now, I will say it was an amazing experience. Carolyn and I performed several times a day along with many other Christian artists in a church, on street corners, at a women’s shelter in the poverty-stricken east side, and in a huge theatre. We were able to dive into this city where the world is currently meeting and use writing and dance to celebrate the glory of God and invite people into His peace and deliverance. What an incredible privilege.

While we were doing that, I had a couple of articles published that I didn’t have time to tell you about. So here are the links:

“Seven Values of a Heavenly Life” — Store up treasures in heaven by living a heavenly life here on earth with hospitality, generosity, self-discipline, love of truth, love of purity, love for sinners, and passion for daily living. Published on Boundless.org.

“Keeping the Heart in Your Writing” — My guest post on the fabulous blog of agent Rachelle Gardner. By identifying your passion, fasting and feasting, and practicing discipline, you can keep the heart in your writing even in the busiest of lives.

Aaaand in preparation for the Olympics, I published our first book under the Soli Deo Gloria Ballet imprint, Pieces of Grace (And What They Mean). This is a little book containing poetry we use in our short pieces and a short story, along with a few theological notes. We didn’t actually get to sell it in Vancouver due to a bizarrely late delivery, but it’s good to have it out anyway! I will eventually get it up on this site; in the meantime, check it out on Amazon.

I’ve been thinking about songwriting lately for two major reasons: annoyance and joy.

Annoyance with a trend in worship music these days to be formless and void (what do some of those words mean, anyway?) and joy in music that does worship and that does teach and exhort, as well as having musical excellence to it.

One of my favourite links these days is Nathan Partain’s music blog. He’s a worship leader at a Reformed church who writes folk-rock melodies for old hymns. The music is fairly rough and raw, which is how I like it, and you can download lots of it. My favourite songs are “Be Reconciled” and “Come, Jesus, Come.”

Nathan is involved with a group of worship leaders who post music, art, and liturgical thoughts under the name Cardiphonia. Check them out here.

So my question the other day about songwriting wasn’t entirely rhetorical; I was leading up to something . Does music — specifically music with words, songs — have a God-given purpose? Is there something we’re supposed to do with it? Obviously, song is an incredible form of expression. But is self-expression all there is to it? In my opinion, if you’re only about expressing yourself, you’re going to become self-indulgent very quickly, and self-indulgence is a sinkhole for artists of any kind.

Paul talks about song in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, with an interesting double emphasis:

… be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph 5:18-19)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (Col 3:16-17)

There are three purposes listed for Christian song here (and by “Christian song” here I mean songs that are specifically related to our faith). One is obvious: to sing to God and express gratitude to Him. The others are maybe not so obvious: we’re supposed to use songs to “speak to ourselves” and to “teach and admonish one another.” In other words, we should sing songs of worship and praise, but we should also sing songs of doctrine and truth and exhortation. At least, that’s how I take those verses.

Looking at most of the music in the church these days, what do you think? Are we fulfilling those purposes?

I love this video, because it is pure joy to watch someone who was so obviously born to do what he does:

I have been very busy lately, and so blogging sparingly, but the recent posts about Andrew Peterson and my own encounters with a few born musicians have me thinking about a type of writing I don’t usually address: songwriting. Do any of you do it? What sorts of music do you write? If you’ve never written a song, why not?

While we have been blogging about Andrew Peterson, Andrew Peterson has been blogging about us.

My favourite thing about CSFF Tours (even ones like this, which I hardly qualify as participating in because I didn’t read the book) is author involvement. Authors used to be sort of mythic. They didn’t live on the same planet as the rest of us — well, except for C.S. Lewis, who they say used to answer letters from readers. All of them. But it’s not like that anymore, because we all live in the Internet Age, and in the Internet Age, marketing is about building relationships with readers.

While I still can’t build relationships with most of my favourite authors (because most of my favourite authors are dead), this change in the business landscape is huge for me. For you, too, if you write. It’s tremendously liberating.  I used to shudder at the thought of marketing. Now I don’t, because  marketing does not equal “self-promotion.” It equals “making friends.” And for those of us who want to serve God with our writing, it means even more opportunity to share Christ, glorify God, and invest in people.

How’s that for a revolutionary thought?

In this great CSFF interview, Chawna Schroeder asked Andrew what he wanted readers to take away from his books. He said, “Most of all I hope they brush up against that holy Other who haunts the world of man and proclaims His truth in stories and art and music. I hope the story pushes them closer to belief.”

I’m with you, Andrew. May our whole lives, marketing and all, push readers close to that belief — or rather, pull them along with us!

Today I plan to start revisions on The Advent. Step 1 is reading through the manuscript as it stands. This is always an interesting venture. I haven’t looked at it since I finished the first draft back in early December, and I have a short memory when it comes to my own writing.  I also need to revise a short story, “Butterflies Dancing,” this month.

