To the (Non) Stereotypical Teachers

I was reading Linchpin, a book by Seth Godin, blogger extraordinaire, and came across this paragraph: “Hand in a paper with perfect grammar but no heart and soul, and you’re sure to get an A from the stereotypical teacher. That’s because this teacher was trained to grade you on your ability to fit in….And that’s how school stamps out (as opposed to bakes in) creativity.”

Right then, I stopped reading, because I realized something very important: that was not my story.

I am a creative person. Always have been. Eight-year-old bowl-cut Amy, an enthusiastic little dweeb who wore brightly patterned shirts and a perpetual smile, decided one day that she wanted to be a writer. And people told her she could be.

Also, I was fascinated by everything. This is totally not posed.

One example in particular comes in mind, one that goes against Godin’s entire chapter about how our education system is designed to repress creativity. I got an A on a high school history essay once. But it wasn’t an essay. It was a one-act play about the life of Louis XIV. My teacher, Mr. Gilmer, had me read parts of it out loud to the class.

At the time, I didn’t even know how to read the Roman numeral in Louis’s name out loud without looking at a clock (it’s the fourteenth, just for the record). But I did know that having people fight over roles in your academic paper was pretty cool.

The Myth of "Good Enough"

I learned something while editing the other day: I don’t like fixing things when it’s hard.

Usually, editing is a lot of fun. I can worm my way around plot holes, tune up dialogue so it’s punchy and true to the characters, and tweak chapter beginnings and endings to get them where I want them.

This time, though, I’m deleting the middle eight chapters of my book and completely starting over on them. Suddenly, I’m not exactly looking forward to the amount of work that goes into this project.

I mean, come on. I have a full manuscript of the right word count. The characters are great, there are a lot of funny parts, and I like the beginning and ending. That should be enough, right?

But I can’t just leave it the way it is, as much as I’d like to, because I know two things: first, it’s not as good as it could be, and second, there is a way to fix it. It’s just that the fixing is going to take an awful lot of work.

And that’s how I realized that the old saying isn’t really true. Good isn’t always the enemy of best. Sometimes it’s the necessary precursor to best. And maybe terrible is the necessary precursor to good. It takes a lot of work to get from one stage to another, but that work is necessary for creating an end product that’s really excellent.

The problem comes when we get comfortable with good—with just “okay,” the generic, passable good of those little mass produced stickers we got in elementary school for copying out the right answers. When we think what we produce is good enough, we stop trying to improve it.

This is true in writing. And this is true (ouch) in character.

The Problem with Sexy Disney Princesses

I was reading an interesting article today that points out that, while Disney creates “strong leading female characters in its movies,” they suddenly get changed before the merchandise comes out: “they’ve all been reduced to flowing hair and off-the-shoulder dresses and coy looks in their post-cinematic incarnations.”

As I soon as I read this, something clicked. You know why Disney movie heroines are brave, wise, and kind, and the merchandise princesses are just sexy?

Because stories do something for women that images cannot.

When a princess is a picture in a coloring book, a figure to hang pretty clothes on, or a design on a notebook, she is there to look pretty. That’s the whole point. And, in just about every other area of life, that’s fine. You wouldn’t necessarily want to buy a dishware set with an imperfect pattern, or seek out wallpaper that was ugly.

Somehow, though, this standard changes change when it comes to people. We instinctively realize there’s more to them than just aesthetics. People are not lawn ornaments that we arrange around our lives for decorative purposes.

For example, take a look at the pictures you have in frames around your house, attached to the fridge with magnets, or displayed on your Facebook page. The images there probably aren’t of perfectly designed and sculpted looks, (unless all your friends are models who don’t allow any candid pictures, in which case I feel sorry for you). Those pictures are imperfect…and completely wonderful, because you know and love the people in them. They are not just images. They are people.

Facebook Has Made Us All Busybodies

So, for the sake of not being a hypocrite and not making everyone angry with me, I’ll start out with the obvious fact that I use Facebook (sometimes too much). I think there are a lot of great things about it.

But, now that the disclaimer is over, here’s something else to think about: we have instant easy access to a whole lot of information about others makes it easier for us to nose around where we aren’t wanted.

You know the old stereotype of the old woman who sits on her porch knitting, bespeckled eyes trained on the small town goings-on so she can always be ready with the latest gossip? (I’m thinking of Rachel Lynde, for all you Anne of Green Gables fans.) That old lady was the only one in town who really could be an effective busybody because she was the only one with the time to sit around eavesdropping, people-watching, and information-gathering.

Thanks to the Internet, all of us can do that with just a few clicks. Chances are, if I wander over to your Facebook profile, I can know an awful lot about you: what movies you’ve watched, how you vote, what events you’ve been to recently, who would be on your zombie apocalypse team, and what stupid chain letter things you participated in during high school.

