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The first and last important rule for the creative writer, then, is that though there may be rules (formulas) for ordinary, easily publishable fiction – imitation fiction – there are no rules for real fiction, any more than there are rules for serious visual art or musical composition…Invention, after all, is art’s main business, and one of the great joys of every artist comes with making the outrageous acceptable…  John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction
Continue reading “The Only Rule: There are None”

I like to complain a lot about the commercialization of the Christmas season. Long lines at department stores. Christmas sales. Companies capitalizing on our every fear and insecurity to prod us into spending money we don’t have. The constant barrage of messages is mind-numbing.
Continue reading “What a Commercialized and Chaotic Christmas Taught Me”

Theda DeHaven and wenflower 65 are this week’s lucky winners of My Amish Roots. Please email your mailing address to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com and I’ll mail your copy to you.

Next Friday is the final drawing of the month – one subscriber will win a free copy of all four of my books. For your chance to win, simply join my email list (in the right hand sidebar). You’ll receive one to two emails per month on writing and books, and you’ll also have a chance to win various contests and prizes. Sign up now!

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Today I’m guest-posting over at Ray Hollenbach’s blog, Students of Jesus. I love Ray’s blog because he has the seemingly rare combination of being super-smart and overwhelmingly kind. His blog posts are always thoughtful and rich.

Each Saturday he hosts a guest-post in which the visiting writer talks about one of Jesus’ parables. My post there today is a creative retelling of the parable of the man, the vineyard, and his son. It starts like this:

The old man bends over and picks up a handful of soil. Fertile soil. He runs it through his finger – it crumbles and falls heavily to the ground. The sound is like the pounding of the first raindrops.

The woman went into labor along the road. There were complications.

“Don’t worry,” her midwife said quietly. “You are having a son.” But the midwife knew the end was close.

In the woman’s pain, and as she lay dying, she named the boy, Ben-Oni, a name some scholars translate to mean, “This Son is my Progeny.” Her husband changed the boy’s name to Benjamin, or “This Son is Strength.”

The woman’s name was Rachel. She died quietly along the road. Having seen the face of her second son, she left the world in peace. Her husband put up a stone pillar to mark the location.

The town to which they had been traveling before she died: Bethlehem. Continue reading “The Town That’s Hard to Understand”

When we first moved to England, we lived in a small cottage on a 100-acre estate. The sheep pasture came right up behind our house. In the spring time the sound of new lambs bleating for milk mingled with the smell of spring and the rising of yellow daffodils.

Our landlady was a wonderful woman in her 50s. She played tennis, was involved in the community, and ran the estate efficiently. She was in shape and always dressed well.

But everything changed when she worked with the sheep – in fact, the first time we saw her she was hoisting a dead sheep into the back of her Mercedes SUV. Mud and sheep shit covered her thigh-high Wellingtons.

Dealing with sheep is a dirty business. Continue reading “The Two Important Words I Skimmed Over”