I’m ploughing along desperately in my effort to get to 75 books before the end of the year. I’m up to 71, which is pretty epic. I think I’m going to reward myself with a whole sleight of Wodehouse on a loop. Unless disaster happens–which, it being 2020, is not out of the question–I should be able to get to my goal.
The last two books were super fun for super different reasons. The first was Planet Narnia, which I guess everyone already knew about except me, and about which I will probably have much to say in the coming days. And the second was Save the Cat: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need.
Don’t worry, there is no novel about to be forthcoming from me. I would love to be a novelist, for that is the only kind of writing that there even is. I’m too intimidated though. The only way for me to show up to my writing life every day is for me to think of myself as a blogging hack with a side of devotion. I can churn out my daily thousand words on a very narrowly confined set of topics, always ending with the gospel. That is the level of my abilities. I will die frustrated and sad and that will be that. As Clay Jones says, in three generations, not a living soul will remember me. So that’s fine.
Also, I’m pretty sure that the promise of that being the last book you would ever need on novel writing is a bit, well, a touch hyperbolic. When I do bring my Great Anglican Novel to the world, it will only be after I’ve read fifty books such as Save the Cat, not to mention piles of blog posts and other kinds of useful literary helps.
Nevertheless, Save the Cat was great. I got it on kindle and highlighted nearly the whole thing. The author was breezy and matter of fact, and occasionally funny, and I wasn’t too stupid to follow what she was going on about. So five stars for both of us. The chief reason I loved it is that I am really afraid of fiction. I am very anxious about climbing into someone else’s emotional landscape, given that my own is so fraught. I don’t climb back out again very easily. It makes me nervous to trust someone else with my spiritual, mental, and emotional furniture. Novels often–good ones anyway–rearrange my categories and ways of thinking and seeing. That’s the whole point. And they do it not in a didactic sense, where you can consider an idea and then accept it or not accept it, they take you there and show it to you before you’ve had a chance to prepare yourself.
This is why–can’t help myself, have to say something about Planet Narnia–Lewis after his debate with that person which apparently so shattered him, did not write the Narniad (that’s the new term and it’s so wonderful) as a retreat into some Freudian childhood safe-space, but rather decided to take the very youngest of readers straight into the world he was trying to describe in On Miracles. On Miracles didn’t work as an explanatory endeavor, he had to introduce the world to Jesus through Aslan, and what a transforming introduction it was–and is.
Setting aside the question of whether On Miracles worked or didn’t work, the point is that Save the Cat shows you how every single story in the universe works, and for me, this is fantastic because I need some critical distance when occasionally I’m faced with a story that is dragging me where I don’t want to go. I may not want to go there because I don’t agree, but more usually it’s because I don’t have, to employ an overused and not very satisfying term, “bandwidth.” I can’t cope. I can’t go back into the darkness just at this moment. Maybe next year.
The other reason I loved it is because she’s right. Her “beats,” as she calls them, do sort out every single story, including the biblical story of salvation. She didn’t say this, of course, but she might as well have. From the Opening Image, to the Theme, to the Midpoint, to the Fun and Games, to the All is Lost and Dark Night of the Soul–all of it’s there.
And finally, the reason Hallmark is so great, I think, is because none of these important elements are in Hallmark–NONE OF THEM–except maybe in a passing, sugar-glazed nod. The B Story is just that the hero doesn’t love Christmas and love enough. And the Dark Night of the Soul is…well, just finally accepting that the hot guy with no real job is actually a prince or something. It’s exactly the kind of thing I’m on board for. I don’t even care. In fact, I wrote a whole defense of why it’s totes fine to watch Hallmark last year. Just to quote myself:
Christians are people too, which means that the Twenty-One Pilots sell a lot more albums than Beethoven, and the church organ gathers a thick coating of dust while the band leader tunes up his guitar. Jesus never said, blessed are those who read only good literature and the Bible, for they shall be better than everyone else. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” A poverty of spirit is the result of frailty and sin and often manifests itself in a love of the paltry, easy entertainments of this world. There’s no reason to sneer just because the plot is the same every time.
Maybe that was off-topic. Oops! Thank goodness this isn’t a story about anything. Just the morning blog. And now it’s over because I’ve got stuff to do. Have a great day!
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