Pagan Book Review: iPagan

iPagan is a fascinating and challenging collection of essays, including multiple, diverse perspectives on Druidry, shammanism, goddess spirituality and witchcraft. These four major streams in the modern Pagan movement are described and explored in a variety of ways both theoretical and experiential. While there are plenty of books that will tell you what these paths are and even provide step-by-step instructions for going through the motions of their practices, I appreciate this collection's attempt to evoke the sensory and inner experience of each pathway.

Later in the book there is a selection of essays on more general topics concerning the Neopagan community, such as gender, Pagan politics and Pagan parenting. These went only tentatively beyond the boundaries pushed by previous collections of Pagan essays. Intercultural topics and disability issues in Paganism were still avoided by most of the authors and only briefly mentioned by a few. I continue to be disappointed by the lack of considerations in Pagan anthologies for issues which cause daily concerns within the Pagan community. However, what is discussed is handled well here, including complex issues of gender identity.

The overall quality of writing in this collection is excellent and there was no boring moment throughout the book. If enjoy reading thoughtful and lively essays, you will likely find iPagan both informative and entertaining. 

Paying attention: The lessons of crow or raven

When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to live close to the land, to live out of the city, grow a garden and even raise chickens. I wasn't just being romantic. That is how I grew up and I knew about the work involved.

Still my reasons at first were not the same as the reasons of grown-ups. Living close to the land is a bit healthier, but it's also harder on the body and often plenty heavy on the mind. My own reasons had more to do with where I felt most alive.

Creative commons image by Igor Shatokhin

When we experience something with all of our senses, we feel much more alive. If you live close to the land, you have to be out in all weather--feeding animals, digging in the earth, planting, harvesting and fixing things.

Often it doesn't seem pleasant but you feel, smell, see and hear everything. As long as this is part of your survival, rather than just a good-for-you walk in the midst of an otherwise dull day, you won't be bored.

Kids often understand this even if they live in a very artificial environment. When my young son marvels at the return of snow and only vaguely remembers when it was last here nine months ago, he tastes it, smells it, stands listening and then runs around wildly flailing in it. 

"Mama, will the snow always be here now?" he asks.

His sister, two years older and oh so much wiser, sneers, "No, baby, it will only stay until the trees want to wake up."

While the squabble over who is a baby goes on in the doorway, the cold wind swirls into the house and a crow (or possibly a raven, my eyes aren't good enough to tell the difference) quarks from the young oak in front of the house. 

Many grownups today barely notice the first snow fall, let alone a single bird in a tree. But I notice. This bird with its solid black feathers is interesting and important, just like the traffic signs on the road. It is part of paying attention and being fully alive.

Creative Commons image by Byrion Smith 

Crow and raven as symbols

Fortunately, it doesn't matter much that I can't tell if it is a crow or a raven. They are both considered important and even magical birds by people all over the world. Europeans, Native Americans, the ancient Chinese and the ancient Egyptians all saw the crow and raven as symbols of real-world magic, the mysteries of the unknown, and possibly death, as well as transformation, healing, wisdom, protection and prophecy. 

While some cultures connect this bird to the sun and others to the dark of a moonless night, there is no human culture where they are native that does not see them as powerful, mysterious and noteworthy. 

Modern pop culture suggests that all symbols of the crow and raven must be sinister. But that wasn't traditionally the case. Our great grandparents might have told us that the appearance of these black birds is a reminder to pay attention, to follow your intuition, to use your personal integrity, to reserve judgement against people, to question your assumptions, to think independently or stand out from the crowd.

Some people believe that crows and ravens can bring messages from another world, perhaps from ancestors. Others believe the bird simply shows that something is going to change or that it asks us to be faithful despite changes. 

How do they live?

Crows and ravens can eat almost anything and adapt to very different environments. Crows always keep a mate but often live in groups. Ravens are faithful to one mate for life and often live in pairs. This is one reason why these birds symbolize faithfulness to many people.

Creative Commons image by Jennifer C, of flickr.com

Both types of bird are very intelligent compared to other species. Their cawing, which sounds pretty raucous to us, is actually a sophisticated language. Different kinds of cawing mean different things. Crows will often build false nests to fool predators and to protect their young. When they are in a group they will let one member check out any new object while the others watch and learn. When they eat as a group, they post sentries to warn of danger. They will even warn other animals, and especially deer, with a lot of noise when hunters are around.

These are all reasons why these birds came to be symbols of wisdom and caution. They are not dangerous themselves. Instead, if we are careful and pay attention to them, we can learn to protect ourselves both physically and intuitively. 

What do they teach us?

Crows and ravens have shown humans how to think things through and question our assumptions. Over time, many people came to see just the appearance of one of these birds as a reminder to look beyond first appearances, to avoid quick assumptions, to measure every thing based on an objective standard, to explore the unknown and to cross physical and mental borders.

In a media-saturated world it is often difficult to tell the difference between your prejudices and true intuition. These birds are a good symbol to keep in mind. Many cultures believe that seeing a crow or raven means you should spend some time in introspection, make sure things are as they seem or try to remember what you may have forgotten or left behind in your hurry.

Different cultures have very specific omens associated with crows and ravens, often depending on which direction the bird is from you and what time of day it is. It may be that these symbols work only in the place they come from. It is more likely that these omens or "rules" were devised to try to explain the intuitive messages of the birds in a logical way. The problem with this is that intuition defies logic. It might then be more effective to observe the specific case without much reference to rules about whether the bird is on your right or on your left or if it is morning or afternoon when you saw it.

Illustration by Julie Freel, used with permission

It is the general reminder of caution and the need for intuition that is universally understood about crows and ravens. When so many diverse cultures with long and learned histories arrive at the same conclusion, it is worth paying attention.

A story about intuition and a raven

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story for kids and adults that gives a real example of how this can work. The story is Shanna and the Raven. It's about a girl named Shanna and her brother Rye, who see a raven after they meet a neighbor who makes them feel strange. The story is a tiny bit scary but it shows how intuition can be a powerful protective tool for both kids and grown-ups. 

Shanna and the Raven is also a story about this time of year. Shanna and Rye celebrate a very old holiday called Imbolc, which is about intuition, inspiration and prophecy, just like the raven and crow. This holiday comes on February 2 and you can try out their recipe for strawberry dumplings, which is really delicious, or make a doll of the Irish goddess Brigid using their instructions. 

You can start reading the story and see many of the beautiful illustrations by Julie Free at the bottom of this page. 

The stranger in the orange kameez

I include fiction and short stories based on fact in this section of the Hearth from time to time. This story is one that really happened though it is told here from an uncommon perspective.

In Dhaka there is a small area of square blocks with a grid of paved roads between them. Each block is surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire and guarded by several weathered men. This is the Embassy District. Many wealthier Bangladeshis live here as well but a good portion of the houses are inhabited by foreigners--embassy personal, aid workers, scientists and the like.

One day near the beginning of the dry season a girl walked out of the district wearing striped orange kameez, the long tunic over blousy cotton pants favored by more progressive women in the city. The matching orange scarf was looped casually over her head, respectful enough but not quite right in its folds.

At the edge of the Embassy District stands the imposing red brick edifice of the American Embassy, the largest US embassy in the world. Because Bangladesh is considered a difficult country for Americans to work in, almost everything the staff needs is actually inside the embassy itself. And almost no American comes to Bangladesh without some tie to the embassy. 

Beyond the embassy there is an open space of several hundred yards where no one is allowed to build. This is a Muslim country after all, though not a particularly extreme one. The embassy requires security. But half way across the security buffer little garden plots have sprung up. Workers tend them in the hot sun, heads hidden under round conical hats.

Photo by Arie Farnam

On this day, the conical hats tipped and bobbed as everyone tried to get a glimpse of the strange girl in the orange kameez. Almost no one left the Embassy District by this muddy track headed toward the vast slums housing millions of the nameless, hopeless poor--people uprooted from rural areas by floods, starvation and disease and tossed at the edge of the city like so much garbage. A few of the luckiest residents of the slums were hired as gardeners, cleaners or other laborers in the district. Thus the need for the muddy track. But almost no one came the other way, let alone an unescorted girl. 

The peering eyes took her in--uncomfortable in the local attire, her face pink from too much sun and not enough pigment. She carried no bag but something bulged inside her scarf, carried on her chest. 

She walked slowly and smiled at everyone. They smiled back. It is good if a foreigner smiles. Then she lifted the scarf to reveal a sleek black camera. She took the cap off of the lens and nodded toward two of the workers in a nearby garden. Her eyebrows arched in question. They grinned and stood up, walking toward her through the small garden. Several other workers followed from nearby plots. And four young men ran down the road to join them. People in the slums love cameras and they love posing for pictures.

But the girl's face changed. Now she looked dismayed and she waved at the workers to go back. She gesticulated and tried a few halting words of Bangla, "No come... Yes work... I please." The workers laughed and jostled one another. A foreigner--European foreigner no less--who spoke Bangla no matter how badly. This was a true wonder, something to break the monotony of the day.

But they could not make out what she wanted. She wanted to take a picture. They were willing. But she was now unhappy. Some moved slowly back to work. Others stood waiting to see what she would do. The four young men ran around her in circles on the muddy track. 

Finally the girl's face firmed with decision. She turned her back on the workers and lifted the camera toward the far horizon, away from the slums and back toward the embassy district. She seemed to be taking a picture of the great brick wall around the American Embassy. The workers sighed. She was not interested in them after all. Of course, the embassy wall was something much greater. They straggled back to their plots and even the young men looked disappointed and ran back down the road toward the slum. 

The girl peered over her shoulder, smiled and turned back to her study of the horizon. She did not actually take any pictures. She only waited. 

Then when the scene had cleared she turned back around and framed two of the workers in her lens. Their conical hats and quick hands were delightful. She was about to take that first beautiful picture when an angry shout split the morning sunshine, "Stop or we'll shoot!"

Half a dozen soldiers were running down the track from the embassy. They each carried a heavy machine gun.

Photo by Arie Farnam

The girl's hand's jerked and she would have dropped the camera had it not been on a strap around her neck. She was not prepared and she did not run. The workers ran and the children playing in the ditch flattened themselves into mud. They knew what was good for them and being noticed by the soldiers was no part of it.  

The girl was surrounded by the soldiers before she took even two steps. The lead soldier demanded her camera in broken English. The girl trembled a little but tried to protest. "I'm American," she said, gesturing toward the embassy wall. "I am a tourist. You can't take my camera."

The lead soldier looked a little less sure. "You come," he demanded. The soldiers formed up around the girl and marched back to the embassy. The workers and the children looked after them, relieved and a little confused about the girl. She clearly did not belong here.

In front of the embassy the soldiers met the Americans. They were men dressed in black pants and white shirts. They had black ties and black sunglasses. They looked like pictures from the American magazines that the workers from the slums sometimes found in the trash. They too demanded the girl's camera. She finally gave it to them along with a small blue book that she took out of a pocket hidden inside her kameez. One of the American's put it in his own pocket.

"You need to answer some questions," he said. "You cannot take pictures of the embassy."

"But I wasn't taking pictures of the embassy," the girl protested. "I was only trying to distract the crowd so that I could get a picture of the people working in the garden." 

The man in black sunglasses did not look convinced, but no one could really tell. His face looked like stone beneath the glasses. But the soldiers took their positions again. Two American soldiers, in the crisper uniforms than those of the Bangladeshi soldiers, came and stood behind the man and the girl. And they all walked into the embassy together. It was not clear if the girl was a prisoner or if she belonged there. She suddenly moved like someone who belonged, swinging her hips and chatting with the man in sunglasses, thickening her western accent a bit and making as many American references as she could come up with on short notice.

It won her nothing. She was taken inside and then the man opened a door for her, as if to courteously let her go in first. The girl, expecting a conference room or at most an imposing office with a heavy wooden desk, walked in without hesitation. But the man did not follow. Instead, he slammed the door behind her. And the girl found herself in complete darkness.

The first sound she made was wordless--a cry of shock and fear. The room had been built to inspire just these feelings, though it was usually used to interrogate Bangladeshis. No foreigner ever went where the girl had gone. 

A strong light came on with a snap and the audible hum of electricity. The girl could not see anymore than she could in the dark. She put her hand up and squeezed her eyes shut. 

"Who are you?"

"Where are you from?"

"Who do you work for?" 

"Why were you taking pictures of the embassy?"

Again the girl insisted that she was not. She told about the excited people in the gardens, how she had wanted a nice pastoral picture. She had only vaguely recalled where the American Embassy was. She had not thought it through.

"Where is your residence?"

"Why are you in Bangladesh?"

"For how long?" 

The questions continued like the beat of an ominous drum. The girl answered and insisted she was a "tourist." She was in essence telling the truth, but it was such a strange truth that it was not believed. She wanted to see Bangladesh. She had a friend she could stay with in the Embassy District.

"Who? What friend? What is his name?"

The girl's answers were coming between hiccuping sobs now. She was properly terrified. But finally she gave the answer that mattered--the only one that mattered. "Oh, my friend is the medical director at the embassy. He has to be here. Ask him. He'll tell you I'm not lying." 

A quick phone call confirmed the girl's story. The men in black sunglasses came and let her out of the dark room. They handed her back the camera and the little blue book. They even apologized. She nodded, blinking back tears, trying to pretend it was all just fine. She understood. Terrorism and all that.

The only thing the men in sunglasses couldn't understand was why she had not given the name of her friend at the embassy first thing. The truth was that her presence here was just as strange in the American world as it was in the Bangladeshi world--impossible really. She had never before been in a position to drop a name. She was not of that class.

The girl walked out of the embassy and back to the muddy track. Several of the workers saw her and they were surprised. No one came back out of the embassy that quickly. It was scarcely noon.

Photo by Arie Farnam

She stood in the middle of the track. Her hands shook. She looked back toward the square blocks of the embassy district. But then her mouth firmed into a determined line and she turned her feet again toward the slums. This time she kept her camera well hidden under the scarf. 

She walked in among the low cardboard and sheet-metal homes of Dhaka's poor. The lane leading to the muddy track from the Embassy District was fairly wide and moderately straight. The girl glanced into the side allies, teaming with children and trash heaps. But she pressed on for some distance, deeper into the slum. A gaggle of children followed her, laughing and speculating on why she had come and whether she might give them some money or even take their picture.

Finally she came to a little market set up at the meeting of three of the larger alleyways. Several people sold vegetables, fruit and cheap clothing from stands there. The girl peered curiously at the produce, but she didn't seem to have any money. Finally she smiled at one seller, who smiled back. And she lifted her camera and took a couple of tentative pictures. The children pressed forward, waving excitedly. To be in a picture was good luck. It meant you were someone and your picture would be there forever, somewhere in the world of the rich.

Then there was a low growl behind the children. "Scat! You filth! Move out!" 

The little market was ruled by a slum gang. The sellers paid them for the right to sell and for protection from the hordes of thieves in the slums. And the gang mostly left the sellers in peace. But none of them, not the gang nor the sellers paid any taxes or tribute to the more powerful city gangs, and the gang bosses did not want any outsiders taking notice. 

This girl had a reason for coming here, an uncommon reason. No one from the Embassy District came to the slums without a damn good reason. The gang leaders were sure of that.

The children scattered before the growling voice, all but one little girl, who crouched down behind a barrel by one of the stands. This girl's name was Minara and she was eight years old. She wore a shift with a faded red and white pattern and nothing on her feet. She was too intrigued by this tall, sun-haired lady in the orange kameez to be scared away.

Minara had never seen anyone like this. The women she knew were small and stooped, scurrying across alleys furtively and always working. They never had time to play and they lowered their eyes before men.

This lady was taller than the men, even taller than the men of the gang. They crowded in around her--a dozen gang members and two dozen more of their supporters and those who owed them something. Minara sucked at a strand of her tangled hair.

"You don't belong here! Go away!" one of the gang enforcers stood in front of the tall foreign lady and shouted at her. Sellers and costumers alike vanished from the market, ducking their heads and hitching up their clothing to run. 

"Why did you come?  You have no business here!" Another man made a fist at the lady.

Minara couldn't decide if she was really a lady or an oversized girl. Her face was unmarked and smooth. And her expression was one of interested amusement rather than exhaustion and fear. 

The overgrown girl turned around in a half circle, looking at the men who suddenly surrounded her and possibly looking for an escape, though she looked more confused than frightened. 

"Take her camera!" a voice called from back in the crowd. "See what kind of pictures she's been taking."

Minara stood up from behind her barrel and slipped between two of the men. She thought this lady or girl or whatever she was should not be here. The men were angry and it is never a good idea to make the men angry. Minara was now the only women around, and her mother had often told her that the oldest woman around was the one who had to take responsibility.

So, Minara reached out her slim hand and slipped it inside the hand of the strange lady just as the front line of men took a threatening step forward and two of them put their hands out to grasp at the camera.

The first man who had shouted--a gang leader, Minara knew--shifted his gaze down to the child. 

When Minara spoke her voice was a quiet rasp, but the man saw her lips move. "She's only lost. A silly girl."  

He stopped shouting and stood still. All the other men were looking at him and they stopped as well. The lady beside Minara jerked with sudden realization. Minara looked up and the lady's face was now full of fear. 

Minara gripped the hand more firmly and the lady looked her. Minara smiled and then tugged at the hand. 

"Come," Minara said. "Don't bother the men. You are so silly."

For a moment, Minara was not sure that the lady would follow her. Her feet were set and she was so large that no one except maybe all the gang men together was likely to move her. But then the foreign lady softened her hand and her face, ducked her head and docilely followed Minara like a wandered cow. 

The men said nothing. They only stared as the child led the strange woman away. 

An idea was quickly forming in Minara's mind. She knew now where to take the strange lady. Foreigners and especially tall, pale foreigners had money. She should show this foreigner the beggars and maybe she would give them money. Everyone would be happy then and there would be good luck. 

Minara led the lady through one street and then another. A few of the men followed them for a bit, but then they dropped back and another gaggle of children began trailing a few steps behind. They kept back this time. There was respect, since everyone could see that Minara had this one in hand. 

Photo by Arie Farnam

They soon approached the crowd around the blanket where a child who had been born deformed with only nobs for legs sat every day. The child was doing tricks, standing on his hands then turning in a circle and falling onto his stumps. A crowd had formed and people threw bits of food or the smallest coins onto the blanket, where a little girl collected them. 

Minara tugged at the lady's hand and she bent down from her great height. "Baby!" Minara squeaked over the noise of the crowd. 

The throng was too thick and tight for Minara to see much at all. But the tall lady went close to the edge of the crowd and peered over the heads of the tallest men. She backed up much more quickly than Minara expected though. Her face looked funny and she shook her head fiercely. 

"Baby! Money!" Minara told the tall lady. She must understand something. 

The lady put a hand inside her Kameez while turning her back on the men and after a moment she produced a coin. It was not the smallest coin, but enough to buy food for Minara's whole family. And to her shock the tall girl put the coin in Minara's hand. Then she looked again toward the crowd of men around the beggar's blanket. She did not seem to know what to do.

Minara smiled and gripped the coin firmly. She pressed between the legs of the men and crouched at the edge of the blanket. With great excitement she revealed her fist and then slowly opened it to show the coin. Everyone in the circle made a noise of approval. 

Minara flipped the coin off her fingers and onto the blanket in front of the smaller girl, who grabbed it immediately. And the child with no legs began a kind of dance, hopping from one stump to another. And then with a flick his hands he bounced up and flipped to stand on his hands again. Now he would do the best tricks. Minara had seen him do them plenty of times, but it was always fun. 

The foreign lady would like this, Minara thought.

She wiggled back between the men's legs to look for her strange charge. The lady was standing across the narrow alley, her back pressed against one of the shacks. 

"Come! You see baby play," MInara said, using simple words so that the lady would understand. She pulled the lady's hand again, trying to get her to come toward the circle.

But the overgrown girl shook her head and pulled back. This time Minara could feel how strong she was. She did not want to go near the crowd of men 

"Where?" MInara spread her hands to show that she did not know what the strange lady wanted.

The lady squatted down so that her face was the same height as Minara's. That made the smaller girl step back. No adult ever crouched down to her short height, let alone a foreigner who was normally so huge. But the lady's face looked kind, so Minara waited.

After a long time, the lady spoke--her words halting and clumsy in Bangla, "I see... Look me... your school?"

Minara didn't understand until the lady had said it three times, but when she did understand, she was happy to know what the lady wanted at last. She grasped the lady's hand again and pulled her down another street and around a few more corners until she arrived at the reading house, where a barefoot Imam taught the boys to read the Koran.

Minara patted the lady's hand to tell her to wait and then she hopped toward the school. It was one of very few full brick structures in the slums and the only one with a sort of second floor, but some of the walls had crumbled into rubble. If there had ever been glass windows, only empty window frames remained. Minara grabbed a hold of a window sill and boosted herself up. The imam looked up over his book at her with watery, surprised eyes.

Minara told him an America had come to see him and then she hopped back down and ran to stand behind the foreign lady. The imam came to the doorway with some of the boys he was teaching clustered around him. Their legs and arms showed their bones under the skin.

The foreign lady said a few words to the imam in her own language, but he did not understand her either. Finally the lady knelt down again to speak to Minara. "You go school here?" the lady asked, pointing directly at Minara's belly. 

Minara shook her head vigorously and the boys standing near enough to hear laughed. This did not make the lady happy either. She looked even more unhappy than she had with the baby that does tricks.

The lady seemed to think and then she asked "Where is your..." but Minara could not understand the word she used. It sounded like a word for a palace or one of the great houses of the rich. Minara knew she had no such thing. So she only shook her head.

Photo by Arie Farnam

The lady tried again, "Where is your mother?" 

Ah, this Minara could do! She called a farewell to the imam and started off down another alley. Soon they came to another little market and here the lady tugged at Minara's hand to stop her. She pointed to a pineapple on one of the carts. The seller jumped to attention, pulling out a plastic bag and putting the pineapple inside. The lady looked around as if searching for something. She put her fingers against her lips and whispered, "Yellow and orange, yellow and orange," In English, so that Minara did not understand. 

Finally she asked the seller for a bag of sweet potatoes and another of oranges and bunch of bananas. Then she pulled three coins out of her hidden pocket and gave them to the seller. The seller smiled at her, showing more holes than teeth. Minara wondered if this was finally what the foreign lady had come for, though she knew that some of the richer women of the slums worked for houses in the Embassy District and they had maids to do their shopping for them. 

But when she was finished the lady asked again about Minara's mother, so Minara continued on her way home. A few streets from her house, she glimpsed her little brother, completely naked and sitting by a trash heap. She chided him with a click of her tongue and he got up and toddled after Minara, too stunned to ask what his sister was doing with this large, orange monster. 

Finally they arrived at the little house where Minara lived with her mother, her brother and sister and her uncle who was odd in the head since he had a bad sickness as a child, so he could not go away to work in the factories with the other men. The house had three brick walls, which was better than most of the houses in the slums. Inside everything was neatly hung on pegs made from sticks whittled and stuck into the cracks. Minara was proud to show how she had cleaned up that morning. 

Her baby sister was there and uncle, but not her mother. The lady took a several photographs and then asked Minara about her mother again.

Minara motioned for the lady to follow and hurried behind the house to the brick yard just a short distance away. She knew her mother would be there. Many women and some children squatted in the brick yard, knocking bricks together with their hands to make the reddish gravel that the construction workers used in the Embassy District. 

After a few minutes of searching Minara called out and her little brother ran ahead. Their mother stood up slowly from her pile of bricks and gravel. Her eyes were tired but lovely to Minara. 

"What have you done now? What have you done?" her mother's words were more fearful than angry.

"It's okay, Mama," Minara said. "She is silly. I don't know why she is here."

Minara's mother turned and reached out her hand to touch the lady's knee. But the lady knelt down again, looking deep unto the mother's wrinkled face. 

"Good girl. Very good girl," the strange lady said, patting Minara on the shoulder. 

The mother's face broke into a delighted grin, showing that she had lost all of her teeth. 

The foreign lady put her hand on her own chest and spoke a strange name that Minara could not say. Her mother only continued to smile. 

"How old are you?" the strange lady asked the mother. But she did not understand the foreigner's broken Bangla. So Minara had to tell her mother the question again.

"Twenty six," Minara's mother finally said.

The lady's face when strange again, blank and troubled. Minara knew the look by now. She knew that it meant the lady was unhappy. 

"I am twenty three," the lady said at last. At least that was what Minara thought she said. If it was true than the lady really was not an overgrown girl at all. But how she could have such straight, white teeth and such a smooth face and be so old, Minara could not understand. 

The sun was getting low in the sky and after a while the lady started to walk back toward the muddy track to the Embassy District. Minara went with her, walking among the piles of bricks. Finally the lady stopped beside a rickshaw. She asked the rickshaw puller to take her to a street in the Embassy District. He nodded.

Then the lady turned to Minara and knelt down again.

"Go to school," she said. Her face still looked unhappy. but she tried to smile. 

She took paper money out of the pocket under her clothes and dropped it into the bag of fruit and sweet potatoes that she still carried. 

She stood up and said again, "Go to school." Then she looped the strings of the bag over Minara's hands so quickly that she couldn't do anything but grab the strings to keep from dropping the bag in the mud. Then the lady hopped into the seat of the rickshaw and the puller started off. 

Minara stood watching her leave, holding the bag with all the yellow and orange foods, whih contain the most vitamin A. She never knew why the strange lady had come. She did not even know about vitamin A or why so many children she knew went blind. She only knew that the things in the bag cost more than the rice to eat for a month.

That was twenty years ago.  If Minara is still alive, she is an old woman, haggard and bent. Now floods caused by the exhaust of cars, factories and cattle in distant countries drown the streets. Minara might have her eyesight at least. Maybe she has her own children who play at the edge of the flood waters and eat little bowls of rice. She almost certainly never went to school or left the slums, unless she was very lucky.

But her picture and her name are here someplace in the world of the rich. 

The threshold

(Short fiction)

"I just don't know." The girl with straight, honey hair, waved a hand toward the heavy window casements. "No one is going to care anyway. Why should we stand out there and get wet?"

Lori shifted in her chair, but she was done mentoring. They'd do what they'd do. 

Rain beat against the windows. Nate, the lanky ringleader of the group, lolled in his chair. "Look, we did what we had to. The Nazi won't be speaking on campus. Our message is that we've won."

Creative Commons image by Max We 

The talk shifted into plans for the weekend. Nate steered things that way and the other students, three girls and one other boy, followed his lead as usual. Every student group needed a faculty adviser and they had Lori. But advisers don't usually attend meetings. 

The group broke up and three of them got up to leave, while Rust and Kelly were giving each other looks and eyeing the back stacks speculatively.

"When's the next meeting," Lori asked Nate's back. 

He turned back around, black dreads swinging, and he looked apologetic. "Oh, sorry, Lori," he said. "I'll let you know. Maybe in a couple of weeks. See you on Twitter."

Then they were gone. Lori wheeled slowly toward the exit. The trek back to faculty housing was going to be soggy and cold. 

She stopped under the architectural overhang that made a dry spot at the front of the library. There must be a specific word for that, Lori thought.... Wait! No, that was Russian and not quite the right term anyway. It was the English word she wanted.

She chuckled at her own nerdy preoccupation. Who but a linguistics professor would care? 

The poster caught her eye. It had a huge anarchy A scrawled and circled over it. But the black block letters underneath were still clear. "White lives matter in America the great! Pastor Author Cox at the Washington Park Center at 5:00 pm on Saturday, November 25."

The poster had been torn down and replaced dozens of times and there were still soggy remnants of the previous posters pressed into the wet sidewalk around the library entrance. Well, Nate's Anti-racist Alliance had managed to keep the speech off of campus at least.

Cox was a national figure and there was talk of a Senate race in 2018. This was the man who said insurance companies should be "encouraged" to deny people with disabilities coverage,  until all books mentioning evolution were stripped from America's classrooms. After all, his argument went, evolution would require all the disabled to die as soon as possible.

Lori put her hat on and tucked the collar of her jacket up before wheeling out into the drumming rain. The cold drops splashed on her head, on her shoulders and on her thighs. She turned down Baker street. Four blocks. That was all and she could always change into a new outfit. A different kind of thoughts clamored at the back of her mind, but she had a thick wall up against them.

She had her head down so that she didn't see the truck drawn up to the convenience store until she was just ten feet from it. She stopped. There was no sign of life, no loaders or unloaders at the back. And the space between the truck and the shop was too narrow for her chair. Lori eyed the street--cars speeding by on four lanes, dirty water spouting from their wheel wells. Better to wait than to go out into the street in an attempt to get around the truck. Wait and get progressively more soaked.

Then she spotted the bus shelter. Okay, make the best of a bad situation.

She wheeled under it and stopped. Rain rattled on the fiberglass roof and a damp chill sank into Lori's limbs. This wasn't the life she'd always imagined. She'd had high hopes for travel, activism and a different kind of career. Everyone had said she could and would do it. And there was no specific reason why not. She and her chair had traveled for exchange programs--Russia, Germany, the UK, even a short stint in Egypt. And a doctorate in linguistics and a career as a professor were nothing to be sneered at. But there were moments...

The hiss and rumble of a large vehicle pulling up startled Lori. Before she could get herself turned around the doors were open and the wheelchair lift was buzzing out of it's nook against the wall of the bus.

Damn it! She'd only been hiding from the rain in the bus shelter, waiting for that damn truck, which still hadn't budged. She rolled out of the shelter, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver and shaking her head in the rain. This would be just her luck and the next time he saw her, that driver might gripe about putting the ramp down. 

"Addison, Washington Park, Central..." the line of electronic orange text scrolled across the panel on the side of the bus. 

Lori stopped rolling, stopped shaking her head.

Okay... this was weird. Were the "powers that be" trying to tell her something? Or was this day just trying to outdo the standard end-of-November drear?

What the hell! Clothes dry.

She yanked on the left wheel and spun toward the ramp. It bumped down and she rolled into position. The driver jumped out and ran around to check the clamps. Lori wished he wouldn't. She could actually clamp them herself. But she guessed there were regulations. They couldn't have wheelchairs rolling off the ramp when it was two feet off the ground. Just the thought of the lawsuits. 

"You're brave, lady," he croaked, grinning up at her from a weathered dark-brown face, "coming out here in all this weather. Where're you going?"

"Thank you so much, sir," Lori said and tried to give him her most winning smile. "Washington Park, if you don't mind. I know it's only two stops but--"

"No problem, no problem. Don't you worry about that, ma'am." He gave the lift a pat and headed back around to the front, his uniform already damp. 

The bus was nearly empty and the heat was on so high that the windows were completely steamed over. Still, the moisture in Lori's clothes did nothing but warm slightly in the eight minutes before the lift started buzzing again at Washington Park. She thanked the driver and ducked her head against the wind. It was too bad they hadn't scheduled the Cox speech for the park itself. If anything constituted inclement weather, this would be it. 

The Center, a conference building owned by the Chamber of Commerce, was on the other side of the park and across a major street. But there were curb cuts at least and the light was still good. She was a whole hour and a quarter early after all.

The students had a permit for a protest in the park across from the Center. She could theoretically position herself there, Lori realized, and be perfectly legal. Except she hadn't actually planned on coming, so she didn't have a sign or an umbrella with her... only maybe a yellow notepad in her backpack. She and the pad would be soaked in minutes out here. 

She crossed at the light and turned up the sidewalk toward the glassed entrance to the building. It had one of those turning doors but at least it was a big one, one her chair could theoretically move through, if she kept turning exactly right. She managed it with little more than bruised knuckles. Inside there was a long entrance with potted plants and at the far end a desk.

Lori wasn't sure what exactly she was going to do. She thought she should be nervous. She could end up in trouble with the university administration. They had been warned that protesters who crossed the street, let alone entered the building, would be arrested.

She put that wall up agaom. She would not care. Some part of her could not let this bigot speak in her town without a protest registered. He was a prominent member of the KKK. He advocated the most hateful positions possible and there were two large student groups on campus that supported him and planned to attend. 

"May I help you?" the trim woman with tasteful make-up and short brown hair leaned over the counter.

"I'm a little early," Lori said. "It's at five, isn't it? That's just how the buses run."

"You're here for the talk?" The woman sounded like she didn't believe a word of it. 

"Why not? White lives matter, right? Wheels or not," Lori said, and put on the same smile she'd given the bus driver. Smiles are cheap. 

"Okay, have it your way," the receptionist sighed.

Cox was to talk in the main conference hall. Lori had been there several times for off-campus events. She didn't really know why she had come, except she had some vague idea that she would go in and sit quietly. Then she would start yelling during the beginning of the speech. Security would haul her our. Not a big deal, but she would at least answer him in some symbolic way. She could not bear to be silent.

When she turned into the main hallway behind the reception area there were three police officers talking at the other end. Of course, the police would be on hand. Nate and his friends had a permit to protest after all, even though they weren't going to use it.

