Terry’s New Book

by SAHS 11 Replies latest jw friends

  • LivingTheDream
    LivingTheDream

    Terry,

    Your description of your own writing is interesting. You said you conciously chose three different styles for mood so when I read your book I will look for that. I am sort of curious that you can actually choose to do that.

    I tried to do that in some way in my own book too, although I can't tell you how many styles they were. I sort of experimented with a mashup of memoir / screen play / romance novel / doctrinal dissertation / humor (ala Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry, et al) poetry and other styles. I'm really not a writer (at least not in the traditional sense) so I don't have a particular voice. I wasn't really even looking for one, but my wife said I did have a voice after all. Since she's the writer in our family, I'll take her word for it.

    Mainly, I just wanted it to be entertaining. Between you, me and the JWN walls....well... I really don't care for the "super-serious, overly scholarly tome style" myself. I read technical materials all the time for my work. I even write them. When I read for fun, I kind of want it to be fun, at least in some way. It can be a serious subject, but it still should be fun to read, an "easy read" if you will.

    Like your short story "Caterpillar eggs".

    But that's just me.

    Brock Talon

  • Terry
    Terry

    Hey Brock--I know what you mean!

    A straight-ahead vitriolic bash-the-Watch Tower Book is not what I had in mind.

    I really wanted to be circumspect in dropping my clues gradually like building evidence in a murder trial.

    Sometimes I wanted to speak biographically in an emotional way and that style was almost poetic remembrance.

    Other times, I chose to give a conversational recollection of early days at the Kingdom Hall and out in Field Service.

    Finally, I needed a gritty Jack London style report on prison life and sexual predation.

    I had in the back of my mind as the ideal reader, a person with just enough doubts to make them curious

    about the things they'd never research on their own.

    The second part of the book is a cumulative straight history not only of coscientious objectors, pacifists and Christian denominations through the millennia, but a sharp and stark contrast for the Watch Tower style of religious co-ercion resulting in the death and incarceration of trusting people.

    I think style is an extension of personality.

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