Good Writing Isn't a Conveyor Belt

"Writing isn't a conveyor belt bearing the reader to 'the point' at the end of the piece where the meaning will be revealed. Good writing is significant everywhere. Delightful everywhere." 

Verlyn Klinkenborg - "Several Short Sentences About Writing"

When Acceptance Comes, We Dance in the Rain

Photo Courtesy of National Telefilm Associates - Picture in the Public Domain

The need for acceptance and validation reside on almost spiritual levels within our psyches. We crave other's approval, especially when it is difficult to acquire. Are we on the right track? Do we have what it takes? Do we matter? Did our Life Purpose walk on by us one sunny day laughing over its shoulder as we failed to reach out and snag it in time. 

Did we miss it?

I'm afraid I don't have the answers. How can we ever be sure that we're doing what we were supposed to be doing? Life, especially American life, has so many choices and any one of them could change our lives forever. It's like we're caught in "It's a Wonderful Life" with no Clarence Odbody angel to give us a glimpse into a different "what if" life? 

But writing isn't about success or validation, but rather the overflowing of a bubbling soul fountain. For many writers, it's not so much a question of if as much as it is a question of how. We write because we must.

And when the acceptance come, for surely it must if we keep at it, we embrace that affirmation and for just a moment, we laugh at the clouds, dance in the rain, and revel in the glory of knowing for just a moment, someone, somewhere thought we got it right. 

I was recently accepted into three MFA programs, Antioch University of Los Angeles, Pine Manor College, and Goddard College. I know their acceptance of my writing is at least due in part to the fact that I will be paying one of them a substantial amount of money. But not all applicants are accepted into these programs. My writing had something that caught their attention. And in that, there is encouragement and affirmation. 

"Priscilla Cash's manuscript . . . exemplifies solid character development and promising attention to vivid scenes. She also has a knack for creating tension." - Admissions Committee of the Creative Writing Programs of Pine Manor College.

So, I tuck the acceptance letter back in it's folder and walk away with my head a little higher, my step a little quicker, and my heart a little lighter. 

I remember . . . "Take that, you bastards!"

I lived in Perry County without TV and was young, but I still remember my sisters, brother and I being home alone, hearing the radio announcer voice the horror as it happened. The second tower coming down. The announcer's loss for words. I remember how hearing those words, "Let's roll" hit me in my gut. ... I remember seeing the footage later and seeing America rally and flags waving from every porch, every balcony. I remember seeing the memorial services broadcasted, seeing people in tears by candlelight, hearing the songs. With time, I remember seeing the books, written accounts, fiction and non-fiction, people grappling with the extreme tragedy. ... I remember the day they said they got Bin Laden. I remember how strange the elation felt, since I hadn't personally lost anyone. But oh how I wanted to holler from the rooftops, "Take that, you bastards!" 

Where nothing else may go . . . Tim O'Brien

Image courtesy of the United States Military

These quotes from Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried really stood out to me. I've found healing in writing and I know many, many others have too.

"I did not look on my work [writing] as therapy, and still don't. Yet when I received Norman Bowker's letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the s*** field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain."

"What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again."

They fought our battles, now they fight theirs . . .

Photo Credit - U.S. Army

We sign them up. Promises of bright futures, benefits, bonuses, a military that will cherish and be there for them. 

They get their uniforms, their weapons, their training on how to kill and not be killed. 

We send them to war. MRE's. Thrills. Tragedies. Boredom. Chill. Sweat. Camaraderie. Dirt. Always dirt. Care packages of toothpaste and deodorant. They volunteer.

We tear them from their families, and then war and the system chew them up and spit them out. Changed men and women walk off the planes. Back to something that used to be home.

Banners wave. Welcome homes and red, white and blue and little children running into multicammed fathers and mothers. Smiles all round.

They go home to places they don't fit anymore and into the streets of America that offer cold sidewalks and averted gazes. We equip them to fight our battles, but discard them when they need help to fight their own.

Without their uniforms, they are just another body who can't quite get it together. 

But that body stood up, stood in the way, absorbed the stress, the sweat, the fears, the horrors, the loneliness, for teenagers and mothers and fathers and business men and women and caseworkers and secretaries and fast food workers and salespeople and salon owners and pig farmers and little girls just learning to walk and little boys running across playgrounds and couples at the altar and mountain climbing tourists and professors and songwriters and builders and anyone in America who has ever had a dream. They stood between us and . . . 

They - hardened, hurting, proud, confused, independent and sometimes broken servicemembers - stood between Americans and fanatic murderers who cried "Death! Death to you all!" 

Dignity. Respect. Appreciation.

Wolves among Sheep - Why Are We Paying People to Mislead Us

Picture by George Gastin

I'm saddened by our spiritual leaders today, by many who have the Bible at their fingertips, who are paid to study and commune with God and then teach. ... Why do they tickle our ears and give us only what we want to hear? Why do they seek to draw crowds and the laud and praise of men while God's face saddens? Why is success calculated by numbers, persons and monetary? Why is it about what God can do for us, and not about who he is and how we can become a living sacrifice for him? 

What would that look like? If for one minute we stopped and fully contemplated what truly believing in God looks like, that he is who he claims to be, wouldn't we be down on our knees, quiet, worshiping? Not this gaudy, "Claim Jesus and live the American dream" that I hear so often. If we truly believed (think about it - just stop and think about even one of the claims of Jesus in the Bible - like the one where He rose from the dead, or the one where He created the world, or the one where he gave sight to blind people, legs to cripples, food to the hungry, life to the dead), wouldn't our fears dissipate? Wouldn't our worries climb the stairs to rest on his shoulders? 

And yet, we hear spiritual leaders, mike to mouth, hyping up a crowd on "claiming Jesus's power for ourselves" and like blind, itching-ear sheep, we follow believing in our impassioned moments of euphoria. Jesus has power and he blesses and uses it in our lives, but this lemming rush towards getting that power for ourselves, for our own benefit, reminds me of Simon trying to buy that power in Acts 8:18. Slow down. It's not about the American dream. ... (Quick disclaimer - this is not in regard to the church I attend.)

Let Me Celebrate . . .

Life moments . . . 

Water beckons. 

Take your swings, 

your slides, your chip bark playgrounds, 

your tunnels, your ladders, 

even your walking, rocking ducks 

and breadcrumb tossing. 

Let my hands in, my arms in, 

let me 'plash and buffet the glistening pleasure. 

Let me revel in its coolness, 

its wetness dripping, tickling.

Let me grin and blink 

up at the fountain rain.

Let me celebrate.