Shopfreepay

Funny story . . . over a year ago, when Apple released their new macbooks, I prayed that the Lord would provide one for me for free, or at least very close to free. I prayed faithfully for a few months, and then kind of forgot about it. Well about 2 months ago I heard about one of those websites that gives away gifts for trying sponsored offers and decided to check it out. The site, as you can certainly tell from the title of this post, is Shopfreepay.com and it is different from the other sites of its kind in that you don't need to refer your friends; you just need to complete the sponsored offers. That's it.

I decided to give it a go, and lo and behold, two weeks ago a shiny new macbook arrived at my office, practically free. I say practically free because the offers I completed cost a grand total of $120, more or less. Not too shabby, but throw into that the gift cards I received from a couple of the offers and the total cost of my wonderful new laptop was only $50. If that's not a bargain, I don't know what is.

So the Lord answered my prayer, and I am immensely grateful.

Go check out the site, no referrals necessary. Just pick your gift, complete the specified number of offers and enjoy.

A decent writer? Try amazing . . .

A.E. Sacco, an avid reader, 04/16/2007

Over-rated

O.M.G.!!!! I believed the hype and picked this book up and it was the worst piece of crap I have read in a long time. 'Boring' does not do justice to how slow and uneventful this novel is. I sped-read most of it to see if the character would get the hell out of the 'university' and fight some monsters 'yeh, he eventually fights a dragon...yawn....'. Instead, the poor reader is subjected to the most minute happennings. I will admit the author is a decent writer, and has a great story on his hands....but PLEASE! Over 600 pages of mostly 'nothing'....I'm sorry...if this is 'the best fantasy novel of the past ten years', then I'll read other genres.

I found the above review of Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind on Barnes and Noble. I must admit that my first response was a scathing rebuttal of the blather spouted above, but then I stopped to think . . . while I completely disagree with the reviewer's assessment of the novel, as should be obvious if you read my previous post, I can remember a time when all I wanted out of a fantasy novel was for the main character to "fight some monsters." That was what drew me to R.A. Salvatore's novels, which I mentioned in an earlier post. But my tastes have evolved since junior high. The Name of the Wind is a character driven story, not a plot driven story. That's not to say that the plot is in any way lacking because it's not, but meeting Kvothe and coming to know him is what propels the story forward--it is first person narrative after all.

So instead of the scathing response I was planning I'll simply acknowledge that this book will not appeal to everyone. For people who want monsters and action filling every other page, you'd better grab a different book. But for those who want to truly know the characters who fill the pages of the books they read, you're not going to find a better novel than this one.

The Name of the Wind

I finished reading Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind yesterday, and after a mere 2 hours or so picked it up and started reading it again. Now why in the world would I do this? I asked myself that question a few times and my answer is:

It’s damn good writing.
But it’s also a riveting story.
And the characters are absolutely believable.

I guess that’s three answers.

In his most recent blog entry, Patrick Rothfuss writes,

True, all authors use words, but not all authors focus on making them beautiful. Shakespeare loved words, so did Roger Zelazny and Angela Carter. Ray Bradbury also has what I consider a poetical turn of phrase, by which I mean that the language itself is beautiful, regardless of content, character, or cleverness.

Some authors just don't play that word game. They care more about story, or plot, or character, or... I dunno, unicorns or making money. I'm not being critical here. Those things are important. Those authors can still write good stories, there's no denying that.

But my favorite authors love words AND character AND story... and sometimes unicorns, I guess.

If Rothfuss could somehow read his story for the first time, it would be exactly the type of novel he loves. Which shouldn’t be surprising since we all strive to write the kind of books we would love to read. The language Rothfuss uses is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I found myself rereading sections simply because they were so delightfully and beautifully written. He has a poetical turn of phrase, and there are passages that simply sing. If my novel is half as beautifully written as this, I’ll be overjoyed.

As for the characters: Kvothe is a living and breathing character who practically leaps off the page—unruly red hair, eyes bright green like new growth grass, and all. He is absolutely believable, especially to anyone who remembers being a boy and the awkwardness that comes with growing up. And the story . . . well, the story pulled me in, immersing me in Kvothe’s world so much that I half expected to see the scrael scuttling through my backyard (a truly terrifying thought for anyone who hates spiders as passionately as I do).

I hate reading teasers and spoilers because I always find the story slightly less surprising, slightly less magical when I have an idea of the shape of things going in, so I won’t give you a synopsis or anything here. I’ll just tell you to run out and grab this book. Grab two. It’s that good.

The verdict: 10/10

A few thoughts

Over at Lost Genre, Daniel Weaver posted some questions for discussion regarding being a Christian and a writer that I addressed on their site, but I thought I'd post my thoughts over here too.

