Lindsey Renee Backen's Blog, page 4

The Friends Who Write Books

One of the things I love best about being a writer is the chance to develop so many friendships with my readers and other writers. Being a writer is fun. It is rewarding. It is challenging. It's also a little scary putting your book out there and letting people know that it exists. Publishing is playing the long game. You have to be willing to put in a lot of time and even more effort. But there is nothing so exciting than when people buy your book, read it, and love it. Except when they tell you that they have read it and loved it.

So today, I want to share some of my friend's books with you. These are more than just writers I have stumbled across: these are real people who have woven their lives into the fabric of my real life. If you see a book that takes your fancy, please consider buying it. If not, just enjoy the antidotes as I tell you a bit about some of the people who are part of my non-fictional world.

Russell Putnam

In the 1990s, Mr. Putnam and his family lived on a ranch. I spent many days there as a kid playing with his children. I remember whittling sticks, attempting to crack a bull whip, playing chase on top of haybales, and pulling green strands of algae out of the water troughs to throw at each other. His wife also introduced me to the world of weaving, showing me how to card wool and how a loom worked. I never forgot the fascination with watching wool turn into yarn and then material, but I did use a lot of what I learned to infuse into my books. I reconnected with Mr. Putnam as an adult when he was reading my books to his wife while caring for her toward the end of her life. Turns out, he also has written books: five, actually. Mr. Putnam's books weave stories about real people with real-life skills. I have no intention of ever raising rabbits for meat if I can help it, but if I ever needed to write about the process, I would consult his book. I have already finished Wheezin', Sneezin', Fever, Cough, Cold and Flu? When it's all aroun'ja, Whaddaya Gonna Do? which is the first book I read by Mr. Putnam. It acts as both a memoir of growing up on the Texas Coast and recipes to help keep you healthy based off the knowledge of yesteryear. It also talks about plants and their various uses. This book was right up my alley, and I enjoyed every bit of it. He continues his combining of history and skills in a book on leather-making as it was done by the local Cherokee Indians. This book is on my to-be-read list, and I look forward to it. Mr. Putnam's other books focus more intently on his memories and even poetry.

Brandon Haygood

This talk of poetry brings me to another writing friend. Brandon Haygood walked into my life when he walked into a theater where I was holding auditions for my first self-directed show, Ship of Dreams. It was a massive undertaking and the biggest challenge of my 23rd year of life. I wrote "Ship of Dreams" to follow  the true-life stories of over 30 people who were on the Titanic and we performed it in 2012 near the 100 anniversary of the sinking. My favorite character in the script was Jeremiah Burke, a 19-year-old Irish man who wrote a message to his family and dropped it into a water using a bottle of holy water his mother had given him. It took an entire year, but it did wash up on shore not far from his home. In my play's version, Jeremiah ended up comforting another immigrant who was later trapped behind a locked gate. He couldn't get the gate open but stayed with her refusing to leave her to die alone. He was an important character to me, and when I saw Brandon read for him, I knew instantly I wanted him to play the role. And play the role, he did. When I think back on that show, I think back to his scenes. In fact, you can watch some of them on Brandon's acting reel. I haven't read Brandon's poetry, but I have read much of his current work in progress, and this man knows how to turn a phrase. He uses dashes of humor to explore what would otherwise deep and serious topics and does a great job at describing the intricacies of human's complex relationships and interactions. If you like to explore the vast usage of the English language, consider reading Brandon's book. (And keep an eye out for his next one, because it's going to be good. ;) )

Claude Robbins

I didn't know Claude Robbins when he released his first book, "The Ice Cream Factory aka The White House" but I did work with him to design the interior of his second, "After the White House." Both books are starkly written in Claude's voice, exactly the way he would tell you in person. I know this because he told me his story in person, but I still wasn't prepared for what I read in the book. Mr. Claude's real-life story is echoed in the voices of hundreds of other boys who endured abuse in a reform school in Marianna, Florida. In recent years, the bodies of hundreds of boys have been uncovered in shallow graves around the area: boys whose families were told had run away. In "The Ice Cream Factory" Mr. Robbins recounts his experience as one of those children, including witnessing the death of a young boy who had a cherished marble he kept in his pocket. In The White House, Mr. Robbins follows up with his adult story of the truth coming out, the legal action, and the fight of the survivors to have their collective story heard in court. This book was not easy for me to read, but it stayed with me long after I did. It is a gripping, heart-breaking testimonial to human resilience and I couldn't leave it out.

Thirzah

And if you're looking for something on the lighter side, check out Thirzah's newly-released novel "The Librarian's Ruse." This is a fun, fast read full of the witty remarks that anyone who knows Thirzah knows she is famous for. She is, indeed, the queen of puns. I got to watch her revise this book and help in its proofing stage while she was a fellow writing student. This is her first novel, directed toward a 13 to 18-year-old audience, but could be a pleasant read for anyone who likes a simple, fast-moving storyline. Her storyline follows Amelia in the kingdom of Eldnaire as she and her brother transport books and come across a crime scene that inadvertently forces her to lie . . . and continue lying. Even though the prince she is lying to is kind of cute. And her brother refuses to quit lying. And then there's the unfortunate fact that telling the truth would involve admitting her unintended involvement in a capital offense of which the punishment just happens to be death. A rather uncomfortable position for a girl who just wants to lead the simple life of a librarian. This would be my description of the storyline. If you want to read the official summary, you can find the book here. My favorite part of this book was the sibling banter. There are so few books that have good sibling relationships and this one captures the love/exasperation relationship that constitutes growing up so close to people with opposite personalities. Thirzah also has a blog where you can sign up for one of her short stories for free.

I have many other friends who have written books, too many for one blog. But I am grateful for each and every one of them and the various ways they have influenced my life. I wish them the best, that their books will travel far and wide and every copy will find its way into the hands of the reader who will like it best.

Creating My First Large Print Book

As of today, Swing is available on Amazon as a Large Print book! Check out the Large Print Edition

“I want to read your books, but can you make the letters big, because it’s hard for me to read the lines when they’re regular books.”

