Timothy's Thoughts

A s you may know, I'm not married nor have I ever been, so I'm not the ideal person to offer marriage advice. But Christian novelist Colleen Coble recently celebrated forty years of marriage and one piece of advice she offered recently is "Appreciate all the things your spouse does for you. Verbalize it in front of others too." And then she said, "Focus on your spouse's good qualities." Good advice. When was the last time you said something in public about something you like that your spouse does? Some people are so quick to tear criticize their spouses in public. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but it seems to me that women are the worst offenders. If nothing else, you can hear it in the tone of their voice when their husband does something they think is childish or silly. You don't see many men who will say something like, "You'll never guess what my wife did this week. She went out and bought a purse to match her shoes. Then ...

O ne of the popular things for literary agents to do on their blogs is to post first pages (with the author’s permission) and then provide comments and/or allow their readers to provide comments about what works and doesn’t work with the piece. The concept is that since agents typically see nothing more than the first page before rejecting a novel, the first page is very important. I’ve participated in these and have enjoyed doing so, but there’s a point where it isn’t fun. The other day, an author submitted a first page and it was brutal. You can usually find something good to say, but this was a case that I felt like I was lying to the author by mentioning the good parts. There wasn’t much hope in saving it. All of the people who responded were nice about it, but I couldn’t help but thing that if I were the author reading those comments I would cry. But then I looked at the author’s website. This particular author has a few books out, is a public speaker, and she gives writing cl...

W riters are often admonished to Show, Don’t Tell . My roots are in the Show Me State, so I’m all for showing, but I think there’s enough confusion about the topic that some writers just don’t get it. I don’t know if it will help anyone else, but when I think about this topic I think in terms of revealing , rather than showing . That may be confusing also, since you can reveal something by simply telling someone, but I imagine that there is something hidden behind a curtain. While the curtain is closed, I can’t help but wonder what is back there. Someone pulls back the curtain a little ways and I can see something. There is a table back there and something is on it, but I’m still not sure what it is. Then they open the current all the way and I can see, that a magician’s top hat is on the table and he is about to pull a rabbit from the hat. In a story, it isn’t just about action versus narrative. Narrative has a way of slowing down the story because it stops the clock, but the real ...

R esearch isn’t always good thing. I’ve seen some authors talking about all the research they did when they wrote their books. You open up the book and there it all is. One author was talking about visiting a farm and talking to the owner about all the stuff he did in a day. She rattled off a list of stuff he told her. In the book, it was pretty much all there. The problem is that when you’ve never lived in that environment, you might place high importance on something that the person you are interviewing sees as unimportant. You might assume that something he mentions is common when he is actually telling you about it because it is rare. And the truly ordinary stuff—the stuff novels are made of—may go unmentioned because it is so ordinary that he didn’t think you would want to hear about it. One reason people like reading novels is because they give us a view of what other people consider ordinary. It isn’t ordinary to us, because we don’t live in that environment, but it is for ...

I s divorce worse than losing a spouse through death? Unless you’ve experienced both, I don’t think you can compare the two. Even if you have, it is likely that your experience may be different than someone else’s. I’ve never been married, so I’m in no position to say. But what about that saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?” Perhaps that isn’t true. I can tell you straight up that I would rather spend my whole life single than to go through a divorce. As for whether divorce is worse than the grief from losing a spouse through death, logic tells us that it is. The widowed person has the memories of the good times to look back on. The divorced person is unable to enjoy those memories as much as he should. He can’t look back a the times his wife did something nice for him without wondering if she really did it because she loved him or if she was just going through the motions. But here’s the thing: It really doesn’t matter. The person whose spou...

S ad news. Today, HarperCollins announced that HarperCollins will acquire Thomas Nelson by year’s end. It isn’t really surprising. It wasn’t long ago that another company took over Thomas Nelson in order to whip it into shape so that it would be more attractive to investors. It appears that HarperCollins took the bait. I don’t really have any idea what this will mean to readers or authors. HarperCollins already owns Zondervan, another Christian book publisher. For the company as a whole, it is probably a good thing, since bigger companies have more power. All the same, it saddens me. I hate seeing so many Christian publishing companies merging with companies whose focus is on things other than Christian publishing. Granted, it isn’t like Thomas Nelson is a church, but it is kind of like so many colleges that started out as Christian colleges but now don’t even resemble a Christian college. I fear that too many people worship the dollar and the power it suggests and have lost sight o...

L ast week, I mentioned that I sometimes participate in first page critiques. Today, I want to give some of my thoughts on what makes a good first page. Begin with a Problem Every good book begins with a problem. It doesn’t have to be in the first sentence, but it should come close. Consider how the ultimate Good Book begins. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void.” That’s our hook. God created, but what he created wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t finished. That’s a problem. But notice that it isn’t a big problem. It would be for us, but for God it isn’t. There’s nothing particularly emotional about the problem. It doesn’t make you cry. It doesn’t make you angry. It is just a simple problem that needs fixing. As is the case with Moby Dick . You undoubtedly remember that the first sentence is “Call me Ishmael.” There are college professors who can talk about that sentence for hours on end. Personally, I find the second sentence...