C. S. Lewis on distraction from his writing

At the public library this week I came across a book by Philip Yancey, another favorite author, that I somehow had missed. Its title is Reaching for the Invisible God and in it Yancey quotes a letter from C.S. Lewis to Father John Calabria that Yancey, as a writer, found extremely relevant.

Lewis at the time was turning 50, had experienced fame and success as an author, and had new book projects on the go. But due to chaos in his household (caring for his infirm mother as well as that of a friend, among other things) couldn't get to them. He felt his writerly powers slipping away. After asking Calabria for prayer, Lewis writes the following: "If it please God that I write more books, blessed be He. If it shall not please Him, again, blessed be He. Perhaps it will be the most wholesome thing for the soul that I lose both fame and skill lest I were to fall into that evil disease, vainglory."

This quote illustrates the reality that Christian writers do, or should, regard their writing careers in a unique light--a theme I explored in an earlier post.

An author entranced, at first, by his iPhone

In the New York Times, 37-year-old novelist Gary Shteyngart writes how buying his first iPhone caused him to start looking at the world in a new way. Later he decided that was not a good thing. He piled Russian novels into his car and headed out of the city to reconnect with who he was before the iPhone.

Shteyngart is one more (articulate) writer struggling to understand his relationship to the new media.

I came across him, by the way, while listening to an interview on CBC radio. Shteyngart's an unusual guy. At age 10 he emigrated to the USA from the old Soviet Union and is still deeply connected to his Russian roots. He speaks Russian fluently and has warm regard for his more "cultured" early childhood while disapproving of the lack of freedom in Russia then and now. (He's also a funny guy.)

The irony, perhaps, is that I was able to learn about Shteyngart and quickly tell you about him because of new media (media that has emerged in the last 20 years). I didn't have to go to the library and look up his name in a reference book. I also, thanks to new media, by the way, have been perusing a favorite, classic book online. I'd loaned my paper copy of it to someone about eight years ago and never got it back. The question of what is good and what is not so good about new media continues to be complicated.

Too many aspiring novelists?

Aspiring novelist Alix Christies wrote something recently that sounded a lot like the description for this blog:

"We live in a time of extraordinay openness, when anyone with an internet connection can publish. Everytime I go online or step into a bookstore, I am overcome by this tsunami of freshly published words. This torrent of expression inevitably provokes existentialism in a writer. What makes any of us think we have something to say that others need to read?"

Her article, published in Intelligent Life, is titled "We Ten Million," referring to the number people in the world (by her estimate) who right now are working on novels they will submit for publication this year. Only 250,000 or so will succeed.

This week I listened to an interesting interview on a related theme, by the way. Laura Miller of Salon.com was criticizing National Novel Writing Month (ever heard of it?) on a show called Q (an excellent program, BTW) on CBC radio. NaNoWriMo, as it's known, encourages people to complete a novel, of whatever quality, in 30 days. Some 165,000 participated last year. Miller thinks this is a waste, given the fact that studies show that as many as a half of Americans last year read less than one book for pleasure. Eighty-two percent, meanwhile, said they wanted to write a book some day.

On the show's website, articulate listeners (writers, no doubt) responded to the interview in opposite ways. Some agreed with Ms. Miller while others said, "anything getting young people to write instead of play video games, etc., is good." Check out the discussion thread or listen to the interview here. To read Laura Miller's original article on this topic, go here.

The Daily Beast and Newsweek merge and why writers should care

I was alerted to this story when clicking on the latest column by David Brooks. (He writes for the New York Times as well as appearing as a regular commentator, along with Mark Shields, on the PBS News Hour. Brooks and Shields debate issues with logic and civility, providing an alternative to the great number of media boors who daily shout their heads off at one another to great applause.)

First I must confess that I didn't quite know what The Daily Beast (warning: some material on their website is not what I would call "edifying") was. Wikipedia tells me it's an online clearinghouse providing links to news, feature, and opinion items as well as having original content. The writers are top notch as is the editor, Tina Brown, who used to run The New Yorker. Newsweek I knew as a boy, though I've not looked at it much lately. Our family subscribed to it and I used to pore over it from junior high school onwards, enjoying well-written pieces on a range of topics.

Anyhow, it seems both Newsweek and The Daily Beast have become huge money losers but recently decided to join forces. For starters, if you go to newsweek.com from now on, or soon, you'll be directed to The Daily Beast. Most commentators, it appears, think this merger is a dumb idea and bound to fail, but Brooks sees it differently. Brooks, I find, tends to think outside the box more than most and believes the venture may have a chance. Referring to 19th century intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson (apologizing, as it were, for doing so, realizing how irrelevant most Americans would find any reference before, say,1980) Brooks presents the philosophy behind magazines like Newsweek when they were founded. Emerson thought people in a democracy should know about the great western cultural tradition and it was not unusual for ordinary people--butchers, bakers, etc.--in those days to own and read the classics. The original Newsweek, Brooks thinks, followed that belief in the need for a "liberal education" (in the old sense of the term) by dealing with high art, science, and literature as well as politics and train wrecks.

Such breadth of coverage lost favor in recent decades and gradually was replaced by a concentration on "news you can use," or news to amuse: stuff designed to boost our egos along with videos of people running into walls on bicycles and the like. (This is an extremely broad brush summary, a caricature if you will, of what Brooks was getting at.)

Bottom line? Brooks thinks the public may be ready to once again learn stuff that is more than on the surface (material that is the intellectual equivalent of Moe whacking Larry with a pipe wrench to the sound of a metallic ping, etc.) As a reader and writer, I hope Brooks is right and that maybe, just maybe, our society could be starting to trend away from its shallowness and incivility. English society at the end of the 18th century was crude, rude, and cruel (slave trading, cockfights, etc.) but began to get better in the next, thanks in part to reformers like William Wilberforce.

Change can happen. Let's pray that it does.

Ted Koppel on Olbermann, O'Reilly and objectivity in journalism

This article by Ted Koppel (host of ABC's "Nightline" for 25 years) explains what has changed in the TV news business in the United States over the last 40 years. In a nutshell, increasingly viewers only want to watch news that reinforces their beliefs, exemplified on the left by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and on the right by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. They don't want to be bothered anymore with boring old newscasts that dig deeply into facts and strive to be unbiased. No--they'd rather listen to hot heads (or cool heads) pummeling the oppostion. Much more entertaining.

I recognize this tendency in myself, by the way, particularly when it comes to online commentary. I have two (quite biased) websites about public affairs I go to over and over. Seldom would I want to know what the other side might have to say. Part of my reason for this is that, generally speaking, the other side (like my side, but more so--in my opinion!) is just shooting its collective mouth off.

Neverthless I do believe that on U.S. television there remains at least one bastion of relative objectivity: the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I know many will say that the bias is clear. But I disagree. Relatively speaking, interviews and reports do not tip left or right. The fact that Lehrer is chosen so often to moderate presidential debates supports this view.

Journalists who work to find out where the truth lies instead of just spouting opinions, I believe, are on the side of the angels. They are doing their part to "get the truth out there" (see post for Oct. 16).

Write to bring calm

The above title is inspired by a writer, Elisabeth Elliot, who, I find, often brings a sense of calm in her devotionals. Elliot, 84, author of many books, is best known to older Christians for Through Gates of Splendor, the story of the death of her husband Jim and four others in 1956 while trying to make missionary contact with a remote tribe in Ecuador.

Elliot's devotional today (titled "Stillness") while mainly about quietness before God, also articulates concerns about the proliferation of noise in the world. She quotes C. S. Lewis in Screwtape Letters (his classic book purporting to be correspondence between Screwtape, undersecretary to the Devil, and his nephew Wormwood) in this regard:"My dear Wormwood: Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell...no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise...But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress." Elliot then adds, "C.S. Lewis died in 1963. Research in noise-making has made considerable progress since then, don't you think?"

