The writing diary is a good form of accountability as I record what I’m learning and what I’m actually doing as a writer.  I chose to go with my birth name for a number of reasons, and it doesn’t hurt that ‘Boyko’ is higher up the alphabet than ‘Friesen’.

Since I won Nanowrimo (got my 50 000 words), my project now is Holly Lisle’s “How To Revise Your Novel” course, so come and see what I’m learning and how it’s coming along!

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This week we got a better rehearsal space, one of the stages we will be performing on in February and March, so I get ‘the big picture’ much easier and can make adjustments as necessary.  This is the part of rehearsal I love!  Lines are down, blocking is down, now to inject it with greater and greater life and interest.  Its so satisfying to watch my actors develop and see the show come alive!

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After world building, character developing and plotting the whole thing, enthusiasm left me to actually write it.  But it is a Godsend to take into Nanoland with me!  A review of the one-sentence summary of all 22 scenes last night sparked some excitement, and reminded me that I’d done a lot of other research that wasn’t included in the sentences.  I will have to get out my How To Think Sideways texts and review all the juicy details that I remember writing down, I just don’t remember what they are.

At the same time, I am working through Holly Lisle’s “Write Page Turning Scenes” and am deeply impressed with what the excercises have brought out of me.  With most of the assignments I’ve used scenarios or ideas from existing Works In Progress, and I can see these techniques really bringing my writing to the next level.  That’s exciting, because I’m painfully aware of how far I still have to go.  Hopefully what I’m learning this last week or so before Nano will come out as I write the Nanonovel as well.

So you can expect further updates as a writing diary as I prepare and embark on Nanowrimo 2009, with every intention of winning.

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This lady is so the real thing, and unbelievably generous in sharing what she has learned over the years as the writer of 32 published novels.  Wow!  Although it’s not a one-to-one thing, I feel very personally mentored.  And excited!

What’s the new novella you ask?  Well, some of you will remember back when I called down lightning (Lesson Three)  and got several story ideas generated.  One of them had to do with a belly dancer and some trans-dimensional slavers, and, oh yes, a social revolution.  That’s the one.  I thought about making it novel-sized, but there are some very specific things I want to write about with this one, without any distraction.  I was heartened to read the following at ONFICTION.ca

Whereas often a short story is about being on an edge, a novel usually allows us to become immersed in a world so that it becomes normal to us. The novella is distinct from these forms in that, although it allows the same kind of immersion as the novel, it is not about a variegated world, but a world in which a psychological issue is singled out, with other aspects pared away.

Often listed among famous novellas in chronological order are Aphra Behn’s (1688) Oroonoko, Charles Dickens’s (1843) A Christmas Carol, Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1886) Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kate Chopin’s (1899) The Awakening, Anton Chekhov’s (1900) In the ravine, Joseph Conrad’s (1902) Heart of darkness, Thomas Mann’s (1913) Death in Venice, Franz Kafka’s (1915) Metamorphosis, Ernest Hemingway’s (1952) The old man and the sea, George Orwell’s (1945) Animal Farm, Muriel Spark’s (1962) The prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

…The theme in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is: What would it be if we were each divided into a socially responsible part and a socially irresponsible part? In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness, the theme is: Are civilized manners and behaviour merely a thin veneer?

So novellas are telling a story (the above include many styles) but they are each centered around a theme.  I’ve often said I like stories just to be stories, but the truth is, my favourites are ones that matter, that have touched on something significant.  This is the realm of theme.

Imagine my relief at reading this article and discovering that the length of story I want to tell is actually ‘supposed to’ be centered on a single theme!  I haven’t put my theme into a slick question form yet, but it could be: To what extent is personal freedom a chosen state of mind? I’ll work on it some more and keep you posted.

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Michael’s Question

“Can you hear the music?”

Matilla frowned at the baby she was jostling to peace on her hip and turned quickly to the kitchen window.  Her brows drew together.

It was Michael.  She knew he was behind her, standing in the doorway. But she didn’t turn.

His bright presence would fill the postage-stamp kitchen. Not with harsh light, exposing the grime and other shortcomings of her less-than-stellar housekeeping. The light that accompanied him was golden and alive, kissing her common possessions like the touch of Midas, revealing a beauty one would never guess.

