Jesus Calls Me His Favorite Writer
The Lord used my finger injury to ensure I continued the Gail Commandments. I was starting to drop the ball, especially in the commandment about getting enough rest, because I was so excited over my writing. So this finger injury has shown me that I can do the Gail Commandments and be a writer, too. I just have to learn that Rome wasn’t built in a day. I probably won’t be finished for at least a year with either novel I’m working on. The wound is healing miraculously well and in order to ensure I get adequate healing, I have been forced to get plenty of rest. I see the finger injury as a Romans 8:28 circumstance and am thankful to God for doing what He had to do to keep me in line with the Gail Commandments.
I am actually working on two books at the same time and the way I got distracted away from Silver Skies 1996 Version, was that I discovered a way to get English subtitles for the first five episodes of Homura Tatsu (my most important research site for Nirvana: Oshu Fujiwara Dynasty).
I kind of gave up on the Japanese history project because it was so difficult to do the research required for this without being fluent in Japanese. The history behind my ancestors has been hidden from the West, because the Jesuits don’t want the world to know about my amazing Catherine the Great ancestry. When I found the first five videos in Spanish language subtitles, I was able to construct English subtitles from these using translator programs. But then the next day, the Spanish site took down 3 of the videos! I studied some Spanish and it’s easier to translate from Spanish to English than from Japanese to English.
But I took it that the existence of the Spanish site was a sign from God to go forward with the Japanese writing project. So I tried to figure out a way to translate the Homura Tatsu (35 part mini-series about my ancestors). By sheer determination I found English subtitles to the first five episodes! This was even better than having the Spanish subtitles. And it was like God’s joke on the Jesuit who took down the videos with the Spanish subtitles. I was determined to figure out how to translate the Japanese and in the process discovered some English subtitles to the first five videos of the series. I guess Jesus knew all along I’d find the English subtitles. I had to really dig to find them! I have joined an Asian Drama Wiki and we are all working together as a group to get the entire Homura Tatsu with English subtitles. I have episodes 26 to 35 in English subtitles on DVD, but it’s horrible quality and I have to create my own subtitles by watching it. I will be working on that as part of my research for my book in progress. https://www.d-addicts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=164632&p=1817693#p1817693
You can see what I’ve done thus far at this page, if you join my Patreon, where you can get the password: https://gabriellechana.blog/2019/06/17/oshu-fujiwara-family-history-homura-tatsu-english-subtitles/
But I had to figure out how to do subtitles on videos, as I had never done this before.
By trial and error, I fiddled around with the files and figured out how to install the subtitles into the first five videos using my current video editor program. I have all the videos from Homura Tatsu in Japanese on my computer. I downloaded them years ago, because Jesuits like to take down these videos. But the main writer for the Homura Tatsu series died in 2017, and since then, it appears the videos are, thus far, staying up at YouTube. But they are in Japanese! You can fiddle with the subtitles feature at YouTube and get a lousy translation, but it does you no good unless you have good English subtitles to at least half the videos (which I NOW HAVE). This is because translating from Japanese to English via a computer translator does an awful translation job, so what YouTube’s automatic translator does is so terrible, you don’t know what these actors are saying.
So what I’ve done is read everything I can find about my Oshu Fujiwara family (not much out there in English). Most of the good stuff comes from Harvard and Yale professors who have written scholarly research on Japanese history. You have to really work to find stuff. Fortunately, I have found some stuff that has enabled me to piece together what really happened to my ancestors.
What I like about Homura Tatsu is that it takes the true story about what happened to my ancestors and has created a super long saga about this that speculates intelligently on what these people were thinking and feeling at the time and told their story from their perspective. It makes history come alive! It also has a very strong anti-war message which (by coincidence?) is very important right now.
Homura Tatsu is a true story about dreams, betrayals, greed, ambition, love, war and peace. Though it is not Christian per se, the devout Buddhists who were willing to die rather than commit wars they did not believe in, is a strong message about the courage of our convictions and about being real, genuine, and loving in opposition to the superficial ones around us who orchestrate wars to feed their ambition and pride. I feel to tell their story adequately, I need to tell it in novel format. The lessons we need to learn from their story cannot be learned by reading a dry history lesson. We need to get into their hearts and this requires a novel.
So, why do I, as a Christian, write a story about a bunch of devout Buddhists who opposed war? Well, Jesus told me he thinks Buddhists are cool. And if they’re like these Buddhists, I can see why. Whenever we feed that part of us that has faith, courage and thankfulness, we are on the path to God. Whenever we feed that part of us filled with doubt, fear and negativity, we are on Satan’s path. That is the message of Homura Tatsu and what God wants us to learn from history.
