Watch Your Language!

As a Christian writer, I often face the assumption that I never have my characters use bad language, and that often extends to the assumption that I don't use it myself...

Well. As to the first, I'll talk about it in a minute. As to the second, DEEP SIGH. I could do better.

The question of how much obscenity/profanity to use in a novel isn't always an easy one. My stories are about soldiers, either active duty or retired. The soldier who doesn't swear is a rarity (they do exist). So it's really not a question of whether to use bad language, it's 'what kind', 'where', and 'how much'.

The first question, 'what kind', addresses the distinction between obscenity and profanity, i.e, is God's name used in vain or not. My aim here is to minimize obscenity, but if a character would use it in a situation, to go ahead. Profanity I don't use, unless the text in question can be taken in the context of a rough prayer.

Where to use it? In general, only within dialogue. Nothing gets more boring quicker than a character to whose thoughts we are privy, when those thoughts consist of a long string of expletives.

The movie "Hamburger Hill" has an excellent example. Two characters are talking about 'boonie rap'; one was sent home from Viet Nam on compassionate leave, and his grandmother fixed him his favorite meal.  He recounted how he said to his grandma, "Could you please pass the f*****g potatoes?", and how it got worse from there.

Should this be in a book? I think, yes, because it emphasizes the divide between the way soldiers and civilians interpret the world through language. But it doesn't need to fill every page. Once, and it's shock value. A hundred times, and it's mental Novocaine.

Also, Irishmen and New Zealanders (for instance) tend to use f*****g as an all-purpose adverb. I worked for a New Zealander, and when he got going, that expression was used in every sentence. I think that the way to emphasize this casual use is to add the 'all-purpose adverb' when the character's introduced, thrown into a completely innocuous context...and then leave it alone as much as possible. The point's been made.

And that begs the question, "How much?" I use bad language sparingly, as emphasis to express the emotion of the character using it, in a way that's internally consistent with the character's personality. And since I can set up the scenes myself, I can avoid description of a scene that would require the use of a lot of profanity.  For instance, describing tactical radio transmissions during a firefight would require a lot of cursing to be even remotely believable. Yes, there is such a thing as radio discipline, and it goes out the window in heavy contact.

But I can avoid that scene, or describe it differently. I'm the boss!

Writers, what do you think? Readers, what do you like or dislike?

The Obligation of Courtesy

I've recently talked with a number of friends who have lost their jobs in fairly ugly ways - not misconduct on their part, mind you!

Just demeaning and insulting behavior from their erstwhile bosses. Losing a job is painful enough, but these incidents included cruelty for its own sake. A gleeful, "You're fired!" in a setting of intimidation, patterned after "The Apprentice".

It leads me to wonder if, back in the 80s when we embraced the managerial style of Donald Trump (among others) in the creation of the Me Generation (or the Generation of Greed), we also gave away one of the things that made this country great.

The obligation of courtesy. Not, "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice', but the thought that we owe one another polite and gracious treatment that puts the other's feelings first.

And that puts our desire to vent our feelings so far down the list it's off the page.

In the last few decades a legion of psychologists have told us that it's unwise to 'bottle up' our emotions, that it's unhealthy and they'll come out in other, ominous ways. (It is of interest that emotional catharsis used to be pushed for veterans with PTSD...until they started killing themselves after releasing their feelings.)

Maybe. But maybe if we had rules (gasp!) to live by, which disallowed the venting of anger for its own sake, the burden of 'bottled emotions' would become society-wide, a burden we all could share, and therefore lighten.

What do you think?

Dukee Plays Nice

We teach kids to play nice, and to share, and boy! is that a trial sometimes! It can be a pretty reluctant paradigm into adulthood, as well.

Dukee is the most recent addition to our family. He's a long, immensely broad dog with a couple of other nicknames - "the walking ottoman", and "flower pot" (because his head tapers like a it's a flower pot, placed open end onto his shoulders.

We have a houseguest this weekend, Jed, a former student of mine from Texas. I'd told him about Dukee's more interesting habits, such as his propensity to push pieces of kibble through the wires of his crate for Ladron, on of my service dogs (a heeler), to find.

Jed smiled politely.

Well, last night Dukee took things into his own paws, and upended his entire dish, forcing most of the contents out of the wires. Ladron thought she'd died and gone to heaven.

