At lunchtime yesterday, I got out my ‘solar eclipse’ glasses to check out the transit of Venus. The weather was perfect for observation and my boss, lured by the winter sunshine and the simplicity of the glasses (he’d already tried the pinhole technique without success), decided he’d try to photograph the event for posterity.

He just wasn’t sure he’d be around for the next transit in 105 years. It took considerable ingenuity to rig up a suitable system, using only cardboard off-cuts, but his efforts were worth it. One of his photos is featured.

All of this recent focus on the planet Venus has a bit of extra fascination for me. I’ve been collecting names for the ‘morning star’ recently. This is because I’m in the middle of writing up some teaching material for my latest fantasy novel, Daystar.

Yes, there’s quite a few by that name at the moment but I’ve been working on this one decades, so it’s hard to change. Daystar is an archaic term, which is actually disputed in meaning: some places say it refers to Venus and some say it’s another name for the sun.

One thing’s for sure: in a transit of Venus across the face of the sun, you’re definitely observing the ‘daystar’, whatever it originally was.

It’s been a real treat for have an excuse (as if I needed one, being a name ferret) to look up more names meaning the morning star.

I was an avid reader throughout my childhood. I had such an instinctive respect for books no one had to tell me not to crease the corner of a page or bend the spine. I was shocked the first time I saw someone turn down a page just to mark where they were up to. It was like mutilating a baby.

Likewise, no one had to tell me that, once a book was begun, it had to be finished. I sensed the unwritten contract between myself and the writer: the commitment to get to the end, no matter what.

Had you asked me back then if I’d ever broken this self–imposed rule, I’d have said ‘no’. However, as an adult, I’ve been surprised to remember books I started and put aside. It wasn’t that I was bored. They were great books. No, it was almost an instinct for self–preservation. There was one particular book (which I eventually read as an adult) that I got out of the school library and started at least five times—never getting beyond the third page.

Even now, with all the self–understanding I have, I can look at those three pages in Alan Garner’s Elidor and wonder what I discerned in them to make me shut the book and take it back. And then to try again—and think twice about having done so.

How did I know the rest of the story would destroy my hope in what life offers?

I’m a firm believer in a happy ending. Not necessarily within the story itself but it must hold out the promise that all will eventually be well. By ‘happy ending’, I’m not talking about a Pollyanna sweetness–and–light finale. Far from it. My all–time favourite movie is the seriously underrated Colossus: The Forbin Project which certainly doesn’t finish on an upbeat note. The world has just been taken over by a giant supercomputer which, in order to enforce its benign tyranny, kills anyone who stands between it and world peace. Yet the final scene, as Forbin vows never to yield leaves no doubt the fall of Colossus was inevitable in the face of an indomitable human spirit.

Back when I was at school, algebra was taught as a symbolic language. Over the years, the emphasis changed and, by the time I left mathematics teaching, it was being introduced through arithmetic patterns. Somehow I got the best of both worlds: I was equally at home with algebra as a language or as a system of recognising numerical relationships.

These two ways of thinking about the nature of equations could not be more different but I was fortunate in being able to move from one system to the other without missing a beat. Despite the disdain of modern mathematics educators for symbolic language, I’m deeply grateful I was brought up with it. Because the day came when I realised that, once you are fluent in one symbolic language, you have the essential grammar of them all.

Dream symbols operate according to the same rules of language as algebra; literary symbols often do too, especially when those symbols are ‘invented’ names within a ‘made-up’ plot.

In Discovered or Invented?, I looked at the question which perplexes some very eminent mathematicians: Is mathematics a construction of the human mind or does it exist somewhere ‘out there’, just waiting to be found?

In Discovered or Imagined?, I looked at a similar question in relation to fiction: Do storytellers make up their ‘secondary worlds’ or do the stories exist somewhere ‘out there’, just waiting to be told?

On an even deeper level: Are the names we think we ‘make up’ for characters simply a random conglomeration of suitable syllables or are they already ‘out there’, just waiting to be exposed?

