It wants to be a novel, but perhaps later

About a year ago I wrote this post on a short story that decided by way of creative inspiration that: It wants to be a novel.

It was going fairly well, then some things in life got to happening and it was set aside.

And then earlier this year I got a new real-world job, details to be disclosed at some other time.

And then… Something happened at this job that got me to thinking creatively. Someone did something that I thought was odd, and that there JUST HAD to be a story behind it. So I got to thinking about the possible story behind the event, and decided that it had to be explored. Writing about seemed to be the best way and so off I was, on to another story.

I didn’t think about length, at this stage in my life I don’t care too much about such things and am just happy that I’m inspired to get story ideas and the overwhelming desire to write them.

I guess it also means that as I’ve matured as a person (which is about time as I’m over 50) and am taking this maturity into my writing “career,” such things occurring could mean that “writing” is becoming a vocation (something meaningful to do as well as to earn a living from) and not an avocation (something meaningful to do, like volunteering).

Why? Because of the seriousness of it. It’s less and less that I’m an “aspiring” writer and more that I’m an “actual” writer.

This new story has taken possession of me. While not obsessed with it as I have marital and job duties, and so on, I am occupied with it. When not actually writing, I am thinking and plotting.

But, I am writing. And in doing so, I am learning more about the creative process and also about me.

More on the latter in another post (I have to look up a quote. a-HA! “Search is your friend.” I found the quote -actually turns out to be two of them as they’re related – and they deserve their own post).

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Flannery O’Connor—Catholic writer

Flannery O’Connor died fifty years ago today. She was, and remains, an American writer of great talent. I say “remains,” because she lives on in her work; she has achieved immortality and her work is alive and vibrant to this day. If you are an American Catholic with writing aspirations, or even writing accomplishments, please become acquainted with her stories if you are not already. You will learn quite a lot about the writing craft and what it means to be a Catholic writer.

Miss O’Connor said, “The Catholic novel is not necessarily about a Christianized or Catholicized world, but one in which the truth as Christians know it has been used as a light to see the world by.”

More on that here: Flannery O’Connor’s Religion and Literature: Dogma and its Implications for Art, by Tami England Flaum.

Her fiction is collected in three volumes, her two novels ‘Wise Blood” and “The Violent Bear It Away.” Her short stories are all collected now in one volume, titled appropriately, “The Complete Stories.” There are several collections of her non-fiction, most notably, “The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery O’Connor.”

I have only recently become familiar with her. Despite having the above four books in my library for several years, I only just read “Wise Blood” this past week, and am now happily making my way through her “Complete Stories.” I won’t be doing reviews any time soon, I doubt I’m qualified. 😉

The point of this post is this: if one is a Catholic writer and is interested in building up and developing an authentic American Catholic culture, and follows Pope St. John Paul II’s suggestions that Christian art should infuse contemporary culture with the message of the Gospel, then one should study Miss O’Connor’s writings. She’s a good teacher.

If Catholic writers do participate in culture-building, we must look to what those who have gone before us have done. We learn from them, offer to the body of culture what we can uniquely contribute and in turn hope that our work survives on to enrich another generation. The living body of American Catholicism adds to the wonderful breath of diversity that is global Catholicism, offering people an alternative to the sterile materialistic secular order.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

I, Blog

For a blog that’s supposed to be my “main” online journal, this place doesn’t get a whole lotta love. I’m a writer, and writers are “supposed to” have a website or blog or some sort of online presence. Granted, as a writer I only have two books published and those are selfies, but there’s more to come! I always figured that with the passage of time and writing success (or effort), this place will see more activity.

Or maybe not. Whatever, I decided to do some geeking around with the site (notice that I haven’t called it by name, yet).

For starters, the “name.” I figured I’ll simplify matters and just call it “Paul Sofranko’s Blog.” It’s short, and to the point. I’m Paul Sofranko, and this is my blog. Of course, I have others, but those are specialized, “niche” blogs. (Links are in the Page tabs up top, below the title of this place.)