Dukee did two things, I think perhaps deliberately, that one does not expect from dogs. First, he shared. Second, he made a larger gesture on that occasion to prove a point (the evidence for this is arguably weaker, but it's still within the realm of possibility).

What do you think? Will dogs share, taking well-defined actions like this? Do they understand emphasis? Do you have any stories of your own?

And Mercy, More Than Life

(First - my nephew Ross is doing ok so far - still responsive. In the morning, we'll see.)

Yesterday I wrote about Sheldon Vanauken's "A Severe Mercy", which is more or less about how sometimes God has to amputate part of our heart to save it.

The concept of mercy's an important one, because it's the active core of love and compassion. Love and compassion are what we feel; mercy is what we do.

Mercy is love that comes with a cost.

The writer of "America the Beautiful" says it best in one of the 'later verses'- "Oh beautiful for heroes proved/in liberating strife/who more than selves their country loved/and mercy more than life..."

Mercy more than life. It brings to mind firefighters running up the stairs in the World Trade Center on September 11, or Father Maximillian Kolbe, volunteering to exchange his life for another's in a Nazi concentration camp.

Dramatic, and far beyond experience for most of us - thank God. But sometimes, we do have the chance to exercise mercy, to exercise compassion with a price.

How? Well, think - have you ever had a chance to take revenge against a backbiting colleague or friend? Revenge that would put him or her down, and vindicate you?

If you had the chance and didn't, that's mercy. Any time you put your own interests or desires aside to show love, that's mercy.

I hope you'll have that chance, and take it.

A Severe Mercy

"A Severe Mercy" is the title of a book written by Sheldon Vanauken, a friend of C.S. Lewis. In it, he write of marriage to his soulmate, with whom he had the explicit understanding that one would not outlive the other. "The last, long dive" would take both of them, at once.

But his wife became ill and died, and Vanauken realized that there was meaning, and ultimately joy, in staying the course, and living through the lonely days. His loss was the severe mercy that brought him from the pagan ideal of a sort of Viking funeral into the arms of God.

Last year my college teaching career came to an unexpected, and bitter end. I had come to it late, only earning a PhD in my late 30s, and worked hard to get what I considered a good position, in which I could do the research I enjoyed and teach more classes than most.

And one day it was gone, and the manner of its ending left the chances for another position hovering between slim and none.

Did I mourn? You bet. But it is turning out to be my severe mercy, a break that has seen the publication of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart, the preparation of several more novels, the reconstruction of airplane parts that had been fit for scrap...it's seen my wife blossom in a new job, finding strength in relating to people that she never thought she had. It's brought several new dogs into the pack, who would otherwise have been euthanized, and whose daily joy and, I think, gratitude is a constant inspiration.

I'll always miss the interaction with college kids, and the fun of conferences and research presentations. But God has snapped the reins, and we've moved off the trail, steeplechasing across the fields, up a slope to a horizon backlit by a rising sun.

What about you? Have there been severe mercies in your life? And how long did it take to recognize them?

Launch Day!

Blessed Are The Pure of Heart is now available, in both 'real book' and ebook format! Here are some outlets...

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Tate Publishing

Powell's Books

We'll be having book signings at three Albuquerque-area Hastings at the end of August - beginning of September - please watch for dates!

Social Media - A Change of Heart

I'm a relative newcomer to Social Media, and am trying to find my way through its use (my wife's been using Facebook for quite a while, and I've been hanging on her coattails!).

Rachelle Gardner's blog today touched this issue, and the comments have been fascinating. The initial question was whether it's made us more transparent than we'd really want to be, but the comments have gone far beyond that, and in their entirety form an excellent treatise on the values inherent in the Social Media's use.

For my part, reading them has caused a fundamental change in my outlook. I came to the subject thinking that Social Media is more a curse than a blessing, in that it provides a tempting outlet to create a false persona with a pseudo-intimacy that doesn't reflect who we are.

No longer. There are problems, certainly. But when this communication tool is used as it's intended to be used, it allows us to maintain connections that may otherwise have been lost, to share life experiences that may resonate with others, and ultimately to give us a sense of connectedness that is so important in a world that increasingly feels large, cold, and unfathomable.

For myself...well, I'm dealing with a chronic illness that affords the opportunity to experience more pain than I ever thought possible. Facebook, and the blogs that I follow, give me the opportunity to step outside myself. When it hurts too much to leave the house, I can still feel like I'm contributing something.

And that there are people out there who care.

What do you think? Have any of you changed your views of Social Media, pro or con?