Zeilschmerz

John Hoenig is not your typical lexicographer. For the past seven years, John has been writing The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which attempts to define emotions that are not currently described by any English word. Unlike Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster, who collected and analyzed words in common usage during their day, John makes up words to fill the gaps in our cultural lexicon.

One of his favorite concoctions is Zeilschmerz (pronounced “ZEEL-shmertz”), a German word that means the dread of getting what you want. “Being German, I know exactly how that feels,” John says. Perhaps you do, too—not because you’re German, but because you’re a writer.

It’s the feeling you get when you toil and sweat over a particularly elusive bit of dialogue until you hit upon a perfectly natural expression of it. You should feel happy, right? Instead you feel dread because now you’re obliged to bring the rest of the story up to this standard.

It’s the feeling you get when you’ve had countless interviews with agents at writers’ conferences, then have one of them offer you a contract. You should float out of that conference on cloud nine. Instead you fret about why this agent said yes when so many others said no. Is this fellow a newbie? a has-been? an incompetent?

This is a perfectly natural human emotion and now we have a word for it. Most times it’s a false warning, like a defective low tire pressure light that keeps flickering on your car’s dash. When you feel it, call it what it is, then get on with your life.

I wish you all the best with your writing this month. May you be productive and effective, with an uncommon number of days when you accomplish exactly what you set out to do. Then don’t fall prey to the curse of Zeilschmerz.

Joe Allison has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN. His non-fiction books include Setting Goals That Count and Swords and Whetstones.

Keeping Your Tiggers and Eeyores in Line

Do you ever hear someone get asked a question and wish they asked you?

This was my case in June, 2005. I sat in a Toastmaster club as area governor elect. (Okay, technically I was appointed. Details, details.) The theme for the meeting was Winnie the Pooh, a theme well used by the Topics Master.

My question was what I would write if I wrote a children's book. That was a fun question. I told them I'd write about an otter raised by a family of beavers. You can imagine what that's like. The otter wants to play while his adoptive parents are getting him to work on the dam. This otter would meet a wolf taken in by a cougar family. “I want to be part of the pack.” “What pack? We aren't a pack.”

However, when I heard the next question, I wished I had gotten that one instead.

“You are Winnie the Pooh. You've been given a free counseling session. Now, you're well adjusted and don't need it. Will you give it to Tigger to help calm him down? Or to Eeyore to cheer him up?”

I was about nine when Disney's Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day came out, which introduced Tigger. I fell in love with Tigger. I wanted to be as bouncy and fun as he was.

Growing up, though, I found my companion and mentor to be gloomy old Eeyore. “It will fall off again,” he said when his tail was put back on him. “Always does.”

If I wrote this blog yesterday, I would have dealt with a topic that interested me, one that would give food for thought. But this has been an Eeyore week for me. Just this week? Maybe all of this year. (Fortunately, we're only half way through January; hope this isn't a trend.)

My Eeyore side has been given plenty to be gloomy about. My wife's dealing with health problems. The only presidential candidate I could be excited about finished 6^th in Iowa and dropped out. My Amazon review of that candidate's auto-biography has the current line “1 out of 6 find this review helpful.” (My hunch is that the five who found that not helpful did so solely because I gave a five star review to a book they disagreed with, but still it's discouraging.)

Also, I received a rejection letter (okay, e-mail) from an agent who kindly mentions my characters and plot don't resonate with him. Not much to encourage me to write, something I've been struggling to find time to do. To be honest, I'm even wondering if writing is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Did the person who got the counseling question think Eeyore was the one who needed counseling? No, she thought it was Tigger who was too hyper. I can identify. Sometimes, my Tigger tries to compensate for the Eeyore. Time to get bouncy. Find other activities. Keep busy, busy, busy, so I don't have time to be gloomy, gloomy, gloomy.

So how would I have answered the question?

Simple. I would have given the counseling to neither of them. Rather, I'd get them Tigger and Eeyore to counsel each other. Have Eeyore kindly mellow out Tigger, while Tigger gives Eeyore something to be cheerful about.

That's one thing good about the ACFW meetings or critique groups. We can point out areas of improvement but give encouragement at the same time. (This is one of Toastmaster's strengths, by the way.)

And the counseling session? I'd give that to grouchy Rabbit.

Producing Passion from Pain



Photo credit: Billy Alexander



“Art begins in a wound,” according to John Gardner, and the same could often be said concerning ministry. As writers, often our writing and our ministries are connected. Let’s talk a bit about passion and then look at how you can use your passions to influence your ministry and your writing.

What are Passions?

Passions, in brief, are strong feelings. The emotions can be positive like love or loyalty. They can also be negative emotions such as hate or rage. Synonyms such as zealous, ardor, and enthusiasm may help bring it into focus. It is interesting to note that the word enthusiasm comes from the Greek en theos, which literally means “with God”.

