Category Archives: Books

When God Answers Your Prayers: Interview with Karen O’Connor

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This week I am happy to host an interview with my friend and fellow writer, Karen O’Connor. Her newest book is When God Answers Your Prayers: Inspiring Stories of How God Comes Through in the Nick of Time. I had the privilege of contributing two of my own answers to prayer for this book. Karen wrote about my stories in the chapters called “Dream Job” and “Wanted: Your Book.” The book is encouraging and enjoyable. I highly recommend it!

Book Giveaway

Karen is giving away two copies of When God Answers Your Prayers. To enter the drawing for a book, just leave a comment at the end of this post. The deadline is Saturday, April 6.

Interview with Karen O’Connor

1. Congratulations on your new book! What is one thing you hope readers will take away from When God Answers Your Prayers?

I hope readers will hang in there with God—even when waiting for his answer can be agonizing. God does some through—in his time and in his way for the good of all concerned. I learned that the hard way!

2. There are many books on prayer, but your subtitle, “Inspiring Stories of How God Comes Through in the Nick of Time,” gives a hint of what sets your book apart. Can you tell us more about the “nick of time” aspect of your book?

Yes, I have a good example of that. My husband and I planned a move from Southern California to Central Coast California to be closer to our youngest daughter and her family. We bought a new home in a quiet new neighborhood, expecting to sell our beautiful condo by the San Diego Bay in a matter of weeks. The sale did not happen in a few weeks or

Karen O'Connor

even in a few months. We came to the point of facing two mortgages. Then when it appeared we’d soon exhaust our financial reserve, my husband’s daughter bid on the condo and purchased it. Escrow closed ‘in the nick of time’ before we ran out of money. I later realized that when I pray it’s not always just about me and what I want. Other people and other circumstances are involved—as was the case with the sale of our home in San Diego. But God did come through—as he always does––and then my prayers turned to praise.

3. When God Answers Your Prayers is based on stories from many different people. How many people contributed stories to your book? As a writer, is it hard to handle so many contributors?

The book includes thirty stories from other people, (including two of yours, Joe!), some of my own, and some from the Bible. I invited people to answer a set of questions—and provided them with sample responses so they would stay on track. Most of the folks are not writers so this method made it easy for them and for me. I then wrote up the individual stories based on answers to my questions. I found the process pretty seamless, though it took several months to finish the book.

4. Your book focuses on answers to prayer, but what would you say to readers who are disappointed that God has not answered their prayers?

Great question. I tend to believe that God always answers prayers in some way—although we may not see the outcome as an answer—at least right away. For example, my first husband and I divorced after twenty years of marriage. I was devastated and cried out to God again and again over many years. But still my husband left for another woman and they are still together. I felt God had left me in the ditch! But he didn’t. God used that experience to ‘clean my spiritual house,’ to draw me to Christ in a personal relationship, and to show me how I had made my husband a ‘god’ in my life. Then after a season of healing, I met my current husband and we’ve established a new home together with Jesus as the head. I consider all this an answer to prayer—over time but in the nick of time too!

5. How did this book change your own prayer life?

I’m now at peace when I pray. I give my situation over to God and let go of it. That doesn’t mean I’m never anxious or concerned. I’m human. But I now pray from a place of trust, knowing God will bring about the outcome that is best for me. He never disappoints.

6. Are there one or two stories that stand out to you as particularly memorable examples of answers to prayer?

YES! Your story (“Dream Job”) of how you got your professorship at APU is one of them. What a suspenseful time that was for you. Another that captured my heart is “Split-Second Grace,” a true story of how God saved a baby’s life in the nick of time.

7. You always seem to be working on at least one book, if not more. What is next for you?

My next book will be published in 2014 from Harvest House. Lord, How Did I Get This Old So Soon? A Woman Talks to God About Growing Older. This is a book of conversational prayers to God about the issues we all face as we age. My editor told me it is her favorite of all my books. Nice to hear. I also have a fun book coming out later this year: God Bless My Senior Moments—short, sentence-long prayers about the funny things we do when we hit the senior age group–and I’m not talking about seniors in college!

8. Where can readers go to find out more about you and your books?

I invite readers to visit my website: www.karenoconnor.com where they will find a list of my books and links for ordering them, and to sign up for my weekly blog and quarterly newsletter, if they wish.

Thanks, Joe, for featuring me on your blog. I really appreciate your support.

Creating a Perfect Opening for a Novel—Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”

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In the California literature Honors course that I am teaching at Azusa Pacific University this semester, we are studying Raymond Chandler’s novel, The Big Sleep, a classic of hardboiled detective fiction that features private investigator Philip Marlowe solving mysteries in a noir-ish and unforgettable Los Angeles setting.

After the students read the book, one of the first ways we studied it was simply to read out loud and analyze the first few pages. Chandler wastes no time. His opening establishes the novel’s tone and atmosphere, captures the personality of the narrator Marlowe, and propels the plot into motion. It isn’t easy to do all those things at once. If you don’t believe me, try it.

Take a look at The Big Sleep’s first two paragraphs:

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. he didn’t seem to be really trying.

What information do we learn from these two paragraphs? A private detective has dressed up in a nice suit in order to call on a wealthy client who lives in a mansion.

Those are the facts, but Chandler’s words tell us much more. Why describe the outfit in such detail, even down to the socks? If you pick up a hint of sarcasm in that little bit of over-description, it is confirmed in the next sentence: “I was neat, clean shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.” That declaration conveys more than the surface meaning of the words. As one of my students put it, “Someone who is usually sober doesn’t need to point out that he is sober.” The same is true for being clean and shaved. Marlowe may be revealing a few weaknesses in that sentence, but also a few strengths: he’s frank, down-to-earth, and he has a self-deprecating sense of humor. I like him already.

Almost every sentence in these two paragraphs has something to commend it. For example, take at “I was calling on four million dollars.” A lesser writer might have settled for something like, “I was calling on a wealthy client.” Chandler’s sentence is better than that in both tone and content. We now know how wealthy General Sternwood is (his four million is in late 1930s dollars), and more importantly, the tone indicates Marlowe is not over-awed by money.

His sarcasm toward ostentatious displays of wealth is extended in the second paragraph, when he describes the Sternwood mansion. He doesn’t need any direct comment about how gaudy he thinks the place is. The fact that the entrance doors “would have let in a troop of Indian elephants” tells the reader plenty about Marlowe’s attitude toward the house. His commentary on the stained-glass artwork tells us as much about the unpretentious detective as it does about the questionable artistic taste of the Sternwoods.

The opening paragraphs of The Big Sleep let us know we are starting a journey with a narrator who knows what he’s doing, both as a detective and as a storyteller. We like him from the start, and we can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. He doesn’t disappoint.

Forty-Seven Different Endings? Some Lessons from Hemingway about Revision

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For the past several weeks my students and I have been immersed in the novels of Ernest Hemingway. I have had the pleasure of teaching a course on him and William Faulkner this semester. In most literature courses, we study only the final, published drafts of novels and other works of literature. That gives us the chance to enjoy the final masterpieces, but it doesn’t reveal much about the torment the author went through to make the book as good as it is. How many revisions did it go through? How many false starts were there? How much bad writing did the author produce before he found discovered the right way to tell the story?

A new edition of Hemingway’s masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms, was published earlier this year that sheds light on his careful, sometimes agonizing writing process. Depending on how you count them, Hemingway produced up to 47 different endings. The exact number is tricky to determine because some drafts use bits and pieces of other drafts and therefore are not completely distinct from one another. The editors have grouped the 47 drafts under nine categories, such as “The Nada Ending,” “The Religious Ending,” “The Live-Baby Ending,” and so on.

Examining these very different endings reveals much about the creative process of writing a novel. Here are a few points his methods illustrate:

• Even very good writers are capable of very bad writing.

Hemingway may be a brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning, best-selling author, but some of these drafts are just bad. One of the “Nada” endings, for example, says, “That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.” The first of three “Funeral Ending” drafts says, “When people die you have to bury them but Continue reading →

When Life is Unfair, Can I Know God is Good?

