Hugh Hollowell

One of the writing gigs I do is reviewing books and writing blurbs for “Christian” oriented books. One I am currently working on is Fields of the Fatherless, by Tom Davis. A beautiful book, I was particularly taken by the introduction by Steven Curtis Chapman, a Christian recording artist. In the introduction to the book, Chapman talks about his family’s decision to adopt a daughter from China back in 2000, named Shaohannah Hope.

In the introduction he tells what his wife said said about Shaohannah:

“When they handed me Shaohannah, God was more real to me in that moment than He ever had been. It about knocked me down!”.

Shaohannah died last night, ran over in her own driveway in a horrible accident. And the person who ran over her was her own brother.

The pain the Chapmans are feeling right now I cannot begin to imagine. The pain their teenage son must feel and live with, knowing he killed his sister… I shudder even thinking about it. More than anything today, I pray for the Chapman family to be able to sort through the pain, the anger and the despair and know that they are very loved.

I believe that if God could have prevented this, He would have, and I believe that Shaohannah’s death grieves Him in ways I cannot fathom and I know that one day, when the dream of God is fully realized, when things are on earth as they are in heaven, wrongs like this will be made right. I will just be glad when it gets here. We are hurting, creation is groaning, waiting for that day.

For Christmas, some friends gave me a gift card to Borders Books. Me being me, I wasted no time in running up there and buying a book I had had my eye on, but was reluctant to shell out my hard earned (and largly absent) cash for. Now I wish I had bought this book back when I first saw it back in the fall.

The book is the modestly titled How To Be A Famous Writer Before You Are Dead, written by fellow Gen-X’er Ariel Gore (apparently no relation to the Almeister), and it delivers. The premise of the book is basically a call to ownership of your writing career and the need to take responsibility for your own success. No Ivory Tower musings here; Ariel Gore delivers the goods, with advice on promotion, creating a market via a zine or a blog or self publishing and so much more.

For me the largest thing I got from the book was the permission for my career to not be pretty. When I decided to be a writer, I pictured my career going something like this (in my head, I call this The Path):

• Write articles for magazines
• Submit a proposal to a mega-publishing house and get my non-fiction work published to critical acclaim.
• With the cushion from that success I would write my novel, which would be to my generation what The Great Gatsby was to my Grandparent’s generation.

Needless to say, that is not how it happened. Instead, I often write for other people, uncredited. And while that does produce what could charitably be called a living, it made me sad and uncomfortable with myself that I was not following The Path.

Ariel showed me that it is OK for my writing to be a eclectic collection of blogs, zines, articles and more. Thanks to this book, I have permission for my career to move in weird ways, as long as it is moving. Yes, I know I could have decided this on my own. No, I probably would not have gotten there any time soon. I would still be working up the nerve to start on The Path instead of blazing my own trail.

Ariel: Thank you for showing me how to blaze my own path, but thank you more for giving me the permission to do so.

Check the book out on Amazon!

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don’t do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don’t do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don’t do it.

if you’re doing it for money or

fame,

don’t do it.

if you’re doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don’t do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don’t do it.

if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,

don’t do it.

if you’re trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of

you,

then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you,

do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,

don’t be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don’t be dull and boring and

pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don’t add to that.

don’t do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don’t do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don’t do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

To be a writer is to be a shuttlecock in a badminton game, one racquet of which is naive optimism and the other a cynical despair.  (John Jerome, The Writing Trade)

I am an email addict.

I belong to a ton of industry forums, several Memphis area mailing lists and have all the usual business email, orders, and so on. In all, I have some 100-200 emails in my inbox, every day.

The one thing that strikes me is how many of them are simply… unreadable.

Here, in no particular order, are things people do in email that drive me frickin’ nuts.

• No capitalization (you are NOT e e cummings)
• No subject and verb (That is what MAKES it a sentence)
• No punctuation or improper punctuation.
• Lack of subject and verb agreement.
• Misuse of There and Their and Insure and Ensure.
• Use shorthand. Is your life so incredibly busy that you can not spare the 3 seconds to write “See you later” rather than “c u ltr!” ?
• No paragraphs.
• No spell check.
• Forwarding me pictures of Jesus with a note telling me if I am not ashamed of Jesus I will send this to 5 -10 friends or to my whole inbox.
• Subject lines like : Question or Let me ask you or What do you think? (Maybe you could elucidate what the subject matter is?)
• Using one sentence where three or more are preferable.
• Using three sentences where one would be better.

Update: Using ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS!

I could go on, but it fascinates me that people who graduated high school (and many have degrees) can not turn out a readable paragraph.