Lori stopped to examine the notice board, which was covered with the shiny brochures of local businesses and several not so local corporations. The officers finished their conversation and walked toward her and then past. One stopped. She could feel him behind her, hear his breathing. But he said nothing and eventually followed the others. Was it her wheelchair, she wondered, or her rumpled jacket?

The hallway was empty again but she heard a murmur of voices. She rolled quietly toward the door to the conference hall. It was cracked open, and there were several men inside. She was surprised. Cox was one of them. An hour early? Maybe he'd come to check the venue. She recognized one of the faculty from the university, a political science professor who had promoted Ayn Rand ten years ago. She didn't know the others.

There were double doors but not too wide. The doors themselves and the frame were both made of carved oak, and old fashioned glass had been fitted into small diamond windows on either side. It was a handsome entrance, the only one, except for a fire escape at the back, she recalled. Despite the new glass facade, most of the building was old and well-preserved. Lori recalled the fight over accessibility at the Washington Park Center when the building was remodeled...  was it fifteen years already? The fire escape was still marginal.

It was the easiest thing in the world at first. The door was only cracked open three inches. She just reached out and shut it. 

Creative Commons image by Roger H Goun

Click.

That was all. But the two handles... they could be bound together...

The bike lock hung on a clamp from the side of her chair--mostly for safety, not so much for locking up the wheelchair, although she could get up and walk a few steps, if painfully. 

A swift loop around the door handles and then through the spokes of a wheel.. 

Click. Again. 

The key was on her key ring, tucked in the inside pocket of her jacket. But she didn't even need it to close the lock.

"Hey! What are you--?" A harsh shout from down the hallway. One of the police officers was striding toward her, but his words cut off in a snarl. 

Lori glanced up at him. Her face relaxed. This would do. Yes, it would do very well.

She lowered a hand and engaged the safety brake on the chair. The officer stared at her with blue-gray eyes. A bit of gray showed at his temples too. but his neck was turning red, as were the corners of his eyes. 

He stepped a bit closer, craning his neck to see the bike lock. "Unfasten that immediately and clear the doorway." It was a cold order but there was an edge to it. He did not want this to happen.

Lori's face didn't change.

A fist hammered on the inside of the door and the handle moved. The door opened a crack and the chair jerked against it. Lori braced herself a little better but the doors stopped on the lock.

"Just a moment," the officer said more loudly. "I'll get a saw." 

"There's a fucking moron chained to the door," a voice said on the other side of the door. Lori peeked and glimpsed the profile of the Alt-Right faculty member on the other side of one of the windows out of the corner of her eye.

"I'll gladly see you arrested," the police officer hissed at Lori. Then he stalked off down the hallway.

It took longer than she'd thought, at least fifteen minutes, for the officers to come back. The curses and threats from the other side of the door had died down. Lori had managed to get her backpack and pull out a sharpie and a piece of paper from the legal pad.

She wrote, "Don't dishonor your ancestors." It was the sort of slogan a linguistics professor and lapsed Wiccan turning Reconstructionist would come up with. Most people wouldn't even understand it. Lori didn't really care.

But it wasn't the blue, gray and red officer who returned. This one was black.

He walked down the hallway with measured firm steps and stopped in front of her. She held the makeshift sign by two corners, her face schooled into calm. 

"We could arrest you for this, you know," the officer said in the placating voice some people employ when talking to a person in a wheelchair. He was big and his uniform was dark, like a looming cloud threatening rain. 

I'm already plenty wet, Lori thought.

He shifted from foot to foot. "I don't want to do that."

She tried not to smile. She tried. But finally the flicker of it came onto her face.

"I don't want you to either," she said. 

"You can't block this door," he said. "For one thing, it's a fire hazard." A hand reached up to massage the short hair on the back of his head.

"There's a fire exit," she said.

"That's not up to code if there is only one exit with an audience of two hundred in there," he said.

"They aren't in there though," she said. "There were only four in there last time I looked."

"You still can't block it. It's private property," the officer said.

He didn't look happy but Lori sensed that he wasn't angry like the other officer. She wondered what he really thought. It couldn't be much fun being black and defending the free speech rights of a man who said Christianity belongs to white people and who wanted to turn the United Sates into a white, Christian ethno-state. He hadn't said publicly how that should be accomplished, what should be done with all the black and brown people, but still...

"The city isn't private property and this speech pollutes our city," Lori said. "I may have to sit down for it but I won't take it lying down." She raised the "Don't dishonor your ancestors" sign an inch. 

"I don't want to arrest you, ma'am," the officer said. "But you've got to unlock that thing and leave."

"I don't see how you're going to saw the lock off without damaging the door or my chair or injuring me," Lori said. "Someone will end up suing you."

He gave her a flat look. She wondered if he would take offense. She had as good as threatened a cop with a lawsuit. They don't generally take kindly to that.

"We could have you carried out," the officer said.

"I insist that male officers don't touch my body for search or any other reason," she said. "That's my right."

"What's the hold up, Wheeler?" the harsh voice of the blue, gray and red cop lashed down the hallway. 

The black officer knitted his brows and gave Lori a distinctly disgruntled stare. Then he walked off toward the other cop and they disappeared around the corner. 

A few minutes later the first patrons arrived, trickling into the hallway and staring at Lori. A bored-looking local TV reporter walked around at the end of the hallway. No one spoke to Lori or came close enough for her to start a conversation. She continued to sit, holding her paper sign on her lap.

Finally the hallway was crowded except for a tense space around Lori. The people hoping to attend the white supremacist speech were all white and mostly young. There were twice as many men as women, but still far more women than Lori had imagined. Their language, whether muttered among themselves or hurled at Lori was crude and tired. She didn't store any of it for future reference.

The door at Lori's back rattled several times and the curses emanating from beyond the oak were growing more urgent and frenzied. 

After some minutes the two police officers returned, pushing a hospital-issue wheelchair through a narrow gap in the crowd. The white officer smirked and folded his arms, standing in front of the crowd. The black officer pushed the chair forward, his head down. He put the chair next to Lori and then squatted down beside her.

"Ma'am, there are no female officers available at the moment. You have to move and I have to move you or..." He spoke low enough that his voice wouldn't carry in the crowded hallway but he made a small jerk of his head. 

Lori watched him for a moment. His face was unhappy, his shoulders slumped. No, she decided, this was no fun at all for him. 

A fist beat slow and hard against the door behind Lori's head. Author Cox's words followed it in a plodding rhythm. "You're scum! The police... are idiots... in this town. How long... does it take... to arrest... one parasitic... bitch?

"You have children don't you?" Lori leaned forward so the cop could hear her low voice over the racket..

He nodded. "Two." His eyes and his tone of voice had both chanced. All direct now. He looked right at her. 

"And they need a father with a job," she guessed. She handed him the yellow paper sign and he held it awkwardly for a second. Then she nodded and he folded it into fourths.

She braced her hands on the arms of her chair. "You'll still have to cut the lock, you know," she said.

She got to her feet, wobbled unsteadily for a second. The officer put his arm out, like a bar in front of her, not touching her but steady as iron. She gripped it for support and moved a step, then another sideways and sank into the hospital-issue chair. 

The officer took out his tools and started to work on the lock, the high-pitched whine of the saw drowning out the epithets of the crowd and the pounding behind the door. The television camera came close, ignored Lori, and focused on the image of the officer cutting the lock.

It aired on TV that night. A minor incident. One unnamed and unpictured protester blocked the door against two hundred right-wing supporters of Author Cox and was forcibly removed by police. 

Writer-to-writer critique: the boot camp of the craft

The simple technique that will teach you to write better than any other method, class or book

For as long as there have been story-tellers, we have commented on one another's work. Writers, poets and bards alike--we are a mouthy bunch.

Sometimes these comments have taken the form of criticism, ridicule, jealousy or insult. And many writers and story-tellers have been greatly harmed by the comments of others, suffering blows to confidence and motivation. 

Creative Commons image by Robert Couse-Baker

And yet, the comments of fellow writers can contain gold. I know of no other way to learn the craft of writing faster or better than through the sincere cooperation between two or more writers. And based on the comments of some of my favorite famous authors, it seems clear that no writer is ever "beyond critique" or at a level where the comments of colleagues can no longer help. 

Critique--the term used to differentiate constructive criticism from tearing down another writer--isn't just useful. If done correctly it can also provide great motivation and pleasure. It is very rare that anyone, other than another writer, wants to discuss in detail the ins and outs of your writing project.

Even your most avid readers (and your immediate family) are likely to grow weary of your writerly obsessions. This isn't that different from any other profession. My husband and his buddies can bore me to tears with endless technical discussions about surveying and cartography. (Just measure it and draw a line already! What is the big deal?)

My husband assures me that even though I think my profession is creative, vastly more fun and endlessly interesting, he finds long conversations on the finer points of writing just as boring. And this is why we need fellow writers. 

While the practical method of writer-to-writer critique may be well-known and may in fact seem intuitive to many, I have found that parts of it strike fear in new writers or lead others to abuse the trust and claim authority they don't have. Beyond that readers often don't understand the tenants of the system through which their favorite books, movies and TV shows are made. 

It is worth setting down the rules for critique. This is a starting point for writers' groups as well as useful information for everyone involved in the process.

1. There are skills that can be learned in writing. Experience is to be respected.

2. At the same time, a writer of any level can usefully critique the writing of a writer of any other level. The critique may have different uses, but even the critique of a novice can be helpful to an open-minded master. It is at the very least the honest impression of a reader. No such critique should be dismissed out of hand or ridiculed. 

3. Critique may be done for compensation, in trade or simply in good faith. Critique does not have to be reciprocal but the terms should be agreed upon in advance. Critique is always of value, even if it is not compensated in which case it is a valuable gift of time and attention.

4. On average, about seventy percent of comments in any given critique will be useful or pertinent to the writer. No writer is obligated to agree with or to use suggestions made by a critique partner. 

5. Rules of grammar and style vary geographically, culturally and between genres. Arguments about the absolute correctness of a change have limited use. It is worth stating clear reasons for one's belief. Style and grammar guidebooks are useful sources. However, in the end the final decision of rightness in the given context is the prerogative of the entity taking responsibility for publication--be that a publisher or a self-publishing author. 

6. Differences of opinion are inevitable. There is no single best POV, tense, voice, distance or style. Intentional grammatical errors are not illegal and have their uses. Questions over dialogue tags are a matter of continued debate. It is worth listening to writers of long experience, but in the end each must form one's own path. Insults do not become us. 

7. Keep in mind that, as in any creative profession, a minimum experience of ten thousand hours of active writing is considered the initiation level for a professional. However, this line is arbitrary and denotes only a level of experience, not the rightness of one's arguments or the marketability of one's work.

8. By the same token, what is correct and most seemly in writing is not always what is most marketable. Each writer has his or her own goals for writing and it is not the place of a critique partner to judge, only to give the most honest advice that individual can give.

9. We all have biases. I love first person narratives. I recently met a fellow author who hates first person. It's just personal taste. We can't help but have such biases and when we read the work of other writers those biases will get in the way. The more aware you are of your own biases the more useful your critique will be. When unable to entirely get past biases it is worth stating that you are biased on a particular issue, so that the writer can keep that in mind. That said, completely avoiding critique partners with biases against your POV or stylistic choices can weaken your writing. Remember that readers have biases too and our goal is hone our craft in every way possible.

10. Critique means honest advice to improve a piece of writing. Pure and simple. That can mean spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, voice, plot or description advice and more. It does not ever mean judgment upon the abilities or prospects of the writer. That is beyond the bounds and is never an appropriate topic for comment. 

A peek inside the Beltane story: Shanna and the Water Fairy

Readers have been waiting a whole year for the next installment of Shanna's story. Words fall quick but the pictures to make a story come fully alive take more time. 

Still the wait has been worth it. The third Shanna book has the most beautiful illustrations yet and a story that will keep kids breathless for each succeeding chapter--judging from my experience reading it out loud. 

This time eleven-year-old Shanna discovers a hidden spring on the city waste land behind her new school. When she learns that the spring and the pocket paradise of trees and flowers around it is to be bulldozed to make way for a new shopping mall, Shanna is horrified. Not only is the spring a beautiful place and the water is sorely needed to help irrigate the soccer field and school playground, she's also pretty sure there is something--or someone--magical about the spring.

After Shanna writes a letter of protest to the local newspaper, she and her eight-year-old brother Rye get a glimpse of the grown-up world of city politics. They learn about activism and how committed individuals can make a difference in a community. In the midst of it, they share the celebration of Beltane with their friends from many cultures and help to spread the love and passion for justice that infuses this special day.

While this is the third book in the Children's Wheel of the Year series and readers of the other books will recognize the main characters, the book can easily be read on its own. It is a real-world adventure story for kids who care about their community, their friends and the earth. 

Now with no further ado, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Shanna and the Water Fairy . If you would like to see how this story appears on a Kindle, you can click on the orange button to go directly to an Amazon Kindle preview of the book. No app or other download required.

Chapter One: The Spring

Shanna grasped the rough rock and pulled with all of her strength. She gulped in a great lung-full of the rich spring air and heaved herself over the last boulder just ahead of Rohan, Ella and Rebecca. 

“Queen of the mountain!” she chortled as she spun in a circle and waved her arms in the warm, free air.

Her friends pulled themselves up and collapsed giggling on the rock beside her. 

“You’re too fast!” Ella puffed, as she sucked on a scraped finger.

“I’ll beat you next time,” Rohan laughed as he pretended to tackle Shanna’s foot.

“You kids be careful on those rocks,” their teacher’s voice floated up to them from the trees below. “There could be rattlesnakes.”

“I think we’re making enough noise to scare away the rattlesnakes, Mrs. Baker,” Rebecca called down. “And you said we were supposed to find as many different kinds of rocks as possible.”

“Well, did you find any new rocks while you were scaling the mountain?” Mrs. Baker’s voice sounded like she was chuckling now. 

“I think so,” Rohan called down and he held up a speckled rock. “This might be granite.”
Another group of kids came running out of the trees to show Mrs. Baker their new rocks. They were led by a girl with light brown hair. She was Brandy, the most popular girl in the fifth grade. And she didn’t like Shanna. If she was entirely honest with herself, Shanna had to admit that she didn’t like Brandy either. 

But looking down from way up on the rocks, Brandy looked small and Shanna thought about how her new school wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. Mrs. Baker, her class teacher, was a lot of fun. She had gray hair, but she still loved to go on field trips, and she found a way to do a lot of lessons outside—even math. 

This warm spring day they were collecting rocks for science. It was also for math though, because Mrs. Baker said they would be practicing percentages and graphs once they gathered all of the different kinds of rocks they could find on the waste land behind the school. 

The waste land was a long, low hill that ran up from the back of the soccer field through brush and rocks and a few scraggly trees to the new River View Condos. It wasn’t really a park and there was litter here and there among the boulders and water-starved trees, but Mrs. Baker said they had to learn as much as they could from it before it got bulldozed. 

Ella and Rebecca started looking for more rocks, walking up the gradual hill behind the Queen of the Mountain boulders. Shanna followed them at first, but then she saw dark green rocks down in a little gully under some particularly nice trees, so she slipped and slid her way down. 

As she got close she heard a splashing sound like water hitting a rock. Was someone pouring out their water bottle? What else would make that sound out here?

Shanna looked in among the trees. They didn’t look very high down in the gully, but they were actually bigger and less scraggly than most of the other trees on the wasted land. 

The whole country here was pretty dry and trees didn’t grow in big forests the way they had where Shanna used to live. There was usually just one or two trees together. But in this little gully there was a whole clump and the grass around them was lush and green. Out on the open hillside the grass was already turning yellow from the dry heat, even in April. Mrs. Baker called it a “drought.” 

Curious, Shanna stepped closer. In the little hollow under the trees the air smelled wetter. And the grass beneath her feet was brilliant green. Shanna saw something sparkle and flutter in among the trees. Maybe a butterfly.

She climbed over some big rocks and slipped in between the trunks of the trees. And there behind the trees were more flowers than she had ever seen outside a flower shop. Red, purple, yellow, blue, orange… They hung down the rocks and covered the ground under the trees.

Shanna looked around for the butterfly and there were at least ten of them, flitting in and out of the sunlight and shade. She was about to call out for her friends to come and see the beautiful scene, but something stopped her. 

One of the butterflies was different. It seemed to glow against the shadows under the trees and Shanna couldn’t see it right. It didn’t even look like a butterfly exactly, but it wouldn’t hold still so she couldn’t get a good look at it.