The problem of noise impinges on writers in this way: to write well, we need calm and quiet-- time to collect our thoughts. But the stimuli of new technologies mitigate against allowing ourselves such periods ("Instead of staring out the window, you could have answered that e-mail--or added another 400 words to your manuscript!"). However, books that will still be read in a hundred years, I think, will be those written by those who took the time to write thoughtfully and well. I wonder if those also are the books that tend to minister a sense of calm instead of noise--particularly when the author has, like Elliot, also taken the time to "be still and know that I am God."

Write to...entertain!

Let it be said: entertainment and amusements are not, in themselves, bad things. In our culture, it is true, we have gone overboard. A book I've mentioned before called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman deals with this topic as it relates to television. In general, he would say, people at the time the book was published, 1985, spent way too much time entertaining themselves while letting certain vital parts of their lives slide. I would love to know what Postman (now deceased) would say about the world of today. The process of "amusing ourselves to death" has accelerated.

Having said that, entertainment (as I say) at its heart is a good, in fact God-ordained, thing. Like sex, it can be abused, but it is not bad in itself. A book that illustrates the looniness of trying to eliminate entertainment altogether is Hard Times by Charles Dickens. In it Mr. Gradgrind runs a school that purports to deal strictly in "facts." Gradgrind even opposes flowered wallpaper since "flowers don't live on walls." His son and daughter, meanwhile, are fed up with their father's philosophy and sneak off to see a circus. (All this I learned from a BBC production of Hard Times we were watching the other night. I once tried to get into the book but found it depressing, as I recall. The BBC production was depressing as well, come to think of it...)

In any case, in Hard Times Dickens seemed to be making the point that the people that worked in the awful factories of 19th century England, like the children of Gradgrind, needed circuses to maintain a semblance of sanity. One could make the case that in our dizzying world, we too need to be entertained. I know I certainly feel that way. (A regular question around our household is, "Is there anything funny on?") Life in its complexities can wear us down and wholesome distractions can be a blessing.

The problem, as we know, is that today's world is rife with entertainment that is anything but wholesome. For starters, professional wrestling, pornography, most reality TV, and violent video games spring to mind. Writers have the opportunity either to improve the situation by writing worthy and nourishing novels, scripts, op-ed pieces, magazine features, blog entries, etc.--or to make it worse by adding to the drek. A scripture with a million applications also applies here: "as we have opportunity, let us do good unto all people..." Writing that heals and uplifts while it entertains can be of service in God's kingdom as much as a donation to World Vision or quality time with the family.

Write to get the truth out there (2)

In citing yet another book I have on the go, you will wonder if I do nothing but read. (No I don't, but sometimes it so happens I've discovered more than one great book and want t0 get through them all before returning them to the library. Okay?)

This other book is Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War by Harry S. Stout. Having an interest in the Civil War, I went looking for this book when I noticed Christianity Today had selected it one year as a "Book of the Year." What Stout does in Upon the Altar, in my opinion, is to look at the Civil War neither from a "conservative" nor "liberal" point of view. Instead, he looks at it from the perspective of just war theory as set forth by Christian thinkers from St. Augustine onward.

For those of us who luxuriated in the strains of Ashoeken Farewell while watching Ken Burn's magnificent Civil War series on PBS, it is a let down. We like our heroes and our sanitized versions of the past. But in this book, Abe Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, and Robert E. Lee often come across as morally deficient--even as they in other ways were good men. Not unlike the way the Bible depicts its heroes, come to think of it. Stout is strictly fair, citing fact upon fact, and the result is a look at the past as it was, not as we wish it had been. We should look at the past in such a way, says Stout, not in order to pass judgment on the people who lived back then. Instead it is so that we can go forward living the right way ourselves.

Stout in his writing (and a fine writer he is) in other words, is "getting the truth out there." A worthy goal for any of us.

Media and me

After thinking of the above title I realized it was also a play on the title of a book I'm finishing called Acedia and me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris. (In the link, Norris defines acedia as "the spiritual aspect of sloth.") If anyone deserves the title of "a writer's writer," surely it is Norris. A poet as well as prose master, her books are packed with meaning. She writes about the day to day, but with references to literature, scripture, the words of ancient monks, and her past life. Rich stuff.