But she didn’t turn.

The question hung in the air as she forced herself to stare out the window.

Could she hear the music?

She used to hear the music….

Never loudly. A subtle undercurrent below tumultuous, colliding brain-waves.  It coaxed and called, and sometimes she would answer it. A little.

But the music wasn’t for her. Not the her that she was. Maybe for the her that she might one day attain to in her mighty striving to Be.

Why was he asking now?

Why now when her days were dim and filled with dutiful love;  true love that had been eroded by responsibility and harangued by storms of resentment, but with a foundation strong enough to keep her?

She could not afford to hear the music. Not now.

The baby had quieted and she cradled him in front of her, still glaring out the window.

If she turned, she would weaken.

The glow would touch her, the music would well up and she’d have to respond. How dare he speak of that sweetness when she lived with so much that was bitter? How dare he remind her it was there?

How dare he suggest that she could hear the music, respond to it, and still meet every urgent task determined to swallow the hours of her life?

If she could do that, she’d already be doing it, wouldn’t she?

…wouldn’t she?

Michael waited.

She clenched her eyes and her arms tightened, molding her son’s sleeping form around her chest like a breastplate.  But the light behind her was warm, and patient in the stillness. It lingered, and her stiffened back, her grinding jaw involuntarily relaxed.

“If I hear -” she spoke to the window. She cleared her dry throat.

“If I hear the music,”  she whispered, “I’ll have to dance.”

An attempted wry smile twisted her face into a grimace.

“There is no… room… to dance here.”

The light seemed to grow, the air becoming thick with its golden haze.

“Grace makes room,” said the angel.

Matilla thought hard.

The silence deepened, the light hung suspended in time.

And then…

she turned.

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If you look up codependency on Wikipedia or in a dictionary, it refers to the relationship between a person with an addiction and another person who enables them to carry on with their addictive habits.  This is a very narrow view, and not one espoused by Melody Beattie, the author of “Co-dependent No More” and other books on the subject including her latest “The New Codependency”.

Codependent behaviour can occur in anyone  who is taking care of another person or persons, to their own neglect and detriment.  Yes, the wife who covers for her husband’s alcohol abuse by making excuses to his boss and pouring her life energy into perpetuating the lie that everything is fine…is codependent.  But it can also be the seniors’ caregiver, the mother of toddlers, or the entrepreneur whose business owns him instead of the other way around.

It doesn’t stop there though.   Anyone can be codependent, because codependent behaviour is really normal behaviour taken to extremes. “There are times when we do too much, care too much, feel too little, or overly engage.  We forget where the other person’s responsibilities begin and our responsibilities stop.  Or we get busy and have so much to do that we neglect ourselves.”  [Beattie, The New Codependency, p10] Who can’t relate to that on some level?

Sadly, many Christians believe and are taught in churches that this giving to the point of self neglect is a good and holy thing.  Are we not called to deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow Christ? Did he not give everything, holding nothing back, in his death on the cross?

Well, yes.  Of course he did.  And yes, we are to follow his example.  But which example?  Yes, we know the example of his ultimate sacrifice.  And my old sinful nature belongs on that cross every day.  But what about his daily example?  Was Jesus all day, every day suffering and neglecting himself when he walked the earth?

That’s not what the Gospels teach.  Jesus didn’t say ‘yes’ to every opportunity to minister.  He didn’t stay long term in Samaria.   He didn’t heal very many in his home town.  He didn’t heal all the sick waiting at the pool of Bethesda: only one.  Why is this?  Jesus said himself “I do only what I see the Father doing.”  Contrary to the sometimes manipulative calls for volunteers we hear at church, we aren’t supposed to say yes to everything either!  Only to those things the Father is calling us to.  There is no extra holiness granted to those who over commit to the detriment of themselves and their families.  What matters is obedience in the things to which we know we are called.

Even in the midst of his ministry, we see Jesus taking care of his own needs:  rising early to get away by himself to pray, particularly when he is distressed by the death of John.  We see him taking time apart with his closest friends, Peter  James and John to share a special connection to his Source with them, and encouraging the twelve to get out of the rat race of ministry to spend some time apart in a lonely place.  We see Jesus enjoying parties given by tax collectors and ‘sinners’, because he had something that made them want him around, which gained him the reputation of ‘ a drunkard and a glutton’ among the often fasting Pharisees.

