Bits of June

wordcrafter

The rewrite of Wordcrafter crossed 25,000 words some while ago.  It goes in fits and starts: some days I'm fortunate if I can write a decent paragraph (I exaggerate not.  I can spend an hour wrestling with one or two sentences.), but at others I jump ahead wonderfully.  Some days I hate it.  Other days I brush off my shoulders and sniff approvingly.  It's an up-and-down fight.

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.

- madeleine l'engle

With something like 15,000 words between myself and the last snippets post, I thought now would be a good time to throw out a few pieces from the last several months.  Cheers!

snippets for june

I made myself tea and hunkered down to my own work at my desk, and for a little time—an hour, perhaps longer—a library stillness settled over the flat. Ethan’s fingers chinked against the handle of his mug. I pushed a page aside and hiked backwards on the stool, blue jeans scraping at the torn vinyl covering; my hand went unconsciously to my tea, porcelain shuffling on wood, and I sniffed softly against the chill in my nose. 

- wordcrafter

  Ethan, I noted resentfully, could be devilishly cutting when he had a mind to be. 

- wordcrafter
 

Then, because I had not the least idea where we were going, she took the lead, tugging me past tourist shops and vaguely Parisian tenements and across roads in the teeth of traffic (“The crossing signs are just suggestions,” she said). 

- wordcrafter

With the grace of a horse surging off its haunches Ethan bore up again, eyes opening in a flare of white and grey, right hand falling back and leaving, in the secret hollows at the inner slopes of his nose, two pale oval patches that bloomed for a moment and disappeared. They were telling, those patches. 

- wordcrafter

“You’re looking quite the Jacobite,” I added. 

Her eyelids slanted coyly, bold black against white cheekbones. “I take that as a compliment.” 

- wordcrafter

I saw [Jamie's] hand reach for the dial, the bangles chink and slide on her wrist as she turned up the volume. When we left the suburbs behind and merged with the other glittering headlights on M8 she cracked her window, propping her elbow on the door and straining to put her face up into the wind. It boomed against the glass and whipped at the pheasant feathers, filling the car with the damp, electric smell of the storm, and over the music and the engine, I heard thunder. 

- wordcrafter

His face sparked in piqued pride and that grip on my arm suddenly hurt like a devil’s. “You’re my friend,” he said coldly, “and I don’t play games with friends." 

- wordcrafter

I dumped my armload into the sink, barely remembered to fish out the book before opening the tap and plunging elbow-deep into the wash-up. The edge of the plate banged recklessly against the sides; a wedge of porcelain sang on the stainless steel and my finger caught for a moment in the new notch. Tera! Prince! This was not Roman Holiday, for God’s sake! I hurled the rinsed plate into the drainer and reached for the next, crumbs of toast shimmering across the counter. 

- wordcrafter

The Most Beautiful Curve

smile!

I'm not an outgoing kind of person.  My first day of college, back at the start of the Fall semester, was agony: I had no idea what I was doing, I didn't know anyone, and I have that very British problem of not being willing to ever admit my ignorance.  I will continue walking in the wrong direction just so others won't know I'm lost.  Being obliged to speak to people - especially to my peers - has always been nerve-wracking for me.

This is still the case, but to a lesser degree.  Through a combination of "the college experience" and simply growing up, I have begun to realize that one can - and must - learn to be shy without being rude.  I mentioned in my last post that ours is a very rude generation; I can't tell you the times I've tried to strike up a conversation with a fellow classmate, only to have them give a monosyllabic answer before returning to the oh-so-fascinating world of the iPhone screen.  Of course, those of us who are less tech-savvy can scoff at these people and pretend that because we are engaged in reading an educational book rather than scrolling through Facebook, we're not being rude - we're just introverted.

but we should never let a label become our excuse.

The naked fact of the matter is that, whether we classify ourselves as an extrovert or an introvert, we must make room for the human interaction required by our daily lives.  Maybe this isn't on a university campus: maybe it's at Wal-mart, or church, or at the fast-food drive-through.  Sure, you can go through life in your own impenetrable bubble, never acknowledging unless obliged, never learning to make small talk ("bit the bowl off the spoon!"); but on a wholly pragmatic level, people do not like the self-absorbed.  Even if they're self-absorbed themselves and totally unaware of it, they will still observe it in others - and let me tell you, it's very off-putting.

In addition to the pragmatic winning-friends-and-influencing-people argument, however, it seems to me that our profession of faith demands that we look outside of ourselves to consider the good of others.  Now, I'm not talking about handing out tracts and evangelizing people: I'm just talking about how our attitude toward life and toward those we meet reflects on our Christianity.  Of all people in the world, we should be the most joyful, the most enthusiastic, the most willing to uplift others simply by acknowledging them as human beings like ourselves.  "Someone will say, 'You have faith, I have deeds.  Show me your faith without your deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.'" 

Far too often we are a whiny, negative people, filling up our social media with complaints about being sick (bet someone else is, too) or having a headache (maybe we shouldn't be on the computer...?) or not wanting to take this exam (does anyone?).  And then we do the same in real life.  (Because when someone asks how you are that day, chances are they are not requesting the low-down on your entire week.)  But in reality this doesn't make us feel better and certainly doesn't uplift anyone around us: it just creates an impression of us as an Eeyore, and no one really wants to be chummy with an Eeyore. 

rather, let our speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt, that we may know how we ought to answer each one.

This morning Rachel Heffington posted a link to an article on how to make small talk with strangers, and I thought it spot-on in that, while it does not claim that by chatting it up with random folk you will win ultimate happiness, it does point out that you feel better if you engage with the world around you.  So let us lay aside this label of "introvert" that so frequently besets us, and learn to be a light in a gloomy world.

Learn tact.

Dress with respect for yourself and others.

Look for things to comment on positively.

Be enthusiastic if at all possible.

Appreciate the efforts of others.

Put away your books and your "cellular devices" when with others.

Smile (even if you don't feel you have a very nice one). 

So let us lay aside this label of "introvert" that so frequently besets us, and learn to be a light in a gloomy world.