A conversation with Patrick Rothfuss

First of all, let me apologize to all of you who have been waiting over 3 weeks to hear how my conversation with Patrick Rothfuss went. I can’t believe it was that long ago. There has been a lot for me to think about and I wanted to listen to the whole conversation again in case I missed something. Thank you for your patience.

The morning of our conversation I had a strong sense that it would be an eye opening experience, and it was exactly that. We talked for nearly three hours about the craft of writing and about my book, but mostly about the craft. And this should come as no surprise, but that is exactly what I needed. I do have some very specific story elements to work on in this book and in my future writing, but Pat really helped me to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, to see elements of my writing that can be improved. It was daunting, but good, as the picture above suggests (it's from a column Pat once wrote).

Whether that means cutting internal monologue in favor of dialogue and action that reveal character thoughts and motivations, or withholding information from the reader in a natural way to pique their curiosity; building tension through real conflicts and their resolutions or avoiding the infamous speculative fiction “info dump.” We discussed each of these things and many others. I am especially grateful because each of these issues were things I couldn’t have seen on my own. I’ve read and revised this book 5 or 6 times, but I had never noticed any of the things he talked about. Even most of my early readers didn’t comment on these issues, though I want to give a hearty shout out to Mike and Ann for addressing some of the very issues Pat touched on. You guys rock!

Clearly there is a lot for me to work on, but I’m excited to do it.

But how should I do it? That is a question Pat brought up toward the end of our conversation. Should I allot a few hundred hours to fixing these big picture issues and rewriting at least half of the book, or should I allot those same hours to writing on a clean slate? Even now, three weeks later, I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know my next step. I’m going to work on short stories for a little while, practicing the things we talked about in a shorter form, one that won’t require such a huge commitment of time right out of the gate. Hopefully this time will produce some great stories and equip me to tell better stories later. And whether the next project turns out to be rewriting the story I’ve already written or something completely different will just have to be determined when I get there.

At the end of the day it comes down to this: I have been praying for a long time that what I write will be truly excellent, and this conversation will help me toward that. Pat did say that I’ve created a cool cosmology, done some solid world-building, created some solid dialogue (though there isn’t enough of it), and created a cast of characters (though they don’t shine as well as they could). So I did some things well this time around. But it can be better. And isn’t that what I should strive toward: using the gifts God has given me to their fullest in his service?

So thank you once again to all of you who are reading this and have played a part in the process. Thank you for your prayers, your encouragement, and your support. I would also like to send a special thank you to those who read early drafts of my book and to those who contributed financially to make this opportunity possible.

This was a big step on the path the Lord is stretching out before me, and I earnestly desire your continued partnership. Last semester the Lord gave me three words in answer to the question, “Lord, what is it that you want me to become and do if I am to do your will.” And those words were: Bold, Courageous, and Diligent. Pray that I would grow into those as I continue to journey down this road.

Blessings,
Adam

A couple nights ago I dreamed I had dinner with Neil Gaiman . He was witty, charming, and quite funny. I wish I'd asked him some questions . . .

Drinking from a Dry Well

In Drinking from a Dry Well, Thomas H. Green writes:

“The Lord has known our darkness all along, from the first moment he called us. God is not surprised or shocked by our sinfulness—we are! If we are to grow in love, we have to accept the reality of our own sinful condition—even come to peace about it. Not because we like it, but because the Lord accepts and loves us as we are. He does wish to purify and transform us. But that is his work. We do not make ourselves worthy of his love by bewailing our sinfulness. Rather, he makes us worthy by loving us.”

How true, on all counts! We do not make ourselves worthy of his love; he makes us worthy by loving us. This dual knowledge can be so distasteful to us, but it is what we need. Oh, to know ourselves as we are that we might see him as he is—to see him as he is that we might know ourselves as we are.

Gentle truths brush the soul like waves kiss the shore,

softly drawing it into the Light

as the ocean draws all upon the beach into itself.

Carrion Comfort

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me 

Thy wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan 

With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan, 

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? 

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

This slice of “Carrion Comfort” blesses my soul. To all who have felt what Hopkins writes of, who have felt the pain of life crashing down like the heavy foot of God whose power holds the whole earth together, since it is in fact God who has battered you, trod upon you with his world-encompassing power, spread you out when all you wanted was to stay heaped and huddled--hidden, when all you sought was to run from him. Why would God deal so with one who loves him? Why would, in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, he treat his friends so? Why? That our chaff might fly; our grain lie, sheer and clear. That we might be winnowed, separated, and refined--sanctified. That the wheat in us might be separated from the chaff. That, having been made new, we might be made holy too.

The Dark Knight

So I've now seen The Dark Knight three times, and while I can't say I've enjoyed the movie, I can say it is a good film--perhaps even an excellent one. And something stood out to me the first time I watched the movie that crystallized this evening as I read Spiritual Theology by Simon Chan. Chan writes:

"Even if the devil as a fallen spirit being were not to exist, there are enough candidates at the human level to fill his place. To recognize the reality of the demonic is to recognize at the same time the human capacity for superhuman evil. It is not just cruelty that human beings are capable of, but cruelty in the extreme. 'So artistically cruel' is how Dostoevsky puts it. The vastness of the human potential, whether for good or evil, is well captured in these words of CS Lewis:

'It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.'

Humans can become demonic."

That is what The Dark Knight communicated loud and clear--the human capacity for superhuman evil, our artistic, inventive potential cruelty in the extreme. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett write of this very idea in Good Omens when the demon Crowley tells the angel Aziraphale that the evil and cruelty humans come up with is beyond even what demons could conceive. The Joker proves this.

He seems to be a case study in the depths of evil possible for each and every one of us. He represents someone who is well on his way to becoming that horror and corruption Lewis wrote of. He became, at some point in his back-story, demonic, and what is most terrifying . . . he enjoys it. He is, as Alfred says, the kind of man who “just want[s] to watch the world burn.”

The movie begs us to acknowledge, “This is what we are capable of. This is who we can be.” If that strikes you as false, just consider this--people, just like you and me, wrote the screenplay for this film. They conceived of the immense and creative cruelty of the Joker. If they can imagine a character like him, he is a character we are capable of becoming.

I pray that God in His infinite mercy would graciously spare us from that fate. Because if there has ever been an irredeemable man, it's the Joker.

Ancient and Beautiful and True

George R.R. Martin once wrote in The Faces of Fantasy:

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. 

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? 

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.

Martin is so right, yet ultimately he is tragically wrong.

Fantasy is alive in ways other literature is not--more real than real and pregnant with truth older than myth.

Fantasy speaks to our deep knowledge of the reality beyond the veil, beyond the darkness of life and in the radiance of Life.  Fantasy is a longing, a cry, a yearning deep within.  It is the lodestone pull of the home we lost but just might find again.  It is flavors we've never tasted, textures we've never felt, and scents we've never smelled but recognize even so.  It is a tree which casts a shadow that we call reality.

Yet fantasy is itself a shadow. Or perhaps a glimmer of reflected light that calls us homeward.  Eden is forever lost to us, but our longing for our lost home is really our reaching for our true home, a home we have never known, but have seen and smelled and tasted in those fleeting flashes that never satiate and always leave us craving more.  We know those flashes when we find them.  Our hearts are filled--for a moment at least--and we linger in that long magic moment even as we stand awake, savoring the fragrance of eternity.  We know then, deep within, that what we yearn for we will never find while our hearts beat with mortal beats. There will come a day when life as we know it will be drawn upward into Life Himself, and the mortal will put on immortality.  When that day comes and our eyes open in Valinor, we will see that the towers of Minas Tirith were just a shadow of the Blessed Realm.  We will see that the beauty of fantasy and the longings it sings are satisfied at last.  For it is not Middle Earth we long for--it is Heaven, ancient and beautiful and true.

We read fantasy, I think, because at its best it points us homeward.  And though we have called our yearning for Home many things and mistaken it for many others, we yearn just the same.

So savor Middle Earth now, let fantasy awaken the longing within, but know that while it points us home, it is not home--it's a glimpse.  And if a mere glimpse captures and enraptures us so readily, imagine what Home will be . . .

Robert Jordan

Yesterday morning I got the news that Robert Jordan passed away. I don’t know if any of the few who check this blog read his epic The Wheel of Time, but it heavily marks my literary world. I was introduced to his series as a freshman in high school, back in 1995, and though I went through bouts of frustration at the lack of apparent motion through the middle books in the series, I continued to read them and continued to be delighted by the world, the characters, and the story Jordan was weaving.

And now the story will be left to the hands of another to complete. I know we will see the end of this grand tale, but will it feel the same? I doubt it.

But how wrong-headed is this? A man has died, leaving behind a family who loves him, and readers who love him not just for the sake of the world he created, yet my thoughts return to the story and how it will end. What a selfish life I lead. The story should be the furthest thing from my mind as I mourn the passing of a giant. For Jordan was a giant. His shadow fell across the entire genre and his works were, no doubt, the inspiration for many writers to try their hand at this beautiful craft—I know he inspired me.

To Harriett and Wilson, my heart goes out to you. I hope and pray that your dear friend and companion has found rest in the arms of his Creator, in whose presence is unending Light.