Zachary Ricks's Blog, page 5

Tropes

I am a huge fan of anime, and if I’m watching tv, one of two things is going on.

My wife is watching something, and it has pulled my attention away from whatever I am doing at the computer.
It’s anime.

But anime, like any art form, has its tropes and cliches. It has certain themes that it likes to come back to and play with. And sometimes it gets kind of… well… predictable.

For example: Hayao Miyazaki tends to do a lot of environmentalist stuff in his anime. Nausicaa hits you over the head with it. Princess Mononoke is an explicit struggle between nature and industrialization. Spirited Away has significant plot elements that come from environmentalism (the stink spirit that turns out to be something else?) and Ponyo is another one that hits these themes.

Typically, I don’t mind it. Much. But just once, I’d like to see a show where the industrialization actually, you know, helps people improve their lives. Where it leads to higher survival for kids and adults. Where it improves quality of life, increases food production, creates medical breakthroughs, etc. You know. Like it does in real life.

But that never happens. (With the possible exception of Maoyuu).

SPOILERS!

Tonight, I was watching an episode of Gargantia, and I’ll admit, I had my hopes up. In the last episode, the series’ protagonist gives this great monologue about how the only reason that humanity wasn’t being wiped off this particular planet was because they hasn’t developed enough of an industrial and technological base to make it worth the effort to kill them. In essence, humanity is clinging to life on the remnants of ancient tech, not developing any more, so why take out what obviously isn’t a threat any more?

And my eyes got wide. Holy cow, I thought. This just got really interesting. I wonder how this will play out?

And, of course, it plays out by demonstrating that humanity was really at fault/created the threat in the first place/oh if only we could learn to not be so nasty mean to those peace-loving aliens they wouldn’t be trying to kill us no more.

Just like so many shows. Just like so many books. Just like so much of our culture. Humanity is always the enemy, never the hero.

I’m sorry, but I’ve seen this before. And no, it doesn’t take two to make a war. It takes one party that’s willing to use force. And if the other party isn’t willing to defend itself, there’s a word for that. Massacre. And then Extinction. Or Slavery.

In at least one sense, this is why I have enjoyed a series that I cannot in good faith recommend – Valvrave the Liberator. It is absolutely crazy, and after 12 episodes, the main question I have is still what the heck is going on? but at least it isn’t deep in the humanity-hating camp. Episode 11 notwithstanding.

One of my trunked novels is a space opera with alien conflict, and in it, the aliens have decided that the Galaxy is theirs, and that they are totally justified in eliminating all other sentient life because they’re trespassing varmints. And glory be, it’s not the humans’ fault. If the aliens get redeemed – which is a pretty big if – it will only be at horrible cost. (If you’ve read my short story The Assignment, that’s the universe and characters I’m referring to)

I think it’s high time for stories with unabashed white hats and black hats. For showing the upside of technology and industry. And capitalism.

And someone out there has to be writing them, right? Tell me someone is already in this space. Who is it? And what are their books?

Raising a Standard

Dear science fiction and fantasy fans, writers, editors, con-goers, and other carbon-based life forms of the male persuasion,

So, a couple posts back I said something about not being comfortable with condemning a couple of older gentlemen who wrote something that I still haven’t read in the SFWA bulletin. I stand by that. But today, I want you to go read three things. Shouldn’t take long.

First – read this.

Then, go read .

And, finally, go read this.

Guys, this is our responsibility. Not our fault (unless you’ve been doing it, in which case, yes, it is your fault. Insert the epithet of your choice here and apply it to yourself liberally. If I may suggest one, this is a place where I would probably use the term bastard). But it is our responsibility.

If you see someone engaging in the kinds of behaviors that have been mentioned in those three articles I pointed to above, as a guy you have options open to you that the women probably don’t given the kind of person we’re talking about. Of course, you should use a little judgment and consideration when deciding how to approach the offender.

I’m not saying that women can’t fight their own battles. They obviously can. They shouldn’t HAVE to.

I’m not saying that you need to jump in there on the white horse. You are not Sir Galahad or the Lone Ranger. That’s not the point. The point is that this cretin is doing something that makes life harder for EVERYONE. Both women AND men.