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Our guest blogger this week is Jim Davis, author of the upcoming book, Why Me? (And Why That’s the Wrong Question). I met Jim earlier this year at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. He was part of a wonderful group of writers who took part in a practicum I taught there, and he was working on a book about suffering. After the conference, he was offered a contract for the book, which will be published next year. On his blog, http://tavbiblestudies.wordpress.com/, Jim is described as “a Sunday school teacher, husband, dad, attorney, college football fan, blues music devotee, and frequent Food Network viewer who writes and teaches Bible studies. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with Sonya, his wife of 21 years, and his 13-year-old son Tully.” I asked him to tell how his book came about, and I am honored to post his response.

When Life is Unfair, Can I Know God is Good?

by Jim Davis

A member of the Bible Study class I co-teach entered a hospice program this week. Clay, 39, fought cancer for years. Now the doctors say that medicine has no more to offer.

What do I say to Clay and his family? When life seems so unfair, can I know that God is good? And if I don’t know that, how can I get up in front of the class on Sundays and tell them that His Word is worth studying?

Today I am confident in what I believe, even without all the answers, but that wasn’t true when I first started teaching. Situations like Clay’s challenged my faith. Like millions before me, I wanted to come to terms with suffering and God’s goodness. I started with two questions that I wrote down one evening after a funeral that featured the saddest, tiniest white casket I had ever seen: Why this person and not someone else? And if God loves the hurting person, why doesn’t He fix the problem? I didn’t know, so I wrote a book.

I did not begin with the goal of writing a book. There was just something I did not understand that I wanted to understand, so I read and researched and prayed and thought until I learned what I could and was at peace with what I didn’t know. I decided to write down what I had learned and come to believe. My book is the result of the study I began after the long-ago funeral for a friend’s baby.

In the book, I argue that our typical questions about suffering (such as my original two) are not helpful, are not answerable, and have little foundation in Scripture; however, there are other questions we should focus on that point to God and can help us grow during a storm.

That is not at all what I set out to prove. I started out simply looking for answers to my two questions. I found a little helpful information in my initial research, and many unproven theories, but it became clear to me that God does not Continue reading →

Five of the Eighteen Reasons I Write (by William J. Torgerson)

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Editor’s Note: This post is the third in a series that features former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” Today’s post is by Bill Torgerson, whom I first met when he was one of my writing students at Olivet and who is now an award-winning screenwriter, novelist and writing professor. His first novel, Love on the Big Screen, is set at a fictionalized Olivet in the era when Bill and I were there.  (To see the first post in this series, by Dr. Michael Clark, scroll down or click here. To see the second post, by John Small, scroll down or click here.)  

Five of the Eighteen Reasons I Write

By William J. Torgerson

Professor Joe Bentz was the first person I ever knew to be actively working on a novel. When I was his student at Olivet Nazarene University just south

of Chicago, I was an English teacher who wanted to be a basketball coach because I’d long understood I couldn’t play professionally.  I had no plans to write, but I’d heard that Joe’s house was wallpapered with notes for his book.

As a country kid from Indiana, I found Professor Bentz’s ambition exotic, as if he were a space traveller who’d gone to Mars and come back to tell me about it. Professor Bentz was the first person to encourage my writing. I wrote an essay in his class about a bad date, and he told me I should send it out for consideration for publication. Over fifteen years later, a revision of that essay appeared in my first novel. Upon receiving Joe’s request to write this guest post, I was quickly able jot down eighteen reasons I write. Here are five of them:

  • To Stand Out. Even when I used to think of myself as worth noticing because I could shoot a basketball from a long distance and make it go through a hoop, I was an everyday writer.  At first, I wrote because it was a way in addition to basketball that a girl would take notice of me. Even though I’ve always thought of myself as a latecomer to writing, I realize that even as a middle school student I wrote (by hand on paper!) regularly for a specific audience: a girl I liked. I revised like an obsessive-compulsive madman.
  • For Mental and Physical Peace.  I have a high-octane mental and physical motor.  There’s something about intense workouts and at least a page a day that allows me to get as close as I can to relaxing.  When someone asks me what I do for fun, one of my first thoughts is that I run. Writing gives me a mostly positive act toward which to direct my addiction prone energy.  When I write, I am somehow able to empty my mind just enough to get some sleep.
  • Because I Can’t Stop.  I received Prof. Bentz’s request to do this guest post via my iPhone at 5:08 PM when I was wandering around an outlet mall and my family was doing some school shopping. I could not stop Continue reading →