The first request I got to release my books with larger print came even before I had published. It surprised me because the reader who was asking was around eleven years old. It turned out that my very first published book was designed by the publishing imprint, and I didn’t have any control over the layout. But the request was again iterated when I sold my books in person, all four of them laying side by side, and often heard the comment, “I’ll take this one. It’s easier to read.”

The books with the smaller print were often returned to their place, so I began formatting my books with larger font, around size 12 to 14 as my standard, rather than 10, though it depended on the type of font. Even though my regular books already have larger print, I decided to take it a step further and design versions of my book specifically for low-vision readers.

What constitutes a large print book?

After reading several articles, I quickly learned that there is no legal standard for formatting a large print book, which means any LP book can be released without ticking off a specific set of boxes. The recommendations for types of fonts, space between lines, contrast, and style seemed to have a variety of choices though they did have some similarities. Since I decided I was going to make my book as accessible as I could, I finally settled on using the guidelines by the American Council of the Blind for optimizing documents. I chose Swing as my first formal Large Print project, because it has the simplest formatting out of my books.

I changed the font from its current 16 points to an 18 point font.

I changed the font from a serif to a san-serif style. A serif is the little line on the bottom and top of letters. (This font is a san-serif, meaning it doesn’t have a serif.)

To create a line height of 1.5 or higher, I had to do some research. I decided to use a 26 pt spacing using InDesign to create white space between the lines.

I added an extra space between the paragraphs instead of indenting them.

I let the lines end a little jaggedly instead of in a perfect block. In typesetting terms, I would say I allowed a ragged line instead of a justified-left.

I read that “titles and headings should also be a larger font and aligned to the left” so I made the font larger, but I left the chapter numbers in the middle of the page.

I replaced the italics with bold letters.

I added an inch of margin, though I found this recommendation somewhere besides the American Council of the Blind.

I also made my own decision to take out all heading matter and leave only important words on the page.

The Result?

It’s been fun to learn a new skill and I am excited to have an “official” large print book available. I plan on doing this with all of my books as I re-release them.

If your curious to compare it to my regular book - which still has a larger print and spacing, here is an example below. Neither of these photos will be the actual size of the 6x9 book.

In the meantime, let me know what you like best about the insides of books! Have you ever bought a book just because you liked the cover or layout? Personally, when I go into a bookstore, I love old books that have an old-world touch to their designs. I was also intrigued by the playful ideas in Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer’s book Between the Lines, where the book layout was literally part of the story.

Increasing my productivity by cutting my time in half?

I only have an hour to write this. Why?

I have been trying something new; a technique taught by Rian Doris that I stumbled on that can teach your brain to work up to five times as productively in less time than you are now. So I have cut my work days in half and when whatever box I assigned the sections ends, I stop for the day.

Less time = More productivity

I have been practicing doing this for a week now and, though I am still fine-tuning the specifics, it does seem to be helping. When you work in a limited time frame, you don’t stop to overthink every choice. If someone calls or you suddenly remember another task, you just push it out of your mind. You can return the call or do that task at the end of the hour. I didn’t realize how much I analyze every choice for publishing until I started to work this way.

One Hour Sessions For…

I decided to create all my books as large print editions as well as re-releasing the originals and have been using my “Ever Ink Press” time for that. Swing is now uploaded to Amazon, awaiting final approval, for the regular edition and the Large Print will follow soon . . . I expect by the end of this week.

For my second block of time, I am making great strides toward releasing a website that will help local people find local businesses and individuals who are selling items and services they need. I don’t have all the finances together for all the start up costs yet, but things are starting to come nicely together.

Less time = More Community

One of the things I like best about this work system is that I have been finishing my work between 6 AM and Noon-2 PM. This actually gives me some time to get out of the house and be involved in my community. I have found a new church home and begun to help out there. I have volunteered to help the museum collect oral histories and produce them in a way that can be shared and preserved for generations. I needed this. When you work from home, it’s too easy to go for days without seeing anyone. I was getting feeling sad and lonely working from 9-5 and when almost everything was closed for the day once I was finished.

Less time = More Efficiency

My mind is constantly looking for ways to do things more quickly. Is there a keyboard shortcut I can use instead of clicking my mouse back and forth? Do I really need to do this step or can I skip it and focus only on what is essential? And because I am actually letting my mind rest in the evenings, it has time to process the day and solve the problems I am looking to overcome. Often by the next day, I’ll have the answer to something that stumped me or realize that something could have been doing more quickly if I had approached it in a different order.

In fact, my first class for the Writing’s Class goes into details about this process. I will be teaching it on Friday and sharing it with you in the blog next week, so keep your eyes out if you want to know the science and specifics on how it works. Or you can watch this video which is what I based it on.

Less Time vs Nanowrimo

I haven’t perfected the system yet. Usually in November, I will draft or rewrite an entire manuscript as part of National Novel Writing Month. This November I chose Carter’s story (for the third time) to focus on. So even though I’m not using the Nanowrimo site, and I’m combining revising existing chapters with writing new parts, I am trying to get Carter’s manuscript ready to publish. However, as part of my teaching myself to be more efficient, I am working in 15-minute sessions, adding one session per week until I am able to work for an hour, but in an even more productive way than usual.

At least, that was the plan.

Even this morning, I got caught on my first day working on Carter’s story, and instead of the allowed fifteen minutes I had planned for this week, I went for two hours. Ahem. I did however have time to pray about and find the story-plot solution that I have been stumped on since I began the book in 2019. This will be its third rewrite.

Before . . . Take Three

I drafted Carter’s story, the third book in the Between series, before he meets Choe in 2019. I rewrote it, focusing on the time after he meets Chloe in 2020, while I was still recovering from long-term Covid. That was a fun read . . . I actually did manage a whole story, notes about missing scenes, and an ending . . . that I had only a few vague recollections of actually writing.

Honestly, I remember the first night of Nanowrimo 2020, sitting on the couch, trying to decide if I was going to revise the original manuscript or retype the entire thing. I do not remember anything about writing the rest of that book or most of the scenes, except those from my 2019 version. Covid does weird things to your brain. It is also the worst manuscript I have ever written as far as having a cohesive storyline, veering into a story plot, then coming to a sudden halt, back up and go a different way. But the premise was still fascinating. I was shocked to see I was already trying to write the same elements I am bringing to the table in this version…ones I didn’t even realize I had already worked in.

So How Will This Work?

My task now is to combine everything salvageable from both manuscripts to cover the time from when Carter wakes in Between, through the events in both of Chloe’s book, and into the future, to wrap up the story without creating a gigantic book. Intimidating? A little. Especially when I’m limited in how much time I can work on it.

But it will be a great test to see if this limiting work time actually does make one more productive. So far, I would say yes. But I’m not going to stop and analyze, because I have 25 minutes to revise and post this. Which is actually more time than I expected to find. Perhaps it’s working after all . . .

Progress, Not Perfection

Someone told me once that I have the opposite problem of a perfectionist. That I tend to put books out before they're perfect and just see what happens. That I drop details. It hurt a little (okay, a lot) because I know it's true. I don’t drop details because I’m careless or clueless. I feel like I missed those details because I was burned out by focusing on a thousand others. Ideal? No. But that is my current reality.

Haunted by Perfection

When I first began to learn about the publishing industry around 2003, self-publishing was still considered “vanity” and noses were raised. It was important to me to be able to control the content of my books and maintain the copyrights, but I was terrified of looking unprofessional if I self-published. I decided to create my own publishing imprint and spent the next few years teaching myself to format in InDesign with professional layout standards. I read books on grammar, punctuation, and the Chicago Manual of Style.

I even learned to format Ebooks the old-fashioned way: with HTML. At the time, my laptop had no battery juice and if even jostled, it would lose connection to the power cord - and all work that was not manually saved. I’m not sure how many times I got wrapped up in HTML for over an hour, so absorbed I didn’t hit the save button and then…. bump. “Noooooo!” I told myself the redone work was “extra practice.”

Around 2012, I published the original Across the Distance as an ebook that actually began to sell even though I didn’t advertise it or really even tell my friends it was available. Even though it was selling with no marketing from me, I got scared and pulled it off. It just didn’t seem “good enough.” And I was desperate to be professional.

I began rewriting all of my manuscripts despite the echoes of, “Wait, I thought you finished that one!”

Progress, Not Perfection

Then I met Nate Wagner through an online group. At the time Nate was working on his first book, Sibling Suicide, and I was getting Across the Distance ready for re-publishing, caught up in fear that I would regret releasing and it should go through yet another revamp.

Nate said, “Remember, progress, not perfection," and introduced me to the catchphrase that would go on to serve as the theme for his consulting website where he coaches people through grief, parenting, and goals.

As we cheered each other’s publishing journeys on, that became our cheer . . . along with “Don’t be Tinker Bell.” Tinker Bell happens when you reach the point of rewriting where it doesn’t feel like any good gains are coming from reworking the text and you’re just “tinkering.” Tinkering is a fancy form of procrastination, and that’s when you know it’s time to put your book out there. (It may still have a few flaws.)

It was advice that served me well. You only learn about writing and publishing by writing and publishing. I was working with very limited funds, so I had to use the equipment that I had and as much knowledge as I had gained so far.

Was it always professional? No.

Did I improve as I went? Yes.

Was it a lot of work? Oh, yes.

Did I miss details? Um, yeah...

Do I cringe at some of my past attempts? Absolutely!

But I had to do those things. I had to get brave enough to talk into a camera for teaching videos; enough to get over my self-conscience awareness that my face is never doing what I think it’s doing. Because if I didn’t put things out until I thought they were completely ready, they would never go out at all. If I didn’t do things that made me uncomfortable, I would never learn to become comfortable.

Current Progress

I have been home for 16 weeks now, working on getting Ever Ink Press back in gear. I have fit writing Carter’s story and the final polish to The Calling/Called into a limited slot of writing time. I haven’t blogged as much. And I’m really thinking about what I do and don’t want to put on social media. I am working several random jobs while getting a more-stable career in place.

 

Outwardly, there has been little to tell people about progress and when I have tried, it sounds like a complaint session. So I’ve avoided posting anything at all.

But I realized: in the 16 weeks since coming home, I have:

Completed 4 ebook layouts for Ever Ink Press and read through each one

Completed 3.5 physical layouts for Ever Ink Press and read through each one

Completed 2 content edits for a client

Completed 1 physical layout for a client

Given feedback sessions for 2 writers

Uploaded 4 ebooks to Smashwords

Canceled my Ohio LLC

Closed my Ohio Bank Account

Changed all info for my online publishers and classes back to Texas

Made steps toward re-opening my business in Texas

Was asked and agreed to resume teaching writing lessons in Palacios

I share this, not to complain or brag, but to show you what it really looks like to be a working writer, at least in my experience. I would never discourage anyone from becoming a writer, even if they only want to write a book for its own sake. But making a living through publishing your own books is work, just as any other job. (Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something… ;) )

And even though I am trying hard to catch every last detail (did you know it’s ‘stepdad’ and not ‘step-dad’?) the years of forcing myself to “just do the next thing” has been keeping me going.

It’s helping me fight the thoughts that seem to be caught on a loop of, Oh look, you’re here again. Right where you started. Did you really think it will be different this time when everything you’ve done the last 15-20 years has just fizzled or had to be redone? When are you going to stop sacrificing everything for nothing?

The mental battle has been real. Sometimes my brain scolds me for not working WHILE I am working. But I have found a way around that too and will share it in an upcoming blog.

 Professionalism . . . or People?

All this came to a head while I was formatting the text for Across the Distance. I’ve decided to break the rules, giving my books a larger-than-standard font. In fact, though it’s on the baseline end for being considered “large print,” I took the page with 2 sizes to some friends and asked which was easier for them to read. Then I revamped my books accordingly with fonts a little bigger than average and allowing more space between lines than average. (If you have read Between or Among, you have seen what I am talking about.)

I’m experimenting a bit with the layout to make it seem more immersive: easier to read, easier to focus and stay inside the story.

Will it work? Will my reader’s comfort trump the additional expense of extra pages and having to redo at least the spines, if not the covers for the new editions? I think so. I won’t know for sure until I release it. I'll have to, um, put it out there and see what happens. (I’ll let you know when I do.)

My only other option is to play it safe and show off my "professional knowledge" of standard skills by doing what is expected, following the publishing standards I learned from a book back in 2012.

Embracing Uniqueness

One of the good things that my recent stay in Ohio showed me was reminding me that I am not everyone else. My brain works differently than many people’s. I don’t follow formulas when I write. My characters come up with better storylines than I could ever dictate. One of my best assets as an author is to “get inside their heads” and narrate the story from their point of view, even if it’s written in the 3rd person (using him/her instead of I).

Though the school taught methods that may work well for many writers, I had rejected many of those before the school, and they were a deliberate choice from thought-out reasoning. Being forced to do everything according to formulas and a very specific style just reenforced to me that I had instinctively made the right choice for my own books. What makes me unique as a person is what makes my writing unique. And no matter what my insecurities whisper, there is nothing wrong with my brain.

Freed From Perfection

It’s taken sixteen weeks to recalibrate the comments in my head, to find my own thoughts again and sort them out from things people have said to me over the last 20 (I mean twenty) years of my publishing journey. Sometimes I can roll with feedback feeling grateful for it, and sometimes even constructive criticism has a way of making me freeze every time I work on the thing.

I started out with a chart filled with my “daily routine” which included everything from housework to errands to drafting novels and publishing books to watering the garden and a hodgepodge of jobs I have picked up. And it was too much to start up all at once.

So I erased it.

I put only the things I need to do before I can do all the others. And those are what I have been working on.

Do the best you can with the resources you have.

Progress, not perfection. And you know what? All those intruding thoughts are starting to fade. My confidence is returning. My brain is showing me ways to work more efficiently. I'm starting, once again, to feel the same hope I used to love giving others. I’m feeling reignited.

"You're Getting the Results You Deserve." Truth or False?

“You’re getting the results you deserve.”

This statement didn’t sit well with me the first time I heard it, and it didn’t sit well when I stumbled onto it again last night. But why doesn’t it sit well, I wondered. Does it just hurt because I’m not getting the results I want in my current life, despite over a decade of effort?

No, I decided. It doesn’t sit well because it doesn’t ring true. At least, not without a clearer definition.

“You’re getting the results you deserve” is not a good formula for life.

Does Good Actions = Good Results?

At its simplest, it implies that if you’re getting good results in your life, it’s because you’re doing good things and if you’re getting bad results, you’re doing the wrong things.

But when we apply this to real life, it doesn't take much to come up with a list of instances where it's a false statement.

•    A small business owner whose shop is vandalized during a protest isn’t going to get a good result on their bottom line, but does he deserve to be paid less than usual?

•    A girl who bares herself on a site like Only Fans may do very well in her bank account, but does that make her actions good?

•    A person can pour themselves into saving their marriage and pleasing their partner, but if their partner is selfish and leaves, do the first partner deserve to be divorced?

•    A farmer can plant a field of cotton, but if it doesn’t rain during the growing season or if it does rain during harvest, does he deserve to lose his entire harvest?

I’m sure you can come up with lots of instances where the statement isn’t true. So let’s assume that’s not what the original saying meant and sweep this thought to the side.

Perhaps the statement “You’re getting the results you deserve” actually runs a little deeper.

Perhaps it actually means the amount of effort you put in creates your result and because you’re willing to put in that effort and investment, you deserve the good outcome you’ll get.

Does Good Efforts = Good Results?

Is this true? To an extent. You have to take responsibility for your life and make good choices and put in good efforts to mold that life into what you want it to be. A problem often can be fixed by trying to approach it from a different angle.

But not always.

When I was in college, I was in a math class with a professor who was a brilliant physics teacher who had the unfortunate assignment of teaching basic college algebra. I feel pretty safe to say that neither of us were in our element.

Math is math. It is right or it is wrong. If you calculate the equation correctly but forget to carry that last negative sign into your final answer, you are wrong. No partial credit was allowed. Fair enough.

However this particular teacher only put 3-4 problems on each test. So if you missed 2 or even 1 problem on the test, you failed. B or C wasn’t an option. You aced or you failed.

Most of the students saw the red flags waving high and dropped the class so they could get a W instead of a final score. I didn’t.

I went to every class. I turned in every assignment. I asked for extra credit and was told "You get what you get." I went to tutoring. I purchased an online video class and practiced outside of class. I still can’t listen to songs by Shania Twain without being mentally transported back to my brother’s truck, staring out the window with a steady stream of tears after each class realizing my absolute best wasn’t going to cut it. 

Five students passed that class. One was my brother.

I received the only F I ever got in my life. I was also put on academic probation, at risk for losing my financial aid if next year's grades did not add up to a high enough score. My parents had to pay for another semester and I took retake the class with a different teacher. I felt so guilty about the extra cost, but my mother graciously comforted me with, “It’s okay. I know you tried your best.”

And that was the worst part. I had tried my very, very hardest. And I still failed.

Did I get the results I deserved?

If we’re looking at strict numbers, yes I did. The percentage of errors I made came out to be below 70%. A-B=C. If we’re looking at the amount of effort I put into the class, then no. I did not deserve to fail. But I still did. In fact if we’re looking at my actual ability to do math at that point in my life, I took the same class again the next year, worked just as hard, and passed with a B+. Was that teacher fair? Yes, he was. Did I deserve an A either year based of the amount of effort I put in? No, I didn’t. Effort doesn’t demand undeserved praise. But if we had been going off of effort and skill, the first year I did not get a result I deserved. The second year, I did get the result I deserved. But neither year did I get the result that reflected my sheer amount of effort.

But I feel pretty safe to say with authority that that life’s formulas aren’t always Effort=Result.

Does life have a formula?

If there was a formula for success at life, I think the closest we could come to finding it would be to say if you do the right things, at the right time, in the right quantity you will get a good result.

A+B+C=D. This is the formula I have been operating under for years. If I could just get the balance right in my workday, suddenly my work will succeed.

The problem with this formula is that we all have a variable of “L” thrown in there. While we’re running around trying to adjust A and B and C to the right combination, “Life” insists on inserting itself into our equation. And “L” takes many forms and may not keep the same form from day to day.

So we can’t just discover than L=6 and insert 6 into the equation. L can be any number of things. It could be something a person has a little or a lot of control over—or it could be something they have no way at all of controlling.

But why does any of this matter? Aren’t you just making excuses for yourself?

It’s easy to brush L off as an excuse and some people will take that route and use it as an reason not to try. But there is a danger in either using or accusing the “life factor” as an excuse. Because L is not an excuse. L is another factor. You can choose what you do with that factor. There is a danger in using L as an excuse to explain why you haven't gotten a result. There is as much or more danger in ignoring that L exists.

People’s lives and efforts cannot be reduced to a formula. And they shouldn’t be.

I don’t think that most people would have ill intentions when they say, “you’re getting the results you deserve.” If there is a different way to interpret this statement and give us a formula for getting successful results, please do share. I would love to hear it.

But I think it’s important to evaluate the effect that words can have in the lives of those who hear them. If we insist that people always are getting the results they deserve, we are also implying things I don’t think most of us would ever actually agree with. Because when applied to real life…

•    We’re telling a child who gave their best effort and got a bad result that they don’t have the ability to succeed and wonder why they feel stupid and give up.

•    We’re telling a different child who coasts through life and makes good test scores that they’re doing fine and wonder why they feel entitled or betrayed when life suddenly demands actual effort.

•    We’re telling the overwhelmed worker that they just need to try harder and wonder why they struggle with perfectionism and depression.

•    We telling people whose homes are destroyed by hurricanes that it must be a punishment from God in correlation to some sin in their life.

•    We’re implying that for some reason that small business owners must deserved to be robbed. Perhaps they should have put in a better security system. Or moved locations.

•    We’re implying to a hurting spouse that if they had just been a better person, their partner wouldn’t have left.

•    We’re implying that person somehow must deserve to be sabotaged by a jealous rival or lose their position over a lie.

Aren't we? If you're "getting the result you deserve" then you must also "deserve the result that you get." And that, my friend, is why this matters to me—enough to spend a night analyzing a simple 7-word sentence and then post a possibly-unpopular blog about it.

You don't deserve to be defined by a formula.

I’m not going to claim that my life is successful, and I have a good answer for how you can get the results you want in yours. I’ve put in years and years of effort and still haven’t stumbled upon the magic formula for success. I’ve had times in my life when things were beginning to work very well and then the L-Factor happened and they fell apart again. I suspect you probably have too.

But I would like to gently counter this idea that your life is a direct result of whatever is meant by “getting the results you deserve.”

Of course you have to work for what you want.

Of course it helps to ask people who are succeeding in a certain area what they are doing and try to replicate it in your efforts.

But you, my friend, are unique. You have your own set of abilities that are very good in some areas and very difficult in others.

You have a unique combination of challenges in your life, of circumstances, and other people’s choices that are out of your control and affect your ability to accomplish the task you’re working on.

You have been shaped and developed by a unique history and life experiences that have left you with a skill set that may not match the person next to you.

Because of these factors, your results will vary. Sometimes it is your fault. And sometimes, it's not.

 Does this mean you’ll never accomplish what you want? Absolutely not. Does it mean that if you talk about one of these factors, you’re only making an excuse to let yourself off the hook? Absolutely not. Does it mean that you’re just not good enough. A resounding no. Does it mean you deserve every outcome you've experienced?

Pardon me, but hell to the no.

You might be getting the results that you deserve. But you might not deserve the results you're getting.

So take a deep breath, my friend. Think of how much progress you've already made. If there is something that is currently in your power to change that you know would improve your life, change it!

If there is a step you can take to move forward, by all means take it.

If there is someone who IS getting the results you want, ask them for advice and help.

But give yourself some grace. And give other people reassurance.

The "life" factor is real. It is a legitimate influence in your "result" equation.

I think we can agree on that. And we can all thank God that we don't always get the results we deserve. After all, He doesn't use that standard on us.

Two Powerful Questions to Ask When You Feel Stuck

Today I want to post an earlier blog I wrote. I also want to share a new insight. And former training is bubbling up the thought, “You can’t post about two separate topics! How would you make your social media posts? That will make your blog too long. No one wants to read your personal workalike and your thoughts. No one even cares about your personal life and thoughts…”

And that, goes full circle back to the topic of today’s musing. I have been fighting mental battles for a while now. One before I went to school, another during my time at the school, a third now that I’m striking back on my own.

The Power of Anticipation

My friends have been asking me what I’m currently working on, what my life looks like right now. And it’s hard to truthfully answer them, to share that life is actually quite challenging right now though in many ways it is getting better. I walk away from a conversation feeling like I just gave them one long complaint session. That’s not the kind of person I want to be.

But one friend whom I hadn’t seen in several years asked a very good question in the middle of our conversation. “What are you looking forward to?”

I don’t even know if he’ll remember asking the question, but it was almost like someone threw me an anchor in the middle of the storm of thoughts I live in now. “My books,” I told him. “I’m looking forward to releasing my books.”

And that has helped for several weeks that among the stress of finding or building a job in our current economy, in the midst of reworking novels that I already did once, in the frustrations rising from trying to tie up the last of the loose ends of ending my stay and business in Ohio and restart one in Texas, there are things each day that I look forward to and people that I can’t wait to see.

It has felt like a lot of delays are happening, but since July when I returned home, I have completed six content edits for myself and other people, done layout for five physical books, and three ebooks, proofed each of those layouts, and given feedback on two works for friends who are authoring. Yet, I look at the list of things that still need to be done and feel like I just can’t work fast enough and I’m making such little progress. But by focusing on what I am looking forward to, I have motivation to actually do what I need to do.

The Power of Defining What You DO Want

I’ve also been asking myself lots of questions about how to make it look the way I would like it to look, how to eliminate what is not helpful and how to add what is healthy, especially the things that I don’t want to add back to my life now that I’m settling back home. Last night I realized though, that my thoughts have begun to accumulate on what I don’t want.

Wouldn’t it be more helpful to flip that on its head?

When you don’t want something in your life, it’s usually because you do want something else instead. So why not focus on that?

By thinking about what you do want, you’re forcing your brain to quickly go through this thought process.

What don’t I like?

Why don’t I like it?

What would I rather have instead?

And by focusing on what you would rather have instead, you are priming your mind to look for opportunities to make that happen.

 

For instance, if you’re always thinking I’m lonely, what you don’t want is to be alone. What you’re really feeling could be truthfully stated as, “I want more friends in my life.” Or, I want a romantic partner in my life or I want to reconnect to my spouse and rekindle what we had. Insert your own desire here: this just feels like an example most people can relate to.

By telling your brain what you really want, you’re instructing it what to look for so when you come upon opportunities to fulfill that desire, you’re more likely to see it. This is a subtle shift, and really nothing new as a concept. But it’s important to remember, especially for my right now coming back out of a really tough period of my life.

So in a way, I guess this isn’t really two separate topics. Everyone I know is dealing with their own set of challenges right now. It takes both of these questions to face today and prepare for tomorrow. You can’t get swept up in doing one or the other.

 

So, my friend, what are you looking forward to today?

What would you like to have more of in your life?

Reading A Stack of WWII Letters

Yesterday, I read half of the stack of WWII letters from Grandpa Roy Keith. He’d showed me these letters when I was in collage and helping take care of him until he died. He explained how the V-Mail would fold up to create an envelope. And others would be shrunk, mailed across seas, and blown back up in the states so they could be read again.

I inherited these letters when he died, along with the rest of his genealogy collection which I had begun to explore with him, but I had only read one or two of them while looking for a prop in our WWII play. Reading the others felt too much like snooping. But my grandparents have been gone for a long time now.

But they have been sitting on my bedroom vanity for a while. It occured to me that, just like Scarlett does in Across the Distance, I have a stack of unread letters from 80 years in the past. So last evening, in Scarlet fashion, I sorted the envelopes into a rough order and ventured into 1943.

The very first one, was written, apparently, after Grandma Ruby had left the base thinking Keith had to leave when he really just had to load his bags. He lamented the loss of time with her, (worried perhaps) that she felt snubbed, and pleaded for the details of her route home.

A Texas native transplanted to New York in February, he was freezing and worried she'd catch her death of cold. He begged her to take a more southern route home, if she could, to avoid traveling in the cold. He waffled on whether to tell her to write him at that address or wait for an official address because he wasn’t even supposed to be sending this letter to her. But a friend carried it into town and mailed it civilian-style and on the back of the envelope, he hastily scribbled, “Do not use this address.”

My grandfather was an accountant (I did not inherit his math skills) but he was also a sharpshooter, so after as he was drafted, he quickly became a rifle instructor teaching the boys how to handle a gun before they were sent off to Europe.

I used to play dice with him by rules no one else in the world uses and he would make me keep score for us and calculate in my head. I’d conceal one hand under the table and tap my fingers against my leg to compute the answers.

So I was surprised in one of his early letters to his parents and grandmother to find a lovely description of feeling the Mediterranean breeze, but not being able to pick up a shell. Which confused the heck out of me because in the last letter, he was stationed in New York and this address retained that location. He then went on to tell his mother how much she would love the location because everyone was planting flowerbeds. In fact, it was said…

And then we will never know, because someone from the censoring office neatly clipped out his sentence and chopped off the rest of the letter. He apparently went into more description in a second letter to his wife, and it was rejected completely from being sent as it held too many hints about his current location.

So his next letter was a rather scathing, “How am I supposed to write home if I’m not allowed to write anything about where we are or what we're doing? Dear family. How are you. I am fine. Goodbye.” After which he cooled off and tiptoed into a very generalized letter.

This letter made me so sad, but also laugh a little because the snarky tone he started out with is so close to where my brain goes when I’m especially peeved about something—or feeling trapped, which I’m sure he was.

Another letter rejoiced that they were allowed to disclose their location and said “their little boy” was on the side of a mountain somewhere in North Africa. A later, more depressed letter admitted he didn’t actually know exactly where in North Africa he was, but he was so high up that he could march straight into the clouds and actually they had come down to meet them that day.

A later letter mentioned old ruins. Do you remember, dear, when the biggest sport was watching lions eat people? But he followed it up with "the statures are nice, but I’d rather see my blue-eyed girl."

And every single letter for the first three months held a refrain of, “Please don’t stop writing. I’m worried about you. I haven’t received a letter from anyone… Well, dear, I hit a new low. I went to mail call and as usual there was nothing for me. But the guy next to me got his letter from May 28 (a week or two before) and I haven’t gotten any of mine for three months. You are writing, aren't you? Oh, I know you are...If these guys don't get the mail straightened out, I'm going to blow my top."

When I started reading the letters, I wondered what the experience would be like and if it would mirror the sort of experience people have in novels when they snoop into a stack of mail. And it was more coherent than I expected. I cried more than I thought I would too, I think because I also just spent almost a year across the US away from my family and the home I love. And that was in a place where I volunteered to go, worked on things I enjoy doing, and had a phone to call home on my day off.

One of my favorite letters was when Grandpa (finally) heard from home that they had moved his grandmother into a room on the first story of the house. He suggested they close in the porch and create a place they could all relax in the evenings when it was hot, then went on to suggest changes to several rooms in the house before reaching the end of the page and realizing he’d used up all his space on an imaginary remodel.

So there was a second letter enclosed that he’d written on the same day and informed them that was the fastest letter he’d ever written, and they probably didn’t want to hear his ideas for the house, even though he had more of them. But I did, because I live in that same house, and they did indeed enclose the back porch.

Still, it was fun to imagine him approaching whomever was in charge of handing out the V-Mail paper and being like, “Um…could I have another one of those, please?”

All of his words in this post are paraphrased, pulled from my memory because the envelops are delicate, and I didn’t want to hunt for specific lines. Someday soon I will type up the letters, so we have his words in our family history. But for last night, it made a pleasant evening sitting in the house my grandfather was raised in, reading his mail from 1943.

So much of our modern world no longer values the past. We don’t tend to pass items down to the next generation or keep the china set that belonged to our grandmother. And on some level, I understand it. You can’t cook in a kitchen that has no space for the things you need to use because it’s full of things you don’t.

But most people aren’t lucky enough to sit in the same rooms their grandparents used when they were the same age. They don’t go down the stairs with their hand on the rail their grandfather slid down and fell off and broke his arm. They don’t get to harvest grapes from a vine their great-grandmother planted and use some of her items to can jelly just the way she did.

But I do. And I’m so happy to be home.

 

What happened when I re-read my own novel.