Instead it zipped back and forth as if showing Shanna the way forward. It dipped first at Shanna and then back further into the trees. Shanna walked carefully now, trying not to step on all the beautiful flowers. The air in the little grove of trees was sweet with the smell of them—almost overwhelming, so it made Shanna dizzy. 

And maybe she was just dizzy when she looked up from her feet again and stared. 

There in front of her was an even more amazing image. Flowers with delicate dew-speckled petals hung down all over a wall of boulders. And the rocks weren’t really dark green like Shanna had thought. Instead they were covered with thick, wet moss.

And out of a crack there came a sparkling trickle of crystal clear water. It leaped and splashed down the rocks below and filled a little pool, before trickling under the roots of a big tree and disappearing back into the ground. It wasn’t a stream exactly, because it just went back into the ground.

But that wasn’t even why Shanna stared. Right in the middle above the sparkling pool was her butterfly. But Shanna was sure for a wonderful, dizzy second that it wasn’t just a butterfly. It had the shape of a person with wings and it shone with a turquoise light. Its wings were violet purple like the flowers and its hair was a deep blue green. Shanna couldn’t see it much better than that.

Then it winked a deep greenish-brown eye at her and dove straight down into the water. In a flash and a sparkle of drops, it was gone. 

“Ella! Rebecca! Rohan! Come quick!” Shanna cried over her shoulder, too startled and amazed to rethink her shout. 

She dropped to her knees on the mossy rock by the pool of water and looked around as carefully as she could. Where had it gone? 

Had she seen what she thought she’d seen? A butterfly? Or… could it really be… a fairy? A real fairy?

The other kids came panting into the grove of trees with thudding footsteps muffled by the grass, and Shanna didn’t see it anymore whatever it was. She thought then that she shouldn’t have yelled, but it was too exciting.

“Wow! This is a really cool place,” Rohan said, looking around at the trees, the climbing and hanging flowers, and the little pool. “Good find, Shanna.” He grinned and ran a hand over one of the tree trunks.

“It’s like it called to me,” Shanna said, still caught in the feeling of wonder.

A children's book for water protectors

Last spring, before I had heard of Standing Rock, I wrote the first draft of Shanna and the Water Fairy -- a story to foster the innate passion of children for social and ecological justice. 

If you don't want your child to become an environmental activist, you might not want to let her or him read this book. 

It's part of the Children's Wheel of the Year series, but as with all of these books, Shanna and the Water Fairy can be read as a stand-alone adventure story. This time Shanna, an eleven-year-old girl in a typical American school, discovers a hidden spring on city waste land that is slated to be bulldozed and turned into a new shopping mall.

The spring is tucked away in a rocky gully--a pocket oasis of flowers, lush ferns and life in the midst of a dry drought-stricken land. It's a tiny, seasonal spring overlooked by the construction project's environmental report. Yet Shanna discovers something magical. 

A guardian resides in the spring, a mysterious changeable being or perhaps a real-live fairy. Shanna and her brother Rye decide the spring and its magical patron must be protected. They learn the first steps in local activism and find support in their community, while creating a homemade Beltane celebration of spring that brings together families of various faiths.

I come from dry, semi-desert country and I understood water as precious since early childhood. Shanna and the Water Fairy was born out of that deeply-rooted relationship to the land and water. As a young teen, I fought for a small spring in the dry mountains of Eastern Oregon.

The active protection of home, land and life is in no way beyond the comprehension of children. And in today's world that can often mean defending water.

This time the Shanna books turn to a topic that is by no means limited to earth-based and Pagan holidays and the themes they teach. Shanna and the Water Fairy is a book that celebrates Beltane and the fiery passions that are stirred by both love and war. But it does so with characters from a wide variety of faiths and in the context of a community effort spearheaded by a child.

Painting by Julie Freel

As I edited the book and Julie Freel prepared illustrations over the past year, test readers often remarked that I had written a good book in response to the events at Standing Rock. At first I was confused. There is very little  in the story that is similar to the story of Standing Rock. The activist is far from native to the area, the struggle is purely local and its only tie to the vast tides of politics and climate change is the implied reason for the on-going drought.

But as the year went on I came to see why the book left test readers with a feeling of connection to Standing Rock and new energy for community action. It is a different event and the spring came from my own childhood, but in the end this book, my long-ago spring and Standing Rock are all part of the same story.

The earth is our home. We need the earth, the land, the air, the water, the trees... Beltane or May Day, the passion of the young--it is all tied to this. If anyone is to be a warrior today, the obvious pledge of allegiance is to the earth, our home and our source of life.

How to write dialogue readers will devour

When we read, what we really want is human speech--yelling, chatting, laughing, screaming. The reader's heart yearns for companionship and adrenaline.

If you can bamboozle the reader into the fictive dream and give them fantastic conversation within it, they'll never want to leave.

Good dialogue can be achieved by following some basic rules. Excellent, grab'em-by-the-pituitary-gland-and-never-let-go dialogue takes preparation. 

Creative Commons image by Lorena Cupcake

Here are the basic rules:

1. Dialogue needs to be less formal than narration, even when it is between formal adults. Vocabulary should reflect spoken vocabulary, which is about one fifth of a character's reading vocabulary. You will not make your character sound dumb by having them use normal words. Overly formal dialogue with sentences too complete and words beyond the natural spoken vocabulary level of the type of character is the most common dialogue mistake by beginning writers.
2. Reread lines of dialogue out loud and see if they sound natural. Use incomplete sentences, pauses, vague terms, extreme specifics and poor grammar where it is obvious that they would be used in real speech. But within reason! Dialogue must first and foremost be familiar and real to the reader. 
3. Keep dialogue lines short. Most dialogue should be one sentence or less. Occasionally use two or three short sentences max unless your point is that the character is going on and on. And even then be cautious. Who wants to read in detail about a character giving a lecture?
4. Dialogue should be more coherent and more concise than real speech. But remember "all things in moderation."
5. Speech differences, slang and accents can be hinted at but do not change every word or sentence to match the difference or your text will become unreadable. Mark Twain was an incredible linguist and even so many readers have a very hard time deciphering his dialogue. Don't try this at home, folks. 
6. Avoid obvious phrases of greetings and pleasantries unless you're emphasizing them to develop cultural setting (and even then do so sparingly). If two characters meet and each says "Hello, how are you?" hint that they did so in narration. Don't spell it out unless you have a damn good reason.
7. "Late in, early out" applies because conversations are essentially scenes. Enter the conversation as late as possible while still giving all necessary information and leave as early as possible. Don't drag the reader through extraneous scaffolding.
8. No "as you know, John" please! Do not have a character tell another character something both should logically know already simply in order to tell it to the reader. There are better ways to get facts across.
9. And along with that last, don't "info dump" in dialogue. Work it in. Yes, "work" is the operative verb here. It is hard but it can be done. Information contained in dialogue must be primarily that which is natural for one character to tell another, not things the reader needs to know. Information for the reader can be contained in narration, setting and most importantly the behavior of characters.
10. A note on tags: Mostly use the word "said." This is the exception to the rule you learned in high school language arts about using varied vocabulary and the most specific verb possible. The word "said" is almost invisible. Readers will simply understand who said something. Use other tags such as "stated," "argued," "cried" sparingly and only with good reason.
11. A note on not using tags at all: In moderation, the tags can be cut altogether in some modern styles, especially in two-way conversations. As a general rule, tag the first lines of each character and then allow them to switch off. However, don't create strings of tag-less dialogue more than four switch-offs long. It forces readers to calculate rather than read. Try reading the dialogue aloud in a monotone and see if you would be confused about who is talking. The point is not to make the reader work. Readers are supposed to be in the fictive dream. Period.
12. A note on actions as tags:  An even more advanced trick is to do away with standard tags involving "said" or an equivalent and use action and expression sentences instead. The key is to leave no doubt who is speaking without actually saying it. Example:  She ducked her head, looking at him out of the corner of her left eye. "I don't know. Do you think we should?" He coughed and spots of pink bloomed on his neck. "I... I..."
13. On that note, consider the narration sprinkled in with the dialogue to be part of the dialogue itself. There have been some experiments with "dry dialogue," meaning using only the actual spoken lines without any indication of the character's actions or expressions. Usually these experiments also rely on a minimum of tag lines and they fail spectacularly. I'm not saying don't experiment, but gaining readers through this kind of experiment is equivalent to winning the lottery. It's extremely unlikely but writers do it anyway because experimenting is how everything good got invented.  When you're done experimenting and ready to write a story, make sure your dialogue includes lines of action. It is best if something is happening in the plot while the characters are speaking. But if your characters must have a conversation in which they are mostly just sitting there, you still need actions and the more sedentary the characters are the more detailed the actions need to be. Show the minute motions of hands, a flicker of emotion or picture what your character is reaching for. Watch people talk in real life. Very few people just sit motionless while they talk and if they did we would definitely notice it and put that in narration.
14. Use the time warp. Finally, there is a strange sort of time warp that happens in fictional dialogue. Usually it means time passes more quickly in the story than the lines of dialogue can account for. Let's say ten minutes passes in your fictional world while your characters have a leisurely conversation. That conversation will probably only be four to five dialogue lines long. You then assert that ten minutes passed and the reader will feel like ten minutes really did pass. The exception would be if there is extreme tension, such as characters waiting for a timed bomb to explode in their faces. In that case a lot more than four or five dialogue lines will be noted. It has to do with the attention to detail in a suspenseful situation. Subconsciously readers know that in a scene without life-and-death tension  you aren't reporting every motion or word spoken to them. They expect you to tell only the important parts. But in a scene in which utter disaster and/or death is imminent, you are expected to tell much more. Doing that well is a matter of maintaining tension, however, and that's another post entirely.

That's how you write tolerably good dialogue. But if you want to write sizzling, page-burner dialogue, you'll need more and the ingredients are difficult to put into hard and fast rules. This is more about preparation of the writer than it is about a list of tips.

First, read a ton of the type of fiction you want to write and other types of fiction as well (for balance and perspective). Pay attention to the dialogue. When you really love some dialogue, stop and analyze it. Look at how long the dialogue lines are, what kind of phrases they use, if they use any complete sentences.

Think about the characters you most love in fiction and go through books, looking specifically at their lines of dialogue. Dialogue is much of what makes character. Observe how the character speaks. Is it consistent?  Again, what types of phrases and sentence structures does the character you love use?

Take note of these things either in your brain or on paper and keep reading and noticing. In time, the simple act of paying attention will improve your writing.

Creative Commons image by Jason Lander

Record conversations and listen to them. Today in the world of smart-phones this has never been easier. Record a family argument. Record a boring meeting. Record your friends hanging out and shooting the shit. Then transcribe some conversations. Write down EXACTLY word for word what was said. Include all the messy stuff, um's... repetitions, confusion. Notice how simple the vocabulary is and how incomplete the sentences are.

Then take those transcriptions and change the statements to make them as short as possible while still containing all the important information. Remove repetitions. Leave sentence fragments and a few important pauses that carry meaning. Clean up the grammar just enough to make it understandable. Do this for as many hours as possible. The awesomeness of your dialogue will be in direct proportion to how many hours of transcription you do. 

Then before you sit down to write a scene of dialogue, sit back and imagine it. Close your eyes if necessary and play it like a movie in your head. At first this will not be easy. The better you know your characters and the emotional undercurrents going on at that moment in your plot, the easier it will be. But keep at it.

The first dialogues with new characters may need revision later, but don't worry about it. Do the best you can with your mind-movie in the beginning. Play it out.

Then write. If you can, let your mind hear the voice of the character as you write the line of dialogue. If your brain doesn't do that, reread the lines as yo go, imagining your character's voice and the expression on their face and on the faces of those listening. Get the emotion of the moment in your own head, even if it is hidden between the lines of a constrained setting or repressed by formal characters. 

Finally, after you have written the dialogue go back over it in editing and read it aloud. Try reading it in a monotone and ensure that you still know who is supposed to be speaking by context, tags and word choice. Also read it with a semblance of the voices and emotion appropriate to the scene. Does it sound realistic? Do people of that type actually talk this way?

If the answer is "No, but I want them to talk this way," you need have a long talk with yourself about what your goals in writing are. If you want to create dialogue that will reach out and grab your readers and hold on with unbreakable tentacles, then you've got to face the fact that readers will read what puts them into the fictive dream. And that dream is broken when characters sound fake. No if's, and's or but's about it. 

If the answer is "I don't know," go back to the beginning of the preparation. The problem may be that you don't have enough experience with people in whatever specific cultural, age or professional category you're writing about. Start specifically reading stories about people of the type your characters are. Analyze how they talk. Let it absorb into you. If possible, record some conversations involving people of the type you are writing about. Transcribe. Keep doing it and great dialogue will come. I promise.

This method works. You may have to modify bits of it to suit the way your own brain works, but in essence this is it. Dialogue is very particular. To be good, it has to follow some pretty strict rules. To be spectacular, it needs to make the reader forget they are reading and feel like they are in the conversation. That takes time, practice and quite a bit of intuition. 

Best wishes and keep writing!

A story of cultural and religious diversity for the spring equinox

The gift of a friend,
The promise of the pentacle,
A new beginning…
And the courage to stand your ground.

Shanna and the Pentacle is a story for earth-centered families to share the wonder of renewal and rebirth. The spring equinox (Ostara) is a time for buds and shoots, for the smell of wet earth and for asserting your true self. A new beginning can be hard but it’s worth it after all.

Ten-year-old Shanna and eight-year-old Rye are starting out at a new school just before Ostara. A teacher notices Shanna’s pentacle necklace and asks her to take it off. Brandy, a popular girl, says Shanna is going to “hell” and Rye has his own trouble with kids who say boys don’t draw or sing. Still the magic of Ostara is at work. Shanna and Rye are learning to enjoy the cultural diversity of their new school and help comes from unexpected sources.

Like Shanna and Rye, children from earth-centered families often stand out in mainstream society. Without strong identity and confidence, they struggle to choose their own path. The Children’s Wheel of the Year books provide concepts our kids need to face these challenges.

And they are a lot of fun. I never had kids get their teeth brushed this fast for story-time before we had these books. Thanks, Julie Freel, for the great illustrations that make it all possible!

If you only read one thing to survive the Trump presidency...

read this.

Love Trumps hate.

This contemporary fantasy thriller predicted the revolt of park rangers, the politics of hate and the brainwashing of a nation more than two years ago. It's fiction with an eery ring of truth.

A story of friendship across borders and resistance against a modern tyranny, this series packs a powerful punch. 

Five stars from Amazon reviews.

Get ebooks and paperbacks:

Book 1: The Soul and the Seed

Book 2:  The Fear and the Solace

Book 3: The Taken and the Free

Book 4: Code of the Outcast

Book 5: Path of the Betrayer

Books for kids and families: February 2017

Ten-year-old Shanna has an uneasy feeling about the stranger her seven-year-old brother Rye met on way home from school.

Is she just a silly chicken or is this what Momma calls intuition?

Then Shanna and Rye are disturbed by an angry presence in the shadows under some pine trees and by a mysterious raven. Their mother shows them how to use the magic of Imbolc to protect themselves and stand up for their beliefs.

Shanna and the Raven is the first book in the Children's Wheel of the Year series for earth-centered and Pagan families. It is also a useful book for anyone teaching children about multicultural tolerance and about how to use intuition rather than prejudice to judge potentially dangerous situations.

Mystery and painting: An interview with Julie Freel, illustrator of the Shanna books

This week I would like to take a back seat and put the spotlight on Julie Freel, the painter who has made the Children's Wheel of the Year books possible. You can see photographs of many of the illustrations from the Imbolc story titled Shanna and the Raven here.

Children love the direct, emotive paintings that illustrate the scenes of these everyday adventure stories. The paintings bring alive the traditions of the earth-based holidays and without them the stories would be incomplete. 

It's time readers got to know the artist behind the illustrations. The best way to do this turned out to be in the form of an interview, so here it goes. 

1.    Julie, the first Shanna book is largely about intuition. How do you define intuition?

I describe intuition as an internal knowing based on experiences and wisdom that you have gathered. And something beyond that which is unnameable. 

2. What do you call the unnameable?

Mystery

3.  Is painting an intuitive craft or is it mostly learned skill for you?

It's both.

4. What do you hope to give kids who look at your pictures in the Shanna books?

A sense of connection to the characters and understanding of the story that leads them to a deeper connection with themselves, the earth and mystery.

5. What is the best part of painting illustrations?

The only illustrations I feel inspired to paint are those which have meaning and depth for me.  There is a magic in painting that occurs when these marks on a page suddenly pop into the experience you're trying to illustrate.