It seems to me that our goal as Christian writers is to tell excellent stories. We can't worry about what people will "gain" in reading what we write, because that's not up to us--that's up to the Holy Spirit. Jesus told stories to thousands of people, and some people didn’t "gain" anything from them. Others had their hearts quickened by the Spirit and came to follow Him. Our stories have the same potential since the same Spirit at work in Christ’s ministry is at work in us. The difference is, unlike Christ, we don’t know the hearts of every man. We don’t know who will accept our words with joy and who will ridicule them. And the beauty is that we don’t have to know. Our job is to be faithful, telling the stories the Spirit stirs within us and telling them to the best of our God-given ability. Our job is to saturate our hearts and minds with God's word, allowing it to change us. "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). As we are changed, what we produce will be changed. As the Spirit conforms us to the image of Christ, what we create will be conformed as well. Our art will become a fragrance of Christ, and the Spirit will use it as he will.

The First Draft

I would love to say that the reason I haven't posted in such a long time is that I was feverishly working on my novel and the writing completely occupied my spare time. I would love to say it, but it wouldn't be true. However, I was able to put some solid time into it over the past couple months and have officially finished my first draft. I'll be picking up the printed draft tomorrow and will pull out the trusty red pen and write all over it! I've been looking forward to this part for a while. I'm excited to see how well the story flows (or how poorly--yikes!) and if the characters are well-developed (though I doubt they are). But hey! It's a first draft. I'm not sending this one out for publication, so it's allowed to have some bugs. I'll post again with an update on my progress and some general thoughts about the quality of the story--I'll try to be as objective as possible.

UPDATE 4.18.07: After reading about five chapters of my novel and spending some time reading the blogs of published authors like Patrick Rothfuss, I think I need to tell the whole story before I can even think about having the first volume published. That is going to require a lot more time and effort, but I really feel that it will make each volume of this story of infinitely higher quality. So . . . back to work.

Crown of Stars (concluded)

I finished Crown Of Stars last night after plowing through the last 220 pages in two evenings. Once again I felt the pain of parting as the story came to an end, but in some ways it was not as powerful as in some of the other stories I've read, but certainly not because I care less about the characters. Perhaps it is because the action of the novel closes and then the novel concludes 10 pages and 40 years later. We get a sense that all was for a purpose, that the struggles and battles waged were not for naught. There was purpose and there was meaning because we can look back on it as events in the past rather than a present that is forever closed to us. That is one of the most painful aspects to the close of a story, when the characters lives go on, but we no longer get to be a part of them.

When The Lord of the Rings ends, we are left with a new world but no knowledge of where it is going or where it will end, the story concludes and Frodo sails out from the Grey Havens. When The Chronicles of Narnia end, we see the Pevensie children going further up and further in and we see that their lives have culminated in something grand and beautiful--eternity with Aslan, the one who sang the world into existence. While Crown of Stars doesn't conclude with the grand scope of eternity as seen by the daimones of the upper spheres, it doesn't just drop us either. Elliott gives, and this is probably a poor analogy that hopefully wouldn't offend her, the prose version of a movie that runs the "What happened next" for each of the characters before the credits roll. She gives us a glimpse of life continuing in a wonderful world as we see that the characters we know and love accomplished something great and lasting, but the story continues, life continues in this world.

The beauty of the story is that there is more to it than what she tells. Who is Alain? Perhaps she doesn’t even know, and that is a beautiful thing, because that is where the true heart of myth lies. When a story can spring from beyond us and end with mystery remaining, it is evidence that we have tapped into something that we ourselves are not in control of even though we are the ones who write the stories. I e-mailed Ms. Elliott to ask her about that. We'll see what she has to say.

Another question I asked her is how much of the story she knew before she started. How much just developed and how much was clear from the beginning? Clearly the story grew in the telling because she had planned on a 6 volume series, only to have it turn into 7, which was much more fitting given the nature of the story.

This was perhaps the best fantasy series I've read, and I've read quite a few. Crown of Stars was a fitting end, I might also say inevitable considering everything that happens to the main characters, to a series that I will read again and again simply to be immersed once more in Elliott's living and breathable world.

The verdict: 10/10

8 Weeks

Though I didn’t realize it until a few minutes ago, today marks the end of my 8-week journey (technically the end was last Friday, but who's counting?). I guess it's not exactly the end. There is much more to go, but it marks the end of the 8 chapters in The Creative Call. Another reason I love this book is that it provides a concluding chapter entitled, “An Artist’s Retreat,” which illuminates some methods for reflecting on what the Holy Spirit has wrought in me through the course of these past 8 weeks. Renee and I are going to be in Anacortes between Christmas and New Year’s and we’re going to have plenty of time for quiet and rest, which will provide the perfect opportunity for the retreat Elsheimer writes about.

So, by the time we’re home from Washington, I should have my thoughts organized and some reflections penned and ready for posting, but we’ll see. I make no guarantees :-)