I’m also not saying that if you don’t do something, you’re “just as guilty” as the offender. That’s obviously wrong. But if you’ve witnessed bad behavior in the past, and you haven’t done something about it, for whatever reason, you do bear at least a small amount of responsibility for enabling that bad behavior next time. And you haven’t exactly covered yourself or the male gender with honor, either. Some people would use the word “coward” here. That’s a little too harsh. But you’ve given in to fear at some level by not responding and that’s not something to be proud of. And you should remember that if you see it in the future – that thing holding you back from doing the right thing is fear.

And for heavens sake, don’t compound the problem by imagining that riding to the supposed rescue wins you any consideration or favors from the lady you’re defending. There are none. This is a duty owed not to the lady, but to society in general. And to non-cretinous males more specifically.

Because I’m pretty damn tired of feeling like I have to defend my gender from accusations of sexism. We do that by policing our own. We do that by holding ourselves and the men around us to a minimum standard of conduct.

Step up.

On That Which Is Borked, and That Which Is Not Borked

So… turns out that the SQL database that the Fiction Store page is tied into is… kaput. Corrupt. Screwed up. Gone to that great cloud storage space in the sky.

And may have been for some time. SO… for now, I’ve taken the fiction store page down. You can still GET my fiction, but for now you’ll have to go to… Amazon. Maybe bn.com. And if there’s something that you see in one place that you don’t see in another, let me know with the contact form on this web page and I’m sure I can get it to you in some kind of format. None of it has DRM, anyway, so it should be trivially easy to move it to or from kindle-compatible formats to every-other-ereader-on-the-planet-including-iDevices format. (Pssst… Amazon…? EPUB. Just sayin’.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been contemplating moving to a new host, and actually moving off WordPress altogether. I have a few weeks to pull the trigger on that, and haven’t actually made up my mind to do it yet. While I have stepped away from the management of Flying Island Press, their website is still a part of the same hosting account as this blog, and I can’t trip them up.

Meanwhile, in NON-borked stuff news, I finally finished the Way of the Gun story that I promised Scott Roche. There will be much editing, no doubt, but the thing is out the door and out of my brain. Thank goodness. Which leaves room for other things.

Like the Battlehymn sequel I started last year and need to finish. And like the Aethelian Age book I started in the back half of last year. And like an earlier Unnamed Space Opera book that I did a few years ago and suddenly have the hankering to edit into something I can feel halfway decent about unleashing upon the world. (For those who may be curious, it’s a world and characters I used in the short story “The Assignment”, in a headspace folder I’m currently referring to as Prodigals.)

So, no lack for projects there. What I need now is a little more diligence. And fewer kittens. Seriously. We took in a stray a few months ago, and she turned out to be pregnant. Now we have four kittens. Three have designated homes. No one is in a hurry to take their kittens home. And they’ve decided that my chair is now their “nap place” and “jungle gym”. So by extension, when I am sitting there, trying to write, I become a designated piece of jungle gym equipment. Ow.

The Opportunity

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man’s power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.

- Madame de Stael

Science fiction is often credited with being the forerunner of invention. We were going to the Moon and to Mars and the asteroids in our fiction long before 1969. Cell phones, tablets and Siri were all foreshadowed by Star Trek. Nuclear powered submarines? Jules Verne, baby! The technological progress we’ve made that was foreshadowed and inspired by science fiction is nothing if not inspiring.

But… for all the technical inspiration, has science fiction likewise inspired moral development and better character in the people who read it?

Sure, we have a metric ton of cautionary tales. Dystopias. 1984. Brave New World. Scott Westerfeld’s Pretties and its sequels. But in those cases, the morality is kind of the point. Morality is the message. I’m talking about something different. In a lot of science fiction, at least the more modern stuff, the tech isn’t the point of the story. Rather, the tech helps to tell the story. I’m looking for examples of science fiction in particular where great morality exists, but it isn’t the whole point of the piece.

