Reminder to Self
Image
Reply
Success at what cost?
In one of the books I am reading right now, the author shares an image that a friend shared with him.
Picture a four-burner stove, he says. Each burner represents one of the following: friends, family, health, and work.
In order to be successful, you have to turn one off. To be wildly successful, you have to turn off two.
Discuss.
My Auto-Buy Authors
I will buy anything these writers put out, without having read a review, let alone the actual book. In fact, I will probably pre-order it the moment I hear a rumor of something new:
pre-ordered with love
six months out
Billy Collins (heck, I have his new book pre-ordered already and it’s not due out for another six months!)
John Green
David Sedaris (his latest Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls just arrived in the mail today … another pre-order!)
Donald Miller
Jandy Nelson
Who are your auto-buy authors?
Jeopardy
JEOPARDY
Answer: One summer night I lay alone in a grassy field outlined in pines whose perfume stained the sky. In the distance, a pocket of people played guitar and sang quiet songs. The grass beneath my head was soft as a pillow, and the stars felt close enough for me to use the Big Dipper to ladle up a heaping scoop of memento constellations from this perfect night. Then, though I couldn’t see it, a hand pressed me gently into the earth. There, beneath that great palm, I felt eyes gazing at me with delight and charity, and I for once welcomed eternity.
Question: Do you believe in God?
Thunderstorm or Kitten?
Image
Do It Anyway.
This applies to more than just CBT/ERP. This applies to life.
Truth Tripline
I’m one of those writers who doesn’t really know what she wants to say until she says it. I don’t do a lot of planning before I start fiction projects. I might have a vague idea of the ending, but I don’t know the steps it will take to get to that point, or even if that ending will be what I eventually land on.
Apparently, Jo Rowling planned Harry Potter for seven years before she started writing it. It definitely worked for her.
For me, I make friends with a few characters and then I toss them into a situation together to see what they’ll do.
Listen, I know it’s kind of a trendy thing for authors to say that they are surprised by what their characters do, but I’ll be honest with you: it’s the truth. I am sometimes shocked at what happens when I sit down at the laptop to write. I won’t let my characters have the final say; I get that, as the author … but they usually know what they’re doing, and I’m usually humble enough to listen.
When I sat down to write my current work-in-progress, all I knew was that it featured three teenagers and one of them wasn’t sure if reality was really reality. The first thing that happened when I started writing was that this blind, elderly man named Gordon suddenly started speaking. I had no idea where he came from, had not planned or prepared for him … but there he was. And he ended up being an important character in the story.
C.S. Lewis had the image of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood in his head. He wrote, “At first I had very little idea how the story would go. Then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams about lions about that time. Apart from that I don’t know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.”
Likewise, Lewis said that the stories weren’t originally intended to be Christian allegory. “At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.”
This happens to me while I write. I won’t know what a character should do or say … and then I just write it. My fingers just fly across the keyboard, and I, Jackie, at home on my couch, am marveling at this truth that I tripped over.
Where do these things come from?
I think I know.
Alice in Wonderland 2 by *Ashenebal on deviantART
In the Moment
It’s one thing for me to declare over my blog to a primarily anonymous audience, “Dear obsessive-compulsives, this is what you should do.”
But then comes the moment when your friend says, “Hey, can you talk to my friend on Facebook? Here’s her name.”
It’s not that I’ve never been there before, the frenetic chaos of an obsession. I know what it’s like to feel that furious terror, to need to know that things will be okay. I get it. I really do.
But I know the other side now. I know that reassurances aren’t going to get this girl anywhere. Know that discussing her obsession is like clipping off the leaves of a weed, when what we really need to go for is the root.
In that moment– those wild minutes of obsessive pandemonium– it’s hard to talk calmly, to keep redirecting someone back to the idea of treatment, to feel like you’re doing them any good. In fact, you imagine they’re thinking, No, you’re not getting this. You don’t know what I need.
But I do. Because I do get it. Because I was there. Because I tried for years to put a quick bandaid over the cancer that needed to be cut out.
Breathe, I tell her. Breathe tonight, and then educate yourself tomorrow. It’s time to go for the root.
Favorite Book Lines
This was originally going to be a top ten list, but I should have known that that would about KILL me. So, in the end, I simply present to you a list of some of my favorite lines of literature:
Jude stopped in front of her and, with both hands cupping her face, tried to make a smile. Narnie flinched.
‘Leave her alone,’ Tate said.
‘I need a revelation,’ Jude said. ‘And you’re the only one that can give me one, Narns.”
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
“The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.”
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
“And Dimble, who had been sitting with his face drawn, and rather white, between the white faces of the two women, and his eyes on the table, raised his head, and great syllables of words that sounded like castles came out of his mouth.”
That Hiddeous Strength by C.S. Lewis
“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
“He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.”
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
“Do you remember all of your audiences?” Marco asks.
“Not all of them,” Celia says. “But I remember the people who look at me the way you do.”
“What way might that be?”
“As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me.”
“I am not afraid of you,” Marco says.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
“Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?”
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
“It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
“It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
“It was a jumble, it was a mishmash, and somehow she pulled it together, somehow she threaded every different thing through the voice of a solitary mockingbird singing in the desert.”
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
“There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
“I saw a beached red dory. I could take the dory, row out to the guy, and say: Sir. You have found a place where the sky dips close.”
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
What are your favorites?
Stigma
Image
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS 