The Writing Conference

The first-ever Western Anabaptist Writing Conference is over. We call it WAWC, pronounced "Walk."

It was held at the new Pioneer Christian Academy in Brownsville, which used to be the old Brownsville Elementary School. Everything looked a bit mid-renovation because the old carpets were ripped out but the new ones weren't coming until two days after WAWC.

But you know how it is--fifty years from now, the old-timers will tell stories of how makeshift it was the first year, but oh my, what a good time we had.

"First-ever" and "fifty years from now" imply that there will be more conferences. Many attendees thought this event should be repeated next year, but I think we should sleep for a week before we actually make that decision. 

Why was such a conference needed? you ask.

1. Anabaptist* writing and publishing are different from most other publishing, both Christian and secular. More collaborative, less competitive. More about excellence and humility than platform and promotion. And more about steady, long-term material than quick bestsellers.

2. Mennonite writing conferences in the East are a very long way from here, and writers in the West are a long way from each other.

3. Writing is a lonely process at the best of times. Meeting with other writers who "get" you can be a powerful boost and can re-start a neglected calling to write.

*An umbrella term that includes Mennonites, Old Order Amish, Brethren, Holdemans, Hutterites, Western Fellowship, Eastern, Pilgrim, Midwest Fellowship, New Order Amish, Beachy Amish, Conservative Conference Mennonites, Old Order Mennonites, German Baptists . . . you get the idea.

I did most of the planning. Paul supported me fully. Lots of people helped out.

Our daughter Amy took care of the book and resource tables. My friend Jane's family decorated with old books. Another friend, Shannon, took care of the registration table with her daughter Annika. Others made food, taught workshops, and cleaned.

Did you ever see such cute decorations?

Chris Miller, the principal of PCA and the husband of Paul's niece Stephie, was our keynote speaker and taught us about what we have to offer and the phrases that silence us.

Chris is an excellent motivator and storyteller.
Some of us were afraid he would either leap off the stage or knock over that arrangement.
He did neither.

Around 30 people attended, including Penny from British Columbia who was in the middle of moving and had lost her passport. "You need to go!" said her husband and son, and her 6-feet-2 son crawled around in a trailer full of boxes and found the passport.

Non-Anabaptists were welcome to attend, and a handful of them did, adding a fun flavor to the conversations.

I heard people say, "I don't know which workshop to take! I'd like to take them all!" Those words were music to my ears. Imagine! Too many good options!

Today, instead of a WAWC I took a WALK. Our son Ben took me to Finley Wildlife Reserve and we walked for 5 1/2 miles. I felt like it burned up all the residual stress from the last crazy weeks.

What would it take for WAWC to become a destination conference, I wonder, and for writers from Idaho, Washington, California, BC, Alberta, and other places to get their friends together and take a trip to Oregon in August, just for this? (With a few stops at Crater Lake and Mt. Hood besides, of course.)

Like the local non-Anabaptists, Mennonites from the East would be welcome to attend. But we would always try to focus on the unique needs of Anabaptist writers in the West.

As you can see, I'm already convincing myself to do another conference. If WAWC continues, many decisions arise about turning it over to a committee, forming an organization, bylaws, constitutions, and other confusing things.

For now, I'm resting, grateful, and ready to write.

Dolly did lots of baking and also cut and arranged fruit.

Hannah helped Dolly.

I taught about how to begin writing when you don't know what you're doing.

Some of Jane's crew. They put hours into making those beautiful folded-book
decorations.

Penny from BC is in the middle, with Kathleen and Laura from Oregon.

Laura taught how to write another person's story.

Mary taught one class on self-editing and one on children's stories.

Paul shared about how he supports a writer in the family.
It was a small class but they had a fun discussion, he reported.

 

Quote of the Day:
". . . as I was driving down south on I-5, I probably said, "Wow" about twenty times.  I just so thoroughly enjoyed the seminar, I so thoroughly enjoyed the people I was around, I so thoroughly enjoyed learning in a Christian context where we sang hymns in four part harmony, and I just felt a wonderful humility, as you called it, because how can people be thinking about others and smiling and be happy in their work if they didn't have a sense of purpose that shined through, and that was of course, Christ."
--Bill Northrup

Blessings and Grace on Tidbits Mountain

On the horizon is Hayworth Saddle, which we can see
from home, from the other side.

"I used to think if we just did everything this certain way, our family would turn out well. But I'm finding that every family has issues! We all have our things!" my friend Shannon exclaimed in the women's Sunday school class this morning.

When I started teaching, I decided to take the class along on my personal study of the book "Boundaries" by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. I decided if anyone didn't like it, they could teach instead of me.

Today we talked about things that go wrong in families, and trust me there are many, from financially dependent adult kids to not being allowed to say certain truths out loud to doing what we do for our parents out of guilt and resentment rather than love and freedom.

Shannon expressed what we all feel. Every family has their things, no matter how much you try to get it right.

If you can find good path through your quirks and issues, you can get to an imperfect but healthy place as a family.

For my birthday in June, our son Ben, who has done over 70 different hikes in Oregon in the last year, offered to take me on a hike.

Yesterday was the day. Tidbits Mountain, Ben said. It would be four miles, round trip, with a thousand feet of elevation gain. The grade should be gradual enough for me and my difficulty with steep slopes.

I was excited to the point of giddiness as I packed my sunscreen and poles and all the other necessities.