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about whom I’m writing for. Is it me? Well, of course it is, at least in the first instance. I’m very much of CS Lewis’ philosophy when it comes to writing: I write the sort of things I would have wanted to read or know as a kid or younger adult.

However, there’s an aspect of my writing that is not me. At the end of the day I want to communicate to the widest possible audience. So I make sacrifices to achieve that goal.

Lately, as I’ve struggled to communicate the concept of ‘show, don’t tell’ to many writers who reject the idea, I’ve looked more deeply at the way Scripture writers told their stories. I’ve tried to see how they responded to the taste of their age and the target audience of the day.

So because today is the Thursday before Easter, I’d like to take a specific look at the story of Jesus in front of Annas and Caiaphas as told one of my heroes: a man who used numerical literary technique so exquisitely he raised it to an artform, an author who fused number and word design in ways that bubble with humour. But he also faced a complex problem that I’m glad I don’t: he wrote in Greek to communicate a Hebrew understanding of the world. Writing to Gentiles in their own language, he nonetheless wanted to convey to the Jews of the time the message that Jesus really is the Messiah.

John, the son of Zebedee, was clearly presented with a unique challenge.  How he responded is quite surprising: to me, it’s clear he selected his information so that the story of Jesus’ trial was told with specific reference to doors. 

Yes, doors.

Possibly you’ve never noticed them. So I’m going to point them out. In fact, John was so focussed on doors and words related to them that he occasionally offered us some really awkward constructions. Check out the words in bold: Simon Peter was following Jesus, and so was another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest, but Peter was standing at the door outside. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the doorkeeper, and brought Peter in. (John 18:15-16)

It would be so much simpler if we had a name instead of ‘the other disciple, who was known to the high priest’. Many commentators believe the ‘other disciple’ was John himself and this is his rather inelegant attempt at humility. However, I don’t believe that needs to be the case at all. The disciple could have been anyone, male or female, close or distant. In my view, John simply didn’t want to mix his metaphors by mentioning a disciple whose name was not about a doorway.

A zillion years ago, back when I was in Grade 10, my history teacher gave my class an assignment on ‘totalitarianism’. I’d just started it when I happened to encounter the husband of a friend of my mum’s. He was from Poland, he’d been in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War and he was, so he feared, unable to return home because he’d be executed by the Soviet secret police. His hatred of both Germans and Russians was immense.

He asked about my homework. I told him and asked: ‘Would you say that it’s better to be without law than to endure a system like Stalinist Russia?’

Intense grey eyes suddenly bored into me. His answer was one I’ve never forgotten: ‘Any system of law, no matter how brutal, repressive or tyrannical, is better than none. When I was in the concentration camp, nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the barbarity of the time between the Nazis leaving and the Russians arriving. Any system of law is better than anarchy.’

As I’ve recalled this thought over the years, I’ve realised it contains the essence of a truth Christians have largely forgotten.

Law is an aspect of God’s grace.

According to Vishal Mangalwadi, until the eighteenth century, Christians took this as self-evident. The gift of the Ten Commandments freed mankind from anarchy and lawlessness. Yet human nature tends to inveterate law-breaking and so we desire mercy, not strict justice.

By the nineteenth century, mercy was seen to embody God’s grace but justice fell under a cloud. Into the twentieth century, theology separated law from grace—and so Christian colleges dropped their law departments or, if they retained them, the colleges themselves became increasingly secularised.

Mangalwadi comments that believers in America are currently appalled that every ‘Christian’ president has appointed mostly atheists as Supreme Court judges. But he also comments there’s no one else to choose. Without law students at Christian campuses, there’s a lack of faith-professing lawyers.

Now you may wonder what this has to do with writing. Quite a lot.