But Jesus did talk about self-denial, even his own.  “I do not do my own will, but the will of the One who sent me.”  “I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father.” and of course in Gethsemane the plea to have the cup of suffering taken from him, followed by the pledge “yet not my will, but Yours be done.”  Jesus did have a will of his own, but he held it in subjection to the will of the Father.  In “Like Christ”, Andrew Murray writes “That man has a will other than God’s is not sin.  It is when he clings to his own will when it is seen to be contrary to the will of the Creator that sin occurs.”

This is an important point to me.  As I emerged from a codependent marriage to finally gain a sense of my own personhood, it occurred to me that I couldn’t really deny myself unless I had a self to deny!  We do have a will, a self, other than God’s.  He created us this way, not as robots incapable of being self directed.  And many times my will is not contrary to God’s.  But when it is, the call is clear that because of who I am in Christ, and because of who He is as my Father, I must deny myself and follow.

And here we come to I think the most profound difference between codependency and biblical self-denial.  Like so many things, from the outside these two can look the same: people tirelessly working for the benefit of others, giving above and beyond the call of duty, lauded as heros of humanitarianism.  Is such behaviour always codependent?  No.  The codependent person acts thus out of desperation to attain or maintain a relationship or position she believes is essential to her survival.  The grounded Christian may do the same things, but her behaviour springs from love for the Father, confidence that the Father will meet all her needs and provide the strength to carry out her calling, of which she does not exceed the bounds.

There is a difference between giving of ourselves from duty and expectation (which leaves us resentful), and giving from heartfelt generosity (which brings us joy).  There is a difference between being trapped in a miserable marriage, and loving someone through the hard times.  There is a difference between codependency and biblical self-denial.

Take care of yourself, and you will always have your best to give.

Recommended for those struggling to find this balance:  The New Codependency by Melody Beattie

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• Realise she’s there
• Explore what that means for you
• See what God says
• Cultivate things in your life to nurture her
• Understand her unique role in the world
• Embrace her daily

I wrote it particularly for exhausted mothers who can’t even imagine having the right to their femininity in the midst  of everything else that is so URGENT, and also for those who never really got a grip on their feminine side, of which I used to be one!  Ladies who do already enjoy their femininity found this workshop a lot of fun, and an opportunity to look at it more deliberately.

This workshop can be adapted to fit the needs of the particular audience and time frame, with some sessions left out and a bonus one to add.  I am in process of getting my notes and worksheets all together available for download for those wishing to do the seminar.  A list of sessions follows:

Optional Session:  My Marriage Testimony, how God helped us overcome infidelity

Session One: My Journey to Femininity

Session Two: Rescuing Your Inner Princess

Going through the RESCUE acronym together, with worksheets and discussion.  This can be done all together in small groups, or divided up in larger ones.  Prayer at the end of this time.

Session Three: Exploring With Your Inner Princess,  Dress-Up for Big Girls

There are many ways this can be done, but the main idea is to create a safe place for women to stretch out of their comfort zones and try new things as they get to know their Inner Princess better.  As many large mirrors as possible is good for this exercise.  When presenting this at my church, I brought several belly dance costumes [Yes, I belly dance, but only in women-only settings]  as well as scarves, veils and costume jewelry.  It is tremendous fun to watch each other trying things on, encouraging one another and dressing each other up.

I follow this with a brief lyrical-belly dance demonstration, and show the ladies some basic belly dance moves.  Our physicality is such an essential part of our femininity that womanly movement can help you connect to your inner princess like no lecture ever could.  This session tends to leave the ladies wanting more, so consider scheduling extra time.

Session Three could also could be done with women bringing their own most feminine (or most daring!) clothing, or fancy things they never get a chance to wear.  The movement aspect would be adapted to posture and walking in heels, with an additional section on lyrical dance, set to worship music (comfortable clothes/skirts needed for this).  I incorporate worship in whatever dance I do, but lyrical is the most easily identifiable as being for God alone, and moving your body in the most beautiful way you can as an act of worship brings out your femininity as well.

To book an engagement, contact Bonne here

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