Amy and Emily went along, since their employer, Paul's cousin Darrell, is finished with combining. We drove about an hour and a half--first south, then east into the Cascades, and north on a gravel road, up and up.

See those brave people way up on top?

  

Zoomed in.
The boards are the remnants of an old fire lookout tower.

We parked at the top of the last steep ascent and started up the trail. The path was shaded, the trees were enormous old-growth firs, and the wild rhododendron bushes crowded the trail.

The grade was easily manageable right up to the last quarter mile.

I didn't see any snakes.

Everyone was patient with me and my slow pace.

The views were beyond beautiful.

Ben, who was born in Canada and spent a year in Toronto as an adult, said, "I should have some Timbits along. Then I could have Timbits on Tidbits."

The screes, where huge bare rocks up above had eroded into a long river of little rocks spread down the mountainside, were the scariest parts, not because of any actual treachery or slippery rocks but because the view was so disorienting. Rocks under your feet, up one side, down down down the other, and pretty soon you feel a bit dizzy and not quite sure where to put your feet.



Ben offered to take my hand and help me across, so I had to tell them all how, back in my teenage years, the revival meeting speakers would always have a talk for the youth and tell them to have a hands-off courtship, but it was ok for a guy to take a girl's hand and help her across the creek if they were on a walk.

Ben thought this would inspire guys who were dating to go on lots of walks and find lots of creeks.

He himself is not dating at this point, and I just had to pose him beside Mt. Bachelor.



The very top of Tidbits Mountain consisted of a huge rocky structure. The kids climbed up without too much trouble. I could have, too, but I was very nervous about coming back down. About ten feet up, my phone came loose and bounced down the rocks and disappeared into a bush, where it looked like it could go falling for a long time.

It seemed like a sign that maybe I should come down lest I fall as well.

I peered into the bushes and was surprised to see something shiny reflecting back. About three feet down, the phone had come to rest on a branch and some old wire left over from a collapsed fire lookout tower. It looked like someone had carefully set it in place like you'd set a photo on a wire stand on your dresser.



The phone was unscratched and uncracked.

Sometimes I feel so fortunate I can't explain it.

We ate lunch in a shaded area and went back down the mountain, then drove away, stopping for iced tea at a little convenience store along Highway 126.

That evening, Amy cooked up some fantastic fajitas for Ben's birthday supper, since his is on Monday, a month after mine. He is 26 now. I gave him a lightweight hammock for camping.

Steven and Ben

I shared photos of the day on social media because it was so fun and beautiful, and I was that pleased. But part of me hesitated.

Not everyone is this fortunate with health, opportunity, and most of all these thoughtful, patient offsprings. I don't want to inflict pain on people in hard situations.

And yet, Tidbits Mountain is a credit to its Creator. So is any grace our family has received.

I told Shannon that yes, absolutely, every family, including ours, has its issues. But if you can love each other and speak the truth out loud, that will open a trail through some pretty rocky terrain.

Perfection is not the goal, and so much is out of our control. People get to choose, and their choices might break our hearts.

But if God in his lavish kindness grants me a son who organizes a hike with a gradual grade, just for me, then I will give Him the credit and will be as grateful as I possibly can to both of them.

Quote of the Day:
Me: I'm nervous about cougars.
Ben: Cougars usually stalk from behind, so if I'm walking behind you, you should be ok.
Emily: If I look up younger men's profiles on Facebook, are they being stalked by a cougar?

Feeling accomplished!

The view from the top.

When Parents Change Their Minds

“Maybe I’ll have the last bit of chicken but not the rice,” Ben said today as we finished up our Sunday dinner at the picnic table and I tried to auction off the too-little-to-save, too-much-to-dump leftovers.

He and the girls started reminiscing. “Remember when it was such a big deal that you eat carbs with your meat? Like, you couldn’t just take more chicken, you had to take more rice too?”

“One time Steven wanted to eat a hamburger by itself, without the bun, and Mom and Dad gave him this big lecture that you don’t just eat meat by itself, you have to eat it with a bun. They didn’t say it like he’d done something bad, more like this is an important life concept.”

“And then Mom started Trim Healthy Mama and she was eating meat without any carbs!”

They laughed.

I thought, I can’t wait until you have children.

I also wanted to painstakingly explain that when they were little we were poor, we had a lot of people to feed, and meat was expensive.

Also, the whole meat-and-carbs thing was ingrained into us, as true as gravity.  That was how the world worked. You didn’t reach and grab across the table. You didn’t put your finger in the butter. You passed the food to the left. And you didn’t eat lots of meat by itself.

As Ben said, the THM diet changed my habits and beliefs. That system stresses good proteins, healthy carbs, and separating fats and carbs. A typical meal has meat with lots of vegetables but no bread or noodles or potatoes.

Before THM, Steven helped to shift our thinking as well. He joined our family when he was ten years old, a small but surprisingly strong and very hungry little boy. He ate a lot, and he had an unbelievable craving for proteins. Five eggs for breakfast. Multiple drumsticks for dinner. Thankfully, we had a little more money for groceries by then, and after the hamburger episode we decided that maybe he’s making up for a deficit in his body and we should just let him eat the protein he wants.

Then there’s the matter of nylons. 

You dressed up to go worship in the house of the Lord. That was the way it was. Nylons, or pantyhose, meant that you were dressed up. Little girls wore lacy socks and pretty shoes. Big girls and women wore nylons.

