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A New Old Regular Everyday Thing

In this house we read a lot, especially picture books. I'm sure it has nothing to do with having a three-year-old and a sweet little baby. So trips to the library (Penny's favorite place ever) always end with stacks upon stacks of picture books. Usually I have to sneak some back on the shelf because our book bag will be overflowing. I'm not sure when the library added a New Books section for picture books, but the discovery has yielded a happy preschooler. More books! While I get to keep up with new titles.

I'm also trying to Read like a Writer, and since picture books are too easy to read carelessly and cast aside, especially when a certain tot often loses patience with a book after the first few pages, I'm going to record books as I read them and share my (I'm sure brilliantly insightful) thoughts here. Starting with...

Jampires! 

Sarah McIntyre/David O'Connell, 2014

Can I just say I love love love weird books like this? The illustrations are zany, frolicking, fun (not to mention delicious), and the story is surprisingly satisfying for a picture book.

I hate writing, "for a picture book," because picture books should have stories. You know, with beginnings and middles and endings. The really great ones do. Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are. But too often it seems picture books are given a pass. Anyhow, I'll rant about that another day. Right now I'll comment on the elements of Big People Books that this picture book shares, that make it good.

1. A sympathetic protagonist. Sam is cute as a button, has personality, and shows efficacy - he solves the problem and rescues the world from jamlessness!

2. A plot. I feared, especially when I saw the rhyme, that the book would be a sing-song little story about creatures who eat jam. And while it is about Jampires, it's mostly about Sam saving his donuts and returning the little lost Jampires to their home (the latter was the one element I thought could have been developed more. But hey, we're talking about a few hundred words so...).

3. A really awesome setting. The Jampire's world is so, so, so YUMMY! I want to live there, like right now, with my afternoon coffee. Honestly, I can see a movie springing from this book. If it did, I'd be first in line to see it.

So that's that. I could go on about rhyme (pretty good), and the use of color to evoke mood in the illustrations (really lovely), but maybe next time. I'll just say, I want a Jampire of my own. I also love the word Dodgers.

Forgive Me, My Beloved Scrivener, for you have no iOS

Dearest Scrivener, after these several years of our shared bliss, I confess ... I have been unfaithful. You did not provide the one thing I so sorely need. You promised, oh how you promised. Year after everlasting year you boasted, "It's nearly here! Be patient dears!" All for nothing. Empty words, disappointment after disappointment. I could wait no longer.

Since 2011 Literature & Latte has been proudly forecasting a "Coming Soon!" iOS version of Scrivener. Apparently the app is still in development, but a growing contingent fears the promises will end in vaporware. I wanted to remain one of the faithful, but with four-going-on-five children, most of my writing happens in parking lots, at swimming practice, McD's play place, the park, etc. etc. And with the gear Mommy-Pack-Mule must schlep to these places (jackets, hats, diapers, toys, snacks, sippy cups, "Mack" the Magical Blanket...) my trusty MacBook Pro simply will not fit in the old saddlebag. But my iPad Mini will.

So I cheated, Scrivener darling. I downloaded Storyist for iPad and the free trial for my Mac. I read reviews and comparisons, transferred over my WIP and discovered the delight of total writing freedom!

I will (possibly, I hope) write up my own detailed comparison. But thus far Storyist is more intuitive and easier to use than Scrivener, and for my current WIP it has every feature I could want. So you see, my dear Scrivener? We may adore you, your beloveds, but our patience will not last forever.

On Cottony Clouds

Will you be bothered if I wax eloquent a bit, you my singular reader? If so, hmm, I don't really care. I'm going to anyway! Haha!

So here it is. I love cloth diapers. They're so ... fluffy and soft and sweet (sometimes). They're so effective and useful and inexpensive. They're so cuddly. Can you picture it?

Diapers are also much like plot, aren't they? Absolutely essential and sometimes messy?

I often think of plot as the bones inside a body, or the undergirding of a building. Here's where I get to mix metaphors, like playing in the mud. Industrial and urban is cool right now. We love interiors with exposed brick and copper piping. As far as I know, however, we don't like exposed wiring and rafters open to the sky in Michigan, in January. Many books I read have an overexposed plot. Not photographically overexposed, mind you. Exposed like the creepy guy in the overcoat at the bus stop. These books are anorexic, jagged edges of bones jutting out. They're the books that make you want to tap the author on the shoulder and say, "Uh, excuse me, but your plot is showing."

