Testimonial on Dramatica Pro and StoryView 1.1

"Popular nonfiction is the hottest market in book publishing today, and yet every day good nonfiction writers are finding ways to weave narrative elements into their work. I tend to write in three different genres: memoir, popular biography, and fiction, and I have found that Dramatica Pro has been invaluable. A memoir may be populated by real people, but on the page, they are characters in a story, a story with an idea, a purpose, and a goal. In my recent memoir Silent Fire (New York: Crown Books, 2002), I used Dramatica to bring to life the people as I remembered them, so that they could live not only in my memory, but in the story as well. And even as I type this testimonial, I have Storyview open and minimized on my toolbar. I’ve been using it all morning while working on my next two projects, a novel set during the trial of Galileo and a biobraphy of Johannes Kepler. Dramatica Pro and Storyview help me to think and to think clearly about my work. I don’t know what I’d do without them."

James A. Connor
Writer, Silent Fire
(New York: Crown Books, 2002)

From Booklist

Many of our moments on Earth are accompanied by noise. Everyone wants to grab our attention. Everyone wants a piece of us. Former Jesuit Connor encourages listening to silence so that it becomes not just an ineradicable part of one's spiritual landscape but that landscape itself. He shares his journey into silence, into confronting the promise of the morning and the mystery of the night, by recounting stories of his days as a young priest who, his commitment to the church seeming very shaky, retreated to an isolated cabin in Canada to renew his faith and come to terms with his uncertainty. When words failed, as they often did, he turned to silence. Silence, he tells us, can be frightening, but also comforting, for it arises from fear as well as wonder. In addition to relating his experiences, Connor offers instruction on silent meditation and on the importance of silence in everyday life. Although one sometimes wishes it contained fewer stories and more reflection, this is an interesting book on its subject. June Sawyers

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Book Description

"In meditation the journey of an entire life will be manifest as a state of relaxation and a state of activity, forever a balancing act between sleeping and waking. In life, meditation will form a daily practice that will permeate all your actions until one day you will feel unspeakable joy while standing in line at the bank."

–From the Prologue

Twenty-five years ago, James Connor, a newly ordained Jesuit priest, was called in to console a couple whose baby had been killed in a freak accident. At a loss for words to explain this cruel blow and comfort the anguished parents, he began to question his faith, and eventually retreated to a lonely cabin in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, to try to reestablish his relationship to God.

In this luminous memoir, Connor has found the words to describe the indescribable: his circuitous, sometimes faltering, always passionate journey into the heart of humanity, its darkness and its light. With stubborn curiosity, touching humility, and raucous imagination, Connor gropes for meaning in percolating coffee and washing dishes as well as in the rising sun; in the arrhythmic companionship, sick sense of humor, eager gossip, or drunken belligerence of his eccentric neighbors; with the native bats, loons, bears, salmon, and stars; and in the encroaching fire that’s been burning for months in the hills, no less than the piles of books he’s stacked around himself and the ancient traditions of Eastern and Western spirituality. Ultimately, Connor searches silence and solitude for a way to rekindle his faith, feeding his spirit with simple breath and contemplation, to find that just as the flame jumps up and consumes his grief, anger, shame, and other unwelcome, all-too-human intruders upon Nirvana, it throws into light the blessedness of ordinary things.

The story of Connor’s lurching spiritual quest will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to climb to higher ground or been humbled by the challenges of meditation. The good-natured instruction woven seamlessly into his tale will introduce fellow seekers to the healing power of silence and encourage them to keep climbing.