The daughters grew up. Nylons dropped off the face of the earth, like they didn’t even exist. And, frankly, I got hot flashes. Pantyhose were torture.

“Mom sometimes goes to church without nylons!” a daughter said a while back, with a touch of bitterness.

It’s humbling to change your mind and your ways.

Maybe this happened to you, too.  You were so sure of yourself, back then. This was how the world worked. This was the right course for this family, the best way, the wisest stewardship, the most Biblical approach, the soundest doctrine.

The world spun around, life took strange turns, and the solid truths of meat and potatoes grew mushy. Maybe there was room for disagreement on this. Maybe there were other ways of doing things, and good reasons for doing so.

You changed your mind. You do things differently now.

Today, your kids laugh about it at Sunday dinner, if it wasn’t really a big deal. Or maybe the memory is still a popcorn hull in their back tooth, nagging. Or they have pulled away from you, bitterly, because they tried to make you see, back then, but you wouldn’t and couldn’t, and despite the mounting evidence you were pigheaded and determined.

No doubt, you would be the first to tell others that growing and changing is part of life. “The foolish and the dead never change their opinions,” you know. You’re allowed to make mistakes. There’s grace for this.

It’s harder to give grace to yourself, certainly with the big things, but also when the changes you made were small and relatively insignificant.

What I would tell myself, back then, is that it’s comforting to know things for sure and to stand on firm ground. It’s far less fun to parent out of uncertainty, groping and hoping, needing to make a decision right now because the slumber party is tomorrow, but never feeling like there’s enough information or time. You will do less damage, I think, if you make peace with uncertainty and regularly admit, "I could be wrong."

With the basics, we stand as firmly today as we ever did. Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God. Brush your teeth, show up, tell the truth.

It would have been ok to be less rigid with other things. “You know, there’s nothing immoral about eating hamburgers without buns, but we have only a dollar per person per day for food. Maybe in a year or two you can grill hamburgers and eat them however you like.”

It’s also ok to make a rule, as parents, simply because things need to be decided so we can go on with life. Are t-shirts ok for church or not? You’re allowed to decide that no, they’re not, and that is the rule for this stage of life. You’re allowed to change your mind later. There is grace for this.

If you are honest about the relative morality of this decision, then it’s less humiliating if and when you change your mind, down the road.

If you present this rule as the only possible way for things to be done, reinforcing it with Scripture and long-held tradition that must not be messed with, and then you change your mind later, it’s far more embarrassing.

If you punished harshly and followed terrible advice, the regret brings far more than embarrassment. It means dark nights of condemnation and haunting memories.

But there is grace for that as well if you can face it and speak of it honestly.

We will never get it all right, as parents. We often take on the job long before we are fully grown or slightly healed. We do the best we can out of who we are and with what we know at the time. We are influenced by family patterns, the latest fads, and the blowing cultural winds.

It’s a perilous journey.

Years later, you might find yourself sitting at a sunny picnic table with beautiful adult children. They might reminisce and laugh about hamburgers and chicken, about nylons and rules.

You will feel really silly, and you'll taste the biting vinegar of regret. You will wish they'd have children of their own and find out what it’s like. You will be held close by your Father, who never makes a mistake but allows you the freedom to make plenty of your own. And you will be immersed in a deep and sufficient Grace. 

We ate at this picnic table today. Emily arranged the bouquet.

Invitation to a Writing Conference in the West

After attending Mennonite writing conferences in the East and Christian conferences in Oregon, I felt that Mennonite writers in the West needed their own event. For about five years, we hosted a writers’ dinner in conjunction with the annual Western Fellowship Teachers’ Institute. The idea for a one-day conference came out of those evenings together.

I’ve sent information to a number of writers, with instructions to spread the word to their churches.

Now, we’re opening registration to everyone, Anabaptist or not, western or not.

Whether you’re an experienced writer or a beginner, we think you’ll enjoy this.

WESTERN ANABAPTIST WRITERS CONFERENCE

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Pioneer Christian Academy

331 Blakely Avenue, Brownsville, Oregon

A conference to connect, inform, and encourage past, current, and potential Anabaptist writers.

To pre-register: send $30 to dorcassmucker@gmail.com via PayPal and email your name and phone number. Or mail $30 to:

Paul Smucker

31148 Substation Drive

Harrisburg, OR 97446

Registration at the door is $35.

SCHEDULE:

8:30 Registration, coffee, muffins

9:00-10:30 General session 1

Opening and announcements

Chris Miller: Finding a Message

10:45-11:45 Workshop 1

Mary Hake: Get Ready to Write for Children

Dorcas Smucker: How to Begin Writing

Laura Smucker: Capturing and Publishing a Real Person’s Story

Lunch (provided)

12:45-2:00 General session 2—Chris Miller

2:15-3:15  Workshop 2

Mary Hake: Get Ready to Polish Your Piece

Paul Smucker: Supporting a Writer

Dorcas Smucker: Essay Writing

3:15-4:00 Brief general session. Coffee and cookies. Browse the bookstore, sign books, fellowship.

Workshop 1 options:

“Get Ready to Write for Children” by Mary Hake

Do you want to write for children’s Sunday School papers? These weekly take-home papers need both fiction and nonfiction material, plus poetry, puzzles, and more. This workshop will help you explore and learn to develop ideas for Christian periodicals for children, particularly for Christian Light Publications. We will also discuss writing for a theme, tailoring your work to the appropriate age level, and how to submit it.