For example: The Demolished Man hypothesizes a world of telepathic cops. No crime is ever unsolved, because it’s ridiculously easy for a telepath to see who did it. In that society, one of the richest men in the world undertakes to commit a murder. And there’s morality all through that. Sure, in a sense, all detective stories are morality plays, but this one was particularly good – and the book raised interesting moral questions throughout. Incidentally, if you do want to go get this, I’ve got to recommend that you get it in some sort of text version. Bester plays around with text layout as he gets into telepath culture, with a visual representation of text and conversation that I don’t think would translate well into audio. If you haven’t read the story, it’s fantastic. As is another of Alfred Bester’s novels – The Stars My Destination.

Stars is essentially The Count of Monte Cristo, complete with a revenge quest, secret treasure, disguises, romance… the works. However, it’s also a society where teleportation is a natural ability and people do it all the time. And there’s a bit of a discussion there about what that does to privacy, to protecting family, etc. There’s also a bit about a military-industrial complex and the development of superweapons that ends with… well, I won’t spoil it. Suffice to say that it’s a rip-roaring adventure that I dearly love, but which also raises interesting moral questions.

Who else is doing that? I don’t mean in the Michael Crichton Jurassic Park “you guys were so interested in whether you could do it that you didn’t stop to think if you should” smack you in the face with a frying pan method. I mean who is raising interesting questions, and challenging their readers to live up to a better moral standard? (I would argue that Jim Butcher does this in almost every single Harry Dresden book as Harry makes a choice that he believes to be the right choice even though it will cost him personally, but that’s fantasy so it doesn’t count. Neener neener. I’m talking Science Fiction here.)

Maybe I’m missing them. Maybe they’re out there, and I’m just not familiar with their work?

If I’m not, then I think that’s a failing of the community. Which is another way of saying that it’s an opportunity for someone to get into that space and explore it – not as the main message – but as a side issue, a flavorful side dish that you serve with the rip-roaring adventure and swashbuckling planetary romance. Maybe.

I can’t be right.

The thing about the most recent kerfuffle (and yeah, I’m using that word on purpose) in the SFWA writing community is, there’s no good answer here. People on both sides have interesting points, I care about and respect people on both sides.

And if you haven’t heard about the kerfuffle, count your blessings. 

And I think they’ve both got some good points. Yes, this can be interpreted as some kind of lawyer-like cop-out. I get that. But here’s the thing.

1) If I say that the gentlemen involved were wrong in what they said, that’s a problem. First, it’s a problem because I haven’t seen the articles, haven’t read them, and frankly don’t trust the level of hand-wringing and cries of “Rampant sexism! Misogyny! Those old bastards!” It strikes me as coming perilously close to saying that “These men acted like sexist pigs. They were men. All men are therefore sexist pigs.” Or, to be a little more charitable, “Those people who are not sufficiently upset about it and fervently decrying it are just as guilty, and are therefore sexist pigs.”

2) If I say that the gentlemen involved were harmless in what they said, that’s also a problem. First, it’s a problem because I haven’t seen the articles, haven’t read them, and sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s legitimately fire. Sometimes people are jerks, sometimes people are sexist, and that’s unfortunate. Where sexism exists, we should address it and drag it into the sunlight.

I’ve been in situations, personally, where I was (falsely) accused of something, and so I hope to have developed a bit of caution in waving around accusations. Which automatically puts me in category one in some peoples’ minds. Insufficient concern, they will say, means that you are just as much a part of the problem as the people actually committing the sexism.

Never mind the fact that I’m LDS, which probably makes me ipso facto sexist, racist, and intolerant.

Here’s the thing. Some people are jerks. Most people, at some point in their lives, are going to do or say something jerk-like. When that happens, where that happens, it is entirely right to respond in an appropriate manner. Just war theory comes into play here. You engage for good and just cause. You engage in a commensurate level to the offense. You engage with an aim toward peace.

If someone talks over you at a panel, and you happen to be a woman, it may be that the person who talks over you is doing so because they are sexist. But it is probably more accurate to say that the person who talks over you is doing so because they are a jerk. Or at least acting in a jerk-like fashion. And it is appropriate to address it – “hey, I was talking here, and that was kind of a jerk-like thing to do”.