Jesus said it wouldn’t be very fair of Him to make the actual sinner’s prayer a requirement for salvation. He says if you say the sinner’s prayer in your heart, you are eligible for heaven, even without saying the actual prayer. He said all my Oshu Fujiwara ancestors went to heaven, and this novel will be about WHY they ended up in heaven. My ancestors prayed a lot to their gods, and they didn’t know it, but they were praying to Jesus! They got connected to the right spirit.
Many of those who ended up in hell were very devout in practicing their Buddhism, but it was more an outward show to impress people than a real conviction from the heart, so they went to hell. This novel will be very deep. It’s a lesson about what constitutes true spirituality and goes past all facades. We Christians have our facades. We think if you go to church all the time, read your Bible every day and do the expected Christian stuff, we get favor with God. But God looks at the heart. This novel is all about the heart and its supremacy in all we do. The theme is that behind every war is selfish ambition. And this novel is a deep exploration into what constitutes selfish ambition. Selfish ambition and pride take many forms and sin deceives us, often because we want to be deceived. We think if we do what’s expected by our religion and cross all our t’s and dot all our i’s, we get favor with God. But God wants us to honor the love that’s in our hearts, even if it makes us appear evil and misunderstood, even if it appears to be contrary to the accepted religion or culture of our times. This novel is all about that.
God has gifted me as a writer and I think this book will be very powerful. It will be powerful because it won’t be a dry history lesson. It will be a story told with powerful emotional truth.
I always try to write what I’d like to read and my reading requirements are HIGH. Unless this is a book that I’d read myself, if it was written by someone else, I won’t publish it. It appears omniscient POV is best for this book, and I will somewhat follow the voice of Pride and Prejudice.
I think my opening line will be “All wars are caused by selfish ambition,” and then I’ll move right into the story. I’m going to open up with the theme, like Jane Austen does in Pride and Prejudice.
To help the reader feel what the characters are experiencing, I will have a main point of view character for each scene, but will still adhere to omniscient POV because I have a lot of history to cover and no other POV can do the job, without making this book as big as War and Peace. Books as big as War and Peace don’t get read nowadays. Unlike the 1800s, we writers are competing with television, movies, the Internet, and the world is just more fast paced than when War and Peace was written.
Of course, War and Peace was written in omniscient POV, too. But Tolstoy did a lot of digression and went into super long philosophical discourses, which I won’t do. I plan to write it scene by scene and plot it with a POV character in each scene who has a goal. So it will be somewhat traditionally plotted, but my omniscient voice will tap into the mood of the character and the mood of the times and hopefully make the narrative mesmerizing. Voice is my strong suit, usually.
I’m very impressed with the teleplay for Homura Tatsu and will be following closely the format used for the teleplay as I present my story in novel form. What I really admire about the teleplay is how the events came one after another, and the writer used great economy in writing. If anything did not forward the plot or was redundant or could be inferred from what was presented, it was omitted, respecting the audience as intelligent enough to infer what had happened. There was no flowery language, no long soliloquies – the focus was on the conflict and the characters with just enough information presented for audience understanding and no more. The writing was very, very tight.
For this reason, the scene descriptions were short and very accurate (emotionally and sensually). The dialogue was tight and brilliant, always forwarding the plot or revealing important aspects of character. The voice overs that presented what you needed to understand for each episode were tight and only mentioned what you needed to understand for each episode. The writing was very, very tight.
The dialogue was brilliant. Though the script had heavy dialogue and voice over, the plot was so tight, you were always on the edge of your seats – never bored. In each scene, something significant was always happening. The use of cause and effect was also brilliant. For each cause presented, the next scene always followed up with an effect.
So the scene structure was very logical (cause and effect), very tight with heavy, concise and powerful dialogue. You were able to infer characterization by the opinions of other characters expressed as dialogue and by characters’ actual words and actions. The voice over (which will be my omniscient voice) was limited to historical perspectives, giving sweeping details about the historical climate or specific details about war strategies and the mood of the times for that episode. Voice over was never used for characterization, but to give a sweep over of the mood of the times or war strategies. The script was very heavy “show, don’t tell” as far as characterization. So you have this super tight writing, with concise, brilliant dialogue.