6. What is the hardest part?

My technical deficits, reworking illustrations when the picture gets muddy instead of clear, leaping internal hurdles like self doubt and time management, so I sit down and do it.

7. What feeling do you have when you are in the midst of it?

When it’s going well, it’s like being in love. When it’s not, I feel frustrated and hopeless. Best is when I get lost in painting, then it’s calm and meditative. 

8. Is there anything interesting you can tell kids about the process of making illustrations?

Illustrating a story you want to tell is most fun if you do it in your own way, without thinking about whether anyone else will like it or trying to do something that's really not you.  In terms of working with someone else to illustrate a book, it helps me that my writer sketches her vision for scenes.

9. What was the most important part of learning to paint for you?

Drawing was something I could do well enough to gain attention and validation. The first thing I remember that inspired me to paint was Van Gogh. His bold colors and brush strokes called me to express my own emotions through color and form. 

10. What is the difference between painting a stand-alone painting and illustrating a book?

The book provides structure and motivation to paint more often. It's nice to do both. Even stand alone paintings have to be something that really motivate and touch me in order to inspire me to paint.

11. Where did you learn painting and drawing? 

From watching other children draw as a child, from high school art teachers, college classes, occasional classes and workshops.

12. How do you keep learning?

By painting with artist friends.

13. Where are you from?

As I child I grew up in Southwest Michigan and spent my adult life in rural Eastern Oregon, traveling often to the Czech Republic to see family.

14. Where do you live now?

In northeastern Oregon. 

15. What animals do you live with?

Toby, my cat and Sami, my dog and various grandchildren.

16. What is something surprising about you?

I am a child and family counselor and my work with disadvantaged children inspired me to write and illustrate the first (and perhaps only) therapeutic story for Romany children living in Czech orphanages.

Thank you, Julie. If readers have further questions, you can post them in the comments and I'll do another interview post. You can find the Imbolc story Shanna and the Raven, Julie's first book illustrated with oil pastels here.

Awakening the inexplicable knowing of childhood

A child adopted soon after birth cries bitterly for a sister and later it is discovered that a biological sister was born to her birth family.

A four-year-old turns to his grandmother and says, "I'll never forget you, Grandma. Never ever."

An timid little girl found her strength in the song "Jesus Loves the Little Children" at Sunday School, though she didn't really believe he was the one and only god. She then grew up to be a therapist for traumatized children.

Children know things that don't make logical sense. There are so many things they don't know--like if you chew on that electrical cord it will eventually fray and zap you with electricity and if you throw your plastic toys across the room in a tantrum some of them will break and the others will be confiscated. 

But then they do know some incredible things.

James Hillman, a prominent psychologist and author of The Soul's Code, wrote that children possess a form of intuition which seems almost miraculous and as we age we lose it, some faster than others but almost all inevitably.

I am always the student in class with my hand up and an annoying question bursting out. If I were at a lecture by Hillman, my question would be, "Do we have to lose it? Isn't there some way to keep on knowing?"

I have been fascinated by that question for years because I had predictive dreams as a child. I can't prove it to others, but I know that it wasn't my imagination. I knew. 

When I was nine I dreamed of the moon, big and full in the velvet dark. Then the moon rippled and shattered, breaking into two--one still round and whole and the other squashed and blurred. That was all but I jerked awake and sat up in bed, bathed in cold sweat. 

I immediately knew what the dream meant. I had lost one of the new contact lenses that my mother had bought with a huge portion of our family's meager subsistence income. I wasn't told exactly how much but I knew it was a lot. My vision impairment is such that I could see twice as much with contact lenses as I could with glasses, so I needed them badly.

That was why the dream left me shaken and gasping for a few mements. I was relieved that I was in bed and the contacts were safe on the shelf beside me. Just a nightmare, I thought, and I went back to sleep. 

The next day I put in my contacts and went to school. I came home and immediately got out my sled and followed my brother to the sledding hill. We barely stopped for dinner. Then the moon rose and we went back out into the silver fairyland of a full-moon winter night. 

I straddled my sled at the top of the hill, tasting the cracking cold on my tongue and the ultra dry air in my nostrils. My brother let loose and slipped off down the hill into the dark. I dug my heels in and pushed. The sled scraped against the hard crust of snow and then I was flying. 

The cold air rushed past my face, ice crystals stinging so that I had to squint my eyes. The night was alive around me, the sound of sled runners, the shaddows of well-known trees, the star-studded sky and the moon hanging straight out in front of me. Coyotes called on the far ridge and I looked up at the moon, whooping with sheer joy.

And then I saw it. The moon rippled... and then shattered, just as in the dream.

A spark of fear jolted inside me. I had forgotten the dream until that instant and with the wind and spraying snow in my face and the speed of the sled, I could do nothing.

Except cover my face with my mittens and slide to the bottom completely blind.

My brother came when I called for help and I gingerly took lowered my hands from my face. My right eye felt wrong and the moon and everything else was completely blurred. He crouched down to look at my face and then at my mittened hands. And there, amid the snow and wool he found the tiny contact lens--worth more than all of our Christmas presents put together.

On the eve of Imbolc, Ten-year-old Shanna and her seven-year-old brother Rye find protection and connection through the use of intuition and through a myterious raven, who turns out to be a friend. This is the story of a modern earth-centered family who follows the old gods and celebrates the wheel of the year. The Shanna stories give children in Pagan and goddess traditions a community and inspiration within lively adventures that kids can't get enough of. Check out Shanna and the Raven: An Imbolc Story on Amazon.

That was the first prophetic dream I had but not the last. Several times during my childhood, I had other such dreams. I can't explain it but I am telling the simple truth. I dreamed it the night before each time I came close to losing a contact lens. My doctor always said it was incredible that I never lost a contact and never had an eye infection. It's unheard of among similar patients. 

When I first got contact lenses, I lived in a cabin without hot water or an indoor toilet. To say that money was tight would be a vast understatement, so it is good that my dreams helped out. I could wish my dreams had warned me about a few other things in life than just this, but mostly they didn't.

Some children seem to be protected. Is it a guardian or is it intuition? And if it is intuition, what is intuition exactly? I have found some answers to these questions, answers which led me to a earth-centered, polytheistic Pagan path. But each person answers these questions in different ways and I doubt there is one absolute truth.

There can be sign posts and maps however, help along the way.

The book Shanna and the Raven is a piece of a map for both children an adults. It is a children's story of today's world, an example of how children use intuition in the real world--for protection and well-being. It is also a story of one family's celebration of Imbolc, a tale for earth-centered families that portrays seasonal celebrations as an integral part of life.

Using the full power of language in description and metaphor: Advanced writing tips

The roar ravaged his ears, the cacophony deafened him, and he swooned into mindless unconsciousness...

Quite. 

Creative Commons image by Brandi Redd

That is what happens to readers who read purple prose, if they don't just toss the book and find something better to read. Fortunately for the readers, most of them do toss such books.

And the writers cry in lonely despair, "But it was such a beautiful phrase!"

Writing students often justify embellished prose by claiming that they wish to use the "full power of the English language" or that they refuse to "dumb down" their writing with common and simplistic words. While using the full power of our incredibly versatile language is a worthy goal and I am not in favor of dumbing down writing to the lowest common denominator, neither of these goals really have anything to do with the use of purple prose.

Purple prose is something to be avoided. Period.

And yes, as with many things in writing there is a fine line between purple prose and style. But we can get to that.

What is purple prose?

Purple prose arises when a writer:

1. Uses unknown words from a thesaurus in order to appear sophisticated or learned or simply to vary word choice. The key issue here is the use of UNKNOWN words. A thesaurus is a good tool and varying word choice is a good idea. But the words you choose must be words you have seen in use and are comfortable using, not one you just looked up today. 
2. Repeats the same information in multiple descriptor words. This is one reason why writing "mindless unconsciousness" is a bad idea. When a writer is first thinking through ideas, descriptors will often be repeated in verb, noun, adjective and adverb. This is what first drafts are for. Experienced writers nail these repetitions in editing and make sure each word says something new.
3. Exaggerates or creates logical impossibilities with description. The key to good writing is allowing the reader to experience and usually to visualize the scene. Exaggerations don't help and logical impossibilities stop visualization cold. I know that mostly we're talking about fiction, so you might ask how I know if someone is exaggerating in fiction. Take for example my statement that  "the roar ravaged his ears." While certain extreme body metaphors are permissible--"Her voice was strangled," for instance--we have to be careful with that. Trying to picture a sound that ravages someone's ears throws the reader off. Test such phrases by visualizing them. If it looks like a cartoon and you aren't writing a cartoon, then don't do it. 
4. Employs more and longer words than necessary to impart information, atmosphere and style. This is the most thorny of the issues, because some styles do call for a bit of "flowery" language. Where would fantasy and historical fiction be without a good turn of phrase. But there are ways to distinguish style from purple prose. They usually go back to the first three problems in this list in some form. Purple prose often over-describes in multiple ways, uses a longer and less-known word when a shorter one would do just as well and/or drives all descriptions to extremes. But there are times when a writer simply wallows in description, dragging the hapless reader along until the reader gives up and goes to find something with more plot (i.e. conflict).

Creative Commons image by Alice Popkorn

No reader enjoys purple prose. Some writers will argue with this because writers sometimes enjoy their own purple prose. But writers don't really count as their own number one reader. Purple prose isn't legitimate description, which may bore some but inspire others. Purple prose is always boring, annoying and embarrassing. 

That said, almost all writers go through a stage of purple prose and many of us struggle to weed it out in editing even as professionals. Struggling with the demons of purple prose is no sin. Allowing them to cavort drunk and unhindered through the temples of our word gods is.  

Fortunately, the methods for stamping out purple prose and making your descriptions shine twice as bright are relatively simple. Here are the basics:

• Say what you mean. Get the image or other physical sensation of your scene in your mind and show it.
• Know the full (surface, secondary and deeper) meanings of words. Study dictionaries, notice how words are used, and use words you know well. 
• Be specific. Use the most specific noun or verb you can think of. If you write an adjective or an adverb be aware that you do so only because you do not know a noun or a verb that can replace this particular combination of adverb and verb or adjective and noun. If you mean "hurry," don't say "go quickly."
• Whenever choosing between two words that mean the same thing, use the shorter or more common of the two. This isn't primarily about helping a wide range of readers to easily understand your story, although it may help with that. It isn't the same as dumbing down, which is more about content than anything. This rule really just makes your writing better, smoother and more intelligent. It is an odd but undeniable fact that too many long words make a writer appear unsophisticated and pompous. 
• When editing, read through your paragraphs and cut out any word that can be cut without changing the meaning of the paragraph. At first you'll have to experiment with taking out a word and rereading over and over again, but eventually your brain will start identifying likely culprits automatically. Start with adverbs, interjections, prepositions, adjectives and exclamations. Always look at "really," "just" and "still." There are many times to use these words. But if you can take them out without changing the connotations of the sentence, do it.
• Identify words and phrases you personally use too often. Then do a search with your word processor and look at each instance in your story. Try to get rid of any repetitions of the same word or phrase that are unnecessary. Each of us has a certain style and more over we go through phases in which certain words or phrases pop out constantly. This is normal, but it should also be kept in check. Repetition, when used, should be deliberate and purposeful, not accidental.

On top of these common guidelines, there are a few specific tips professed by George Orwell, the father of the genre of dystopia and a writer of extraordinary clarity and descriptive prowess: 

• Don't use any metaphor or analogy, you've seen more than once. A good general rule, though there are times to break it. If you set that as your goal, you will be much less likely to riddle your story with cliches. 
• Use active voice whenever you can and use passive voice only when you have no other choice. Beginning writers learn that "passive voice" is bad. And it usually is. But when you need it you really need it. If you need to show the unwillingness of characters to disclose who did something, you will definitely need passive voice. It is said that you identify passive voice by looking for the word "was" but that can be misleading. Don't confuse passive voice with past continuous. You can recognize passive voice by asking "Who did it?" as if you're a detective. If the answer is not at the beginning of the sentence or phrase, the verb is passive. So "she was shocked" is passive. But so is "she is shocked."  And "they were shocked." Who shocked her/them? It's not at the beginning, so it's passive. However, "Her mouth was gaping open" is not passive. It is past continuous and depending on the context and style, it may be correct.
• Don't exaggerate, especially if it's "only" fiction. This bears repeating. Say what you mean. Give the reader the true image of your story.

Finally two advanced tips from my own hard won experience. 

• Never use a phrase or word because it "sounds good."
• And kill your "babies."

These two rules are related. In the professional jargon of writers a "baby" is any word, phrase, plot twist or device that you are unreasoningly attached to during the editing stage. You will notice the pull of these bits. They are the parts that make you smile when you run across them and yet they rarely entrance anyone else. You know for sure that you have a "baby" when you find yourself thinking or saying, "But it just sounds so good!" or "It's only that I really like it that way."

These are red flags. 

Sure, we are allowed to have preferences, but if your only defense against problems with a word, phrase or plot twist is that you like it, then you should almost certainly get rid of it. This is painful but will vastly improve your writing. It is called "killing your babies" because all writers know the pain of it but we have to laugh at ourselves a little in retrospect. If you look back on the "baby" phrases and words you were so attached to a year or so ago you will know what I mean.

This is a safe place for writers and readers alike to discuss these issues. I read all comments and I love to hear from you. What are your experiences with using description and metaphors? Any particularly harrowing stories about "killing your babies?" Comments of your own experience are always welcome. We are concerned with improving our own writing, rather than judging others. 

The #1 secret to writing gripping characters

When I was in high school my teachers, mentors and family members gushed praise over my talent as a budding writer. I'll bet that if you're reading a post about the secrets of the writing craft, yours did too... or perhaps they still do.

Creative Commons image by UNC CFC USFK of Flickr.com

I have seen many talented students in writing classes and writer's critique groups over the past twenty years. And there is one terrible affliction that affects them all at some point--the same one that has at times afflicted me. That is the belief that I had made it. 

I don't mean financially. There are only a handful of writers in the whole world who have made it financially through their craft. But I'll admit it. I've suffered through times when I thought I had become such a good writer that I had little left to learn of the craft. I'm glad to say that as I've gotten older, that particular affliction has recurred less and less often. 

Before you get offended and go off certain that you are the exception, sure that you have learned all the basics of writing and only need to polish the brightest jewels in your prose, please stop and consider. I was seventeen when an article I wrote in a small-town newspaper won a statewide competition. I didn't even have to submit the article. It was noticed all on its own. My first writing professor in college initially scoffed at the idea that I would double his required word count and make it all high quality as well. He wasn't scoffing after two semesters in which I delivered before every deadline. And yet when I look back on my writing from that time, I can only cringe and laugh and tell myself it is good that I've improved.

Creative Commons image by Stuartpilbrowof Flickr.com

I had the spark and many others do too. I am not saying you're a hack, just that many new writers who are good still don't have the best skills of the craft. And after twenty years of writing non-stop, I stand in awe at all I have left to learn. 

So, don't despair. Keep your current writing in good clean folders and notebooks. Make sure you keep it safe. You will need it in ten or twenty years, when you will look back and be astounded by how far you have come. It will make you cringe but also give you courage. 

But I promised you the big secret of writing gripping characters, not all this blather about how much you have yet to learn. Don't worry. That wasn't click bait. 

It's only that my writing students have been teaching me that new and talented writers who can dance with language, produce dazzling sentences, craft sturdy and beautiful paragraphs and plot a snappy narrative believe they have it made and often refuse to consider technical terms. They assume they know the "rules" already, even when they don't. 

My writing students recently swore to me that they know what P.O.V. means. Their manuscripts tell another tale. 

So, I decided to put this out there. The single most important key to writing gripping characters is the correct and deft use of Point of View. As you probably already know, Point of View (abbreviated to P.O.V.) refers to the perspective your story is narrated from. It goes beyond the difference between first person versus third person. Or the mandatory caveat that stories can technically be written in second person, but that just because a thing can be done doesn't mean you should. 

There is also the difference between limited P.O.V. and omniscient, i.e. whether the reader feels like a bug sitting in your character's brain, listening to his/her thoughts and watching the action through his/her eyes, or feels like the God of monotheistic religions, sitting on a cloud and viewing the whole thing from above. As the terms hint, the former is called "limited" P.O.V. and the latter is called "omniscient."

Creative Commons image by Dennis Skley

If the terminology of "first person" and "third person" gives you trouble, here is an excellent beginner's guide to P.O.V. But what I am discussing in this post goes a bit beyond the bare bones. 