How Do You Find Your Passion?

Since passions are, by definition, strong feelings, then that is where you start. You observe what causes or beliefs evoke strong emotions in you. Whether it is a news story, an activity, or the lunch table discussion, what are those things that make you want to weigh in? What makes you cry? What evokes feelings of righteous anger? What brings delight to your heart?

You can also notice what draws your attention. When you read a newspaper or scan the television channels, what captures your eyes and your heart? When you are in a group setting and have the choice of several conversations to dive into, where do you gravitate?

One last test you can use to discover your passions is to ask yourself this question: What do I most long to see God accomplish. Your answers may lead you to your passion. Do you want to see orphans set in families? Would you like divorce to be a thing of the past? Perhaps you’d like to see people find freedom from addictions. Possibly it is a group of people you’d like to see helped such as single moms, teenagers, those suffering from AIDs.

What Do You Do with Passions When You Find Them?

As mentioned before, many times our passions rise as beauty out of the ashes of our pain. The woman abandoned as a young mother feels a burden for single moms. A post-abortive teenager grows into a woman determined to keep others from that pain. A child of divorce seeks to help marriages thrive. Working out our passions in our writing or in our ministry helps us to bring “comfort to those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves received from God” (2 Cor. 1:4). Our trial gains meaning and value when God allows someone else to be helped and healed because of a pain in our past.

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, your writing can reflect your passion. Fiction writers often give characters painful pasts or character flaws. In the course of the novel, as the character comes to a place of healing or surrender, this brings comfort to readers touched by the same hurt. Non-fiction writers can shed light on problems, offer their own journey to healing, and give comfort and hope to others still mired in pain.

Ministries within and outside the church abound, bringing help and healing from nearly every painful experience that might shadow your history.

One caution is needed when taking a painful past and transforming it into a ministry of healing whether through your writing or another outlet. You must have already found healing and, if necessary, forgiveness from the painful experience. Christians should always minister out of a place of fullness. If writing is therapy for you, then write until your soul is purged; just don’t expect to publish it. Your readers don’t need to be shielded from the raw emotions or messy consequences of your pain, but they need to see it as only one part of a journey of wholeness whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction. The same is true in any other ministry.

We live in a sick and hurting world. People desperately need the hope and healing Jesus offers. What are those beliefs and causes you will choose to champion? Who are the hurting people you will choose to help?

How do your passions come through in your writing?

By Nikki Studebaker Barcus

The Emotional Roller Coaster

When my love of writing became an earnest intent to publish, I had no idea I was mounting a twisting, looping roller coaster. Please note that from my perspective a roller coaster is NOT an instrument of fun and delight. Chugging to a peak is no problem, but the other side of that peak? Uh-uhhhh. Not a matter of fun, but of heart-stopping, sweat-dripping, jaw-clenching horror. Okay, the worst of my writing disappointments wasn’t quite that bad, but catch the analogy of plunging emotions and we’re on the same page.

My co-author husband and I boarded the roller coaster when we sent our first “publishable” draft to a manuscript critique service. When the author assigned to us left a voice mail praising our novel, I sobbed so hard at her affirmation that I couldn’t even tell my daughter what I was crying about. She thought I was phoning to tell her my cancer had returned!

Chugga, chugga, the roller coaster climbed to its first peak as the author’s agent took us on as clients.  Within months, we plummeted down, rejected by three publishing houses (huh? that happens?) and our agent dead of a heart attack (no connection to the plummet).  But, chugga chugga, we attended our first writing conference and met an amazing bunch of fellow Christian writers. So helpful, especially when they informed us that our novel would never, ever, ever be accepted in omniscient POV. A short nose-dive that time, followed by a major revision of our novel into third person POV. Back to the next year’s conference and, chugga chugga, an interested editor and agent. But no, another plunge toward the depths of despair as both ended up rejecting us.

So we asked the editor-turned-agent we’d met at the conference if we could pay him to critiique our novel. Chugga chugga, his analysis was the best thing we’d done yet. Along with suggested changes in plot and characterization, he recommended we scrap the writing and start over from scratch. Huh? Why do that when patches were just as good? (Weren’t they?)

Back to the same conference a third time, and, chugga chugga, we not only found a wonderful agent but also learned about American Christian Fiction Writers. Joining ACFW was a major turning point because we not only acquired critique partners but also started participating in ACFW’s monthly online classes .That was the year we began learning the craft of writing in a new and serious way.

Remember that patched manuscript? We patched because we hadn’t understood half of what the agent said. Now we do. We’ve caught the lingo and received help with the skills. We’ve gutted our novel and started over from scratch (it’s the first in a trilogy, so we need to keep it). Best of all, we’ve gotten off that horrid roller coaster. We still want to be published, but the emotion driving us now is the joy of improving as writers.  Hmmm, was that God’s intent all along?

Steph Prichard