If someone hits on you at a con, and you happen to be a woman, and you politely decline the invitation – but the person doesn’t get the hint? It may be that the person is being sexist. But it’s probably more accurate to say that the person who keeps following you around and giving you puppy-dog eyes just doesn’t understand certain social conventions. And it is appropriate to address it – “hey, I’m really not interested, and you’re kind of creeping me out. Step away, please.” And if they don’t respond to plain language, then at that point a certain escalation may occur. (Our culture has really gotten away from slapping, and that may have been a mistake.)

It’s harder to tell, I suppose, in the publishing world that sexism is the reason your manuscript wasn’t accepted. Maybe it was. You often don’t get feedback on manuscripts.

I’m not saying that crimes against women don’t happen. I’m not saying that women aren’t often victims. I am saying that this doesn’t make me de facto sexist.

Which I guess in the eyes of some probably makes me… de facto sexist. (sigh)

The Other Side of the Coin

Today, I want to talk a little about language. I happened onto a twitter fight (one of the few things I find twitter is still good for is watching people talk past each other at 140 characters) yesterday where one of my twitter friends – someone I respect but with whom I find myself often disagreeing – had said something about how soda pop was poison. Which got another of my twitter friends – someone else I respect but with whom I find myself often disagreeing (I must be a very disagreeable person), really really upset.

Why?

Well, that’s a good question. I can’t answer for my twitter friend. I can tell you that I thought it was a gross and inappropriate use of language.

Let’s talk for a moment about what language is – a means of communicating ideas and feelings. It’s better at communicating ideas than it is at communicating feelings, but it succeeds when we describe things and ideas with the right language. I looked up the word “evoke” today, and that pretty much gets at what I’m thinking. To “evoke” something is to “call up or produce memories or feelings. To elicit or draw something forth. To call up, cause to appear, and summon.

Language is a powerful tool. It evokes, provokes, invokes. In fact, if you subscribe to the bubba theory of quantum mechanics, it’s potentially one of the most powerful tools in the universe. (I kid a little about the bubba theory of quantum mechanics, and I love Travis Taylor’s stuff that he did with John Ringo – if you get a chance, find yourself a copy of the Looking Glass books – Through the Looking Glass, Vorpal Blade, Claws that Catch…, or go watch a couple episodes of Rocket City Rednecks. Those guys are scary smart. And hilarious.)

Heck, if you’re a fan of the Bible, it’s all over there. How was the world created? Language. Two of the Ten Commandments have to do with language – not taking the name of God in vain, and not bearing false witness. Christ taught that ”(n)ot that which

goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.“ Meaning to say, what we say is more important than what we eat. We are what we say. And that has an impact on the world.

So when you say pop is poison, well… that’s evocative, and it raises -invokes- the specter of some wealthy Uncle Moneybags type holding down little kids and pouring the hated demon soda down their throats while cackling to himself maniacally and going through their pockets for loose change. But this isn’t about soda. It’s about the language used.

Here in the US, the right to free speech is held almost sacred. Any infringement on that right is immediately decried, and it should be. That right is important.

But that right, any of our rights, also come with a certain amount of responsibility. We have a responsibility to use words accurately and well. Running with what I said above about the Bible, I’d up that to saying it’s a sacred responsibility. And one that we will someday answer for.

Just as people who choose to bear arms have to do so responsibly, people should be aware of the responsibility – the awesome responsibility – they have about the way they speak.

After all, that quantum physicist with the heavy accent I reference above implies heavily that the words you speak have an impact, not just on the people around you, but potentially on the very world itself.

So talk carefully.

Goals, Motivation, Confusion.

There’s a lot of talk out there about goals. I keep hearing people talk about them, and the advice is sometimes a little contradictory.

You should tell everyone about your goals so that you build up some accountability!

You should tell no one about your goals so that you’re more likely to actually do them!

Goals need to be big, hairy, and audacious!

Goals need to be specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and… I forget what the T is. Time-focused? On a deadline?

Anyway, goals. I hate talking about them on the blog because it seems that whenever I do, I wind up killing the goal I had set out to accomplish. Specifically with writing, I’ve heard some advice that runs along these lines.

Writing is an attempt to communicate an idea. There’s a part of your brain that needs to tell a particular story. But if you do a lot of other communication-style things, like, say, listening to talk radio, or commenting on other people’s blogs, that satisfies the brain’s craving to communicate, and you don’t feel as motivated to get writing done.