Last Sunday I was in church singing Be Thou My Vision when a couple of lines leapt off the page and grabbed my attention:

Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my armour, my Sword for the fight;

Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight

The first two lines are from the end of the second verse and the next two from the beginning of the third. I was entranced. How could I have missed this before? It was about the making of a covenant. It was about oneness, about the exchange of armour and weapons, about offering dignity through the swapping of mantles. An eighth century hymn that preserves the notion of covenant we in the twenty-first century have lost entirely—how exciting!

As soon as I got home, I typed these words into Google and… …how very odd! Not a single instance of them were to be found anywhere in the entire world.

There are nearly 2.7 million results on Google for Be Thou My Vision but not one of them with these exact words. For a moment I thought I was seriously losing my memory but then I decided to change the spelling of ‘armour’ to ‘armor’.

Aha! One result. On YouTube. Hmm, the account was closed. It was just baffling. One occurrence in the whole world and it was no longer verifiable. How could there be just one and no more?

I decided to check out the 2.7 million results for Be Thou My Vision to see why this discrepancy existed—no, not all of them. Just a few. I quickly realised that, in a significant number of cases, ‘armour’ had been changed to ‘breastplate’, ‘dignity’ had been changed to ‘armour’ and ‘delight’ had been changed to ‘might’.

Van Morrison, Rebecca St James and Máire Brennan all have recorded the second version. At this rate, it won’t be long before this is the most common wording.

Does it matter? I think it does. To change the symbols of covenant to symbols of battle results in a profound loss. Instead of being about unity and defence, it’s about force and attack.

Recently, while I was interviewing Andrew Lansdown, he commented he was living proof anyone can learn to write. He claimed that no one could have started out worse than he did. His story drafts were terrible. I laughed and told him I was sure I could still give him a good run for his money.

But, as I’ve reflected on his words, I’ve wondered: can anyone learn to write? Andrew is a poet and as a result I think there’s probably an aspect or two he’s automatically assumed about writing that isn’t necessarily true for everyone.

Most aspiring writers (and sometimes even published ones) seem to believe one of two things:

(1)   that great technique—and this includes spelling, grammar, sentence flow, engaging prose, a narrative hook, all the principles of perspective and ‘show, don’t tell’—makes a wonderful book.

(2)   that technique is a non–essential—the ideas, the message, the information imparted, the events of the plot (which are subtly different, by the way, to the plot itself) are all–important.

As I receive manuscripts to appraise, I am often struck by the fact that one very critical element is missing in an otherwise excellent text. This ingredient is sometimes missing from my manuscripts, too!  George Macdonald said it best: ‘As stories they want the one central spot of red—the wonderful thing which, whether in a…story or a word or a human being—is the life and depth—whether of truth or humour or pathos…that shows the unshowable.’ 

What stories do you remember? And what makes them memorable?  As I asked myself this, I thought of the images, scenes and words from various books that have stayed with me over a lifetime:

It’s been a while since my last post. Partly that’s because the comments in Discovered or Invented? were so thought–provoking, I had to pause to reflect for a time on a question I’d never really considered before.  Are stories discovered or imagined?

There are aspects to this question I’ve pondered before but I’ve never really looked at it in just that phrasing. And I’m not sure, after considerable thought, that there’s a simple answer to it.

‘To invent [that is, to make a poem] is to come into a knowledge of the unknown thing through the agency of one’s own reason.’ This statement by the medieval grammarian, John of Garland, is cited as an idiosyncratic view by Robert Edwards in Ratio and Invention but, if John is eccentric, then he’s in very good company.

George MacDonald—the great nineteenth century fantasist who influenced CS Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, WH Auden, JRR Tolkien and EE Nesbit, not to mention yours truly—said: ‘A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.’

In his notes to his children’s fantasy, The Moon of Gomrath, Alan Garner wrote: ‘The more I learn, the more I am convinced that there are no original stories. On several occasions I have ‘invented’ an incident, and then come across it in an obscure fragment of Hebridean lore, orally collected, and privately printed, a hundred years ago.’

