First person perspective

I love books written in 1st person [First person, a grammatical person (e.g., "I", "we", "me", "us"), according to Wikipedia.]. Autobiographies, most travel books, and many novels are written as 1st person perspectives. In my mind, the advantages (A) of 1st person outweigh the disadvantages (D).

In 1st person, the writing seems fresh and spontaneous (A), unfiltered through any mind except the narrator's. Of course in fiction, this spontaneity is false, as there is no "first person" except the author, who's making it all up anyway. But in travel writing, first person adds to the reader's experience by making it easy to imagine being the traveler, as the reader feels as if he or she is getting inside the traveler's mind. Paul Theroux is a good example of a travel writer who makes no apparent effort to prevent the reader from living inside his thoughts and actions, be they flattering to Theroux or not.

 [Of course, Theroux's "1st person," whom the reader assumes to be Theroux himself, could be a complete fiction; who can say what really goes on in another person's mind? This is a (D) to the reader who wants facts only, or suspects that the narrator's candor is a sham.]

On the (D) side, first person in a novel is strictly limiting. The reader can only understand the plot, setting, mood, theme and writing style as the narrator sees it. If the narrator is lying, or mentally challenged, or emotionally disturbed, then the reader has to play a guessing game to figure out what's really going on.

Told from the perspective of a person with a very low IQ

Imagine Jane Eyre written from the 1st person persepctive of Rochester's wife who lives in the attic.

Another (A) of 1st person is the ability to make an emotional connection to the narrator. The Diary of Anne Frank comes to mind. Anne's feelings about her life resonate within the reader--Anne's secret capivity is strange to most readers, but her falling in love is familiar to almost everyone.

Anne Frank's joyous, youthful beauty touches hearts

The (D) of 1st person, however, is that the reader may not be able to identify with the narrator, making the book dull and difficult to read. Many, many autobiographies suffer from this (D); the person may have had a fascinating life, but his or her inability to reach out to the reader will make the book unreadable. Or the narrator is repulsive to many readers: think of Mein Kampf, written in 1st person by Adolf Hitler.

The dilemma of the (A) and (D) of 1st person is the dilemma of all efforts at communication: the challenge of taking what is in one mind (the writer's) and transferring it to another mind (the reader's). This challenge has existential, psychological philosophical, cultural, phemonemological, gender-related, generational, geographical, social, metaphorical, historical, religious, and linguistic dimensions that are simply magnificent--as Basil Fawlty's psychiatrist guest remarked of Fawlty Towers, "There's enough material here for an entire conference." Or for an entire lifetime.

Basil Henson as Dr. Abbott

Thus do writers fearlessly jump into a vast sea of meaning, possible meaning, pseudo-meaning and misunderstanding. Yet I still like 1st person, for the thrill of burrowing deep inside the psyche of a stranger. Or so it seems.

Blog fever

I am feverishly writing blog entries, having started a new blog (number 9) and being reenergized by the need to please my reading public.
My blog site tells me how many pageviews each blog has, gives me a graph of viewing activity over time, and tells me how the viewers found my blog (what site they entered from). My Feedjit tells me where some of the viewers are from, geographically.

Although I didn't start writing blogs to build a readership, I find that knowing that my readers are "out there" is very stimulating. When I teach, I can see the students right in front of me, which produces a strong motivation to say something worth listening to. Writing in my blogs is similar, when I realize that someone will want to read what I've written.

So this morning is Blog Fever morning, here in Prague. Please check out my new blog,

http://basicbags.blogspot.com/

for some pictures and information on felting, if you have any interest!

Imaginary Jesus

I downloaded a free ebook on Amazon last week. It looked like it might be cute. Well.

More than cute, I'd say. Jarda and I are reading it aloud, one chapter at a time. It starts with a fistfight between Jesus and Peter, the apostle, in a hip Portland coffee house. So far we have had some pretty good discussions about the tone (zippy-quick and semi-serious) and setting (cool Portland, where our daughter used to live--we visited and liked it very much).

Here's the Amazon description:

Imaginary Jesus is an hilarious, fast-paced, not-quite-fictional story that’s unlike anything you’ve ever read before. When Matt Mikalatos realizes that his longtime buddy in the robe and sandals isn’t the real Jesus at all, but an imaginary one, he embarks on a mission to find the real thing. On his wild ride through time, space, and Portland, Oregon, he encounters hundreds of other Imaginary Jesuses determined to stand in his way (like Legalistic Jesus, Perpetually Angry Jesus, and Magic 8 Ball Jesus). But Matt won’t stop until he finds the real Jesus—and finally gets an answer to the question that’s haunted him for years. Be warned: Imaginary Jesus may bring you face-to-face with an imposter in your own life.