To me one of the most interesting things that happens when I reread a first draft is that I discover allegories. The Seventh World books are not straight allegory (none of my writing is, except the short story “Journey“), but they have plenty of allegorical themes and truth shadows. And one of my jobs, when I’m revising, is to look out for those themes and shadows. Some are there because I put them there; some have crept in quite on their own.

For example? All of the Gifted in the Seventh World books are either orphans or were raised without their parents. I didn’t do that on purpose, but it has significance. Likewise, I realized at one point that an inordinate number of the major characters are female, and I didn’t do that deliberately either. But it also has thematic significance: in scripture, the church is represented as a woman waiting for her bridegroom. In the Seventh World, many of those who are struggling to stand against the Blackness are women waiting for their heroes — and most especially waiting for the King, the ultimate Hero and Bridegroom for that world.

To me there’s something truly exciting and joyous about discovering hidden meanings in my own writing. It’s fun, and it gives me new insight not only on the stories, but on life itself.  Whatever your day may bring you, may you also find hidden meanings in it — and may you find joy in the living!

The publishing industry is changing. Today’s Big News: Kirkus Reviews is gone. Wow.

It’s interesting that so much of the negative fuss about self-publishing is that we need gatekeepers to tell us what’s worth reading and what isn’t, but right now we’re losing many of the traditional gatekeepers in the form of print reviews. Can bloggers replace them? I wonder.

Also, I’m not the only writer interested in knowing what music other writers listen to. This Publishers Weekly blogger asks a whole bunch of writers what music inspires them.

And finally, while I will post tomorrow, I may be largely absent from now until Christmas as Soli Deo Gloria Ballet has 13 or 14 performances (I lost count) in the next ten days. Pray for us!

The Advent is now a complete first draft!

A messy first draft, full of loose ends, accidentally dropped characters, rambling sentences, and scenes that are too sparse.

But I am finally happy with this story (which is now in its third completely different incarnation); finally satisfied that it’s the story it’s supposed to be. I typed the last words of the first draft yesterday afternoon and bought a hot chocolate and a cheese croissant from Tim Horton’s to celebrate. The book will now lay fallow until after Christmas, while I keep up with my student papers and an insanely busy touring schedule. Then revisions begin.

Thanks for all your encouragement on this journey .

So two weeks ago I came to a turning point in The Advent which I wrapped up all nice and quick, and then I realized, No, it just can’t be that easy. We need a battle scene here.

Despite the fact that both Worlds Unseen and Burning Light contain climactic battle scenes that work fairly well, I am terrible at writing them. The pacing is hard to keep up as the tension levels have to be high without frazzling readers completely. They have to be planned out so carefully, and all the time I write them I think, I’m probably missing something really obvious and important, and when readers read this, they’re going to go, Yeah, but why didn’t they just push the button? They could have skipped the whole silly fight!

I had a week where I wasn’t able to write due to Behold the Child prep, rehearsals, and first performances, so last night I finally came back to this battle scene and started writing it. I was right, it needs to be there, and it’s not going too badly, but it’s still hard. I think this might be easier if I was a guy. Possibly guy brains are more suited to figuring out battle plans.

On a very different note, tomorrow I am launching the best Seventh World Trilogy sale EVER — both Worlds Unseen and Burning Light for only $25 plus shipping. They’ll be available on the home page starting tomorrow around 11:00 a.m. and going until December 25.

In the discussion on “what makes good literature,” an issue crops up that’s unique to those who hold a set of objective standards about the world; i.e. Christians and other people who believe that a certain account of creation and morality and history is really true and not something that changes depending on your perspective.

Literature contains a whole lot of perspective, so we can look at a book that is brilliantly written and still feel that it’s “bad literature” because we believe it’s telling a pack of lies about life.

In my e-mail discussion with Annalisa I started thinking about this when she expressed frustration that there don’t seem to be black and white standards when it comes to judging literature, even though we can look at some literature and judge it as damaging to readers. I said,

I think it’s reality, though — art, including writing, can’t really be judged by purely objective standards. It’s not like truth, which is black and white. An analogy just came to my mind: when we make art, we’re imitating God when He created. Just like we can’t look around and say, “Well, that’s a good tree because it meets X and X and X standards, and that’s a bad tree because it doesn’t,” we can’t judge art that way either.

We can judge the trueness or falseness of content, because then we’re getting into the realm of truth, not just art. In writing the two often merge, which may be one reason it’s frustrating trying to define “good literature”! So you can perhaps say, “Even though X book is beautifully written, its content is full of lies and therefore it’s harmful to readers.”

What makes good literature in the world’s eyes may be the skillful handling of form and language, the treating of timeless themes, and the ability to endure. For a Christian, what makes good literature is probably the skillful handling of form and language, the treating of timeless themes, the ability to endure, and faithfulness to biblical truth.

What do you think?