Tag / Robert Olen Butler

by Michael

Trusting Your Voice As An Act of Faith

Nonfiction connects with the truth-telling in explicit ways.  Fiction is different.  Writing fiction means I make things up. 

When you make things up, things which are supposed to read real, it’s challenging.  It’s even more challenging when that work isn’t being consumed by a reading public.  You have to build an internal trust in your voice as a writer without the benefit of readers who buy your stories and your books.  Trusting yourself is harder when you’re the only person interacting with your material.

I mentioned that I was pursuing constructive feedback by getting an editor.  I’m not ready to tell you about that process yet.  It may take me getting out from under the weight of changes-yet-to-be-made in that manuscript.  But I am prepared to say that writing and revising characters requires trusting yourself.  It requires trusting your eyes, what you saw, and your ears, what you heard from those characters. 

Cultivating internal trust is work.  Developing trust–in yourself or in someone else–is an act of faith.  You believe there is something worthwhile in you or in that relationship.  So you trust.  You give a little.  You aren’t disappointed.  At least not massively.  So you give more.  Trust grows.  Then, it flowers and when trust flowers, fragrance results.

Here are some pointers for maintaining the small stable sediment called trust, particularly when you get feedback that may remove things you thought were unmoveable:

  • Trusting your vision and your voice takes courage.  When you get feedback from a reader, writer, critic, or editor, your trust must be intact.  But that’s courageous effort.  If you’re not bold or strong, work at it before you give that work away.  Otherwise, the small part of you that you send to that reader or critic will come back smaller, and you will base your own estimation of yourself on that small receipt. 

 

  • Be generous.  Give away your words and your work.  When you ask for feedback from that reader, see it as a chance to, first, give.  When you give, it simply doesn’t matter (or it shouldn’t) whether something will return to you.  That’s more of an investment.  What I’m thinking of is a bit more scary.  Giving is always one-sided, motivated only by what you already have, not what you intend to get.

 

  • Remember what matters is the story.  In my case, I’m writing a story.  Whatever’s good for the story is good for me to know.  My feelings may get hurt when you tell me that a character is flat or unexceptional or, perhaps worse, forgettable.  But what matters is the strength of the story.  It’s the end result, the end product, that matters, not process of cutting and crying, weeping and wailing.

 

  • Trust you have something to say–even if you need help saying it.  It’s not bad to get help.  Be it while writing and revising a manuscript, developing a relationship, starting a new project, or whatever else you can imagine.  Seeking and using help is a sign of fortitude and humility and meekness, which I always think of as internal strength.  When you have something to say, let others help you.  You can be great at having something to say and terrible at crafting that message.  Of course that’s not true in writing but in other areas of life, the point is that you can do your thing well and be supported by people capable in areas where you’re weaker.  Don’t be convinced to the contrary.

If you’d like to see another perspective on a similiar topic, two links:

1) Steven Pressfield wrote a great post, and it’s a resource that I think you’ll be interested in.  It talks about the Ego and the Unconscious, which I’m pretty sensitive to since I just finished Robert Butler’s From Where You Dream.

2) Jane Freidman has a recent guest post on her blog that’s not about the writer or the writer’s unconscious at all.  Shennandoah Diaz discusses the merits of developing a profile of your reader.

by Michael

Dealing with Difficult People

One of the best parts of attending our denomination’s January pastor’s conference is that we get free books.  Donors and publishers are extremely generous to ensure that every pastor has five or six books to carry home.  That usually includes a book on some aspect of biblical interpretation, theology, self-care, historical or contemporary issues, and some other interesting topic. 

Right now I’m reading Will and Spirit by one of my favorite authors, Gerald G. May, From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler, a superb recommendation I got from a literary agent’s blog.  And I’m reading The Me I Want to Be by John Orberg–the book I got at the conference earlier this year.  I’m reading Ortberg slowly but not because it isn’t good.  It is.

I’m reading slowly because the book is about personal growth, really spiritual growth.  And that’s slow work. 

Here’s a passage from Ortberg’s chapter entitled, “Find a Few Difficult People to Help You Grow” (p. 210-211).  He’s discussing when Jesus told his followers to do more than a Roman soldier could by law ask them to do.  If the soldier said walk the obligatory mile, you, at the end of the mile, offer to go further.  Go further with people in power.  Go further with difficult people and what happens?  You become more human, a better version of yourself:

Often when someone is difficult to me, I want to think of them as deliberately unlikable rather than as a real person with their own story.  A friend offered to introduce English essayist Charles Lamb to a man whom Lamb had disliked for a long time by hearsay.  “Don’t make me meet him,” Lamb said.  “I want to go on hating him, and I can’t do that to a man I know.”

We can give the gift of empathy.  We remember that the person we don’t like is also a human being.  We put ourselves in thier place.  We take the time to imagine how they feel, how they’re treated.  We ask what would help them become the best version of themselves, and in turn the interaction becomes an opportunity for me to practice becoming the best version of myself.  We actually need difficult people to reach our full potential.

Difficult people enable us to be better.  They aren’t simply to be ignored or rushed passed.  They are people, and when we treat them like people, we become better.  They may not.  They may persist in being difficult.  They may not change.  But we change.  We come closer to being what Ortberg calls, the best version of ourselves.

I’ve noticed that I like for people to change more than I like to change.  It’s easier for me to watch and push and encourage (or manipulate even) the movements of somebody else.  Especially when someone else is difficult.  But there’s something deeper when they don’t change.  Something scarier.  And that is my own change.

I spend a lot of good time thinking about how to help people change.  And that spent time is not a waste.  But it’s always harder and more painful to query my own insides.  After all, I am a pretty difficult person too.