“How to Begin Writing” by Dorcas Smucker

Maybe you have a persistent idea for a book, or you enjoy journaling and would like to try writing for publication.  Probably, you don’t know if you have what it takes. This workshop is for those who are interested in writing but don’t know how or where to begin. We’ll look at the steps from vague idea to published piece.

Laura Smucker: Capturing and Publishing a Real Person’s Story

Have you ever wished to write a personal story without boring your readers to tears with unnecessary details? Find ways to explore and gather, begin and continue, then sell and publish a real person’s story making it a good read for a broad audience.

Workshop 2 options:

Get Ready to Polish Your Piece by Mary Hake

After you have finished your manuscript and let it sit for a while, it’s time to polish your written work. How should you conduct this self-editing process in order to make your words shine? This workshop will offer steps to follow to check for errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. and tips to revise your creation so it best expresses what you wish to convey. The material covered can be applied to all types of writing.

Supporting a Writer by Paul Smucker

Writers leave jotted notes around the house, shed tears over negative reviews, and agonize over word choices. What types of support do they need from their spouse or family member to best fulfil their calling? Discussion will include privacy, priorities, and practicalities.

Essay Writing by Dorcas Smucker

Essays are short nonfiction pieces that are both story and opinion, personal and universal, wandering and focused. We'll discuss what essays are, what they are not, and how to develop essays from personal experience, moving from initial brainstorming to final paragraphs. We'll also cover the self-discovery in essay writing, asking "So what?" about your experiences, and finding a home for your finished pieces.

Speakers:

CHRIS MILLER is a teacher, motivator, and communicator. He is the principal of Pioneer Christian Academy and is passionate about history, music, and the great outdoors.

MARY HAKE has been writing for more than 40 years and has sold numerous articles, stories, activities, poetry, devotions, and curricula for both children and adults. She has studied children’s literature and enjoys children and their books. Mary has also taught creative writing to children from second grade through high school and has taught Sunday School to children from preschool to adolescents. Mary, a native Oregonian, and her husband, Ted, became Anabaptists as adults, and live in Central Oregon. She is involved with a local writers’ group there as well as Oregon Christian Writers. She is currently working on a historical middle grade novel. In addition to her writing, she does freelance editing work.

LAURA SMUCKER began her writing as a girl keeping a journal as part of a writing class in middle school. Working to find her style, Laura wrote poetry, children’s Sunday School stories, and personal stories. Her love of history and people led her to begin writing about real people. She has three published books—Strands of Gold, A Reason to Hope, and Prejudice and Pardon as well as other stories and short articles. She lives in Madras, Oregon, with her husband and five of her six children.

DORCAS SMUCKER is a pastor’s wife and mother of six. For almost 19 years, she wrote a newspaper column about family life for the Eugene Register-Guard. The columns were collected into seven books, including Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting and Tea and Trouble Brewing. She blogs at Life in the Shoe and is experimenting with other types of writing.

PAUL SMUCKER is a pastor, teacher, and businessman. He has written hundreds of sermons and learned to communicate effectively with students, church members, farmers, and many others. Paul is also the husband and father of writers and believes in finding and encouraging a family member’s talents and callings, even if they’re very different from your own.

Dealing with ADD

My sisters used to laugh at my detailed lists. When I wasn’t looking, they would slip over and add, “Breathe” and “Go to the bathroom” to my list of things I needed to get done.

I was just that crazy detailed, they said. Then they would chuckle. 

The cleaning schedule--printable lists in pretty colors win the day.

As an adult, I diagnosed myself with ADD—Attention Deficit Disorder. Or maybe it’s ADHD, with hyperactivity thrown in. When I first began reading about adult ADD in a library book, I had the sense that someone had crawled in my ear and was describing everything they saw in my head.

This isn’t the exact test I took but it was something like this, and these were definite yeses for me: 
1. I have difficulty getting organized.
2. When given a task, I usually procrastinate rather than doing it right away.
3. I work on a lot of projects, but can’t seem to complete most of them.
4. I tend to make decisions and act on them impulsively
5. I get bored easily.
7. I often get distracted when people are talking; I just tune out or drift off.
8. I get so wrapped up in some things I do that I can hardly stop to take a break or switch to doing something else.
10. I get frustrated easily and I get impatient when things are going too slowly.
15. I often find myself tapping a pencil, swinging my leg, or doing something else to work off nervous energy.

This came from the ADDitude website, a super-helpful resource.

Here are some ways this malady manifests itself:
1. Everything is equally loud. In a crowded room, I hear all the conversations at once and it’s really hard to focus on conversing with YOU. In my kitchen, the cobweb in the corner, the dirty dishes, and the slimy lettuce in the fridge all “yell” at me in equal volume. I might stand there, kind of paralyzed, not knowing what to do. Then I might organize the spices.
2. At the same time, I can ignore clutter and piles, walking right past them for days and weeks without actually seeing them.
3. I have a constant fire hose of creative ideas spraying around in my brain.
4. Daily housework is unbelievably tedious.
5. I over-promise and under-deliver.
6. It is hard work to stay with a task and not get distracted.

While daily functioning is hard, it’s not impossible. I’ve raised a family and finished many projects, after all. Most of my plants are still alive, and you wouldn’t be grossed out by my bathroom. 

The biggest differences between my “normal”* friends and me are:
1. They know what to do next. Somehow, they seem to have a clear blueprint in their heads for what needs to be done that day. They know where to begin, and they move from task to task until it’s done. They don’t have much chaos or crises. Also, they know what to do without writing it all down. It is amazing.
2. They can stick with one task until it’s done. I once worked with some other women to make food for a big event. One woman in particular worked hard and fast at making tortilla roll-ups, without a break, for three hours.
I was helping her, so of course I felt compelled to keep up. I mean, the shame of taking off to run around the building to work off my nervous energy, as I felt sorely tempted to do. After an hour, I felt like bugs were crawling up my arms and legs. Two hours in, the bugs had turned to mice. Three hours, and the circuits in my brain were shorting out, sparking and zapping, heading for a meltdown.
I finally took a break.
3. They can hold still in church. I act like a 4-year-old. I own a fidget spinner and sometimes I use it. I cross my legs and swing my upper foot and pop the heel of my shoe off and back on.
4. They remember commitments, names, and the salad for the potluck.
5. But they also can’t look at little plastic animals and give them all personalities and spin a long story about them, so there’s that.

Recently someone asked me for advice on raising a child with ADHD.  Here are some ways I cope as an adult, but these tips are relevant for children or adults. Most ADD adults are secretly about 7 years old.
1. Remember: making it work is good. Shame is bad. You will be tempted to explode in disbelief—How can any normal person need a list or a timer or a chart for this simple task??? Don’t.

Yes, getting up is an accomplishment.
"Puff" isn't what you might think, since I live in Oregon.
It's actually using my Advair inhaler.

2. Lists and routines are life savers. I have a morning list that includes everything that needs to be done before I do any big projects or leave the house. It doesn’t include breathing and going to the bathroom, but it does include such very basic basics as making the bed, feeding the chickens, and taking my vitamins. Marching down this list is tedium and drudgery, but it also saves me from chaos. And chaos is the unhinging of us ADDs.
Then there are evening routines, Sunday morning routines, getting ready for a trip routines, and on and on. The more I can refer to a list, the more likely it is to all get done.
In addition to lists for routines, I also have lists of people to call, emails to write, and to-do's of every kind.
3. Gimmicks, charts, timers, and rewards are our friends. With my mind spinning ideas for fun and creativity, laundry and weeding and dishes seem like drudgery, and they look overwhelming. Also, if I stick with one thing too long, the bugs start crawling up my arms. 
One of the most effective techniques is to take a piece of graph paper with big squares [try this printable] and make a list down the side of all the tasks that will take a long time. Maybe working outside, writing, cooking, and paperwork. I pick out a few pretty crayons and color in a square each time I work at a task for 15 minutes. Then I can rotate on to the next task, if I’m getting bored, or I can stick with the current one for another round.
That’s where the timer comes in. It helps to keep me focused. Then, coloring in the square is my happy little reward, and looking at the chart keeps me from getting distracted from the day’s big jobs.
This is where normal people, YOU, perhaps, are saying, “Are you kidding me? Just grow up already. Coloring a chart?? At age 57? Too weird.”
That’s why not many people have ever seen my charts.
The other day my fine husband, of the super-organized brain, great efficiency, and 5 balls juggled in the air at all times, came in for lunch when I was coloring a pretty square. Purple! Yay! 
He saw me. 
In some embarrassment, I over-explained what I was doing. 
“Hmm,” he said. “Whatever works for you.” 
There was not one iota of shame. He didn’t think I was silly. He thought I should work with whatever motivated me.
That is how you should be toward the chaotic little ADDs in your life.

This is an actual chart.
"MCP" is Muddy Creek Press, my catchall term for everything writing-related.
"Vesh" is PA Dutch for laundry.

4. Learn one skill at a time. By “skill,” I mean very basic skills that you might think don’t need to be taught. Your ADD child or even teen might need you to walk them through a routine of coming home from school: coat on the hook, homework on the desk, shoes by the door. Change clothes; hang them up.
Using a timer is a skill, and putting it back in the same place every time so you don’t lose it. 
5. Ask normal people how they do what they do. Learn from them. A few months ago, I was talking to my efficient daughters about cleaning the kitchen. “How do I just do the basics and make it look nice but not get distracted with cleaning out the silverware drawer?”
They said, “Pretend it’s someone else’s kitchen! If you were asked to clean Aunt Laura’s kitchen, you would do the dishes and clean the counters, but you wouldn’t do all the detail work.”
Brilliant! It works!
6. Let them tap and fiddle and fidget, even when you’re talking to them. Give them Silly Putty in church if you have wooden pews.
7. Make sure they have time for play, creativity, thinking, running around outside, and putting their finger in the loop on the fly swatter and twirling it around and around for a long time.
8. Let them know that God makes all kinds of people and He made them like this for some amazing and good purpose. 

In addition to ADDitude, I like to follow FlyLady. She tells chaotic people how to make life work.

What works for you or the person with ADD in your life?

*Note: For efficiency’s sake, I use the word “normal” for people without Attention Deficit Disorder, but we know they all have their own quirks, and some of them are even a teensy bit boring and predictable.

Gullibility and Skepticism; Fiction and Non

Americans think it's good to be skeptical. It shows insight, sophistication, wisdom, and superiority.

It's definitely not good or cool to be gullible.

This works out just fine when you get a phone call saying your car's warranty is about to expire, or your bank account needs to be reset.

In other venues, it gets weird. Post a photo or video online of a chipmunk peeking into a security camera and a host of commenters pipe up with skeptical snorts of "Photoshop!" and "obviously fake!" We assume they want to show how astute and discerning they are, but we note that they have time to watch and comment, which tells us a lot about them and a possible lack of sophistication in their lives.

I think: this is not a scam to get your passwords. Just enjoy the video.

It also gets weird when you're writing fiction. You would think that if you're writing non-fiction, then of course you have to stick with the facts. But if you're making up a story you can include whatever you want.

This might work with fantasy, but I'm starting to think that most fiction is more restrictive than non-fiction, not less.

Today we had our bi-weekly fiction group meeting. One contribution included a long-ago character who was given a bizarre treatment for a tropical disease. I won't say more than that because you need to buy the book when it comes out.

The rest of us were quite skeptical of this part of the story. Really?? we said. What about this complication, that result, and this detail over here? 

It turned out that the writer has actual historical documents verifying this event.

Oooo-kaaay, we said. Well then.

Real life provides plenty of stories that are hard to believe but verifiably true. But you couldn't get by with putting them in a work of fiction, I don't think. Such as my friend Donna's unusual handicap:

For my whole life I've had trouble recognizing people, especially people I don't see every week. Watching movies I've never seen before is incredibly frustrating because all the actors look alike. I have never been able to recognize people at graduation -- all those hats, or swimming. A couple years ago I took an online test and discovered I have a condition commonly called "face blindness" where I don't recognize faces -- I compensate by recognizing people by a million other characteristics including hair, voice, etc. Sometimes I resort to recognizing people by what type of shoes they wear (really!). When someone changes my cue (gets a haircut, or whatever) then I'm sunk until someone tells me who the person is. Knowing it's an actual thing doesn't make it easier than it was, but at least now I know what's going on and I can laugh at some of the things that have happened to me, like the time in grad school that I was getting to know two cute guys (one at school, one at church) only to discover, after maybe 6 weeks, that they were the same person! One day the guy from church showed up at school and as we were walking and talking he casually opened the guy from school's locker! That's when I figured it out.

Wouldn't it be fun to put that in a novel? But all those astute readers would say pffft, too implausible!

Last year I flew to Minnesota and took a shuttle to St. Cloud. The driver was a great storyteller and kept us entertained with local lore. I posted one of his stories on Facebook:

"So I got this friend Mike who’s a big blond Norwegian. He was in the military and learned to do welding on these nuclear submarines, and he’s kept up his credentials, so he works for the electric company nine months out of the year and takes three months off so he doesn’t go up to the next tax bracket. That’s when he goes hunting. He’s a big quiet guy, you can’t get six words out of him if you try. 
‘Hey Mike! How you doin?’
[Slow low voice] ‘Fine.’
While he was in the military he married this Korean woman named Chuni, and Chuni’s maybe 5-4 and 120 pounds soaking wet, with rocks in her pockets. And she’s a talker, and she loves to play bingo. She just loves her bingo.
So one time Mike was off hunting for five days and while he was gone Chuni went to St. Cloud and played bingo. She was coming home at maybe 11:00 at night and all of a sudden she hits a deer—an 18-point buck. It was huge. The biggest deer you ever saw. 
She didn’t hit it broadside or it would’ve killed her. The front right of the car hit the neck and broke it. She could still drive the car.
Well Chuni knew Mike carried rope in the trunk so she looked and sure enough, there was 100 feet of rope. So she tied up the deer’s feet and ran the rope up over the car and back under and tied it to a fencepost. Then she pulled forward slow and hauled the deer to the luggage rack. Tied it down and went home.
When she got home she knew a deer needs to be hung up so she strung the rope over the basketball hoop on the garage and tied up the deer under the antlers and backed up until it was hanging there.
[The driver explained it better but I don’t remember just how she did this.]
Then she dragged the picnic table over and laid out all the knives. By this time it was 3 in the morning, so she went to bed.
At 6 in the morning Mike comes home. He’s been out for five days hunting, didn’t get a thing. He pulls in and there’s this enormous deer hanging on the garage.
So Mike told me, 'You know, da h**k with dese expensive huntin’ trips. From now on I’m just sendin’ Chuni to Bingo.'
. . .
The head was too messed up to stuff, but they were able to mount the skull with that big 18-point rack. It’s hanging on their living room wall, and Mike put a plaque underneath that says, 'CHUNI’S DEER.'"

Predictably, two commenters out of fourteen said something like, "This is a made-up story, right?"

My question is: does it matter? And if so, why? I had my own reasons for assuming it was at least mostly true: first, the utter plausibility of the slow-talking Norwegian Minnesotan, and then the Korean wife, which you don't find in a normal Minnesota story. That combination rang true for me, but it was a good story and that's what mattered most.

That's how I want people to react when I tell or write a story.

It's different when it's my brother Fred. When he tells one of his yarns, I listen with sharp skepticism from the first word on, because I got so sick and tired of being all awed and taken in by his amazing stories and then chagrined and humiliated at the punch line, when it was finally obvious that he was working me like a fish on the line the whole time.