“Paul Sofranko’s Blog” isn’t very imaginative, but it’s less pretentious than previous names: “Writer for God,” “In the Land of My Exile I Praise Him.” “Paul Sofranko Dot Net” might have served again, but it’s just a notch higher than a minimalist, simplistic title I was looking for. 😉

The purpose, such as there is one, of “Paul Sofranko’s Blog” will not change; still a place for me to post stuff on writing, reading and whatever miscellaneous ramblings that serve as my interests and that won’t fit into my two niche blogs.

Don’t come here looking for profound, insightful commentary on current events, Catholic or secular. There are plenty of blogs for that written by people who have the time to work out such posts for online publication. Such writings, for me, take time away from the fiction efforts I am trying to work with, as well as other writing and blogging work. I know my strengths and limitations, and I prefer to focus my thoughtful efforts where they’re best capable of being useful. Although I do reserve the right to do that here when the impulse occurs. But I have a full-time job that has nothing to do with writing or blogging for a living, and other personal responsibilities and commitments. In other words there’s a nice life that’s mine and it happens!

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

The gardening season is finally here!

Spent a good part of yesterday and today digging in the field off our driveway to put in a vegetable garden. Much nicer soil than where the garden used to be. Nice, dark, rich-looking with plenty of wigglies in it. Wet, too. Veggies should do well.

The old garden had too much clay soil and things didn’t grow well. After 3 seasons, it was time for a change.

As it was still snowing just a few weeks ago, and there was a frost advisory early last week, this weekend’s developments are welcome. Long-term weather shows NO danger of frost. Finally! Going outside is safe! 😉

I found cheap fencing today, so the original 15′ x 25′ will be expanded to be 25′ x 25′ . Some old fencing may be employed to expand on that, or may be for a smaller garden for other stuff.

I may just be tempted, for “accountability” sake, to post photos and updates throught the year. I had planned on doing that these past few years, but the results weren’t impressive.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Peter and John rushing to the Tomb

I saw a beautiful painting in an article yesterday while perusing the news online. “The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection” by Swiss painter Eugène Burnand, is an image that draws you into it. You are just THERE.

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Source is right here:

The Greatest Easter Painting Ever Made.

In my opinion, John looks like Roddy McDowell and Peter kinda looks like James Farentino, who played him in the epic TV miniseries, “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Jesus in the Ashes

Ash Wednesday was two days ago, and I took this webcam picture of myself as a part of the annual #ashtag fun. You basically take pictures of yourself after recieving ashes and post them to social media.

This was mine:

 #ashtag2014

A friend of mine on Facebook sees an image of Jesus on the Cross in the ashes. Others, myself included, can see Him also. A miracle! (Just kidding.)

Please, no need to make pilgrimmages to my forehead, the ashes are long gone.

Kinda neat to see such things. I wonder what they mean?

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Strange “sightings” in Church

While at Daily Mass this morning I saw someone who from behind and to the side was a dead-ringer for a friend I knew from kindergarten through some college. Same Mr. Spock-inspired haircut and shade of black hair, same physical build. It wasn’t JJ, who passed away from leukemia in 1995. But the similarity in appearance was amazing.

This brings up something else, a phenomenon I’ve noticed at my home parish, and nowhere else: Every so often I see people who bear a striking resemblance to someone from my old, hometown parish, either a physical similarity, or “something about them” is reminiscent. Odd. It would be one thing if I experienced this at other parishes, but that has not happened, only where I attend Mass now.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Death sucks

Death sucks.

Someone, be they a human person or an animal person, is in your life for years, then they’re not. And it’s not like they moved to some far off strange place like California, where you can still email, Skype or Facebook with them. The distance they travelled is measured not in miles or kilometers. But in time.

It’s a wide chasm. We may take a few more years or decades to get to the point where we can cross it. That is a part of the chasm separating those on the other side from us. But forgetting the amount of time between now and when we die, that chasm is just huge. They’re in eternity. We’re not.

But there’s a hole left behind. That space in your life that they filled is now empty. They are no longer there. That space can’t be filled by anyone else.

This post was caused by the death of our cat, “Mr. Onyx,” whom I nicknamed “SpeedBump.” He died this morning. He’s the black kitteh in the picture. The cutie on the right is his girlfriend, Jerrie. Nice headshot of him is right after.