My reason for bringing her up is that Norris especially illustrates to me how (as per my last post) books connect us to an author. Over the years I feel I have "come to know" Norris--at least in ways she has chosen to reveal herself. (Analogies to God's self revelation in scripture, perhaps?)

But speaking of self-revelation (and getting to "Media and me") I wanted to say something about my own evolving interactions with media over the years.

When I was a child, there was TV (a few channels), radio, and printed matter. That was it. Before I could read or write I felt attracted to writing, perhaps because my father, a prof, read voraciously and had a "study" full of books. I occasionally went into the room, put paper in the Underwood and tapped the underline key. I wanted to create the look of lined paper. When asked what I was up to, I would say, "It's for when I learn to write." As far as I recall my father never reprimanded me about it.

In a few years I did learn to write and to love it. In junior high I wrote my brother, away at school, "monster letters" and faithfully kept a diary for the year 1963. I loved English, even grammar and diagramming, and especially loved Creative Writing in Grade 12. I majored in English, wrote a column for the college paper one year and edited it the next. After graduation I took a single course in "print journalism" (learning elements I had missed) and began writing features for a local daily newspaper. I then landed a job as a reporter for a small weekly and stayed there just under three years. I remember it as the happiest time of my working life. I could hardly believe they paid me to do what I loved.

There was a simplicity to pursuing a media career in those days. The path seemed clear. The teacher of that journalism class (himself a former newspaper editor) told me to put my published stuff in a binder. Drive around to small newspapers. Walk in. Ask to see the editor and show him your stuff. Leave your resume. Even if he has no job, he may remember you when he does. So I did as he suggested and it worked. After visiting a dozen or so papers, one day I walked out with a job. "We were just about to put an ad in the Globe and Mail," said the publisher, "but since you're here..." I walked out the door feeling three feet off the ground.

In those days, if you had elementary skills and were "willing to go anywhere," as my teacher put it, landing a job in the field seemed doable. People with skills had value. Newspapers made bucks from ads, but needed copy to sell ads. The formula was simple. Today, as we know, that formula has failed many renowned newspapers. The New York Times and Washington Post subsidize their print operations through other enterprises. Perhaps it still is possible to acquire a starting position on certain community newspapers (which have proven more resilient than urban dailies) using the show-and-tell method I was taught. But even those opportunities are fewer in number, as this premiere website for jobs in Canada reflects.

For most journalists and writers of my generation, the way forward now seems more complicated. Blog, we are told. Create a "web presence." Write in a "web friendly" manner. While you're at it, acquire technical skills to become a webmaster. Learn how to make sure your stuff appears on the first page of Google. And so on. And on.

Oldsters can learn new things, of course, but it takes us longer. Today it seems to take me two or three hours to learn what used to take an hour. And doing so can feel like pulling hen's teeth. Adding pressure is the fact that sand in the hour glass of life is running out. How best should I use what is left? What I really want to do with the remainder (keeping in mind "if God wills") is to write. Write! My desire is the same as when I tried to create my own writing paper with my father's typewriter.

Now perhaps you better understand the meaning behind this blog's title and description. My own answers to the "Why write?" question are a work in progress. Based on my genes and life experience, I face it anew every morning. Perhaps every writer does, whether or not they often think about it.

I hope some of you will feel free to join me in this quest and, whatever your age or background, tell us about your own.

Write to connect

Went to church this morning and stopped at the church library. Browsing new books, my eyes fell on the name Joshua Harris. The name was familiar--I'd read reviews of earlier books--but this title was especially fascinating: Dug Down Deep: Unearthing What I Believe and Why It Matters. Harris, I knew, was on the younger side compared to me and the picture of the dude with the shaved head on the back cover bore it out. Yet I felt drawn to the book.

Here's why. I found it heartening that someone of the younger generation of Christians is interested in doctrine and theology, and, from what I could see, regards it as essential to knowing and serving God. I look forward to getting inside the head of this young man so different from me--learning who he is and how he thinks.

