Kevin D. Hendricks's Blog, page 42

The Difference Diversity Makes

That whole ‘diversity in literature’ conversation keeps coming up and I think it might help some people to understand why it’s so important.

If you’re never confronted with it, if you’re always finding people who look like you in your entertainment, then it’s a question you might never think about. It helps to step outside of ourselves and see a different perspective.

I came across exactly that perspective in Deza Malone, a character in Christopher Paul Curtis’ The Mighty Miss Malone:

When I was...

Festival of Faith & Writing 2014

This past week I attended the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. It’s a gathering of writers and readers interested in faith.

I first heard about this event when I was in college, but it’s never been practical to attend. It’s also held every other year, so I would tend to forget about it or only remember during off years.

This year I’d been looking for an event to attend and this seemed perfect. I’ve never been to a conference in my professional career that w...

90% of Everything Is Crap

“90% of everything is crap,” says sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon, as quoted by Austin Kleon in Show Your Work!

So don’t worry about it. Create enough to have that 10% that isn’t crap.

Maya Angelou on Complaining

“What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”

Wisdom Maya Angelou’s grandmother used to tell her (Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now, page 87)

A Little Therapy After the How I Met Your Mother Finale

The quirky sitcom How I Met Your Mother ended its nine-year run this week, finally revealing who the mother was. My wife and I started watching the show after the second season, usually on weekend DVD-binges. It’s become our go-to comedy and re-watched countless times.

So the end is always bittersweet. Most finales are a letdown (except for Buffy) and this one is worst than most. The only thing that softens the blow is that it was going downhill for the last few seasons.

When we get this attach...

Children’s Novels That Teach Culture & History

While generally I have a weak spot for sci-fi reading, I’ve also noticed I enjoy books that help you understand a specific culture or history. I think that’s one of the greatest joys of reading—better understanding part of life. Young adult and teen novels seem to be the best at this, since they’re usually more focused.

These sorts of stories may be a weak route to diversity, but they at least offer some. I’d also counter that understanding differing perspectives is the whole point of more div...

World Vision & Arguing Over Gay People

This whole flip-flop fiasco with World Vision (declaring one day that they’ll employee abstinent or married gay people and then reversing the decision two days later) just makes me sad. I wrote a piece about it for Church Marketing Sucks, but it’s primarily from a communication lens, exploring how World Vision tried to [rightly] focus on their mission of helping kids in poverty but in the process forgot that very mission. In short, they ended up in a fight about gay people instead of helping...

Why I Don’t Help My Kids With Their Homework

I don’t like helping my kids with their homework. There, I said it.

My parents never had to harass me to do my homework. I just did it. I was annoyingly responsible. To the point that I spent Friday nights in college getting a jump on papers. My wife still makes fun of me for that.

But I feel no sense of responsibility over my kids’ homework. It’s their homework. They need to be responsible for it themselves.

And now there’s research that backs me up. Apparently kids don’t learn anything when pa...

Where’s the Diversity in Literature?

I read a lot. And in all that reading it’s apparent that diversity is lacking. I like to tell myself that’s because of my own tastes or my own white privilege.

But it’s not just me.

It’s a problem that pervades the publishing industry. Earlier this month I tweeted a story about how 93% of the characters in children’s literature are white. The New York Times has run a pair of opinion pieces on the issue, Where Are All the People of Color in Children’s Books by Walter Dean Myers and The Apartheid...

Learning How to Write Fiction Again: Point of View

Yesterday I hinted that I’ve dusted off one of my old novels for [some more] editing. I don’t do a lot of fiction writing, but I do a lot of fiction reading, and it’s helping me see what kind of edits I need to make. Sometimes the edits I need to make are painfully basic. It’s like I need an re-introduction to the elements of fiction writing.

Point of view is one of the big issues I’m dealing with.

It’s pretty important because it determines how the reader views things and decides what you’re a...