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I nicknamed Mr. Onyx, “SpeedBump,” after his penchant for laying right between wherever anyone was sitting and wherever a doorway is, as well as slowly walking down the hallway before you.

We don’t know how old he was as we didn’t get him as a kitten. His previous human died from cancer and untreated alcoholism and we took him in as no one else could.

He lived with my wife and I for almost exactly 6 years.

He is survived by two other kittehs, Jerrie and Ninja.

He had an amazing impact on our lives, bringing much joy, love and FUN into them.

We will bury him in a Mary Garden, next to our house, and we’ll plant stuff around him that would attract the birds and bunnies he so loved to watch from the patio window.

Where are our beloved pets, after their death? That is for another post. But Mr. Onyx’s death is really hitting me. The death of a pet in not inconsequential.

Pets matter.

Additional NOTE: This is a “retropost,” a post from an old blog I wrote on “The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven (& Purgatory) and Hell” that I shuttered a few years ago. Individual posts are being transferred to either In Exile or Sober Catholic, whichever seems appropriate. Some are backdated, others postdated, some edited, in case you’re confused as to why you never saw a particular post if you’re a diligent reader. The process should be completed by early 2022.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Reading and writing is cool, when you think about it in an odd way

The very idea that you can inscribe, whether scribbling by hand or banging away at a keyboard, little squiggly things called “letters” that together make things called “words” that in and of themselves stand for ideas is fascinating.

Weave these words together in some rational or artfully irrational manner and you can tell a “story.”

And that someone else can use their eyeballs and scan theses squigglies and interpret their patterns and decipher their meaning, called “reading,” is even more fascinating.

The very idea that someone else, in some far off place and time can “read” these squigglies on a page (paper or digital) and derive enjoyment or get angry just turns the fascinating into something awesome.

Writing can be quite the responsible and exciting thing, when you think about it. I mean, just ponder the wonder of it all.

I got the above idea once by just imagining “reading.” I envisioned some sort of light beam emanating from an eye to scan words on a screen or paper, and seeing the words just fly up into the eyeball and thence into the brain. And once there creating pictures and scenery and the like.

It is interesting to just think about the commonplace and wonder. I just think that the act of reading is taken for granted, and we forget its awesomeness.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

The Artistic Temperament is a Disease

“The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men not having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being. It is healthful to every sane man to utter the art within him; it is essential to every sane man to get rid of the art within him at all costs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily, or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament. Thus, the very great artists are able to be ordinary men – men like Shakespeare or Browning. There are many real tragedies of the artistic temperament, tragedies of vanity or violence or fear. But the great tragedy of the artistic temperament is that it cannot produce any art.” ~GK Chesterton, Heretics, 1905

A Facebook friend (and one from whom I learn much) posted this Chesterton quote in a debate thread.

It explains a lot (the quote, not the debate). I find it healthful to “utter the art from within;” however I fail to utter more often than I do utter. I aspire to write, and do so, but I don’t write more often than I do write. Such is the tired refrain of many so-called and self-referenced “aspiring writers.” We want to write, but don’t, and perhaps from that comes this “artistic temperament,” one of “vanity or violence or fear?” Vanity: the desire for the “writing life;” violence: the resulting self-loathing and esteem-reduction from failing to do what you’re supposed to; fear: fear of failure, that of discovering that you are horrible at writing, and maybe fear of success?

The funny thing is that I find writing to be therapeutic. I feel better after having done so and thus become the “sane man” when I “utter the art from within.” This partly stems from a feeling of accomplishment. “Hey, I wrote today!” Partly it comes from just the emotional and psychological release.

Perhaps this is a successor to my alcoholism. I knew I should stop drinking and why, but I feared doing so. I also lacked the strength or will to stop. I only did so because no other choice was offered. I was unable to physically go and replenish my stock and thus found myself in the hospital with DT’s. If I continued, I would die. So maybe the choice was helped along.

The parallel to writing? “No other choice but to write.” I have to develop the “sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in” my “being.” And I have to associate this need with sanity and survival.

I am a writer, it is what I (should) do, and to not do it is a type of death.

Interesting notion; now let’s see me put it to use.

From Isaac Asimov:

“I write for the same reason I breathe … because if I didn’t, I would die.”

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)