Category Archives: Writers – Loose Canon

Religious Right…By Any Other Name

RELIGIOUS RIGHT

OR

literalist
fundamentalist
religious fanatic
simple
ignorant
intolerant
judgmental
bigoted
proselytizers
right-wing extremists
vast right-wing conspiracy
religious zealot
right-wing zealot
twisted misfits
conservative
close-minded
narrow-minded
born-again Christians
exclusionary
hypocrites

…uuuuh…deep breath…keep going

divisive
mean-spirited
rigid
self-righteous
violent
potentially violent
terrorists
gay-bashers
ominous agenda
blind
punitive moralists
right-wing conspiracy
hopelessly ignorant
shibboleths
hard right
eccentric
Spiritual Svengali
perennial convert
artistic censor
ridiculous
hysterical

—uuuh…that’s right…there’s more…

tyrannical
puritanical
bleak acceptance of a dark mystery
superficial
weak-minded
self-mutilators
desert dropouts
extremist
hate group
hate monger
Godzilla of the Right
KKK
politics of the mean
anti-establishment barking
Pantheism
soldiers of the right
restless radicals
reckless
armed isolationists
sexual McCarthyism

…uuuhhhhh…almost finished…or…dead from exhaustion…

puritanical zealot

…THE END!…

 

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Why Write?

Inkwell Black Tall

 

The house was quiet.  Vic was at work, the kids at school.  Resolved to put an order to my randomness, I pulled the chair up to the wide oak desk and started cleaning out the folder of papers collected at the American Christian Writers Conference, the first writer’s meeting I ever attended.

I filed away instructions on writing spiritual meditations, along with a full page of editors and addresses, any one of whom might buy two hundred words.  I copied editor Steve Laube’s web page address into my computer and made a mental note to write thank you’s to the writers and editors who had looked over my work.

Reaching the bottom of the stack of papers, I discovered the outline of Cecil Murphey’s opening keynote speech.  My outline was empty of notes…never had I been one who could listen, concentrate, and take notes at the same time. Cecil had begun his speech with one question typed at the top of his outline, “Why write?”

In 40 years I had never asked myself this question.  It never occurred to me.  Even now, the answer seems too obvious.

I write.  That’s what I do, like breathing, eating, blinking, and moving.

My feet walk, my mouth talks, my heart beats, my fingers write.

It is the only way to empty the thoughts out of my head so I can concentrate on cooking a new recipe for dinner.

It is my personal thumb tack to pin down ideas, hold them in place, to keep them from coming back time and again, when I really need my mind to work on more practical matters.

It is my way of arguing with myself, thinking, evaluating…coming back in a better frame of mind at a later date to straighten out my confusion.

It’s my way of giving relief to my husband Victor, not holding him accountable to listen to everything I want to say.

It keeps me from boring my friends.

It hints at a tiny way of connecting with people who don’t know I’m here, and don’t care if I am.

It holds my feet to the ground.

It lets me hear God speak.

I write…because I have to.

It’s the only way I know to live.   End Scroll

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Copyright 2013.   All Rights Reserved.

To Take Away the TAKEAWAY

Published October, 1999

Inkwell FeatherEven when everyone’s head is bobbing agreement, I just don’t get it.  Actually, I guess I don’t want to get it.

There are lots of reasons for writing.  As an ex-English teacher, I’ve taught most of them at one time or another:  get a job, say HI to Grandma, get a good grade on your research paper, make someone laugh, explain how the car accident happened, advertise the used Mustang, or to sell a million copies of a best-seller, killer novel.

I usually write to get something off my chest.  It doesn’t have to be something bad.  Just a thought that continues to roll round and round in my head like an old record stuck in the groove.  If I write it down, it’s stuck, tight.  I can walk around it, look it over, adjust it, wad it up and throw it away, or, if I decide I might want to, I can return to it—in my own good time.  But for sure, I’m no longer its slave.  The thought doesn’t own me anymore because I wrote it down.

Lately, though, I’m beginning to feel out of the groove.  A new reason for writing has taken hold:  the takeaway.  According to the ‘unwritten’ formula, it’s usually in the last line of the last paragraph, a pithy statement of wisdom.  It’s the steel-toed boot that kicks the reader, “Hey, dummy, this is what I’ve been trying to say.”  It’s the message that turns the corner of the mouth up in a smile and puts dreamy looks of love in eyes.  When you hear the reader sigh, you know they’ve reached the takeaway.

Millions of formula books collecting cute stories have created an inviolable recipe for writing.  Keep it short, one page, one small page with big type and large margins.  Keep it cute.  Make it wise.  Make the reader smile; he’s already depressed enough.  And just in case he doesn’t get it, finish with the takeaway.

This is the era of Uplifting writing.  We inspire.  We coach.  We change lives.  We tell of disasters where the maimed and injured were glad to be injured and maimed.  It changed their lives.  They want to inspire us.  On one short page,…with a takeaway.

Am I the only one?  Is anyone else tired of being inspired?  Is anyone else hungering for a long story that requires concentration and an easy chair for reading?  Does anyone else love the delicious dance of alliteration?  Who would be willing to read five pages just to come upon a Jabberwocky?  If Melville had needed a takeaway, would we have Moby Dick?

Am I the only reader who feels like the name of the game today is to guess the takeaway in the first paragraph and save yourself one page?  Am I the only writer who doesn’t want to uplift the world in 300 words or less?  Isn’t a description of a three-year old pulling gummy goo off the bottom of pink jelly shoes worth reading just because it makes your hands feel sticky?

At yesterday’s writer’s meeting, six readers smiled as they read Alice’s story.  Steve began the critique, “This is great.  But I’d shorten it up and add a takeaway.  That’s what’s selling.”  Five heads nodded.

Maybe I get his point.  But for my part, Alice, keep it the way it is.  You got six smiles, and we all felt the sandy, slimy mess between our fingers as we read.  If that’s not enough reason for writing and reading, I don’t know what is.