And, if I’m feeling like a stalker, I can find out all those things about your mom, your siblings, your roommate, and your boyfriend/girlfriend too.

Thanks to social media, we have an incredible amount of information about people. Sometimes that’s good—Facebook is great for sharing pictures, keeping up with friends who moved away, planning events, etc. But I’d like to claim that Facebook is also really good at making us busybodies.

Generic vs. Name Brand Products...and Writing

I didn’t learn an awful lot in my high school economics class. (Case in point: at the beginning of the recession panic, I raised my hand and asked my teacher to explain what would probably happen with the national debt over the next ten years. She said it was too complicated and not to worry about it.) Mostly, we were told to not go into credit card debt. So far, I’m doing pretty good on that one.

But there is one lesson that has still stuck with me. Even though it wasn’t the lesson I was supposed to be learning.

One day, our teacher brought in a sack of food and asked for volunteers for a demonstration. Food + high school students = an unlimited number of volunteers. One lucky participant was chosen and blindfolded. Then he was given two cookies, one generic and one Oreo brand. And so on, with products like orange juice, crackers, and fruit snacks. Each time, the student was supposed to raise his right or left hand to guess which product he thought was the brand name one.

He guessed right about 50% of the time. And even then, he admitted, “I’m just picking one. They taste exactly the same.”

Granted, this lesson on the relative unimportance of brand names might have been lost on the saggy-pants volunteer wearing a shirt proudly emblazoned with Abercrombie and Fitch, upping the cost about 400%, but the point was supposed to be clear: you don’t have to pay more for a quality product.

I say “supposed to be clear” because I learned a different lesson: you can charge more for a product if you market it well.

The Bikini Debate

If you haven’t already seen this video that’s been circulating on Facebook, take a look. It’ll be an interesting ten minutes of your life.

To recap, Jessica Rey, creator of a vintage swimwear line, talked about modesty and how women wearing bikinis cause men to view them as objects. This generated a surprising amount of discussion and debate—check out the comments on this blog for a sampling. Here are the two basic responses from Christians I’ve seen in various places on the Internet.

One: This is so great! Christian girls have no business running around wearing skimpy bikinis. Don’t they know how it affects men?

Two: This is outrageous! Christian girls should wear whatever swimwear they want—they’re not responsible for the reaction of others. Men need to learn how to control themselves.

And those are mild ways of phrasing the debate. I’ve also read a few comments that questioned the salvation of parents who let their teenage daughters wear bikinis and some that pointed to Rey’s attitude as one that leads to a culture where rape is common because people see the woman as the one to blame.

One of the Rey Swimwear suits

I want to say something totally different. See, I think that this discussion on swimwear is actually bringing up the central issue of Christian ethics, one the apostle Paul wrote about more than any other. (Seriously. I bet you didn’t even know Paul talked about swimwear 2000 years ago.)

When you strip down the bikini debate, both sides are really looking for someone to blame. There is a central fact: women in skimpy swimwear often cause men to lust. So whose fault is it? The anti-bikini people emphasize the responsibility women have to keep men from stumbling by the way they dress. The pro-bikini people are outraged that men aren’t being held responsible for their own lust.

But guess what? Christianity has never been about shame and blame. It’s about grace and love. So why aren’t we talking about those things? Because when you start talking about loving others, it’s no longer about whose fault it is. It’s about something else.

How Many Crazy Writer Tendencies Do You Have?

I realized I hadn’t had a quiz on here for a long time. And, since crazy people, by definition, don’t know that they’re crazy, I thought this handy guide might be helpful. Enjoy. And let me know what your level of insanity is.

Say you were alone at a cabin in the mountains, well-stocked with supplies, in November, probably hunting a turkey for your family’s Thanksgiving dinner. If a freak avalanche trapped you there for the winter, how long would it take you to go stir-crazy?

1. Probably about a week, if that. I couldn’t handle not being around people. 
2. Around Christmas I’d get a little lonely, but I could keep myself busy and stick it out the whole winter without going completely insane.
3. Are you kidding me? I’ve waited my whole life for an opportunity like this! Think of all the writing I could get done!
4. Wait, why was I hunting a turkey when I can buy one at the grocery store? This question doesn’t even make sense.

How heated is your opinion on the Oxford comma?

1. That’s a kind of punctuation, right? I think I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really care.
2. I mean, I can see both points of view, although I could argue one side over the other. Really, just follow the rules of whatever publication you’re writing for.
3. Oh my goodness, don’t even start. I have had five heated debates about this in the past year. Friendships were ended. It was bad.
4. Oxford…that’s in England, right? I like England.