I’ve often encountered a similar phenomenon in my own stories: scenes that I thought I’d invented out of my imagination turn out to be classic moments from certain northern myths or folktales. Names that I’d made up and then looked for through 27 books without result have subsequently popped up in the age of Google as real names with precisely the meaning I assigned to them.  My spelling is often atrocious, as if I’d never seen the name but heard it sounded out in Old Gaelic or Norse and spelt it phonetically. I don’t even find this spooky any longer. Because I’ve noticed that lots of other writers do it as well. They just don’t know they do.

So is the creative process really one of discovery, rather than an exercise of imagination? Are writers explorers, rather than fabricators? I think a lot of us are, particularly in the field of fiction and more especially within the genre of fantasy. There’s a lot of talk in fantasy (and speculative fiction generally) about world–building, but sometimes I wonder: is it truly about creating or about charting an already–existing geography?

I have a confession to make. It’s a fairly awkward one so I apologise in advance for displaying my shortcomings in public.

Some years ago, when I was helping to organise a writers’ conference, I received a phone call from an author who was interested in attending the event. ‘My work isn’t so much Christian,’ she mentioned, ‘as Christian worldview.’

Not wishing to appear totally rude or absolutely ignorant, I remained silent but I was perplexed. What on earth constituted ‘Christian worldview’? And what distinguished it from ‘Christian’?

Although this was the first time I heard the phrase, it’s something I’ve heard many times since. In fact, since that time, I’ve tried hard to educate myself about ‘Christian worldview’, particularly when it comes to writing. Without any success, I have to say. It’s a concept I’ve always found so subtle that I was never sure what it really meant. And it always seemed to me everyone else could detect it with ease while I blundered along in a fog. I’d try to work out some sort of definition for the idea but the more I thought about it, the more nebulous it got.

Numerous books were recommended to me for their marvellous ‘Christian worldview’ but I couldn’t see it at all in what I read. I found the notion increasingly difficult to comprehend; sometimes there was a rave review in front of me and all I could think was: ‘If I didn’t already know the author was a Christian, there’s absolutely nothing here to tell me differently.’

I kept fairly quiet about this thought because, until very recently, I was ashamed to say that it was something that had crossed my mind about some very notable Aussie and Kiwi Christian authors.  When aspiring writers mentioned they wrote from a ‘Christian worldview’, I’d get frustrated. To me, it was invisible, untouchable, undetectable.

I’ve even had my own fiction described as ‘Christian worldview’ and wondered which aspects of it qualified for that title and why. Sure, there are some specifically Christian concepts and embedded Scripture references in my fiction, but I was (and am) fairly sure most of them go over people’s heads unless I tell them what they are.

And those aspects aside, all that was left was a good, moral story. But good, moral stories don’t make a ‘Christian worldview’.  At least I don’t think they do. Good, moral stories make the work good and moral.  Stories of hope and light don’t make a ‘Christian worldview’. At least I don’t think they do. Bright hopeful stories make a work bright and hopeful. Epic battles between good and evil don’t make a ‘Christian worldview’. At least I don’t think they do. Epic battles between and good and evil define what’s good or evil.

It requires something far more to qualify as worldview.

I expressed this thought recently to another writer who recommended a wonderful novel she’d just read. We happened to be debating this question of ‘Christian worldview’ and she raised a valid point: it wasn’t necessary to a good book. She cited the novel she’d just read as an exemplar and mentioned the name of the author. ‘But she’s a Christian,’ I said.

‘I’d never have guessed that,’ was the reply.

There are complex issues arising from this. One of them is: if it’s impossible to tell the author is a Christian from their work, even if the work is very good, then does the work really have a ‘Christian worldview’?

With a huge sigh of relief, I have to say that I’ve realised at last that this is the wrong question. 

I was at a luncheon recently, listening to Vishal Mangalwadi, a speaker from India who is one of the world’s foremost evangelical thinkers. He made a number of points that finally laid all my queries, doubts and confusion to rest.