Adjusting my hat to slant sideways, I skewer it with a hat pin. My white gloves are going to be miserable in this heat, but I pull them on to complete the illusion of a cultured young lady. I hardly recognize myself. I certainly don’t look like anyone capable of keeping the peace in a family of competing men.

I’m playing all sorts of roles today: sister welcoming brother home, beautiful woman on a picnic as though I go out every day, and detective solving a hundred-year-old mystery to report back to two other time travelers. The last terrifies me, but if I make it into a game like I’m part of a book, I can keep my head about me. I hope. - Clara Castle, Across the Distance

Like Clara Castle in Across the Distance, I - Lindsey - have been wearing multiple hats lately and on my own bit of time-travel adventuring lately. Though I can't actually travel back to 2015 when I published this book (or 2004 when I actually started working on it) I have been revisiting a plethora of memory’s around this book. Since it was necessary to update all of the social media and website links in the back of my novels as I restart Ever Ink Press, I am reformatting the eBook and physical copy for Across the Distance.

As I have been rereading the text to make sure all the intricacies of formatting such a book are correct, it's been almost like reading it for the first time. I first drafted Across the Distance as a time-travel novel. I rewrote it as Distance Song, eliminating the time-travel storyline and focusing on the lives and romance of Clara Castle and Andrew Callaghan. This included keeping a handwritten journal for Clara and a handwritten novel for Andrew which I then combined into a manuscript. That manuscript was never released because of a small uproar among my readers who had read the first version and wanted the time-travel. In fact, unfortunately, I can no longer find any version of that manuscript, either printed or on the computer.

So in the end, I rewrote the entire manuscript for the unknownth time and combined Clara's expanded storyline with the time-travel version. The result was a few months of intensive labor, publishing, and a book that I no longer remembered which scenes did or did not make the final cut.

I have to admit, I was a little scared to read it. It's always scary to go back and re-read your earlier work. But you know what? I still love Across the Distance as much as I did when I wrote it. Though the storyline is completely fabricated, the setting for the book is woven into my own past. I lived in the house where the story takes place, a house my 2nd-great-grandfather built in 1902 while I rewrote the book. Many places in the book are real places, including the Luther Hotel where Andrew works as a violinist which has recently been rescued from an impending demolition. The bookstore where Scarlet meets Keith is still open for business, the restaurant/lumberyard still stands though it is currently up for sale. A railroad car currently marks the place where Vincent would have returned home from school on Galveston, Island. The pavilion is gone but the pier is still there. Even the changes in the town since the time I wrote the book has reminded me of how special the places that intersect with our history are and how quickly they can vanish.

On a more personal note, the chest that Scarlet finds the music box that allows her to travel from 2012 to 1912 is based on a real chest that contained my great-uncle's personal items as they were sent back from Hawaii after his death in the 1940s. The same chest that my siblings and I explored as young children that held curiosities such as shoe brushes and old Christmas cards. The same chest I sat next to in my 20s while writing the scene where Clara, her father, and her servant share mint tea on the hallway floor during a storm. We also recreated several scenes inside the house when we were attempting to make a book trailer. It was never released because my little computer wasn’t powerful enough to handle the footage we had gained, but we had so much fun the weekend we filmed it, even if I didn’t know exactly what I was doing when it came to creating film.

I even spent a month while writing one of the versions, living in the same house using as little electricity as possible and recreating what I could of the life that Clara (and my great-grandmother, Bertha) would have experience. All of those memories came back to me this week as I worked my way through the book. And you know what I found?

I still love the book as much as I did while I was writing it. I’m contemplating releasing a few of the original chapters that were cut from the file, or parts of the journal/manuscript here on the site. If that’s something you’d like to see, be sure to leave a comment and let me know! And if you’re interested in following the restoration of a historical hotel, you can sign up for the newsletters here.

Across the Distance

Dragged from New York to Texas by her newly-divorced father, Scarlet Beldon braces for a lonely summer in a Victorian house that allows only the faintest of wifi signals. A stack of letters dated 1910 introduces her to the house's former occupant, Clara Castle, who lives with a strict and paranoid father and develops a friendship with a quiet, Irish violinist. When a music box connects the girls' worlds, their friendship turns into a mad scramble to unlock the secrets of Clara's future and alter history itself.

On Asking God Why

Move back across the country? Check. Reboot my old website to continue my role as a publisher? Check. Restart Ever Ink Press as a business in Texas, find a job to pay the bills, figure out what the heck happened to the email software, get those manuscripts to your editor for proofing, continue drafting the companion novel to Between, keep up with your friends and readers, and . . . God, why is this happening?

I have been asking God questions.

Regaining the business I put on hold when I started my apprenticeship in Ohio has been no joke. Ever Ink Press is more than a book publisher for me: it’s part of my calling to connect my stories to readers. It’s something God has entrusted to me. It brings me joy both to share my books to my readers and when I help other writers create their books.

It’s the only thing in life that I have never questioned: I was created to be a writer.

Why Do Bad Things Happen?

But I have been questioning God on a lot of other things. I have been asking God for guidance while “rebooting” my publishing world. I have been asking God for help when one delay after another keeps my website from being ready. And I have been asking God why? If I’m doing my best to obey God, why is life so hard?

Two days after I returned to my Texas home, I sat on my bed completely overwhelmed by the transition, feeling like every time I turned around, life was slapping me for going to Ohio. From vehicle transition fees, to website glitches, to a rising panic combing through job listings, I felt like I had lost more than I had gained by going. And it wasn’t fair. God told me to go. So why do I feel like I’m being punished for it?

My Conversation with God

I had lots of questions for God. But did I have the right to even question God? I mean . . . He’s God. So that night, I lay on my bed after journaling, contemplating if it was even safe to be feeling what I felt.

“God, I can’t figure out how to talk to you about all of this. You let David ask questions and tell you how he felt but when Job did, you told Him it was too big to understand and he needed to just trust you. I don’t want to whine but this really hurts, and I don’t understand what you’re doing!”

And then God’s voice came calmly into my head. “Why do you need to understand?”

“Because it’s hard to have a friendship with people you don’t understand.”

” Your friends often do things you don’t understand.”

“True.”

“Yet you remain friends, even though you don’t fully understand them.”