Many writers think of P.O.V. as a simply a technical decision you make at the beginning of a writing project, like the verb tense you will use. You decide whether or not you will tell the story as "I" and in the present moment, so that the reader feels like they are the main character and the events are happening right now OR if you will tell a story about another person--a guilt-ridden old man, a reckless young woman or some other "he" or " she"--and in some long distant fantasy age or possibly a yet unforeseen future.  And ,many writers believe that once the decision has been made that's the end of it and that gripping characters can be had with any tense or P.O.V.

Many will argue that P.O.V. is not character development and thus it has nothing to do with how gripping your characters are.

But they'll be wrong.

Deciding which P.O.V. to use is no small thing. It's a momentous choice and not one you can change easily. I can tell you from bitter experience, that if you change your mind two chapters into a story and decide to change your P.O.V. you should definitely not attempt to edit your chapters to reflect the change. You should start from scratch and write the chapters again. P.O.V. affects everything, every turn of phrase and many things too subtle for anyone to consciously edit well. 

The reason for this gets at the root of why P.O.V. is the key to gripping characters. 

Here is a hard truth. Despite all this talk of different P.O.V.s in fiction, there is in reality only one P.O.V.:

Creative Commons image by Jimmy Baikovicius

The reader.

I'm serious. At the very least, it's the only one that matters. When you read George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, you are presented with a myriad of different P.O.V.s but they all meet at one point. They all meet in the reader. The reader feels and understands the various characters, knows their fears and anger, grits their teeth in frustration and clings to fleeing hope. 

How does Martin manage to get readers so hotly engaged in the characters and the story and keep them that way for years... a lot of years?

It is primarily because when Martin wrote, he clearly took the position of each character in turn, put himself in those shoes and smelled what that character smelled, felt what he or she felt, burned with the anger of that character and knew the history of that character--even the history not specifically stated in the pages. 

New writers make P.O.V. mistakes a lot, chief among them being what we call "head-hopping." You can technically avoid head-hopping by learning what it is and how to avoid it from a technical standpoint. But there is an easier short-cut to avoiding it and one that will inevitably make your characters grip the reader more.

Try this exercise. After you finish reading this, take your hands off your keyboard, close your eyes and form the image of the character who you want to tell your next story. I don't care if this is the kennel boy, the vapid alien, the plucky rookie cop or an omniscient God.  Make up an image. Then make up an image of a video camera in your hand. Put your eyes into the camera and then your ears and lastly your heart. Make sure they are firmly inside this camera. And then hand the camera to your character.

Creative Commons image by Ed Brambley

Good. Now, go write. But write ONLY what that camera in the hands of your character sees and hears and feels. 

If you are writing the next big thing after A Song of Ice and Fire and you need to jump from character to character, take a moment each time you want to make the switch to a different character. Envision the next character and clearly see within your mind the character who had the camera last handing the camera to the next character. Then continue writing. 

Don't just switch without taking the time for this exercise or some similar moment of concentration and visualization. You must take this time and engage in a conscious process of switching. That is the key to writing gripping characters.

Not just deciding on a P.O.V. and not just choosing the "correct" one for your type of story, which is a debatable issue. But rather the clear understanding of what your P.O.V. can see and hear and feel.

Your book may not be a movie and you may not even want it to have a film-like feel. That doesn't matter. Your narrator still can only experience what he/she/it experiences. No more. 

You can have the camera held by one person and thus see all closely from that person's perspective, including understanding their inner world and feelings of that one character and misunderstanding and guessing at the feelings and thoughts of other characters. Or you can give the camera to God and point it at the characters, seeing all of them more objectively, yet not delving deep into their inner thoughts and emotions. But you cannot have it both ways without a clear break.

Keep in mind that characters cannot actually see themselves, unless they are looking in a mirror. You cannot start a sentence describing a character's facial features and ending with his inner, unspoken fears. Well, physically you can of course, if you really want to. There are plenty of examples of a character looking into a mirror and noting their appearance and then continuing with their inner thoughts. But this is an overused technique and should only be employed if it comes up as a completely obvious choice for your character. If you create this kind of sentence without the mirror and thus imply looking from the outside and then the inside of the person at the same time, you will destroy your reader's experience and turn readers away from your character. Such a character does not hold interest or empathy. 

When I explained this in classes, one student responded by pulling out examples from classical literature in which this rule has been broken by famous authors of the distant past. The question was plain. Do I dare to challenge the titans of fiction?

Well, in some ways I do. We don't look down on the great medieval painters because they painted stiff, portraits of children with faces that appear middle aged. But neither do we emulate them. Crafts progress and P.O.V. is one way in which the craft of fiction writing has developed over the past several hundred years. 

Creative Commons image by Isawkins of Flickr.com

On the other hand, many early works are quite good and have a magic of their own. I didn't claim that P.O.V. is the answer to everything, just the key to gripping characters. Engaging character development was not always the highest goal of the fiction writer. In the ages before Facebook and on-demand TV, fiction could take at least a little longer to get around to the point and characters could be a bit less gripping in favor of other virtues of the prose.

Today, however, they can't.

Either you grip your reader or you die. All writers must die as George Martin would probably say. The question is whether or not you will die in obscurity without your stories being read.

If you want to grab readers, make your characters grip. And in order to make them grip, be absolutely certain of your P.O.V. and stick to it. Never forget who is is holding your camera at any given moment and be firmly inside their experience as you write. 

There is more to writing gripping characters of course, things like character description, motive, character arc, background and believable interactions--all things I will discuss in other posts. But getting the P.O.V. right and sticking to it is more important than any of that. Without a solid and steady P.O.V. there is no character to develop. 

I love connecting to fellow writers. Let's share our experiences. Drop me a line below and tell me and other readers about your experiences with writing P.O.V. Have you made any dramatic mistakes with P.O.V.?  What is your favorite P.O.V.? Are these terms new to you or have you been wrestling the beast for some time?

Be well and keep writing.

How to market on-line... from someone NOT selling a book on the subject

I’ve got to be honest here. This is unlikely to be the most popular blog post about social media and on-line marketing. That’s because I am not going to tell you this is the best time to be an author, entrepreneur or creative artist and there is a ton of money just waiting for you once you buy my book on marketing and use my simple five-step plan. That’s what a lot of sites say and it’s a more palatable message than the truth.

Creative Commons image by Moyan Brenn

I’ve spent the last three years busting my butt looking for answers in this field, trying out quite a few things myself and watching many of my fellows crash and burn. I have no intention of writing or selling a book about how to market on-line. So I don’t need to make things sound better than they are in order to sell you something.

And yet I want to tell what I have learned. 

“Why?” I can hear you asking. “If you know so much about it, why don’t you just write your own book on marketing?”

I’m not writing my own book on marketing because I don’t see any quick or easy ways to do it. The whole rigmarole around selling such books by promising unrealistic fantasies of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps makes me physically ill and tempted to violence against innocent pieces of computer hardware (because the authors of said drivel are out of my reach). 

The real impetus behind me wanting to blog about how to market on-line is that I get spammed every day by dozens of new entrepreneurs and authors tagging me in their posts about their new cover, their new jewelry line, their new Amazon discount deal or some such as well as new the same people force-adding me to their fan groups and fan events, thus dumping dozens more emails in my inbox before I have a chance to opt out of these spammy groups and events. I mostly just delete these spammers, sometimes unfriending them if I have time. Occasionally I vent my frustration with irate messages asking them to stop spamming me and suggesting that this is an unwise marketing strategy for books or anything else. 

But the other day I took a different tact. I was in an especially good mood, so instead of ranting and deleting or even ignoring, I simply sent the spammer a concerned note, explaining their tagging tactic was going to backfire and make people hate them. And instead of an irate response back, which is usually what you get for your trouble, this one thanked me, said he was very new to marketing and asked for advice. 

He was the author of an erotic thriller—something I would read AFTER I finished all the technical manuals and pukey romances, if I were stranded on Mars for years without access to any other reading material. In case you can’t tell, I find erotic books excruciatingly boring. I know. I’m weird, but all readers are weird in one way or another and this guy seriously had the wrong reader demographic going. I had to tell him.

So in the interests of reducing spam and of having a blog post to send future newbies, here is what I know about on-line marketing.

What doesn’t work

Spamming doesn’t work. I know you’ve probably read marketing things that say a person has to see your book or product X number of times before they’ll be likely to buy it and so you’re trying to fill that number by making sure people see it on social media. 

Here are the problems with that concept:

• “Likes” not the number of posts determine what people get to see. When you start out you post about your new book or product a few times and your enthusiastic friends and family “like” the post. That gets you an initial boost but after awhile not even your friends and family are going to “like” or actually enjoy your repeated marketing posts.
• So if you continue posting about your book or product the algorithms determining what your “friends” on social media see in their news feed will almost never choose you. 
• There is way too much noise. Those marketing books were written about an era when advertising meant billboards and TV commercials, possibly direct mail leaflets. At that time, people were presented with one advertisement at a time and if there was a snappy logo involved, it would eventually sink in after several exposures and they would have the general feeling that this is a known (and thus inherently somewhat trustworthy) brand. That’s the whole rationale behind the X-number-of-views theory.
• In 2016, you can toss it out, right along with your old TV. Today the on-line environment means multiple ads coming at us all the time from the top, bottom, sides and often the center of our screens. People’s brains get used to skimming and jumping.
• Add to that the fact that there are billions of on-line products and logos being marketed and the chance that anyone is going to subconsciously get the sense that your logo is trustworthy simply by encountering advertising is minuscule, even if you have a fairly large budget. 

That’s why many on-line marketers turn to tactics that cause potential customers to remember them with hate rather than trust. These tactics primarily involve ensuring that your message gets specially delivered to the individual.

These marketers use whatever Facebook or Twitter or other social media happen to be directly delivering to people at the moment. Right now on Facebook this means adding people to groups and events without permission and tagging people in posts. Both of these tactics are legal on Facebook and they result in the person added or tagged getting a special message about it—a message that always gets delivered rather than just sitting in the news feed que and possibly not being seen at all like regular posts.

Some marketers feel that they have somehow “earned” the attention because they have to input each name to be added or tagged individually and it is actually quite a bit of work. But whatever the marketers think, the result is still the same. They are forcing the random people they target to deal with yet one more message in their already swamped on-line environment. This either results in the person swiftly dismissing the spam or in the person taking a moment to notice and hate the product presented.

Don’t do these things.

Don’t post tons of posts about your book or product, don’t in fact try to get random people to see your message X number of times and don’t send random people special messages about your book or product, so that they have to take the small action of deleting your message and/or opting out of your spamming group or event.

These tactics don’t work. If they worked for someone else it was before 2011 or they are a celebrity of some kind already.

What does work… sort of

There are no quick fixes. The book market is completely saturated--over-saturated by orders of magnitude. Many other on-line markets are similarly flooded. It is very unlikely for a new author, artist or innovator to break in without several years of work, unless you have some prior celebrity and a big publisher or distributor (and even then it isn't a done deal). But from three years of hard full-time work, a ton of reading and discussions with more experienced marketers, I have observed a couple of strategies that provide some returns:

Creative Commons image by 401(K) 2012 of Flickr.com

Strategy 1: Find a clear-cut genre and write A LOT of books in that genre (more than ten, twenty books is better) following genre standards to the letter and write snappy, easily read prose.

This is not about writing “well.” It is about writing what the largest group of readers wants and that is not actually in line with good prose. It is instead about keeping everything ultra simple, both plot and prose. Characters must fit popular beauty standards and the problems and solutions in the books must pander to the current trends of the age group of the your ideal readers. Avoid controversial subjects or main characters representing minority groups. 

Then give away a few books for free, sell the rest cheap and blog about your genre incessantly. The same might be applied to music, I suppose, but with physical products this mainly requires producing the cheapest and least environmentally-responsible product you can. I’m not saying this is a good tactic. It’s a soul-destroying tactic for either writers, artists or other businesses, but I have observed that it has some merits as a marketing strategy. It can make someone a living.

Strategy 2: Choose an underrepresented non-fic topic and write a book or two about that. Alternatively specifically include characters representing minority groups or other demographic niches (not genre so much as demographics). Sell those but blog incessantly about your topic, minority or nich and advertise your books in each blog post.

This can be applied to physical products as well. Simply choose to sell something that is unavailable or not widely available on-line but needed by a specific group of people (even they are only 0.2 percent of the population) and then blog the hell out of it. It takes several years to break in and you need some luck. First, you had better be right that your product or book niche is both underrepresented and needed. And you have to hope that several other businesses don’t come up with the same idea at the same moment or slightly earlier than you.

I recently found exactly the product I needed for my hyperactive child who legitimately needs to chew on something in order to focus. I found one on-line company that could demonstrate a track record and had nice-looking chewies designed for older kids (not babies) made from materials that don’t pose a health risk. I had never heard of the company before but they got my business right then, because I searched and they had a blog and it demonstrated knowledge and a track record. I bought $50 worth of products from them immediately. No X number of views. Just a niche need met. This is a much better strategy than the first but it does require you to have a niche and to blog for free for months, probably years before you ever see payday. 

Strategy 3: Finally, you can write or make only what you are passionate about, blog incessantly about the topics and themes connected to those books or products, advertise the books or products beside each related blog post, offer a free book or sample for subscribers to your blog, blog at least once a week, post your blog posts on social media where people may actually really want to read them, such as matching-topic Facebook groups or Twitter tags.

Thus I write fantasy and blog about herbs because fantasy readers often like herbs and there are herbs in my books. I write dystopia and I blog about social exclusion and social justice issues related to the themes. This has gained me a mailing list of five hundred truly interested people in one year and favorable Facebook and Google algorithm ratings. Some people now come to my site by searching Google for some of my keywords. I don't have to rely on having a huge number of Facebook friends or on manually inputting their names into spam methods, because I can reach people who aren't friends with me at all by putting interesting posts into Facebook herbalist groups that will actually enjoy them.

Creative Commons image by Pictures of Money of Flickr.com

One reason I actually encourage you to indulge your own passions and write about what you love is that you won't have to do nearly as much research and the research you do have to do will give you added energy. I could have blogged about the history of the fantasy genre to support my books, but then I would have had to do a lot of extra research. I know medicinal herbs already, so I can blog about that. I want to avoid doing a ton of research, not because I'm lazy but because you never get paid to blog and you have to be able to keep it up for YEARS in order for it to matter. So pick a topic you don't have to research too hard.

This isn’t a hugely effective strategy, but it does get you a mailing list of actually interested people. It is most lucrative when combined with a niche market (see strategy 2) with very little competition. But it is also something you can do to feed your soul, while paying the bills with another job and having the hope that with consistent effort over many years, you may be able to make your living doing what you love. Honestly, only one in several thousand people will ever succeed with Strategy 3, but that is also the strategy that has produced some of the most remembered writers of history, who were often unknown in their lifetimes but were eventually discovered and recognized for their intense passion. 

All of these strategies have one thing in common—the specific desire of the potential customer. In Strategy, 1 you cater to the largest known customer base, giving them what they want for as little as possible at all cost to quality and your own creativity--banking on the fact that although you will never be great you can make a living by simply having so many trickles of income that it adds up. In Strategy 2, you find a niche market in need of something and then fill that need. Here you have to price your products a bit higher (sometimes very high) because the market is small. In Strategy 3, you focus on your own passions and work on connecting with people who share the same passions and thus the desire for what you have to offer. 

Contrast this with the author of the erotic thriller who dumped his video trailer in my inbox. No attempt was made to determine if I or anyone else tagged by his dozens of posts was at all interested in his topic. He simply fired his shotgun and let the random pellets spray. Pounding the average person with random ads will only get them to block you, delete your Facebook "friendship" and cut off all contact if they can. Thus it isn't good marketing. Blog about the themes of your books or possibly your genre if you are aiming for the mass market.

All three of these strategies share one more thing and that is a stand-alone webpage. I know there are Facebook business pages and I have asked experts about them, but I have not been able to determine whether or not they are good for anything. There was once a time (back in the dinosaur days of 2012) when Facebook business pages were considered "social credit," meaning a potential customer could go to your business page and see that you had a ton of "likes" and thus believe that yours is a moderately trustworthy brand. Facebook business pages and Twitter accounts show how many people have been persuaded one way or another to “like” your page, although bundles of “likes” are also for sale, so the credibility this affords is ever decreasing. However, these pages don’t really do much to get your message out to the people who want what you have to offer. The best base for any of the reasonably functional strategies is a stand alone website. 