There is, he said, no such thing as Christian worldview in the twenty-first century.

There should be, he went on, but there isn’t. To illustrate his point, he narrated his visit to a university where he met a professor of applied physics. ‘How is it,’ he inquired of this expert, ‘that the energy dispersed by the Big Bang turned into clumps of matter? What sort of process was involved?’  After several minutes of discussion amongst his colleagues, the professor answered, ‘That’s not a question for applied physics. That’s not our field. You should ask a theoretical physicist that.’

Vishal later spoke to a professor of economics about the current crisis on Wall Street, suggesting that the corruption which has led to almost-global economic collapse might have been averted if students in economics and business courses had been given some moral framework in which to operate. The professor agreed entirely but said, ‘That’s not a question for economics. That’s not our field. It’s not my job to teach ethics; I’m an economist.’

The point, Vishal went on, is that modern academia puts subjects into silos. A reign of darkness dominates the intellectual life of the West. And in such a culture, there is no such thing as a worldview, just a view inside a silo.

The Bible too is inside a silo. It is meant to be the sun, lighting up every subject, every book, every endeavour, every discipline, every part of the world.  By its light, we are meant to see every aspect of creation and every activity of mankind: applied physics should not be separate from theoretical physics nor ethics from economics nor mathematics from poetry nor music from biology—nor any of them from the Bible.

Until all these aspects of knowledge are out of their silos, there can be no such thing as worldview.

I now understand why I couldn’t see ‘Christian worldview’ in modern novels. To distinguish between Christian and Christian worldview automatically negates any aspect of worldview.

Vishal’s idea is frankly medieval. It hasn’t been current since the Middle Ages. Still, if he’s right, then we’ve been duped. As in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale The Emperor’s New Clothes, we’ve not only been deceived but we’ve paid an exorbitant price for the privilege of getting nothing for something.

Perhaps you disagree with me and have an insight I’ve missed. If so, please take the opportunity to comment.

But if you do agree with me, I challenge you, as Vishal Mangalwadi challenged me, not to be, first and foremost, an apostle or prophet, teacher or miracle-worker or to look to any of the offices we’re encouraged to seek today. Rather, simply be a witness.

To create in your writing a truly Christian worldview by taking Christianity out of its silo and making it into your sun.

I’ve got a question. It’s a trick one, so I’ll give you a couple of paragraphs or so to think about it.

Does God want you to be like Him?

While you’re mulling that one over, I’d like to tell you about the recent experience of a friend of mine who was trying to sell some of her books. She encountered a woman who told her bluntly (and not a little scornfully), ‘I don’t read fiction.’

This is an attitude that is unfortunately all too prevalent amongst Christians. Fiction is somehow beneath the notice of some readers who view it as untrue and therefore suspect. It may not always be the work of the devil but most of the time it comes pretty close. When confronted with this viewpoint and the veiled contempt of these sort of put-downs, those of us who write fiction tend to feel inadequate, intimidated and defensive. It’s hard to know what to say to these ‘cultural despisers’ of fiction.

There’s a widespread tendency to overlook the fact that Jesus’ one and only mode of public teaching was story-telling. Parables are fiction.

Like the best stories, they teach us about relationships, the world around us and the human condition. They let us slip into the skin of the characters and experience the world through their eyes. How does it feel to have worked through a hot, humid day and received the same wage as someone who laboured only half an hour?  What’s it like to know your manager has just been forgiven a million dollar loss when he’s threatening to fire you over five dollars missing from the till?

Non-fiction reports the story. A great fiction writer or a supremely gifted story-teller gives the reader the chance to live the story.

Back when I was teaching, I read many documents about Asperger’s Syndrome but nothing ever gave me anything like the understanding of it as a story written from the point of view of a kid who suffered from it.

So, now back to my question: Does God want you to be like Him? 

‘Do not touch me.’

After his resurrection, Jesus said to Mary Magdalene: ‘Do not touch me…’

John recorded the incident in his gospel and the phrase was rendered in Latin as ‘Noli me tángere.’ In Greek, its meaning is closer to ‘stop holding on to me’.