Which takes us to a whole ‘nother issue – motivation. I know some people feel compelled to write. Those people are going to write anyway to get the voices in their heads to shut up. Maybe. But they feel this compulsion to write, so they write. Who knows if they’re any good – what they’re doing to increase their skills, improve their plotting, characterization, use of language, etc. Their drive is to make the voices stop. To just write it out.

And two years ago at Galley Table Live, we sat down with Ben Bova. And someone in the audience asked him about motivation to write. To which he responded something along the lines of “well, about once a month I get a letter from the American Express company. And darn it, about then, I start feeling really motivated to write.” (Incidentally, Dr. Bova is a super nice guy. If you ever get a chance to talk to him, do it.)

So, motivations abound. Advice on goals abounds. Advice on writing abounds also. Traditional or indie? E-book or paper? Most indies never really see any money! Most traditionally published books don’t earn out on their advance! And have you seen the contracts you have to sign? That on both sides of the debate – ebook and traditional.

Goals. You need them. And you need to stay with them, because success – for various definitions of success – doesn’t come easily or cheaply.

And it may never come, for various definitions of success. If your goal is to make a million dollars selling your anthropomorphic-horses-living-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean story to whoever the current big movie studios are, and then move to Fiji, well… that may never happen.

But if your goal is just to tell a good story, I think that’s pretty doable. I think you can do that.

I don’t know. I’m no expert. All I do know is, if I want to, I can take the time to plant my rear in a chair, put my hands over a keyboard, and make some clickety-clack noises. And words come out. Which is pretty darn cool.

Tomorrow, I think I’ve got a couple of things to say about language.

Who needs a weekend project?

With the day job, I find myself around a lot of very interesting characters – some crazy smart people. Which is always good.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hang out with crazy smart people every time I’m with my wife. I read crazy smart people on the internet. I listen to crazy smart people in the podcast. But there’s something about being around someone who is crazy smart face to face that’s just different.

So, one of the things that FIP always talked about but never really got off the ground was RSS delivery of ebooks. The delivery is probably pretty simple – it’s an RSS feed, and the ebook is provided via a link or an enclosure, like a podcast. So that’s not that difficult to set up. The hard part is how to catch it and make it automatically readable on your computer, your e-reader, your phone, or your tablet. And that means building some kind of app.

We had thought about applying this to something like serialized fiction – where you have a number of chapters that get released bit by bit over time. You could do that by making them all separate ebook files, and that’s probably how people are solving that now (to the extent that people are doing it at all). Basically, it’s taking the podcast model and applying it to text. Separate files.

But I don’t know that it’s the best way to handle it.

I guess first you need to understand something about what an ebook is. I haven’t done a lot of looking under the hood at .mobi files, but I have been up to my elbows in the guts of epub files. Mobi can’t be all that different. And here’s what an ebook is – it’s just a set of hyperlinked web pages, zipped together with a specific hierarchy. Period.

Serious. It’s just a re-named zip file. If you’ve got an epub (or can get your hands on one from someplace like Gutenberg or Baen’s free library, then make a copy of it on your desktop, and rename the file extension from ePub to zip, and extract it. And what you’ll see is, essentially, a stack of web pages linked together in a particular structure. And if you do anything on the web, you can build your own pretty easily. I usually use Sigil to build an epub file.

Now, here’s my thought. There are two problems with RSS delivery of an ebook.

The Delivery. How to get the book from the RSS feed into a reader app?
Not Losing Your Place. Because if I’m working my way through someone’s book, I don’t want to have to do a lot of flipping back and forth to find my page again. That’s a non-starter.

So, an app. A new app that would be a basic e-reader, and could add chapters to the end of a current work, smart enough to recognize a new update in an RSS feed, grab the file and insert it in the place of the prior one, while keeping your place from where you were reading in the old file.

Here’s where I start just randomly speculating how current e-reader apps work.

If I was designing an e-reader app, knowing what I do about epub structure, I’d tie the “bookmark” or “last read place” to

The last internal web page you were looking at.
and the line number in that web page that appears at the top of the screen on that last viewed page

Then if you download a new file with more chapters on the end, the prior chapters (which are separate webpages) should all be the same with no changes in their names, the lines should be the same up to where you’ve read in the current chapter, and all you’re doing is adding more train track in front of where the reader has gotten to.