“Also true.”

“So why can you not extend the same courtesy to me?”

I answered a little slower, “Well . . . I haven’t committed my life to serving my friends, I don’t depend on them for everything I need . . .” Then realizing what I was trying to say, I managed a coherent sentence. “It’s hard to trust you when I don’t fully understand what’s going on. It doesn’t feel safe to be friends with you.”

I swear I heard a grin in His voice as He replied, “Yeah… It wasn’t really safe for me to be friends with you, either.”

My eyes widened. I sent a startled glance to the yellow paint of my ceiling, suddenly envisioning a nail going through a wrist.

After a stunned second, I burst into peals of laughter that lasted for several seconds before I sputtered, “Touché!”

And that ended our conversation for that night. What had started in a tearful monologue ended in a companionable, “Well, when you put it that way . . . .”

I went to sleep. God never did answer my question of “why” . . . at least, not that night.

Why is Life so Hard?

I think all of us, Christians or not, are asking why? Why can’t life be easier? Why do bad people get away with things? Why do good people have bad things happen? Why do kids get kidnapped and sold into sex slavery? Why is it so hard to find a job? Why, when I’m doing my best, does life just keep kicking me?

is God punishing me?

Many times in Christian circles people will imply that there is some sort of contracted formula that runs along the lines of “If you’re obedient, God will bless you and life will look just like you think it should. And if you’re life isn’t going well, it must be because you’re doing something wrong.” And to some degree, this is true. In all areas of life, what you put in affects what you get out. In Christianity, you “reap what you sow.” But not always.

Sometimes as Christians we wait for God to “come through” for some circumstance in our lives and then when it doesn’t happen, we’re left with the question of why. Many of my friends who have decided they don’t believe in God anymore or have never believed in God, point to this question as their reasoning.

why does my life hurt so bad?

Sometimes even when we obey God, we get hurt. Even Jesus, by obeying God, got hurt. And it’s easy to conclude that, since God didn’t stop it , God wanted us to get hurt. Maybe He’s even the one who hurt us because he’s punishing us. Maybe He even likes it because He’s a sadistic God who doesn’t really care about us. Or maybe the state of the world is a reflection of what God is doing for us, not what He is doing to us.

Who Gets the Blame?

I don’t think it’s wrong to ask God what is He doing. But I think I often blame Him for stuff that he’s not doing. When I really think about it, the vast majority of bad things that happen are usually caused by a choice a person made. That person might be in my life today or they may have lived thousands of years ago. I could get hurt because of my own choice, something a friend does to me, or a ripple effect from someone I don’t even know. But all our choices create the world we live in, and often that world hurts. Sometimes when life “goes wrong,” it’s directly our fault. Sometimes our life “goes wrong” and it’s not our fault at all.

So, what is God doing?

What if we stopped viewing our circumstances  as a reflection of how much God currently does or doesn’t love us? What if it’s an awful way to measure how well we are doing in our calling? He told us that when we were in the world, we would have trouble. And that’s the good part: no matter who  got the trouble started, God gets to end it. What does God do with the bad things that happen to us? He keeps His promise that “all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28

God takes the bad things, turns them inside out, and brings out something good. We may never fully understand why things in our past happened. But we can trust that He can use them in our future. And he really, really wants to be friends.

The Answers

The truth is that three weeks after my conversation, a lot of the problems have been cleared up. A few of the questions have even been answered. With every step I take into Ever Ink Press, I can take with mounting confidence that I am stepping into my calling. Things going well? I’m in my calling? Things going badly? It’s okay. I’m still in my calling. I’ve spent enough time asking “why.” Now it’s time to ask God “what?”

Undismayed: Turning Difficulties into Assets

“But what she achieved in herself was more. In a world where life was always hard and often cruel, she met the requirements without even flinching, without ever thinking of running away to some remote place in pursuit of evasive happiness. Just to have remained steadfast in itself would have been much. But she persisted until she made a greater usefulness of the hard conditions. She persisted until she saw herself in relation to things, to all things, and, right where she stayed, came to know the deeps of a serenity from which she could look out on whatsoever and be undismayed.” – Rolo Walter Brown

-The Hills are Strong

I read this paragraph in Rolo Walter Brown’s book “The Hills are Strong.” As a memoir written by a man who grew up in the same area of Ohio where I am living now, it’s been a fun, uplifting book to read when I’m trying to wind down late at night. I read this passage several nights ago and it stuck with me because this is what I would like to become. Life has never been easy, but coming up to Zanesville, Ohio on my own for a full-time apprenticeship at The Company—and trying pay my way with a part-time job—has been a new kind of toughness. It’s not the first time I’ve been working from morning until late at night and making every cent count, but having to meet both the time requirements of teachers and bosses, along the needs of my own body is a new kind of balancing act.

I’m not thinking of running away, but I did come up here in pursuit of some evasive happiness; one where I could make a living entirely through writing and publishing without balancing several gigs and jobs on the side. Only six months into a 24-month apprenticeship, some days feel breezy like I’m where I am supposed to be and others feel like I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. I am meeting the requirements of a hard period of my life, but I can’t say I’m looking into the future without flinching. I feel like I’m climbing into improvement and parts of my life get better, only to tumbling down in another area. I’m making forward progress, but sometimes it feels more like instead of stepping into the next day, I meet it tumbling head over heels.

But God’s word to me this year was “adapt.” I think the paragraph above gives a good thought about how to do that. Not only do we learn to face things when we want to pretend they’re not there, but we can develop the mentality of many of our ancestors and learn how to “make the hard conditions useful.” Once upon a time, I blogged about “streamlining and optimizing my life.” This feels like an echo of that time.

How can we, my friend, take the things that are the hardest in our lives and transform them? (Here I can give the usual challenge to let the difficult things in life grow you as a person.) But I want to do something more than that. Let’s be sneaky together. Let’s look at those things that you feel like are killing you, not as something that must be endured, but something that can be analyzed, turned inside out, and used to our advantage.

Challenging? Yes. But also intriguing. I want to make a list of all those things that keep my brain in a sleepless overdrive, and figure out how to turn them from a slave master into a servant. How about you? What is one thing that has been bothering you that you can transform into something to your advantage?