The Latin may not be a perfect translation but its sense is valid: it harks back to a Jewish tradition surrounding the Day of Atonement. The high priest, as he completed the annual sacrifice and came out from behind the curtain separating the Holy of Holies, would say: ‘Do not touch me.’

Behind the phrase is a sense of one who is consecrated, set apart, dedicated, in some way special.

This sense persists even outside the religious sphere. There is a story by the fourth century grammarian, Solinus, that three hundred years after the death of Caesar white stags were found with collars inscribed: ‘Noli me tángere. Caesaris sum — Do not touch me. I am Caesar’s.’

The picture is one of dedication, separation and inviolability.

At the risk of turning from the sublime to the trivial, I’d like to explore the concept of noli me tángere within young adult literature. Recently I have had a number of young adult manuscripts to appraise. Several of them are romances based on similar ideas to series like Twilight or The Fallen.

Some of the authors have taken exception to my remark that a romance novel has to end with a marriage. It can end with the removal of the final impediment to marriage and its promise in the near future but basically the star-crossed lovers must be together.

Twilight, so these writers point out, is a romance that takes three books to achieve that end. Now this is where I take exception: Twilight is not a romance, it is part of a genre I class as ‘menarche fantasy’. Its target is young teenage girls and, while it has romance elements as all menarche fantasies do, its plot is driven by a conflict which can be characterised by noli me tángere.

‘Do not touch me, do not come near me… even though I really really want you to.’

The conflict appeals to a significant section of the young teenage girl population because they are at an age when they are starting to be seriously interested in boys but they are not yet sure about the boundaries they want to install. They want to touch and be touched while they simultaneously do not want to touch or be touched.

They want an ideal boy who is in some sense godlike in integrity, passionate but master of his passions, both untouchable and touchable. In the end, he’s got to be human in his desires but it’s quite in order to take three books to break down his defences. It’s a different genre entirely to romance, with different canons and different rules. To write it as if it is primarily romance is to miss the mark in every way and, instead of creating a deeply satisfying story, it will just be a mix-up that doesn’t quite work.

I first came across menarche fantasy many years ago in Patricia McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.

I looked at the concept carefully, tried to understand it and used its basic ideas as a model for the romance between Tamarlane and Thuric in Many-Coloured Realm. There the noli me tángere conflict revolves around an unbreakable vow. But there are many other reasons for such a conflict: vampire, fallen angel, monk, to name just a few.

Whatever it is, however, it must be intrinsic and integral to the character, not external. Otherwise, it simply fails to achieve the satisfying resolution the readers want.

FACTOTUM: MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO BOOK 3

DM Cornish
Scholastic

The lightning-wielding fulgar, Europe—the Branden Rose and Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes—threw caution to the winds at the end of Book 2, Lamplighter, to rescue Rossamünd from the hands of the black habilist, Grotius Swill.

Although Rossamünd was accused of being a monster—even his name gave away his origin as a rossamünderling, a manikin, a creature born of mud from the dark fens who has all the appearance of a human child—Europe has taken him into her service as her personal factotum. Europe is a terrifying teratologist—a monster-hunter—so it is with considerable anxiety Rossamünd awaits the results of a cruorpunxis, a monster-blood tattoo, stamped on the arm of Fransitart, his old master from the foundlingery.

Will the mark come up after a fortnight? What will it reveal? Is he man or monster?

While waiting back in the city of Brandenbrass, Rossamünd comes to the attention of Pater Maupin, the owner of a gambling den and fighting pit where dogs and monsters duel to the death. Pitying the more kindly-natured creatures trapped there, Rossamünd creates a diversion that helps them escape. Spotted, he is pursued and almost killed; he is saved only by the intervention of the Lapinduce, the Duke of Rabbits, an eons-old monster who lives in a quiet wood in the very heart of the depraved city.