So, all my software engineer buddies out there. Here’s the idea. Maybe that works, maybe it won’t because my understanding of e-reader software is incorrect. Maybe it doesn’t work because of something else. Or… maybe it does work, and all of a sudden you have something you can put in an author’s hands to put stories in front of their readers…? Something that could be skinned and branded for a particular author so that if you wanted to get everything written by, say, a podcast author, but you want to get it in text.

Then the fans subscribe to a secured feed – maybe there’s a subscription fee, maybe not, but if there is, it becomes another revenue source for the author.

Am I overthinking it? Is it enough just to put chapters out on a blog, which is what I see other authors doing, particularly on a Friday?

Shakeups

I have just made the official announcement on the Galley Table podcast, which will be up on Youtube later, but I should mention it here also.

Effective a week ago, I stepped down as managing editor of FlagShip and Flying Island Press. Reasons are many, and I won’t go into them here. As for anyone looking to submit new stories, FlagShip is on hiatus for now while the team determines how to proceed. They are in discussions now.

For anyone who’s submitted stories to those outfits and gotten no or slow feedback, that’s on me, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. It was my fault, and should not be taken as a reflection of the professionalism of anyone else on the staff.

What does this mean? Well, for FlagShip, watch that space. I’m not sure how they’re going to proceed, but I have faith in the crew, and I still believe that its mission of publishing positive fiction is a good one – one which should continue to be pursued.

For me, well…

I can’t promise anything, and it would be inappropriate of me to do so. I have no current plans for podcasting anything in the near future. I do have a short story that is WAY behind schedule and a book sequel that need finishing up, so I do believe I’ll be giving those some loving attention. Also, our cat just had kittens, and a lot of my time is being taken up by being super distracted by those adorable little fuzzballs. All four of them. (Frodo, Mary, Pippin and Sam, if you must know).

Meanwhile, I’ll admit that there are places where I’ve done a lot of self-editing. And there are things that I haven’t said here because of how I thought it would impact FIP. I haven’t always been able to keep a lid on things, and I honestly expected that I’d have more to say on a plethora of issues, and that I’d be posting more often here. A lot more often. But for a variety of reasons, I haven’t felt comfortable asserting my voice here. In formally separating myself from FIP, I want to clearly restate that my views here are my own, and not those of FIP, not those of the crew members of FIP, and should not be construed or interpreted as such. (Hi! I’m a lawyer.) Heck, even my views over there are my own, and not the views of FIP. I hope to be able to to say a lot more on a lot of things. No promises.

This was, at least on my part, an amicable parting, and I hope not to have hurt any feelings by stepping down from a role that I could not in good conscience continue performing (and wasn’t doing a very good job with, let’s not fool ourselves).

In the meantime, watch that space. I’m sure there will be some kind of announcement as to their plans going forward, perhaps around Balticon. And to those people who supported and encouraged our venture, and those who will continue to do so in the future, I thank you.

Dig In. Pull.

Lately, the news has been nothing but doom and gloom.

Doom and Gloom.

Doom and Gloom.

DOOM AND GLOOM.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting a little tired of unrelenting, unremitting tons of metaphorical dirt being shoveled on top of my metaphorical head.

Hey, Guys! I’m not dead! I think I’ll go for a walk! I feel happy! I feel happy!

Clonk

Doesn’t it just feel like the walls are closing in a little bit?

Don’t you feel like you’re being pulled a little? I sure do. It feels like some place I’ve been before. It feels like a tug-o-war.

I mean, with the bombing in Boston, and the imposition of what essentially was martial law, the warrantless searches (which were largely consented to, yes)…

With shots being fired at a gathering of protesters in Denver…

With an economy that people say is getting better, while prices on staples like food and fuel rise…

And, of course, it reminds me of a story…

STORY TIME!

I spent two years in the Philippines as a missionary for my church, and both Christmases I was there, all the missionaries gathered at a little ag college in the middle of our mission area for a big Christmas conference. We’d have talks and songs and a talent show. And the last day, we’d break out into teams and engage in a little friendly competition.

