Aaron Patterson's Blog: Guest Post by Bill Myers: "Writing Edgy Christian Fiction."

Aaron Patterson's Blog: Guest Post by Bill Myers: "Writing Edgy Christian Fiction."

The 30%

I've been ruminating on life's statistics: the 99% vs the 1%, the  80-20 rule...then I remembered a blog my daughter wrote a couple of months ago about a lesser known statistic: schizophrenia is 70% hereditary and 30% evironmental.She is writing a novel that explores the legacy of mental illness. I asked her to be a guest blogger on Riddles on the Harp.  Reprinted with permission from My Wilderness Years.

April Trabucco

The Writer Magazine’s email newsletter this week was titled “Why we need pain to write.” I’m all over that, but not by choice. If that’s the key, I should be churning out chapters by the hour. There is the requisite time necessary for licking one’s wounds though and that turns out to be an involved process. There’s also work and children and house and said source of pain that require ample tending. So chapters are not churning as fast as I would like. Is it to my creative detriment that I'm an optimist and cherish the happy times that come when hope prevails?

Bill Manville on falling in love with writing

My friend and writing teacher Bill Manville has requested guest space. (He tried to post this is the comment section to one of my blogs on writing and wasn't able to...some of my friends have difficulty posting comments and others don't, I don't understand why; it happens to me too.) From Bill:

What do New York editors, publishers and agents look for in new writers? I'm Bill Manville; my last thriller, “Goodbye,” published by Simon & Schuster, was a BOM Alternate; my last non-fiction, "Cool, Hip & Sober," was published by Forge New York. I also write a weekly column for the New York Daily News, and teach "Writing to Get Published" online for both writers.com and Temple University. The principal text for both courses is, “The WTGP Student Handbook.” I give it to my students at the beginning of each course, Here's a passage I hope other writers will find relevant to what they may be trying to do:

How early as kids do we develop a sense of justice? As yet unwilling to accommodate selfishness and greed, “It isn’t fair!” we cry out to each other at some petty instance of bias;-- one of the most powerful arguments childhood can summon. Commenting on the Peloponnesian War at the end of the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Thucydides noted:

The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.

Not only does he record a fact of war but does it with an irony of language that says to us, Oh, no—it isn’t fair, it isn’t just. And the noble child who lives in us still – the one who reads a lot and may even aspire to be a writer --resonates to the unspoken message: Amen! we answer back—which is why Thucydides is still read 25 centuries later.

What I try to teach my students is that good writing starts with that community of values between writer and reader, an unspoken meeting of souls between-the-lines. A feeling very much like falling in love.

From "Writing to Get Published." If you’d like a free copy – over 150 digital pages, email whmanville@yahoo.com and ask. No strings; results do not vary; yes it’s free.

Postscript from Sydney:  Thank you Bill. And, gentle reader, if you can shed some light on how to leave a comment that doesn't disappear into cyberspace, please do.  Let's have a comment blitz to this entry. No advertiser will call, I promise.