Writing for Love

I recently attended the Big Orange Book Fair at Chapman University in Orange, California. It was great fun and I had the opportunity to interact with several authors and also to enjoy their panel discussions.

One young writer spoke of her reluctance to do any marketing for her work (fortunately for her, her father thought otherwise) because she could only think of writing. For her, it was a thing she loved and the idea of publishing her work for the benefit of others hadn’t really occurred to her.

I had a nice conversation with her, and I must say I appreciated her focus on the love of her craft, even though I’m all for sharing one’s work with others, at least at some level.

This morning I ran across this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke (cited in Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out (p. 40). She is speaking to a young man who has asked her if he should become a poet:

“Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places o f your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.” (Letters to a Young Poet. New York: Norton, 1954, 18-19)

This is helpful wisdom for anything that we feel compelled to do, whether in the arts, business, religion, medicine, law, sports, or whatever. Do we do this because of a hopeful outcome, such as recognition, money, prestige, or power? Or do we put our hands to this work out of love—love for the thing itself, love for the power that compels us, love for what it sparks within us?

Christian Fiction and Imagination

J. R. R. Tolkien was a Christian writer, but loved to simply tell great stories. C. S. Lewis was also a Christian writer, but told his great stories while working through Christian ideas, like the atonement (Chronicles of Narnia) and the afterlife (The Great Divorce).

I find that contemporary writers of Christian fiction lean toward making a theological or moral point, or writing stories that are too sanitized to be believable (the is probably at the insistence of the publishers). A notable exception to this tendency is Tom Davis, who writes brilliant stories dealing with difficult issues like human trafficking.

I like considering an idea and then seeing how some fictional characters would deal with it. I started with the idea of evil and hell invading human life, and ended up writing This Side of Death, using a vampire as the embodiment of evil. After losing some dear friends to death, I wrote The Dead Cry Out, a ghost story dealing with the pain of loss.

My collection of short stories, Dark Ocean (released on Kindle, and free for the next two days), uses a zombie story to explore the nature of forgiveness, a story set in a university faculty to look at betrayal, and others that were just ideas that seemed like fun to write about.

With all the rhetoric that we hear about the issues that dominate the newscasts, it would great to put a Christian and a Muslim into a story where they are neighbors and co-workers, and see how our views change as the characters work through a crisis together. Or create a story with a gay character that requires the reader to deal with the person as a real human being rather than as a caricature. Fiction gives us the space to do this.

Rachel's crisis with the "V" word

I really appreciate Rachel Held Evan's blog and very much enjoyed her book, Evolving in Monkey Town.

Now I see that she is struggling with editorial issues that I can somewhat appreciate but only imagine. Read the blog here and you'll understand what I mean.