The shuttle driver told another story that was just as interesting but actually verifiable online:

"Do you see that sign for Flying Cloud Drive? Do you know what that's named after?
Ok, so the main Twin Cities airport used to be out at Shakopee, and it was called Flying Cloud Airport.
Where the main airport is today was all part of Fort Snelling. In 1946 they kept the cemetery part of Fort Snelling and sold the rest to two guys who wanted to build a racetrack. So they built a replica of the Indy 500--the 2 1/2 mile track, the bleachers, everything. 
Well by about 1956 they had gone bankrupt and the racetrack just sat there.
Now we get snow and ice around here sometimes as you may know, and one time in 1956 there were two commercial airliners coming in to Flying Cloud and it happened to be all socked in with snow. These guys radioed each other and said What do we do? because they were running low on fuel.
One of them said, "I think I saw a long straight stretch on that racetrack."
So they both landed on those long straightaways on that racetrack.
So then someone in the city got the idea to turn that area into the Twin Cities airport. Today we have four runways. Two of them are the remnants of the two long sides of that racetrack.
The first time I told that story, I had a passenger who used to be a stewardess for Northwest Airlines and she said, 'Yep, that's true. I remember when it happened.'"

That would also make for an interesting plot device in a novel, and it would seem totally made-up until you went to Wikipedia and looked it up.

My conclusions: we all pride ourselves on our finely-tuned skepticism, but we probably come to the wrong conclusions quite often about what is true and possible, and what is not.
Also: writing fiction requires an annoying amount of sticking to what the average person considers possible and believable.

Sunday Evening Popcorn

Paul and I are married to each other.

We both have laptops.

We both scroll through Facebook and news sites.

Thus far, it seems we are similar.

Once in a while, such as when we're on a plane, I sit beside him when he's online, and I watch what he clicks on and reads. That's when I realize how completely different we are.

Looking over on his screen, I'll see a catchy headline: "Missing Iowa Child Found In Cornfield After 28 Hours."

I think CLICK ON THAT.

He doesn't.

Next comes ONLY 1% OF AMERICANS CAN PASS THIS HISTORY TEST.

I think: clickbait and silly. He opens it, passes the quiz, and is pleased.

Next there's something super-interesting like Nova Scotia Grandma Discovers Ancient Pirate Treasure While Digging Potatoes in Garden.

Oh my stars. We must read this, I think.

He scrolls by and clicks on something inane involving Mueller testifying, the Blazers winning, the football draft picks, or Trump tweeting something.

I read about the British royals. Oooooh, pictures of Prince Louis!

He certainly does not.

However, I'm happy to say that I've found a few ways we are similar. We both click and read things involving plane crashes, big snakes in the Everglades, college costs, and the Amish.

And we both don't read about entertainment celebrities and music and movies.

The experts say that yes, opposites attract, but they also have to work a lot harder at making the marriage work. We are opposite in many ways and marriage has required a lot of hard work, but at least we can always talk about the latest article we both read about plane crashes, pythons, student debt, or the growing Amish population.

---

Ben and Amy sang in the Riverside Community Choir, which presented its final program for the season this evening.

"Somebody should do a livestream," I said.

Well. You know how it goes when you say out loud that "someone" should do something?

Yes, that is exactly what happened.

Jenny and I got to church at 5:39, and already the parking lot was full and people were parking on the grass. We rushed to the balcony to set up. I couldn't connect to wifi because the information was on the router, locked in the office, and Paul wasn't there yet with the key.

So I did the best I could with what I had as the church filled, the foyer filled, and the balcony filled. Partway through the evening, my battery was dying. I'd forgotten to plug in the phone. So we handed a long cord back and around, and a nice person plugged it in over by the Sunday school supplies.

"I am too old for this," I told Hope Krabill afterwards. She is my age. "No!" she said. "Don't say that! We can still learn to do things!"

"Yes. Growth mindset." I said, and added, "Please tell me I'm allowed to make mistakes."

She emphatically said I was. The video is imperfect but it will be viewable by David the soloist's parents in Grenada, and that sort of thing is why I made the attempt.

---
I think it was last year when I wrote for Daughters of Promise about change and identity. With each new phase, we think, "Who am I now?"

If you even try to be a writer, please know that you will be tested and tried in every area you write about, especially if you sound like you have it figured out.

Somehow I got to discussing the change/identity subject with a woman who came to the concert this evening. The changes in her life involved marriage, moving, and a baby, all about 15 years later than her peers experienced these transitions. Mine, recently, involve no longer writing for the newspaper and, as a result, not getting as many speaking invitations, which has left me feeling strangely at loose ends.

"We know our identity is in Christ," she said. "But still..."

I agreed.

Christian women tend to overdo the identity topic, I think, but maybe it's because we are so defined by what we take care of , which keeps changing, so we're forever trying to adapt to a new phase of life and trying to figure out who we are now.

---
My friend Judy and I got married the same summer and lived in the same town for the next two years. We endured morning sickness at the same time and had our baby boys three weeks apart.

Then our paths parted. But whenever I see her, we eliminate the conversational fluff and go right to the heart.  One time she happened to be at church and we talked briefly and intensely afterward. Her daughter walked up to us. "Really, Mom? Five minutes with Dorcas and already you're crying?"

Well, yes.

Today we met again because a young man who is a nephew of both her husband and mine was baptized. She had great and immediate clarity about what I should do about my biggest life issues, and I had great and immediate clarity with hers.

When you sit together in a car during a church service and eat crackers so you don't throw up, you form this sort of bond.

You should try it.

---
Have a wonderful week.

On Writing Fiction and the Nonexistent Magic Wand

I am slowly working on my work of fiction, which is not yet epic or compelling or any other of those words found on the backs of novels. Basically, I write a chapter every two weeks for our Fictitious Five meetings. I've changed the beginning about four times. I still don't know how the mystery will get solved.