Why I Write (by John Small)

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Editor’s Note: This post is the second in a series that will feature former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” Today’s post features my friend and former student, John Small, whom I met during my early years of teaching at Olivet Nazarene University in the mid-1980s. I taught journalism and literature and advised the student newspaper. John was editor-in-chief of the paper and did excellent work. He has continued to thrive as a journalist ever since. (To see the first post in this series, by Dr. Michael Clark, scroll down or click here.)  

Greetings. My name is John Small; I am the news editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly small town news paper headquartered in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. I met Joe Bentz while were were both at Olivet Nazarene University; age-wise we are contemporaries, but I was the student and he was my college advisor and journalism professor and I worked with him at the campus newspaper, the GlimmerGlass. We both left the same year as I recall, he to take his job at Azusa Pacific and I to take the job here. Always makes me think there was a reason we were both there at the same time, but I suppose that’s a topic for another time…

WHY I WRITE

by John Small

It occurs to me that there is no one easy answer to that question.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I was fortunate enough to have parents who both love to read, and they saw to it that I earned to read as a much younger age than the other kids my age. My mother claims my love of writing stems from that; the story she likes to tell is that I started writing my own stuff because we ran out of things at the house for me to read. That certainly sounds like something I would have done.

My late younger brother Jimmy always said I took up writing as a defense mechanism. When you’re the lone bookworm in a class overflowing with jocks and jerks you tend to get picked on a lot – but the picking lessens considerably when they realize you’re the only one who can help them with their term papers.

My wife Melissa likes to say I became a writer to get her attention. That’s not entirely true, as I was writing long before I met her; on the other hand, why argue with success.

My own feeling is that I became a writer because Continue reading →

Thanks for “Pieces of Heaven” Birthday Book Launch!

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Today is my birthday, and I wanted to take a moment out of our regularly scheduled blog content to thank my wife and friends for the birthday book launch they sponsored for my new book, Pieces of Heaven: Recognizing the Presence of God. They asked friends to help celebrate my birthday and the release of the book by doing one thing, such as:

• Buy the book for themselves or a friend

• Post a review of the book on Amazon.com

• Review or mention the book on their blog, Facebook page or elsewhere.

I have heard from many friends over the past week telling me of things they have done, and I am very grateful. The book has spread to places it never would have reached otherwise. It makes me wish all my books had released around the time of my birthday! If you would like to get involved, it is not too late!
Here is the Amazon page about Pieces of Heaven:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0834128861?tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20

Here is a video interview that Alton Gansky did with me about the book a couple weeks ago for his Writer’s Talk video series:

http://altongansky.typepad.com/writersconferences/2012/09/pieces-of-heaven-an-interview-with-author-dr-joseph-bentz.html

Thanks you again for your encouragement and support.

This is How I Know I’m a Writer (by Michael Clark)

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Editor’s Note: This post by Michael Clark is the first in a series that will feature former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” 

Dr. Michael Clark has had an inspiring journey as a writer. He has worked professionally as a journalist, a high school English teacher, and now as a college professor. I first met him at Azusa Pacific University, where he became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper while I was faculty advisor. He had extraordinary energy and drive. Once he graduated and became a newspaper reporter, I thought his career was set for life. He was good at it, and he could have stayed with that work for as long as he wanted to. He married another of my talented former students, Heather (Murphy) Clark, an Honors student who became a teacher and is now a part-time college instructor. Michael felt the urge to try teaching, so he completed the education and other steps necessary to move into that career. Once again, I thought he was set. Then he felt the urge to earn a Ph.D. in creative writing and pursue fiction writing. He applied to universities across the country and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It took courage for Michael and Heather to move their young family a couple thousand miles away to pursue this dream, but they did it, and once Michael finished his Ph.D., he was hired as a writing professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, where he now teaches. 