So, here’s what I told the erotic thriller guy: 

"If you write thrillers with a macho, gun-porn sort of aesthetic and you know a lot about guns, blog about guns. (Just an example. I have no idea what your thrillers are like.) And then you get on Twitter and FB and post the link to your blog with hashtags and in "Facebook groups" that like posts about guns—such as hunter's groups, NRA people, Republicans, survivalists, ranchers and men’s groups with that particular atmosphere. And then people who actually like guns will click on your link, go to your page, read your post, sign up for your mailing list to get more such posts and... eventually some of them buy your books, if you were actually right that people who like guns might also like your books. It's tricky and a hell of a lot of work, several times more work than writing a good book, but it actually allows you to post on social media in a way people will applaud rather than hate and thus they will like you rather than hate you. No one really has ever sold anything by annoying people. It only seems like they must have because annoying random people is the most common (and the most unsuccessful) marketing tactic."

I wish everyone out there good luck in finding those who want what you are selling. They very likely do exist even if you’re selling a thneed.

Four magic spells you can cast on your novel with a fictional language - Advanced Writing Tips

In my last post, you learned about the building materials needed to make a fictional language. Nuts and bolts, verbs and nouns, bricks and cement—that sort of thing. You could stop there if all you need is a few sentences of dialogue to add an exotic feel to a character who is supposed to be from another culture in your story. But the real magic and usually the whole reason for creating a fictional language for your story goes a lot deeper--to a level that makes your settings and characters live and breathe.

Creative Commons image by Nick Kenrick

Language is part of culture and culture is part of your fictional setting--the environment that shapes your characters. As such, when writers invest time and effort in creating fictional languages the purpose isn’t just a generalized exotic atmosphere, but rather a technique for shaping characters and social setting in specific ways. With languages, we can play with psychology and symbols and get deeper ideas across without having to spell them out and spoil the plot.

Creating a fictional language is a wonderful way to manipulate the culture and setting of the world in your novel because you become like a true magician. By uttering a few words, you create massive changes. As such, you must be careful what you wish for. Subtle things in a language can have far reaching effects. 

Here are a few of the magic spells you can cast—or avoid casting—depending on your needs.

1. Play with gender and other social divisions

I mentioned gender briefly in the post about grammar. Many languages show the gender of a person being spoken about. Others even make clear the gender of the speaker, meaning that little boys and little girls actually have to learn to speak in two different ways. But it isn't a given. Some languages may not point out gender so much.

Creative Commons image by Jason Pratt 

Take a moment to think about the possible consequences for the culture. As a general rule, linguists have found that languages that emphasize gender are found in cultures where gender roles are very clear cut and inflexible. English makes it very hard to avoid spelling out whether or not a person being spoken or written about is a man or a woman. This has caused a lot of frustration for English-speaking feminists, who wish to break down stereotypes and avoid the second reference to a theoretical doctor or repairman as “he” or a nurse as “she.” In recent decades, many people have tried to avoid this with cumbersome constructions, like “he/she” or “they” used in the singular, or with obscure, made-up pronouns like “ze” and “xe.”

That may seem like a big problem to English-speaking feminists, but take a language like Spanish, where even the adjectives show what gender the person you’re talking about is, and all nouns are associated with a gender. Talk about stereotypes and assumptions!

Then there are the Slavic languages—like the Czech my children are growing up to speak—where it isn’t just pronouns, nouns and adjectives but even verbs! You cannot say anything about what you have done in the past without giving away your gender. Avoiding the gender of a person is almost impossible even in the shortest sentences. As a result, gender-neutral names are anathema and officially illegal. They would cause no end of confusion. Small boys in this culture—my son included—often encounter a strange problem because as toddlers they are exposed primarily to women’s speech at home and thus inadvertently speak like females for a few years, not having heard enough male speech to form it correctly. Men often come down heavy on this quirk of little boys and thus reinforce the patriarchal idea that being female is shameful. Gender roles are often starkly defined.

What does this mean for your fictional language? Well first of all, if your story takes place in a culture with heavily defined gender roles, make sure the language has lots of gender definition in it. You can point out these issues, even if your dialogue is actually written in English. How characters think about language and the mistakes people notice others make in language are both keys to cultural norms and can say volumes about the social environment without you having to explain. 

On the other hand, if you want to claim that your fictional culture is not hung up on gender and is thus more equitable, you will need to do away with this sort of gender differentiation in the language. Preferably don’t even use separate pronouns for “he” and “she.”

My own example comes from The Kyrennei Series. It isn’t until Book 5, that the Kyren language is more deeply explained, but there are earlier hints about gender neutrality. As in many fictional languages where the author wants to emphasize gender equity, there is no specific pronoun for “he” and “she” in Kyren. 

However, almost all societies do have divisions. (If yours doesn’t, where will your necessary, fictional conflict come from?) It is an excellent idea to emphasize the most crucial social divisions in your grammar. What if instead of “he” and “she,” you had separate pronouns for peasants and nobility?  Your social structure would be locked in place even more rigidly than medieval Europe. Peasants and nobility might not even be considered to be of the same species! 

In my Kyren language, the division that is not apparent between genders exists between the old and the young and between those who are Kyren and those who are not. There are four different pronouns for “he/she” (and another four for “they” for that matter. In Kyren, you get no breaks for speaking in the plural.) 

Creative Commons image by  Rusty Clark

There is a pronoun for a young Kyren person and one for an old Kyren person. There are also pronouns for a young non-Kyren outsider and for an old, non-Kyren outsider. Just to make it more fun, all nouns come in these categories too, just as nouns have gender in Spanish. The verb endings  reflect the same differences. 

This tells the reader—without anyone ever saying it outright—that the ancient Kyren culture was obsessed with age, respectability and Kyren versus outsider status. There are important reasons for this as any Kyrennei Series reader will know. That’s why it's magic. This kind of game with gender and social divisions can paint vivid pictures and spark massive conflict in your setting. 

But go cautiously at first! As with all powerful magic, there are costs and pitfalls. Keeping the words of the spell (and the grammatical endings) straight can be an immense task, if you complicate your language in this way. At the very least, you should play with it a bit before inserting it into a book. If you want to tackle encoding social divisions in your language, make sure that everything I wrote in the last post about the building materials of language is very familiar first.

2. Fun with time

Most languages change their verbs a bit to show when something is happening in the present (you’re reading), in the past (I wrote), or in the future (you’ll write). There are some languages that don’t entirely separate these ideas of time, however. Or they may do so in ways English speakers would find unsatisfactory. 

One could say that English is a bit obsessed with pinpointing time exactly. We have at least twelve basic verb tenses, all of which we consider to impart crucial bits of information. Consider the differences between the sentences “I will have written it by tomorrow” and “Tomorrow I will have been writing it for a week.” Most languages would have to go into quite a lot of explanations to make sure you got all the nuance of difference between those sentences.

Why does English have so many verb tenses? Possibly our ancestors worshiped clocks. Hard to say but if you want to make a society obsessed with time, you had better give them at least a moderate number of verb tenses. 

Creative Commons image by Alice Popkorn

Conversely, if you want to protray a society where people live in the moment and emphasize their phlegmatic relationship with time, you don’t have to give them verb tenses at all. If they really need to specify that they fought a battle yesterday, they can just say, “We fight yesterday.” The point gets across. And there are real languages like this.

What if you’re writing science fiction and you have a society that is very familiar with time travel? They would almost have to do without verb tenses. Thus it would not be so important whether the battle already happened or will happen in the future. That’s relative and might even be changeable. 

As with gender and other divisions, be careful with over complication. But also have fun. Time is a lovely play thing.

3. Making your characters prejudiced

A prejudice is simply an assumption or a pre-conceived notion. It does not mean your character is bad. Everyone, even good people, make assumptions all the time. And many assumptions and prejudices stem from the very language we speak. 

Terminology, such as the word “disabled,” creates assumptions. When a person (or a machine) is called “dis-abled” our English-speaking brain assumes that this means it is less able in general, even though what we actually mean is that one certain function works differently. In today’s society some “disabilities” such as deafness, may not really “dis-able” the individual in any significant way. Deaf people simply speak a different language. We all have differing abilities and lack of ability in various areas. Whether you are called “disabled” or not, you know if you are a fast runner or if you have perfect pitch. Often certain abilities will be mutually exclusive. You can’t have both the strength of a body-builder and the speed and agility of a prime soccer offense player. The two don’t work well together, but neither is considered “dis-ability.”  

In fiction, you could construct a language where terms for bodily abilities were different and thus created different, possibly more open-minded assumptions. Of if you want to heighten conflict in your story (always good for your plot), you could construct terminology that actually increases assumptions. Consider the interesting real-world fact that the word for German in many Slavic languages literally means “those who can’t talk.” It is very similar to the modern word for “mute.” One can see what the ancient Slavic tribes thought of the ancient Germanic tribes. But the assumptions carry over subliminally even until today. You can do this in fictional languages as well.

In the Kyrennei Series, the term “Kyrennei”  means “people of the night spirits”  or something of the like. Their term for people who aren’t Kyrennei is “Nyttanah”  which means “people of the day spirits.”  There are all kinds assumptions and prejudices that pop up because of these two terms. I don’t mean by this that my characters are bad and evil racists. I simply mean that they are reawakening an ancient culture which makes certain assumptions and this does play into some of the conflict. 

Another way to show assumptions and prejudices is in the use of adjectives and nouns. As I said earlier, putting a certain gender to each noun will automatically cause people to leap to certain associations with that noun. School is feminine in many cultures and castle or fortress is usually masculine. If it were the other way around that would say something interesting about the culture. But there are many other ways to do this beyond gender.

The best way to show this trick is by example. In my fictional language, Kyren you cannot say an adjective such as “big”  or “small”  without giving away what you think about the person or thing being described. Adjectives have endings that show whether the speaker thinks the attribute (such as largeness or smallness) is temporary or permanent. Thus if you say a child is small, you will use a temporary ending. But if you say an adult is temporarily large the connotation is quite different. In fact, in the world of the Kyrennei an adult can be only temporarily large--generally those who carry Kyrennei genes but are born into Nyttanah bodies. If they undergo a genetic change, they will become smaller, more the size of a young tween.  

And the ending also changes depending on whether or not the speaker thinks that all similar people or objects generally share that attribute--in this case temporary largeness and whether the person or object is unique in being being temporarily large. So, if you speak about a child as small, you will either say the child is temporarily small like all children or temporarily uniquely small to say the child is small for the age. There is no middle ground. You have to choose in order to use the adjective “small” in Kyren. 

This is a very advanced linguistic trick but it can define your society in interesting ways. If you force the language to reveal the assumptions of the speaker, whether those assumptions are about groups of people or objects (as in Kyren) or about whether or not actions are completed or not (as in many real-world languages) you will force your people to be cautious in their wording and create cultures where offense is given easily. 

4. Showing the love

Good fiction must have conflict and that is why most of my language-tweaking suggestions involve giving your fictional culture problems and tensions. But there is another way to create conflict—love. 

That’s right. Make your people love something and then threaten it, abuse it or deny it to them and you’ll have more conflict than you know what to do with. But the deeper the love runs, the greater the passion will be. 

Creative Commons image by Gisela Giardino

And there is nothing deeper in psychology than the way we use language. 
So, if you want to make your fictional characters love something with a deep, irrational passion or show a cultural reverence for age, wisdom, freedom, youth, piety, virginity, sex or whatever, encode it in the language.

First of all, you can make words connected to those things you want your fictional people to revere romantic and beautiful in sound. This can be particularly effective when the thing you’re adopting as a social obsession is actually something modern society thinks of as negative, such as death or sex. 

This is a good place to make up idioms. You can make positive associations between words that today’s real-world culture might not see as positive.

Here's a real world example from the Czech language. When a person wants to say that a situation, idea or thing is NOT good in Czech, they might say, “It’s not greasy and salty.” While not being greasy and salty (especially applied to things that aren’t food) is generally considered a good thing in modern culture, that phrase dates back to a time when the poor peasants in this landlocked country desired salt and fat (usually a priceless bit of lard) above all else. And the phrase is still widely used today. Language shows what we desire and love.

Obviously idioms can just as easily show what a culture despises or does not value. In English, when we say, “The CEO made a blind decision,” we aren’t just saying a bad thing about the CEO, we’re also expressing a cultural assumption about blindness as unwise or stupid. If you are aware of these markers and use them in the dialogue of your characters as fictional idioms, you can create complex loves and hates in a reader without ever having to resort to the more obvious tricks of the trade.

These are a few of the advanced, professional-grade power tools used by writers when constructing a fictional language. Pulling it all together can take time, especially if you make the language overly complex. But you may not need as much of it as you think. Insert a few specific idioms into your English-language dialogue and you’ve essentially hinted at a fictional language. If used consistently and with care the bits and pieces can make the cultural setting of your story shine.

Creating a fictional language - Step 1: Mastering the building materials

J.R.R. Tolkien has long been seen as the master of fictional languages—a genius in fact—and many writers I talk to say they would never attempt to repeat his feats because that would require being an academic linguist.

Creative Commons image by Dianne Lacourciere

My bachelor’s degree is in linguistics—Slavic linguistics to be exact. And I had the great honor to study with professor George Smalley at Lawrence University in Wisconsin in the 1990s. However, I’m not an expert or a true academic linguist. And still I can make a very credible fictional language, and I can tell you that it isn’t as difficult as it looks. There are amateur pitfalls to avoid, certainly, but the background necessary to start a fictional language can be laid out in a few steps.

The first and most indispensable step for making a fictional language without looking silly is mastering the parts of speech or the building materials that you'll use to construct your language. The essential issue is that you don’t want to take a sentence like, “I’m going to cut off your stinking head, you barbarian!” and translate it word for word simply by making up a word for each word in the sentence. That would result in something like “Gwa’l tori ik akshi ma lu yelim krat, dre marano!” 

Even if you wrote each one of these words down in your notebook and remembered them well enough to use “dre” for “you” the next time you wrote a sentence, it still would be silly. For one thing “dre” doesn’t appear to be related to “lu.” And it should be, because “you” and “your” always have some relation in any language. Beyond that “am going to cut” is one verb and in most languages it would be one word, maybe two. English is a bit strange that it makes so many little words out of one verb. 

If you tried to make a fictional language by the method of translating every word from English, it would not only be silly, it would be insanely difficult to maintain for more than a sentence or two because of the finicky little words you'd have to keep track of, like "am" and "to." 

Creative commons image by Avenue G of flickr.com

The key to making a believable fictional language and not going nuts while you do it is having a good grasp of your building materials and making your own rules for them. For most people, the most difficult part of creating a fictional language is reviewing what you learned in middle school English class about verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, articles and the like.

Now stop that! Your eyes are glazing over. I can smell it. I’m not going to make you diagram sentences. But essentially if you can keep these few terms straight, you can make a fictional language that no one can sneer at.

Verbs

A verb is an action. (Sit, run, be, am, am going, are sitting, was running, has been reading—be careful of the fact that many verbs in English are made up of more than one word but that’s really the only tricky part.)

There are no known languages that don’t have verbs of some sort. The main trick to this part is making sure you’re using the whole verb. In the sentence “I will have been writing for ten years next week” the verb is “will have been writing.” That’s four words in English (not even counting the pronoun), but in many languages it would be one word. It is much easier to simplify your verbs in this way. You don’t need a word for each of the four words “will have been writing.” .

Instead what you need is a rule. Take the most important word from that verb—”writing”—and make up a word that means “to write” in your fictional language. Let’s say you make up “Falimanesa.” Great! That sounds suitably grand for our noble profession. 

But stop a minute and look more closely at your fictional word. You must decide what about it makes it basic verb in your language. Is it that it starts with F?  Or is it that it ends in “esa” or just A? Usually it’s the beginning or the ending. Just as English has “to” to show that we’re talking about the basic verb “to write” other languages have their own ways to mark a verb.

Let’s say you decide to go the easy route, like I would. Looking at your first fictional verb, you decide that all basic verbs will end in A. (Vowels are a good choice for the standard ending.) So "Falimanesa" is "to write" and "Bida" is "to eat," and so on. Just build a word list as you go. If you only need a few sentences of a fictional language in your book, it won't even be that many words but it will look like it's a real language.

Then it’s time to decide how complicated your grammar will be. In the beginning, it is best to start out simple, which means you probably won’t have much beyond a past tense, a present tense and a future tense. 

Past tense is things like “I wrote,” “I was writing,” and “I had written.” In your fictional language you do not need separate words for these different English phrases. They’re all just past. They happened. It’s over. 

Present tense is things like “I write,” “I’m writing,” and “I have been writing.” Don’t complicate it. Make them all the same. The same goes for future tense. There is no need to have a different form for “I’ll write,” and “I’m going to be writing.” They are in the future. If you want to make your life difficult and have a degree in linguists somewhat more advanced than mine, feel free to ignore this.