I also don't know how the main character will grow as a person and resolve her personal issues. I've often pondered what exactly it is that makes some people change and grow while others stay in the same patterns and habits for years on end. I've often wished for a magic wand that I could wave to instantly turn manipulators into honest, healthy people, freeloaders into humble repentant helpers, and shy wallflowers into freespirited friends.

Even with twenty-four years of pastor's wifing, I still haven't discovered a magic wand, not even for myself. All change in my own heart and habits has come from painful consequences, terribly hard work, and the slow dawning of truth.

It would seem that a fiction writer has the magic wand at her fingertips, and she can make the characters do anything she wants.

Carol pulled the heavy envelope out of her church mail slot. What in the world? Cautiously she opened it and pulled out a copy of Created to be His Helpmeet. What? How had anyone caught on how badly things were going with her and Phil? And whose bright idea was this book that she had already read twice? The shame of it--first, people finding out about their rocky marriage and then to be given this last-ditch-effort book. She looked at the floor, fighting tears.
Frieda Yoder came bustling by, fresh from telling the teen girls their skirts were too short and the pastor that his sermons were too long. "Oh Carol! I hope you aren't offended, but I just heard from Wilma how you and Phil had a big argument at Taco Bell the other day when you locked the keys in the car and I had such a concern for you. I thought that book might help!"
Flushing crimson with the agony of it all, Carol looked around for a way to escape and caught Dorcas Smucker's eye.
Dorcas came over, pulling her magic wand out of her purse.  "What's going on?"
Carol explained. Frieda kept interrupting.
Dorcas glared at Frieda. "Are you kidding me? How about you quit trying to run everyone else's life and work on your own for a little while! And your own marriage, while you're at it. Funny how you never talk about that."
Then Dorcas turned to Carol. "And you need to figure out that this shame and secrecy stuff is crazy. How about you be honest about things but also realize you're completely normal and it's ok to ask for help!"
Dorcas flicked the magic wand between the two women. A strange blue light flickered on their surprised faces.
Frieda started crying. "I'm so sorry. I've been so cruel, and it's all to cover up the fact that I don't feel God really loves me, ever since I lied about Pauline when I was 19 so John would date me and not her! And now we're married and he's miserable!"
Carol was smiling. "What? You mean I'm all forgiven and there's no more condemnation? And it's ok if people find out Phil is a jerk? And it's not all my fault? And I don't have to do everything people tell me I should??"
Frieda and Carol hugged each other and made plans to get together for coffee while Dorcas telescoped the wand back together, dropped it into her purse, and marched out the door, into the pleasant rain.

But if people change instantly, with no struggle, then there's no real story! Apparently that was God's idea, right from the start, and all our storytelling reflects that truth.

In between fiction deadlines I'm working on a few talks, organizing a one-day first-ever Western Anabaptist Writing Conference in August, sending advice to fledgling writers and also working on a how-to book for them, and planning another collection of articles.

In addition to all the normal tasks of living.

So that's why progress is slow. I tell myself it's a throwaway novel, the same way you [ought to] make a throwaway muslin when you try out a complicated new dress pattern.

One thing that surprises me is how many things you have to verify when you write fiction. In all my years of writing for the newspaper, I'd verify dates and details and quotes with the family, or ask Paul if it was organic oats or barley that he was bagging that week.

But fiction is different. Even though I'm writing about a family in Oregon, I can't pull all the content from my own life.

So I had a character recall how she worked on her dad's farm in Wisconsin back in the 1970s, and she was disking a soybean field with a John Deere 4020. If I worked only from my own life, it would be Minnesota, a cornfield, and a Farmall M. But that's for a memoir, not a novel, because I'm pretty sure nobody else in the Midwest used a Farmall in the 1970s.

But did they disk soybean fields? And was a 4020 typical for a mid-sized Mennonite farm?

It gets complicated. But sometimes the information you need arrives in unexpected ways, almost like you waved a magic wand and there it was.

Another part of the plot is that the 16-year-old is planning to serve at the Gospel Echoes banquet. Now I recall from our own children's experiences that serving at that banquet is a very big deal, and who you serve with is even bigger. But it's been a long time since my kids were part of that and I don't remember much except for the time Kevin K. offered Matt $100 if he would ask Erin on a date. Erin went home before Matt worked up the courage, so the story ended right there.

So how was I going to work some concrete details into a story?

My friend Ila invited the women at church to join her on Friday evening to crochet hats for charity. That sounded like fun, so I went.

My crocheting skills are rusty so I used a plastic "knitting" hoop with pegs instead. I sat at a table with Aunt Susie and a few other grandmas, and also four teenagers--Ila's two daughters and the two Mishler girls. Suddenly I realized the girls were talking about...serving at the Gospel Echoes banquet! And all the drama involved!

I whipped out my notebook. What a bonanza I had just lucked into.

Of course I explained my curiosity, and they were happy to oblige. "It's all about who you serve with," they said. "That's where alllll the drama is." They then told stories and described people in such delicious detail that I went home with sufficient material for the next chapter.

What a delightful surprise that was.

So, for everyone who's been asking:
Yes, I'm writing fiction.
Little by little.
Only for practice, at this point.
With a growth mindset.
You are not in my story.
But you might be, at the end of this week, if you served at the banquet.