This is How I Know I’m a Writer

by Michael Clark

I’m a writer. This is a reality I have finally accepted. I do not have a large number of publications. I may not be very good at it. I can’t really tell. But I am a writer nonetheless (if for no other reason than I use the word nonetheless unreservedly).

How do I know I’m a writer? Simple – it’s what I do. Two full novels written (unsold), a third well underway (40,000 words and counting), and more than 20 short stories (mostly on my hard drive) that I would show other people attest to the simple fact that writing is more than my hobby. My body of work is solid and continues to grow, whether or not anymore ever sees the light of day. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I have a stack of rejection letters, like every other writer I know. They’re from journals, publishers, and agents across the country. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of all the times I’ve been rejected and accepted. According to this ledger, I’m deeply in the red. This is how I know I’m a writer.

When I hear stories of famous authors who struggled to find a publisher before they were finally granted a book, I am unabashedly soothed by them. The fact that Elie Wiesel couldn’t sell Night for years gives me hope, not that I will ever be Elie Wiesel, but that I can continue to try. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I simultaneously love and hate with the way I say things.  I want the ability to revise my conversations as they happen and fully expect that every time I try to put things into words the result will be fantastic. It is a frustrating way to live. This is how I know I’m a writer.

Every aspect of the world around me has the potential to be told. To live and breathe not just in the moment I witness it, but on the page and for much longer than it would have otherwise. Thus, I am alternately interested in everything and overwhelmed to the point of shutting out those closest to me. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I often forget to eat, but I never go long without coffee. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I live in San Diego, three miles from the ocean, but I spend more time in a chair wrestling with the next character, the next scene, the next story than I do in the water. This is how I know I’m a writer.

People tell me that fiction is a dying form and it makes me nervous to the point of feeling like a poet. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I only find mathematics understandable if it is part of a narrative with tension and great character development. When I studied math, I often critiqued the lazy form of word problems. This is how I know I’m a writer.

If you are my friend, part of you might just end up in a story. If you’re my close friend, I might just kill you in print. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I write because it is comparable to breathing. When I do it, it is so natural I don’t think about the fact that I’m doing it. When I don’t do it, it’s pretty much all I can think about and I feel like I’m holding my breath. This is how I know I’m a writer.

 

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction as well as a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. His work, most of which is set in the San Diego area, has appeared in Fast Forward, Relief (where he later became the fiction editor), and Coach’s Midnight Diner among other publications. He is currently at work on his third novel-length manuscript and will move on to number four as soon as he is done. He’s sort of obsessive that way. When he’s not writing, he is likely herding one of his three children around or speaking to his wife sarcastically because sarcasm his love language.

Is Literature Necessary? (Part 4) “Consumed by Story”

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Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts that will consider the question:

What does literature have to offer (if anything) that no other art form or media (such as video games, social media, movies, TV shows, etc.) can match?

To view the first post in this series, scroll down or click here. To view the second post, scroll down or click here. To view the third post, scroll down or click here.

Consumed by Story

By Kate Sullivan, APU Honors Student

Throughout all of mankind humans have connected with stories. As Renita J. Weems says in an essay on the womanism movement, “Stories offer readers an inner script to live by, glimpses into the way things are, and more importantly reason and a way to talk about things ought not to be” (Weems 36). We were not simply content with knowing we live on the Earth, instead we make up stories to explain why we are here and make sense of the universe in which we are immersed. As humankind has evolved, the love for stories has not dissipated. Quite the opposite outcome has occurred. Instead of a vanishing media for story telling, a plethora has showed up. A challenge now arises as we go forward: where does literature fit in this high tech era? I hold that literature will always remain important and unique because it captures the imagination in a way different from any other type of media.

Literature connects with the imagination on a deep level because as a reader we dream up a story that is uniquely our own. Although the words are the same for each reader, the characters and imagery are unique to the possessor of the story. This is a quality no other media outlet can really claim, for in movies, TV shows, and video games the character and scenery are created by the authors, and the viewer simply joins their world. The limitation of such media is the viewer only imagines what is set before them. Literature is free from this problem for in reading, the imagination is only led by the words and the rest is entirely within the discretion of the person enjoying the story. This connection gives the reader a type of ownership to the story that surpasses other media sources.