Sometimes you have a project that just doesn't come together easily. Our book in progress, 21st Century Christianity, is such a project.

During our 2012 planning meetings, Jarda and I decided to finish the book this year. We first envisioned this book in 2008, and wrote about half of it before realizing that it was not the book we really wanted to write. We put it aside while working on 21st Century Jobs, the book we published in 2009.

on a church in Kolin

I think that the problem with 21st Century Christianity is that the topic is too vast, yet too limited at the same time. We can't come up with a narrative that will lead us into the book. The drafts so far have had these less-than-successful qualities:

1. too factual, too dry, and so data-driven that the book will be outdated by the time we publish it.

2. too opinionated, ending up as a diatribe that doesn't even interest us, let alone anyone else.

3. too general and sweeping, covering centuries of complex history in a few paragraphs, distorting the importance of events.

4. too specific and nit-picky, devolving into minute theological disputes, descriptions and explanations that are boring and irrelevant to the truth of Christianity.

So we are still searching for an approach, a handle, a hook--some way to enter into a reasonable, well-informed discussion about this huge, emotionally-charged topic. Maybe part of the challenge is that we are both long-time committed Christians and therefore not at all objective. Our vision of Christianity is positively biased, not impartial.

Anyway, we're going to try to finish this book by 12/12/12, our 17th wedding anniversary.

Writing in bits and pieces

I love to read novels, and won't buy one that's fewer than 300 pages long. I also love non-fiction: travel books, biographies and accounts of businesses/institutions/historical events are among my favorites.

But when I write, I prefer to compose in bits and pieces. The 1000-word article is my favorite form of writing. I've been writing newsletters for 26 years, and really enjoy the compressed format. My writing tends to be loose and wandering, so the limits of a two-page newsletter tighten up my writing, reining in my verbosity.

Samples of my newsletters are here

I have 7 blogs, and love this format, too. I use lots of photos and very little text, styling myself as a copywriter.

Praguepies, one of my blogs

Someday I will write long novels. I have written several fiction and non-fiction books already, none longer than 120 pages, with relatively short chapters.

My goal for 2012 as a writer is to write longer pieces that are just as focused and economical in their wording as my short pieces. One book I'm already working on (for the past several years!) is non-fiction, 21st Century Christianity. I also have a couple of novels rumbling around in my head.

Kindle, Kindle, Kindle, 1, 2, 3

I have gotten very comfortable with my Kindle reader. So far, after 9 months of owning it, I've paid for only one book--99 cents, by mistake. There are enough free books to keep me happy. I read a book every couple of days. With that kind of sampling of books, I can list the three top things that keep me engaged in a book:

1. Interesting setting. I just finished For Time and Eternity, a romance about a young woman who runs away with the Mormons as they trek to Utah. The writing was good, the characters were okay--what hooked me was the setting in Utah as the Mormons drove out the Indians and claimed their own Zion.

2. Decent dialogue. The Velveteen Rabbit, a kid's book, features some lovely conversations between the rabbit and the other toys. I admire authors whose dialogue sounds natural and unforced.

3. A fast-moving plot. Dracula by Bram Stoker has a nice, quick pace. It also has a great setting: Transylvania. The dialogue is pretty stiff, but maybe 19th-century upper-class Brits and vampires really talk that way!

Any of these 3 will keep me clicking the "next" button on my Kindle.

Kentucky history: The Frontiersman's Daughter

This novel was a freebie on the Kindle website at Amazon. I "bought" it because of my Kentucky background, and didn't expect much as it was billed as a romantic, Christian novel which often means boring!

I was wrong. This was a heart-rending, well-written, fast-paced adventure story that was wrapped in Kentucky history. I loved the book.

From Amazon.com:
Lovely but tough as nails, Lael Click is the daughter of a celebrated frontiersman. Haunted by her father's former captivity with the Shawnee Indians, as well as the secret sins of her family's past, Lael comes of age in the fragile Kentucky settlement her father founded. Though she faces the loss of a childhood love, a dangerous family feud, and the affection of a Shawnee warrior, Lael draws strength from the rugged land she calls home, and from Ma Horn, a distant relative who shows her the healing ways of herbs and roots found in the hills. But the arrival of an outlander doctor threatens her view of the world, God, and herself--and the power of grace and redemption.

This epic novel gives readers a glimpse into the simple yet daring lives of the pioneers who first crossed the Appalachians, all through the courageous eyes of a determined young woman. Laura Frantz's debut novel offers a feast for readers of historical fiction and romance lovers alike.