Other books are fluffy. Soft. They're plot marshmallows that have been put in the microwave for ten seconds on high. They're the guy in the low-riding sedan. They need Weight Watchers and a crowbar to pry off the excess layers of 1970s paneling and a sandblasting to clear the 1930s lead based paint to get to the gorgeous red brick below. They're the diaper with so many layers they never fully dry and always sort of stink, so much bulk baby can't sit up. They're a problem.

Yet there's also a range of what works. I love the urban streamlined design, but I also love Victorian frills. So long as both are in the right place. I don't want the historical 1910 colonial stripped down to plaster and lath; I don't want the high-rise condo decked out in lace. Just as I don't want my sweet baby girl peeing out of her too-small outgrown diapers, no matter how much I love them. The fluff has to match the baby; the structure has to match the book. Genre, audience, intensity, all factor in when making the Plot Decision. At the end, the goal is a book that's not like Papa's chair, exposed springs and unsanded wood that leaves splinters in Goldie's bum. Not like Mama's chair, either. So soft the poor girl suffocates. It needs to be like Baby's chair. Baby's diaper? A perfect fit, soft and squishy, Just right.

Whiteout in the Hands of a Fool

I think I mentioned attending the Festival of Faith & Writing, yes? Yes. And I mentioned these workshops I attended. On poetry and on playwriting.

Well, just this minute I decided to rest my brain from a taxing revision, to read something that was handed out during workshop. A ten-minute play about a guy and a girl talking about their failed relationship. We weren't given time to read it during the workshop, even though the focus of the workshop was on structure as seen in a short play. It would have been wonderful to read it then and there, to dissect it and unpack it and learn from it. But whatever. We didn't.

So I pulled it out and read it. And I wondered what was up with the margins. There were these big gaps in the middle of paragraphs or at the start of lines. Then I noticed the gaps were not gaps, rather words. Words that had been mostly successfully whited out by ... someone. The workshop facilitator? I'm assuming.

See, the topic of profanity came up briefly during our workshop. One participant mentioned that his scene had a naughty word in it, and asked if we minded. I was more than a little surprised when the man beside me said he did indeed mind, and if he read the part, he would not say the word. Really? Well, ok, I thought, the man is a pastor. Not a pastor of any church I've attended (or would attend even if it meant salvation from the fires of hell), but a pastor. So his reluctance to drop the D-bomb aloud is allowable.

But what about profanity in a written work, a script? I can understand censoring a word mid-read-aloud to avoid violating one's own moral code, but is it acceptable to censor a published work (pre-photocopying) - thus inflicting your moral code on everyone who happens to read the document? Hmmmm.

Yes, yes, I understand that she may not have been inflicting anything on us. Rather, she likely did it to avoid offending anyone. Is it really possible to avoid offending anyone? Some may be offended by a well-placed damn, others by the presumptuousness of someone else deciding what words are appropriate for us to read, still others by the (marginally) salacious content of the scene itself. Personally, I'd rather be treated like a grownup. Pick a different scene, or put the white-out away.

Plus, maybe it's the jr. higher in me, but it's really distracting to read something when I'm tilting the page sideways trying to see what that word might have been.

Note to the facilitator: you missed one. An F-bomb!

Festivalivities (aka Festival of Faith and Writing)

I haven't felt like a writer since Penny came along, or not like a good writer or a serious writer. I've been writing in snippets between nursings and changings and appointments and errands. It's amazing how complicated life is with now four children. In the past two weeks, for example, I've sewn a Revolutionary War costume, attended two (or three?) school events, two (three? four?) doctor's appointments, writer's group, made several trips to the library, run countless errands, gardened, read a parenting book, gardening book and two juicing books, made thirty or more lunches and several dozen breakfasts and dinners, played Single Mom for six-or-so nights, slept through the night zero times, changed about 190 diapers, spent 3-4 hours each day nursing the baby ... oh, and wrote. A little. When I could.

But this weekend I was able to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing. Three days, 11 sessions, two meals with my MFA friends, and only one occasion of a wet shirt from over-full-leaky-milk-makers. Plus, I still managed to attend the kids' school carnival.

Refreshed, renewed, ready to tackle that ever-present question from Dr. D: How do you plan to pay off your student loans?

Something on which to FEED (by MT Anderson)

Feed by M.T. Anderson. Candlewick, 2004.

In this futuristic novel by acclaimed M.T. Anderson, a stream of information virtually identical to the Internet (including banner ads) is accessed through a direct implant in the brain. This feed is integrated with the limbic system; it can read an individual’s desires, tastes and pleasures so suggested products will be sure to satisfy. Of course, nothing ever fully satisfies, since there is always more to buy, as the corporations (who run the feed, and the schools, and the government to a large degree) ensure. And if one person’s feed fails, his or her brain may fail as well.

All at once hysterical, sarcastic, poignant, this book eclipsed mere story and became social commentary. It’s about a young man’s coming into awareness of the feed’s hold, and his struggle against that hold due to a romantic relationship with a very non-traditional girl—one who resists the feed, and is in danger of being destroyed by it.

Some items of note:

Worldbuilding: “It was at least good to get out of the hotel, because most of the rest of the city had pretty good artificial gravity, so if you dropped things, at least they fuckin’ fell. It was almost like normal, which is how I like it” (8). Here Anderson’s worldbuilding comes into the spotlight; he weaves details of his universe perfectly into the narrative. Every sentence is in voice, every fact giving insight into character. Even the first line, “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck,” shows that it’s still our own world—they went to the moon for Spring Break—but it’s very much different.

Unit! The moon for spring break!

Characterization: The protagonist Titus - here’s a guy who has a bad attitude, but because he’s surrounded by total boneheads and has this deep, creative way of viewing the world, he’s sympathetic. He’s with friends, but isolated, misunderstood. Who hasn’t felt that way? So even when he’s a prat and we hate it, Anderson makes us understand him, so we sympathize. He feels things too deeply, yet he doesn’t have anyone in his life who has shown him how to express these depths because everyone around him is basically a bonehead. This makes all the difference.

Without a doubt a fabulous, challenging story. Of all M.T. Anderson’s works (of which I’ve read almost all), Feed could easily be my favorite.

Saturday Morning Surprise!

No, I don't mean the baby. I found an email in my in-box, a reply to a submission from a few months ago. My brain being what it is these days (made of marshmallows), I had no idea what I'd sent where - a reason to keep good submission records - so I braced myself for a "Thanks but No Thanks."

What did I find but, "I am pleased to accept 'Wood' for publication in Volume 3, Issue #1 of The Medulla Review, due out on November 1, 2011."

A bit about The Medulla Review from their website:

The Medulla Review is a literary journal that caters to experimental and surreal writing, a place in the hindbrain where breathing, swallowing, and circulation are done through words, a venue for those who believe in creating reality. We want to hear your voices. What jars you? What makes you dance on the staircase of your mind? It's about the core of things, getting down to the essence: that soft center of being and experience where you are free.

Oooh, it sends shivers up my spine! As have a number of the poems and stories they've published like LL Bledsoe's "The Babies." When I found The Medulla Review I ended up losing much of a week just reading the back issues online. Delicious, and a number of Pushcart Prize nominees among their authors as well. What a privilege to see my little byline beside the rest of their superb contributors!

Since "Wood" is a story for adults, the byline will go to an alter ego. I think. Maybe. I'm still doing some soul-searching on whether I want to invent another author identity or stick with the less-than-sexy Rebecca Grabill. Hmmm. All advice on this tricky topic welcome.

How to Be the Best

I admit it, I have a competitive streak.  When I check out my friends at iStockphoto, I get a bit perturbed if their downloads outpace mine. When I read a particularly banal Disney princess adaptation to Mud Pie, I think, "Good lord, a monkey could do better!" More often than not, however, I am my own prime competitor. Which is a lose-lose situation; I can never measure up to my own ideals.

As a writer, I once believed to be Real I had to face unflinchingly the dark, shadowy things on the edge of existence. There was no backing down, no escape. Happy sunshine and cute little bunnies, well, that's what those other writers did. The sentimental ones, the ones stuck on believing their childhood was happy. I saw it as my mission to stare down the darkness and make it retreat.

There's a certain similarity between winter and summer in Michigan. In winter we have a landscape of white and white and white and gray and black. Summer, it's all green. Green is lovely. Warm and shady. But it's still green.

Autumn is creeping through the forest now. For the first time all year I can see the maple trees springing out from the landscape, their sprawling arms reaching as far as they can to spread orange and yellow. The stately oak, rich brown, towers now over the goldenrod fields. An aspen, each leaf twinkling like a golden coin, glitters against the backdrop of color.

The sweetness of life is not tripe, not childishness or sentimentality. It provides contrast. Without contrast all detail is lost; sameness and boredom drift in. Four or so years ago much of my thinking had a sameness to it. Brooding, dark, cynical. Not that I wasn't "happy," but joy came in a more self-satisfied way, a feeling that I was more Real because I faced the ugly truths of the world without those abhorrent rose-colored glasses. Yet I didn't experience a joy or celebration of life and the world. On the contrary, if I happened to notice the quaking aspen, offering me its golden gift, I felt squeamish, unworthy. I didn't trust it, this fleeting beauty. With so much darkness, I should work to face it, to fight it, extinguish it! Shouldn't I?

A righteous calling, but impossible. Like trying to distinguish the maple in a forest from the oak - from two miles away. In summer, as in winter, it's hard to do. Darkness won't retreat unless I bring a little light in with me.

Dewitt Jones said in a video I watched Sunday, "if you celebrate what's right with the world, you will find the energy to fix what is wrong."

Slowly, over years, I've changed my emphasis. I no longer want to be the Best In The World, competing and losing against my scathing inner critic, judge, hangman. I now want to be the best for the world. This new way of thinking is liberating, healing.

During the MFA we talked a lot about the aboutness of a story. The central thrust, the take-home, the gravitas. The story I began in my mind several years ago, the one that became my creative thesis for the MFA, was once about abuse of authority, cruelty, intergenerational evil. But through re-envisioning and revision, I found a different aboutness: hope, innocence, and the triumphant power of the human spirit. The darkness is balanced by light, and the contrast makes both more meaningful.

Witness this!

Witness by Karen Hesse. 2002.

This book was made up of poems from different points of view and usually in differing and discernible voices all telling one story.

The plot, though ... the story seemed to end at the wrong spot. It ended with one of the secondary (even tertiary) characters, with a sort of twilight zone “dun dun dun!” campfire ghost story ending. The whole meaning of the book was lost.

I saw little Esther’s attempt to take the Heaven Train (i.e. kill herself) as the primary focal point of the book—she’s certainly the only character the reader ends up knowing intimately and loving thoroughly. Yet this scene happens mid-way in. The scene seen by the author (I’d guess) as “climax” is her father getting shot. Why is this climactic? We don’t know nor really care about her father, except in how his death might hurt Esther.

So, today's lesson boys and girls, is this: end a book with something directly related to the character we come to love most. And the most emotionally charged moment maybe ought to be the climax? Or that the emotional intensity must escalate to the climax. So if the reader is choking on sobs at the half-way point, she sure better be all-out weeping by the end. Dénouement is allowable, but it really can’t take up half the book (and the “shooting” scene, like I said, wasn’t resolution—it was escalation/climax, except it ended up being anticlimactic related to the Heaven Train in the middle).

A Compass of Gold, off to a Good Start

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

The power of a great opening: Pullman’s The Golden Compass begins, “Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.” We see a bit of each method of creating conflict. We know Lyra only by name, but it’s a lovely name, likeable and not quite ordinary. We sense that Lyra is also a likeable and not quite ordinary girl. The hook in this case involves action—Lyra is sneaking around in the dark—which provides obvious mystery: why is she sneaking? What on earth is a daemon? Pullman makes us wait.

Pullman continues to keep us waiting. He follows his opening line with a smidge of description—Lyra lives in a fancy place—and then provides a glimpse into Lyra’s character when she taps crystal to hear it ring. She’s curious and playful, yet her response to her worrywart daemon of, “They’re making too much noise to hear from the kitchen,” shows Lyra as a sensible, independent girl.

In effect, we are dumped straight into the action in a strange world. Lyra snoops where girls aren’t allowed, but before our curiosity about Lyra and her world can be sated, she must duck into hiding to avoid detection. Yet more questions arise as she overhears a plot to murder her uncle. Lyra’s character has heart, we have ample hook to propel us forward, and Pullman gives us abundant mystery. If we want answers, we must read on.

The end of the book continues with questions. Lyra rescues a group of children, but the story continues into the next book. Of the three, I thought the first two fit together best. The whole world of the dead/souls/something like that in the third was bizarre and hard to follow.

On Punctuating Dialog ...

It’s a common confusion – how on earth do I punctuate dialog? Punctuating dialog is the same as punctuating any sentence, isn't it? You put the end punctuation at the end of a sentence? Except with dialog, even if it’s not the end of a sentence, you still might put in end punctuation, but then you need more end punctuation, and ... it’s a confusing mess. The key is this: in dialog you are punctuating complete and separate sentences. Take this example:

“Mary, I really like you.” The boy reached for the soda and poured a glass.

“Mary, I really like you” and “The boy reached for the soda and poured a glass” are both complete sentences. There’s a period after “I really like you” and the first word of the second sentence is capitalized, just as you’d expect.

Most people intuitively punctuate both sentences separately. Only those who are thinking about “some rule” they learned back in high school, about how a comma comes right before the end quotation mark, mess this up. But really, it makes sense. If the sentences are separate, if each can stand on its own, then you punctuate them like two distinct sentences.

Now for the sticky comma. Where it goes and why. Another example:

“Your beard is looking good today,” Mary said to Miss Maven.

“Your beard is looking good today” IS a complete sentence, but “Mary said to Miss Maven” is NOT a complete sentence. Said what? Huh? Mary said something? It’s what is called a Dialog Tag. Like a Christmas gift with a tag telling you who it’s from, the Dialog Tag tells you who said something and (sometimes) how it was said. The stuff in quotes is the gift. The “said whoosibuts” is the tag.

Correct: “I like cheese,” said Marty.

Incorrect: “I like cheese.” Said Marty.

“Said Marty” doesn’t make a lick of sense all by itself because it’s not a complete sentence. So, the “gift” (the “what is said”) part of the sentence is not punctuated as a complete sentence either. You can’t separate the tag from the gift or you won’t know who gave it to you. That’s why you use a comma.

This is pleasantly complicated when the thing that is said is a question or an exclamation.

“I love cheese!” screamed Marty. AND “Do we like cheese?” screamed Marty.

You have a dialogue tag (screamed Marty), so there is really only one sentence (“screamed Marty” can’t stand alone), but you have no comma because of the exclamation point and question mark. The dialog itself is punctuated to show the emotion or question, and the end punctuation is a simple period.

Some more examples:

Correct: “Martha Stuart, I’ve had it!” Cindy cocked the gun and aimed it at Martha’s chest. Two separate sentences, no dialog tag. Both sentences are punctuated individually.

Incorrect: “Martha, you are too much,” Cindy squinted past the glow from Martha's blowtorch at the exquisite gold-foil centerpiece. Two separate sentences, no dialog tag. These should be punctuated individually, with a period at the end of the dialog instead of a comma. Fix: “Martha, you are too much.” Cindy squinted at the exquisite gold-foil centerpiece.

Correct: Herbert didn’t know how long he’d waited. “What time is it?” he asked. Even though the dialog ends in a question mark, it is followed by a tag, so the “he” isn’t capitalized. This shows that the tag goes with the “gift.”

Incorrect: Herbert twiddled his thumbs. He glanced at the clock. “What time is it?” He finally asked. “He asked” can’t stand on it’s own. Even though there is a question mark (end punctuation) just after it, “he” should not be capitalized. Fix: Herbert twiddled his thumbs. He glanced at the clock. “What time is it?” he finally asked.

Correct: “We gather together on this blessed occasion,” the pastor droned. Dialog tag, one sentence. Comma and lower case.

Correct: “We gather together on this blessed occasion.” The pastor paused to sip from a cup beneath the podium, then continued by saying, “The joining of these two kids who really should have known better.” First sentence is not followed by a dialog tag. Second sentence (“The pastor ...”) becomes a dialog tag for the dialog that follows it, and so it ends in a comma.

Incorrect: “Why, Cindy, is that thing real?” She asked over the deafening alarm bells. “She asked” is a dialog tag and shouldn’t be punctuated as a separate sentence. Fix: “Why, Cindy, is that thing real?” she asked over the deafening alarm bells.

Correct: “Why, Herbert, is that a new style from Spain?” She glanced down, then back up to his eyes and smiled sweetly. “Or did you forget your pants?” No tag; all three are separate sentences and are punctuated independently.

Correct: “Velma, my dear,” he intoned, “you are a sore for sight eyes.” Dialog tag interrupts a sentence. Separated off with commas.

Correct: “I see you haven’t been taking your medication,” Velma quipped. “You really should seek help, Daryl. Professional help.” Tag applies to the first phrase of dialog. The second phrase is a new idea/thought/sentence. Period comes after the tag in this case.

Oh, and as an aside, do avoid using intoned and quipped and such. Said is almost always best. Unless you're being silly.

Sookie, Time to Pack Your Saggy Bags!

I haven't stayed current with blogs lately - been trying to cut back on digital attachments. But yesterday I clicked over to bloglines and started skimming through the dozen or so blogs I follow.

Then, at one post in particular, I stopped skimming and started reading. Karen's, Perfectionism is Nasty. I half expected my name to be mentioned. Wasn't Karen writing about me?

(Of course she was! It's her blog, sure, but I am a card carrying member of NRU*, so it had to be about me!)

See, there's an elephant in the room, only I didn't know it was an elephant until I read Karen's post. Perfectionism. This is exactly my problem.

I had another blog, and this one (which I don't really consider a blog; it's just a little journal to replace my spiral notebook because that inevitably gets scribbled in or spilled on with something that will smell terribly horrid, like coffee with cream) was my sweet little homeschool journal where I kept track of what we did and how it went. Nobody read it and I didn't care. Because plenty of people read my other blog. My professional blog (that has to be said with a snooty upturned nose, by the way). On that blog, my technorati ranking was incredible; I had links in from friends and strangers and Important People; I got advertising solicitations almost weekly.

But it was an albatross. The very week of its inception, I began to resent it. My every thought: what do I blog on next? What would be a good post? How can I attract more readers, and how can I satisfy my fans? (Fans! I'm shaking my head here.) I'd spend hours I didn't have brainstorming posts and sketching them out. Each had to be better - funnier, more insightful, more novel - than the one before. Before long, what little time I had for other things (beyond the day to day things, like SCHOOL) was gone.

"It's so fun!" I'd say, watching my hit counter soar creep up a dozen, then a hundred or more every week. Pretty soon I had attracted readers from far away places, and important readers I wanted, almost desperately, to impress. It was marketing. Building a platform for my career, I thought. Or at the very least gaining inroads to an industry that has very few doors, most of which are guarded by hydrophobic three-headed beasts.

The more I thought about my readers, the more questions arose. "Can I post this? What will those Important People think of me? If I post on bioethics, won't some of my readers think less of me? And my friends? They know I'm pro-life, right? Wouldn't they have to know that? But, I can't post a link to this, even to just point out that Dr. D's name is mentioned. It's way too controversial."

And religion. Post about faith and risk isolating those not on the path; don't post and run the risk of being misjudged by the rest. There were other topics too - family, homeschooling, untouchable for one reason or another. Soon I couldn't write anything on any level for any purpose. The blog was, at that point, the least of it, although it was the initial cause.

So I deleted it. Two clicks, gone.

And I picked up here, thinking anonymity would free me from the shackles I'd bound myself in. After all, if no one knows who I am, why would I worry about what I write? Why would I care if I'm too sarcastic or too scatological? Too esoteric or too simple? A religious zealot? A backslidden heathen? A crunchy liberal? A *gasp* Republican (I am Independent, when I bother to think about it, which is just a few seconds shy of zero, fyi)? A hack? A fraud? No one knows me here, so why would I care?

But ... I do care. It all comes back to one thing: perfectionism. Having to be understood. So that if someone does disagree with me, it's not because I haven't been rational and reasonable, because I've been very careful to be right. Perfectionism. Which, as Karen pointed out, is arrogance.

I was so focused on who people thought I was, and I got so wrapped up in trying to control their opinion ("the spin" as Dr. D puts it), that I forgot - entirely for a while - who I am.

Perfectionism is just innately wrong. It's arrogance. It's thinking you are something when you're nothing. It's thinking you can do things perfectly, which is a lie, or that things depend on your performance, which is a lie. It's setting up your own standards and believing that if you fulfill them, then you are good and God is pleased. Total legalism. (And, I'd add, idolatry.)

I became so obsessed with numbers - stats, inbound links, comments, popularity - that I let it define my value, and I forgot the origin of my value.

Like desiring the favor of men; like wanting to feel approved and worthwhile because of your accomplishments when the Bible says you're already approved and worthwhile in God's eyes because of HIS accomplishments...

I became so crippled by fear of how my words would be received, or if they'd ever be received (those Important People again) that I am going on six months of "vacation" from something all of those closest to me say is as much a calling from God for me as is motherhood.

Yet even as I write this, staring truth in the face, the loudest voice is crying, "What will they think of you? Surely they will misunderstand!" So, there he is, Sookie, the Saggy Baggy Elephant, moping in the corner. Despite my efforts to be anonymous, it hasn't changed a thing, because the real cause of my struggle doesn't need my name attached to torment me. There's only one way out. Which, as usual, means opening my hands.

* Narcissist's R Us, or rather, are me. Just me!