This ownership gives literature its greatest asset that no other media can capture. The deep connection to a body of literature drives a passion for the story and the ideals held in that story. William Jong comments, “Literature preserves the ideals of a people; and ideals–love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverence–are the part of human life most worthy of preservation.” (Jong). The more I connect with a piece of literature, the greater it consumes me and begins to affect my life. Literature has such a tremendous power to consume a reader as they read and as they carry the story on in everyday life.

There is no question that literature will continue to survive in the high tech era that surrounds us, the question is why does it continue to be a favorite medium of so many. It will always be my favorite because literature offers a way for me to escape the reality around me and enter a completely different world. Unlike other media where I am only a visitor, in stories on paper I am the co-creator with the author. No other media has the power to make me stop, think, cry, smile, and laugh quite as well as novels. Socrates’ writings did not survive because of the special effects and sound track, they survived because they captured the mind and heart. The power of literature will always be that the author never truly owns a story; it belongs to each person who sits down and is changed by what they find.

(Note: Kate Sullivan blogs at http://collegegirlonthemove.wordpress.com/.)

 

Works Cited

Jong, William J., PH.D. English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World. N.p.: Gutenburg Ebook, 2004. Gutenburg.org. Gutenburg Press, 6 Jan. 2004. Web. 21 Aug. 2012. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10609/10609-h/10609-h.htm#chap1>.

Weems, Renita J. “Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible.”Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World. Ed. Sugirtharajah, R. S.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006. 27-39. Print.

Is Literature Still Necessary? (Part 3) “Disrobing Its Allure”

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Note: This is the third in a series of posts that will consider the question:

What does literature have to offer (if anything) that no other art form or media (such as video games, social media, movies, TV shows, etc.) can match?

To view the first post in this series, scroll down or click here. To view the second post, scroll down or click here.

Disrobing Its Allure

by Luis Marin, APU English major

It may interest you to know that this is not a pipe (as it is so eloquently indicated in French handwriting). It may also interest you to know that when playing a Mario game, you are not controlling a high-jumping plumber. In fact, when watching the Lion King, you are not witnessing anthropomorphic lions that break into song, and when tuning in to I Love Lucy, you are not viewing Lucy cooking up new schemes to get into show business. In all these instances, what you are actually seeing are representations. The pipe is actually a digitalized painting of a pipe. Mario is a computerized rendering of a plumber. The musical lions are drawings. And Television Lucy is recorded video.

But here, dear reader, is the kicker: The words you have been reading are also representations. They are literally groups of markings and scribbles you have assigned meaning to. The word “pipe” is not a pipe, but it signifies one. This is, by the way, the type of representation literature specializes in. Rather than using images and sound, literature utilizes written words. Video games, films, and television shows can all tell stories, create characters, and explore themes. But only literature specializes in the art of written work, and there lies its great appeal: its artful use of its mode of representation.

Through literature’s implementation of written words, readers enjoy an unparalleled level of imaginative influence. The author provides a general roadmap, but readers provide their own specific interpretations of the roadmap. Literature adds a gratifying layer to the representation process. Instead of going from an image to meaning, readers can opt for the scenic route of creating images from words and then making meaning out of them. In this regard, literature is much more interactive than any video game, television show, or film. This is also why literature cannot be replaced by music. Most music involves listening to someone else sing, but with literature, it is in your voice that the words are spoken or thought, but literature really should be read aloud, voices and all!

There are, nonetheless, other media that use words as their primary mode of representation, like social media with its user updates that are text-based. However, generic updates fail to qualify as art. Social media and literature provide different services to their participants. Both are interactive, but one aims at giving the reader formal pleasure, and the other aims at giving the reader day-to-day news about friends and family. Consider this William Carlos Williams quote: “It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably everyday/ for lack/ of what is found there.”

And that, dear reader, is what makes literature irreplaceable. Even if other art forms and media are of equal caliber, literature is the only one specializing in the art of written work. If some other art form or media one day matches literature’s artistic mode of representation, it would merely be heralded as literature itself, wouldn’t it? Literature may no longer have a monopoly in mass media, but it will never, so help me, declare bankruptcy.