Now you need to have a simple rule for your three verb tenses. Let’s say you make all writing in the past be “Falimanesan,” all writing in the present be “Falimanesat,” and all writing in the future be “Falimanesas.”

Creative Commons image by Juhan Sonin

Simple. Elegant. Easy to remember. Past verbs end in AN, present in AT and future in AS. Yes, most languages have exceptions but don’t tinker with that until you’ve mastered this. You can also theoretically make your verb change depending on what the subject is. It can be as simple as the difference between English “I run” and “he runs.” But it isn’t necessary and at first it is better to keep it simple. It will look complicated enough both to you and to your reader by the time you’re done.

In the fictional example of my sentence about cutting off heads. We need a verb for “to cut.” Let’s make it dramatic like, “aksha.” To show that the cutting is going to happen in the future (however near) we’ll use “akshas.” 

Nouns

A noun is a “person, place or thing.” (Yup, you probably remember that from grade school. "Dog", "house," "houseboat," "you," "Mr. Blip the alien" and "I" are all nouns.) 

Theoretically, nouns can be simpler than verbs. You don’t really NEED to have various forms of nouns. But you should be aware that most languages do have some rules. In many languages, nouns have a gender—masculine, feminine or neutral. Some languages have even more than that, although they aren’t called gender anymore but “noun classes.” The basic thing is that if you have a gender, it’s best to find a way to show which gender your noun is by its spelling just as we did with basic verbs ending in A. You could say all masculine nouns will end in O and all feminine nouns will end in hard-sounding consonants like T, K, G, B and D. It all depends on the gender roles in your fictional society. 

It’s also good to know that many languages change their nouns depending on where they are in a sentence or context. This is called “case.” You don’t have to do it and I recommend not dealing with it if you don’t yet know what a noun case is. But you will need to have a way to show the difference between singular and plural nouns (dog vs. dogs). You will also need to add something to your nouns, when you run into prepositions like “to” and “for” and determiners like “my” and “that.” But those can be saved for another section. Just be aware that you’ll probably need to add something to your nouns, either as separate words or added to the beginning or end of the noun.

In my example, we have four nouns “barbarian,” “head,” “you,” and “I.” Let’s say “head” is feminine. So we’ll say, “krat” and the barbarian is a male, so we’ll say, “marano.” 

Now one of the more important parts of a fictional language is what you do with the pronouns. “I” and “you” are not your average nouns. They are pronouns. They’ll get used A LOT. And they don’t have to follow the same rules as other nouns. This is one place to make exceptions. 

If you have made very simple verbs that don’t change depending on who is doing the action, then you really need good pronouns. Make pronouns short and easy to differentiate. We’ll say “I” is “Gwa” and “you” is “Dre.” At this point, it would be a good idea to make up your equivalents of “we,” “he,” “she,” and “they” as well and to decide if you’re going to have separate pronouns for different genders. Just as we have “he” and “she,” you could easily have different genders in the words “I” and “you.” But you don’t have to. In fact, you don't have to have separate words for "he" and "she." Feminists will be thrilled. But it's worth thinking about what gender is like in the society where your language is spoken.

Adjectives and Adverbs

An adjective describes a noun. (Green, huge, multi-faceted and monstrous—all prime suspects.)
An adverb describes the action of a verb (slowly, wildly, on Tuesday, for weeks on end—are all adverbs and like verbs in English many of them are actually phrases of several words.)

Some languages are less likely to use adjectives and adverbs and more likely to have a special verb meaning “to eat slowly.” You can play with such things in a fictional language, but you can also just copy English when it comes to this sort of thing. Tolkien did, so you’d be in good company. 

It will be helpful to you and it's general good linguistic policy if there is some way to tell what is an adjective and what is an adverb by the spelling, just as we did with nouns and verbs. English has the ending “ly” to differentiate a lot of adjectives. Let’s say adjectives are going to end in IR and adverbs are going to end in ESE. In this fictional language. To make it simple they all will. Not just some as with the LY ending in English.

The one place to be careful is in adverb phrases like “on Tuesday” and “for weeks on end.” These usually tell how long something is going on and it is better to use one word for these phrases or at least come up with a consistent way of making them. 

The only descriptive word in my example is “stinking.” Let’s say “yelimir” but make a little note in your notebook that “to stink” had better bear some resemblance to this word and end in A. Probably should end up as “yelima” for the verb “to stink.”

Prepositions

Prepositions are words that prep another word or phrase. 

“In,” “at,” “under,” “around,” “before,” and “of” are all prepositions. Some languages don’t make them separate words but rather add a prefix or a suffix to the word that the preposition preps, as if they wrote “the dog is the kitchen-in” instead of “the dog is in the kitchen.”

You can simply translate prepositions straight across. Make up a word for “in” and always use it for “in” when you translate a sentence. Many languages work almost like that. At least they have a word that is a bit like “in” even though it is often used in a few situations where English would use “at” or isn’t used in some instances where English does use it. But in general you don’t have to play with your prepositions. But you can and it is one of the easier ways to make your language more authentic and less like a direct code of English. 

In the fictional language Kyren in The Kyrennei Series I made many prepositions into prefixes, so that instead of a separate word, the preposition is attached to the word it preps. Thus, “of the Kyrennei” becomes “i-Kyrennei.” 

Many real languages use a grammatical function called “case” which essentially acts like a preposition but instead of a separate word, it adds an ending to or otherwise changes the words being prepared. This is very common and English is a bit of an exception because we use almost no cases. (We do use cases when it comes to pronouns. That’s why you say, “You see ME,” instead of “You see I.”)

Some languages use a preposition word in some situations as well as the case ending, but in other situations it is only the ending. For instance, in Czech the word for train is “vlak.” But “in the train” is “ve vlaku.” There is both a preparing word for “in” and an ending. 

If you have not learned a language which uses cases, it is better to avoid using such complexities. But you can easily make a special ending denoting each English preposition word. Your language would then appear at first glance to have cases and no one could really argue with you.

In Czech, going "by train" is simply "vlakem." There is no preposition word for "by" only the case ending. You could think of the ending EM as the equivalent of "by." It isn't quite that simple in Czech, but in a fictional language it would look very authentic.

Let’s use that trick in our example. We need the preposition “off” for the example sentence. But we’re going to add it as an ending to the adjective and the noun, instead of a separate word. So, I say “off” will give a word the ending ARA. So, “Gwa akshas … yelimirara kratara, dre marano!” We still need a word for “your” but we’re getting a lot closer and the sentence is starting to look like a real language. 

Articles and determiners

The English article is “the,” “a” and “an.” The easiest way to deal with these words in a fictional language is just to drop them all together. Most languages do and it doesn’t hurt a thing. Although writing without article in English makes you sound like barbarian, it really doesn’t sound too bad in other languages.

Creative Commons image by Jem Henderson

However, other words like “my,” “your,” “some,” “any,” “this” and “that” are very necessary. There are more complex ways to handle them, but for the purpose of making your first fictional language relatively easy, it is best to simply designate a word for each of these. 

Just keep in mind that they should be short and they can’t be entirely arbitrary. Possessives like “my” and “your” should have a clear connection to the pronoun they are related to. So, if “dre” is “you,” then we’ll say “drem” is “your.” 
Words like “this” and “that” are also good to keep slightly related. But that’s a detail.

Other words

Other words such as the connectors “and” and “but” or interesting constructions like “would,” can be handled by simply making up a word to correspond to the English equivalent. That’s the simplest way, even though you can get complicated with many of these concepts as well. 

It’s only advisable to think before you leap. Some words like “since” can be a preposition and a connecting word. And a word like “could” actually is a combination of “can” and “would.” Be aware that some words ending in ING in English look like verbs but they are really nouns. A "human being" is one example. Make your words relate in logical ways as much as possible. You’ll save yourself a headache when trying to use your fictional language and it will look much more believable.

Now go play with your words or else. Gwa akshas drem yelimirara kratara, dre marano!

Children's Healing Stories: Realistic problem solving for bullying

"If you have a choice of schools, ask what they do about bullying and if they say they don't have a bullying problem at their school, choose a different school," a teacher with twenty years experience once told me. "All schools have bullying problems. The ones that acknowledge the issue and have a policy for dealing with them have fewer problems."

That is some of the best advice I've ever heard on the subject of bullying. And there is a lot advice out there, but much of it is ineffective precisely because it is focused on making things look peaceful and happy on the surface.

As a girl, I was once the new girl at school. In class, I was treated well, if coolly. The school was a good school with high standards. But there was no policy or way of dealing with bullying. I went to the bathroom during a break and three other girls came in after me. They wetted down hunks of toilet paper and threw them over my stall door, jeering at me and laughing as they splattered me with the sodden paper. 

No adult ever saw these things and I was far from the only one to face them alone.  I knew from a lot of experience that if I told teachers about the incident, it would be dismissed with a bit of sympathy or the teacher would freak out and demand to know who had done it in front of the class, which would result in far more ostracism. 

So, I never said anything about that incident. The cumulative effect of bullying can be quite severe, impacting a child's ability to learn and causing psychological and relationship problems that last a lifetime. If a child faces only a little teasing or bullying and it isn't addressed, they will often feel that it is "just the way life is" and thus they will become a perpetrator at other times. Every child in our schools has experienced either bullying or being a bystander, feeling helpless while another child is bullied. And many have been bullies and may feel defensive shame that actually contributes to perpetuating further bullying.

The problems seem intractable, particularly considering how much violence and injustice children observe in the adult world. However, anti-bullying programs have shown over many years of trial that there are methods that schools can use to mitigate bullying and vastly improve outcomes. The methods involve mediation and bringing students, teachers and parents together to discuss divisive issues. 

But you may ask what you can do if your school isn't yet open to such holistic anti-bullying programs. 

Even where such programs exist, children need to build the confidence to speak up about harassment and have a measure of trust in the program. Where formal programs don't exist, there are still many skills that an individual child and her parents can employ to improve a situation. 

The healing purpose of the new book in the Children's Wheel of the Year series Shanna and the Pentacle is to highlight a real, contemporary and truly problematic bullying situation and offer a functional model for dealing with it. Unlike many anti-bullying books the end result is not a school with no bullying problem and a bunch of kids drawing rainbows. It is a realistic end, in which Shanna, who faced bullies, comes to understand the situation better and learns to stand up for herself. She gains friends among children who are open to differences. Because problems among children are often rooted in the attitudes of adults, this is also addressed and children can see that adults make mistakes and that these mistakes can be addressed through a respectful process. 

This book and others in the series can be used to give children confidence in a solution as well as to bring comfort in the knowledge that they are not alone. Every child is different from the norm in some way and many have experienced the pressure to shave off any of our protruding corners--to hide those parts of us that are not perfectly "normal." Healing stories give both children and adults the understanding of our differences as gifts and the knowledge of that many others have been through the same difficulties.

Shanna and the Pentacle has just been released in ebook format and will be available in paperback next week. Find out more here.

Children's Healing Stories: Kids can utilize intuition and be safer

I was returning to the apartment of friends where I was staying late in the evening. I was a teenager alone in a city far from home. And one of those things that parents fear most happened. 

A man came down the sidewalk toward me and stopped under a streetlight. The street was nearly deserted, only the occasional car going by and no other pedestrians. The man greeted me in a friendly and kind way, but I felt instantly that something was not right. 

There was nothing so terribly wrong about this man, except perhaps the fact that he greeted a young girl alone at night in a city. If he had been a few years younger, even that would not have seemed out of the ordinary at all. Still my hackles rose. Somehow I knew…

Intuition?

That illusive term we can’t quite explain. Some believe it's merely the quick, subconscious analysis of factors barely perceived by the senses. Perfectly logical and scientific. Others believe something more mysterious or spiritual is at work.

Either way it's a faculty that we know we have. Myth has it that women use intuition more easily and more readily. But the truth is that men can use it as well. But in either gender it helps if one has some practice and confidence in one’s own intuitive abilities.

That night when I was out alone on a dark street in a faraway city, I was afraid but I had been taught to use my intuition and I had been given a few self-defense skills by a handful of teen workshops. And so, with the feeling of danger buzzing in my nerves, I played cool for a few moments. I pretended I had no foreboding sense about the stranger and chatted lightly to him as we walked toward the dark apartment building. And I quietly gripped the key to the door in my pocket.

Illustrations by Julie Freel

As I turned toward the building and said goodbye to the man, his hand came out and settled firmly around my upper arm. My feeling of danger had been correct. Now, out of the light and away from even the sporadic traffic of the street, he would make his move. 

“Hey, Nat! I’m over here!” I called gaily toward another doorway as if I did not sense the tension in his grip. “Come meet this guy.” Then to the man. “My brother and his friends are here. You’ll like them.” 

His hand lifted from my arm in a second of uncertainty as he doubted whether or not someone could be hidden in the shadows. And in that second, I bolted for the safety of the correct doorway, racing inside and up the stairs to a door with locks and deadbolts.

Twenty years later, I am a mother myself with two growing children. And like all parents I want to arm my children with the skills to protect themselves in an unpredictable world. There are some who trust in weaponry, whether it be guns or pepper spray. But statistics don’t back the theory up. Such physical weapons are more likely to be seized and used against the defender than employed against an attacker. 

Illustration by Julie Freel

Others favor teaching self-defense and martial arts techniques at a young age. And these techniques are more useful. I carried pepper spray for years and never had it handy in any of the dangerous situations I encountered. However, I did use techniques like the ruse about friends waiting a doorway that I was taught in self-defense classes in this situation and another similar incident.

So, I will teach my children these skills and see to it that they have more training in self defense. But I also know there is another faculty that was even more crucial to my safety at the time. I was prepared to escape and cautious enough not to give away the fact that I was alone, because my intuition was strong and well practiced. That I believe made all the difference in my two encounters with personal danger as a teenager and intuition saved me from great potential harm.

That’s why I have given a great deal of thought to how to help children develop intuition. I know that it can be developed. It's enhanced by both practice and confidence. I trusted my internal sense as a young girl because I had been told by wise adults that I could and should tap into that inner knowledge. It was important both to my inner development and to my practical safety. 

As a writer, one of my tools is now storytelling and I’ve seen the power of stories to impart deeper understanding and inner confidence. As a result, I became interested in the stories available for children on the subject of intuition and self-protection. But I was surprised at some major gaps in the literature for kids in this area.

There are children's books that explain about "okay touching" and "not okay touching." There are even storybooks to help the youngest victims of abuse cope after the fact. But there is precious little out there to help children successfully avoid abuse or an attack in the first place.

Partly this is because adults write the materials for children and it pains us to be too upfront because that might frighten children or lead to paranoia. And it's partly because evading harm isn't simple at any age and intuition is a slippery concept to impart. 

Beyond the issue of the topic, many of the stories in this area are not very much fun for children. They are too often pedantic and unlikely to be chosen by children. Instead these are books chosen by adults to forcefully teach a child. But anyone who has watched how children absorb information will know that it is very difficult to force children to learn concepts that are preached directly. It's much easier for children to absorb concepts and lessons that are part of a suspenseful, gripping story that is fun to read. 

From this need was born the first book in the Children’s Wheel of the Year stories. There is a tradition in the modern earth=based spirituality movement that claims February 2 as a holiday devoted to intuition and protection. It's an ancient Celtic festival called Imbolc. The themes are inspiration, intuition, protection, healing and the hope of new beginnings. These themes are embodied in the story of Shanna and the Raven, a book I wrote for children ages six to twelve, in hopes of answering the need for stories that help children develop intuition and train their inner listening skills.

The story begins when ten-year-old Shanna and her seven-year-old brother Rye meet a new neighbor on their way home from school. The neighbor is nice enough but he asks their names without giving his own. And more than that Shanna just doesn’t have a good feeling about the situation. Then the children encounter a raven that seems to warn them of danger and darker fears haunt their steps. As the story progresses Shanna learns the meaning of intuition and the raven, which she initially thought might be a bad omen, helps her to understand her inner sense. When true danger threatens her brother, Shanna’s intuition leads her to come to his aid in time. The story teaches both how to tap into intuition and the confidence to trust one's own sense.​

Shanna and the Raven is the first book in the Children's Wheel of the Year series. It will be published on January 8. Within a few days it will be available in Kindle, Nook, Apple and other ebook stores. It will also be available in paperback here. The beautiful illustrations have been created by Julie Freel with pastels in a style that is very emotive and close to the hearts of children. We both hope the books will bring joy and confidence to many, many children.