So how will I transfer this to my novel? I shall use the same techniques as the script and think of it as a movie in my mind, much like how I wrote Silver Skies. I won’t spend a lot of time in description, unless to convey a mood that is necessary to understand in order to further the plot. My descriptions will be tight, concise and just enough to create the necessary mood and then I will MOVE ON. The novel will be dialogue heavy, low on description, with a very tight and fast moving plot – much like the teleplay. That is my strategy.
This will be great writing practice for my Silver Skies 1996 version, which will be telling FUTURE HISTORY (the tribulation and millennium). I always write history (either past or future). Though I’m a novelist, my stories are taken from events that have really happened or that will happen (according to Bible prophecy). By the time I’m finished with Nirvana: Oshu Fujiwara Dynasty, I will have learned more about writing, which will enable me to go into the writing for the Silver Skies 1996 Version ending with stronger writing skills.
Everything I write, I write to make the world a better place. The best way to do this, is to write something so truthful and so powerful, that the reader can’t put the book down and wants to reread it after they’re finished. This means I must write a masterpiece, and that is my goal. I do this not to make money, not to be famous, but to inspire people to be great lovers. That is my payment and I’m sure it makes Jesus smile.
I’m not impressed with the novels coming out today. They seem superficial, and lacking spiritual depth and beauty. What I mean by this, is that the character’s heart is not presented in the story in a way that grabs the reader’s attention and makes the reader feel what the character is experiencing. Also, there is a great lack of true heroism in today’s writings. We have no heroes that we can relate to and villains are not believable. My goal is to help correct the dearth of good writing in our modern, fast-paced world. In my opinion, if what you read does not make you a better person, the writer has failed.
Here is more about Nirvana: Oshu Fujiwara Dynasty: https://gabriellechana.blog/2019/06/21/nirvana-oshu-fujiwara-dynastys-theme-behind-all-war-is-selfish-ambition/
You might say, if your writing is such high quality, you should go with a traditional publisher. No. Because I think most of the writing coming out today is horrible – no originality, no strong voice, no mesmerizing characters, with vapid plots, like a canned formula that we have seen again and again. In other words, the writing only entertains (if it does even that) – it does not inspire.
No, I want the freedom to write what I have to write without worrying about traditional publishing guidelines. I refuse to be extorted or conned into mediocrity. I will say that my standards are very high and possibly higher than the traditional publishing guidelines. But I don’t want to be constrained in any way. This story I’m telling is something the Loree McBride Jesuits don’t want to go out and they will try to sabotage this novel. My best course is to self-publish and do it all myself. Jesuits infiltrate every aspect of publishing almost. I have to work around that to get this masterpiece out the way it deserves to be published.
It appears pride is my motive, but that’s not it. I am discouraged by the mediocrity, even the horror of what the world must watch on television and see at the movies. I believe we artists are partly responsible for the violent, shallow culture that surrounds us and we have a responsibility to show the world a better way, to inspire the world to a better way. If, as a result of my writings and work, I inspire the world to be at peace with each other, to show true tolerance and respect for cultural differences, to show love and understanding for each other – I will be content. If my writing exposes the cancer that causes war and helps prevent war, I am at peace and have done my job.
In the past, I have seen Jesuits sabotage my book covers, do lousy editing and so forth. I have to do it all myself to work around all this. They also try to get me an agent who will destroy the book. I will have to rely on my gut instincts and use my brilliant intuition as I go forward with the book. Jesus has given me talent in all the areas I need to turn out a successful book as a self-publisher.
I create my own covers, do all my own editing, and format and publish the book myself. All I can say is thank God for Amazon! Amazon has made it possible for me to do this. I used to think I had to get a traditional publisher to publish my book. But in today’s world, if the writer has artistic talent, writing talent, some promotion talent, editing talent, etc., they can turn out the book successfully all by themselves. It’s a lot of work, and time consuming, but I can be sure to turn out a quality product with a cover that works for the book, if I do it myself.
I was absolutely disgusted with the Silver Skies book cover I got from using someone else to design my cover. I even tried to take that book down and I can’t take it down! I have given up on the first edition of that book. I am rewriting that book any ways, and putting on a better ending. When people see my book cover, I want them to get a feel for the book. I have an artistic sense about this and design good book covers. I will never make the mistake again to hire anyone to help me with my books. I do it all myself. I understand my story and know what I want my book covers to be like. Jesuits are everywhere and they hate me as a writer.
Copyright © 2019 Gail Chord Schuler. All Rights Reserved.