My point is that in reading this book, I am quite sure I will come away feeling "connected" to the author. It's what happens when we read. Despite new ways to communicate, people today feel increasingly isolated. Books, I believe, can help eliminate the distance and help us understand people similar and different from ourselves. Books go deep in ways You Tube, Facebook, tweets, texts, or e-mails generally do not, or can not.

Also fascinating about Dug Down Deep, by the way, and illustrating my point, were the front and back cover blurbs. The one on front was by Donald Miller, a non-traditional ("emergent"?) Christian voice of Gen X'ers; the one on back was by 85-year-old theologian J. I. Packer. Despite the generational and cultural gulf, the blurb writers found common ground in a well-written book.

Write to get the truth out there

In short, we should write to tell the truth, with love. Obviously, a lot of people out there today are communicating, often hatefully, lies and half-truths in scripts, blogs, and books. (Christians, I might add, tend to be best at spotting lies in books with titles like God is not Great. We're not so good at noticing lies of a more subtle nature, say in the film Avatar.) Today's culture, in other words, usually does not write to tell the truth, with love. Instead it gives another prime answer to the "why write?" question, and that is, briefly put, self-fulfillment. Our reason for being on this earth, goes this reasoning, is to fulfill our potential, to "be the best we can be," and as a result be happy.

The Christian would answer, yes, we should strive to develop the gifts God has placed within us. But if that development is not prefaced by our saying, and meaning, "if God wills," then we're on the wrong track. (Remember that famous passage in James?)

A Christian, in other words, should say, "Yes, I'm called to write. But I'm also called to be a spouse (or remain single) and parent (or not) as well as, friend, neighbor, employee or stay-at-home worker. Wisdom is knowing when I should write or when I should skip my writing and help a friend or stranger, or dig in the garden, or take a nap...

When you read about the lives of famous writers, many of them say they let everything (marriages, children, etc.) go for the sake of "art." Actors and musicians also live by this ethic and as a result often do often produce art which, whether they know it or not, in some muted way reflects the image of God. God brings glory to Himself in mysterious ways.

But we Christians are on a different track. We seek intentionally to glorify God in arts and crafts, but we also seek to do so in churches, families, and communities. Bach, for one, wrote, in Latin, "to God alone be glory" at the end of most scores. Hopefully as we go about our days, we writers will "seek first the kingdom" in a thousand ways, with the hope that "all these things"--artistic expression which will last--will be "added unto us."

The result might not, like a Bach cantata, thrill and bless for millenia. But it might just help one other pilgrim on their journey.

All media are not created equal

A theme of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is that different media have different best uses and strengths. This was brought home to me this week after I received a couple blistering e-mails from someone who later regretted sending them. In response I said that I too had sent messages I later regretted and that instant communication has a negative side. In the past we might have written out an angry letter, set it aside, then changed our minds. Today, it is far too easy to write the first thing that comes to mind (in a rage?) and hit "Send." Oops.

The question of what new media are good for, and not so good for, is one I ponder regularly. It impinges directly on what it means to be a professional or casual writer in the 21st century. E-mail is fantastic in so many ways, of course, and my siblings and I today can settle practical questions (when and where shall we meet?) in a few hours that used to take days. (People who text or tweet can settle such things in seconds of course.)

But e-mail is not ideal for dealing with sensitive issues, methinks--unless you can strongly resist your "Send" impulse.

Why write?

This is a question I've asked myself a great deal in recent years, and no doubt others with an interest in writing have as well. I mean, it generally feels so much easier not to write, not to bother, and to excuse myself by saying, "Ah, everybody today is busy with their tweets, texts, reality TV, video games, or what have you. Are they really going to care what I have to say?

On a deeper level, I know those sorts of thoughts are not accurate. I know that things I have written have touched people: they have told me so. If you are a published (or unpublished) writer, your experience may be similar.

What is more, I know for a fact the difference other peoples' writings have made in my own life. Some of those books, articles, and web postings have been, almost literally, life saving.

So there, already, is the beginning of an answer to the question, "Why write?"

Much more could be said--particularly if, like me, you profess to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Check here again in a week or so as we explore this and similar questions further.