I was on the Green team, and…well, we weren’t the most athletically inclined people in the mission. In fact, if you’ve ever seen any of those movies where you essentially had a team of nerds who had to compete against teams of jocks…we were the nerds in that scenario. And we lost every competition we were in. Badly.

The climax of this exercise in humility (which is a good thing for a missionary to occasionally experience. And I suppose it’s really good for anyone when you get down to it…) was the tug-o-war. It was the most anticipated event of the competition, and it was the last event of the competition. I wasn’t really looking forward to it.

However, just before leaving for the Philippines, I’d been talking to my uncle – a Scoutmaster – who’d just gotten back from Scout camp, and he’d seen an interesting way of winning tug-o-wars demonstrated there as a particular troop took all comers and whooped ’em. So I figured… what the heck? We’ll give it a shot.

Being an American and the biggest guy on the team, I was automatically assigned the anchor position. So I walked to the back of that rope, and tied a loop around my waist. I kicked my flip-flops off into the grass, and waited for the signal. And when it came…

I turned around. I dropped to my hands and knees. I dug in my fingers and toes, and crawled.

And we won. It was…weird. But awesome.

The next team we pulled against was the red team. If we were the nerds in this little scenario, the reds were the jocks. (Let me introduce you to my team of ex-American Gladiators…Blade! Laser! Blazer! And my fitness consigliari… Mi’chell)

The signal went off, and I turned, dropped, and pulled. It was HARD. Much harder than the first pull had been. And though we had a little early success, it was shut down fast and hard. And I was pulling, my legs and arms aching from the unusual effort, and I’ll admit – I got to a point where I did not think I could go on any more. I was this close to giving up and letting go.

Boy, does that feeling seem familiar today.

Suddenly, from the crowd of onlookers, one of the sister missionaries came running over to me. She began jumping up and down and yelling at me “YOU CAN DO IT! KEEP GOING! YOU CAN DO IT! COME ON!!!”

This was a little frustrating to me. I was ready to quit. We weren’t going to win against the Red team. Right?

But…I couldn’t give up with this sister jumping up and down and clapping and yelling me on. I just couldn’t do it. So…I reached deep inside, pulled myself together, and somehow pulled harder. And incrementally, we started moving. Little by little, inch by inch, with Sister Raj cheering me on through every clutching grab and incremental step, with a whole team pulling with me, we won.

Third team came up and we beat them pretty easily.

You see where I’m going with this, right? We are in a struggle. Pulling with all our might. And it feels like we’re not winning – like the odds are insurmountable. Like we’re doomed to failure. Like we’re lost and scattered and going down for the third time.

I’ve been there. But I kept pulling. And we won. So, that’s the first lesson. Don’t stop pulling.

That was my first year at Christmas Conference.

The next year…

Again, somehow I was on the Green team. Same scenario. Except this time, with every setback, every loss, I would look at my team members and say…“It’s all right. We’ll win the tug-o-war.”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that after we beat those first two teams that year (without anything close to the struggle that we had that first year with the Reds), I may have gotten a bit of a swelled head and said a couple things about being unbeatable. I was feeling my oats. Ah, hubris.

It was the last match. We were making steady progress. I knew we were about to win. And that’s when it happened.

Suddenly, I was ripped out of the ground, and flew backwards like I’d been fired from a catapult. Flew what felt like ten feet. Totally sent the Mission President’s daughter flying through the air. You’ve seen those Peanuts comics where someone gets tackled and his shoes and socks go flying off? Yeah. That.

And I got up, wandering around, and wondering what happened? How had we lost? I don’t think I had a concussion, but I was pretty darn dazed.

Well, turns out we’d won. And when we won, my team – in understandable and perfectly justified jubilation – dropped the rope and lifted their hands in a cheer. But the other team kept pulling. With somewhat spectacular results.

And that’s the second lesson. You can’t do it alone. The good news is, we aren’t alone. I can’t believe that we are. I keep thinking about 2 Kings 6, and the words keep coming to me They that are with us are greater than they that be with them.

So, if you feel things are pressing you down, pulling you back…

Dig in.

And pull.