The Wait

If you've asked me lately about how our adoption is going, the word "waiting" probably figured prominently in my answer. For a variety of reasons, the timelines for Chinese adoption have doubled or tripled in recent months. When our paperwork went to China last fall, Shawn and I thought we would be travelling to get our daughter about now. At the current processing rate, we probably won't go until early 2007.

And sorry to say, the worst part of the wait is answering questions about the wait. There's really nothing to say. We're waiting. It's fine. We knew it would take a while, that the process might slow down, that nothing in international adoption is predictable.

Karen at The Naked Ovary is waiting too. She copes with waiting by writing snarky posts about all the categories of waiting parents out there. [For the record, I'm an Ignorant Positive Oedipal Beaver.]

Me, I work on my novel. Shawn gets to play competitive Ultimate Frisbee this summer. There's no hurry to set up the nursery or read parenting manuals. We're just enjoying the borrowed childless time.

If you'd like to read up on all the speculation and rumours, visit the Rumour Queen. (You won't catch me there, I'd rather be Ignorant.)

Interlude: Where Am I Now?

I'm still catching up on posts about working with my writing coach, but I wanted to interject and bring you up to speed on where I'm at right now.

A few months ago, I realized that I would be more likely to finish my next book if I were to turn the novella into a novel. Coming up with three to six new short stories in addition to finishing the novella felt overwhelming. But if I could focus on the characters and the world I was currently engaged with, that seemed more manageable. Talking to Shawn about this possibility, I realized that I was leaving out a big chunk of the story in the interests of keeping it novella-length. That day I started working on new material, and I knew pretty quickly that I was on the right track.

So the novella is now a novel.

Once I made that decision, I continued to pile up the word count, and at the end of April I assembled a draft from all the pieces I had completed (the original NaNoWriMo manuscript, the January material from the new point-of-view character, the April stuff I started when I knew I would expand it into a novel). All of that came to just over 70,000 words.

I did a spreadsheet showing the word counts for each point-of-view character (this fussing with math somehow helps my creative side. It's the sandbox I construct to mess around in. The walls make me feel free to play. The numbers are totally arbitrary, but that doesn't matter). Joan, the mother, had 42,000 words and Laura, the daughter, had 28,500. So I chose 120,000 words as my final target for the first draft, and determined I needed to write another 18,000 words for Joan and 32,000 for Laura.

Then I went through the manuscript I had, and made a scene list and target word counts for where to add material. I designated May as pseudo-National Novel Writing Month, and my goal is to finish the extra 50,000 words by the end of the month. I'm mostly on track, as you can see by the counter in the sidebar. Lord willing, on May 31 I should have a 120,000 word first draft.

Is this the way you write a novel? I have no freakin' clue. I'm just making this up as I go along.

Intake Session, Part 2: Down to Business

So, with a new clarity on my values, we turned to the work at hand.

Working Hard

One of my intentions for working with Cynthia is to get a handle on "getting things done," finding a system I can lean into. I want to be able to trust myself to complete the tasks that are important to me, and to have realistic expectations about what I can get done. I want to focus on setting priorities and letting the less important stuff drop off the bottom.

Cynthia asked me to think about the question "What is my true capacity?" How much can I truly do in a day, at a sustainable pace? One of the limiting beliefs I dug up recently was that if I work hard, I’ll burn out. This fear developed a few years ago, when I was working two jobs and trying to write, and dealing with a lot of family stress. No surprise that I did burn out. But things have changed since then, and I want to put that fear of hard work to rest. To me, hard work means working a lot of hours in the day, and being focused and disciplined.

Cynthia asked me about the work I have on my plate at the moment. I said that I saw things in two categories: my important work and my obligations. Important work is writing, blogging, reading ... whatever helps me live my purpose. Obligations may be things that I chose as important in the past, but now feel like chores or duties that I complain or gripe about while I'm working on them. Answering email feels a lot like an obligation for me. Obligations easily tip into owning me or running my life, rather than the other way around.

My default approach has been to complete my obligations first, to try to get them out of the way, because I want a clear horizon so I can enjoy my important work. But doing the obligations first has often left me no time for writing. I resent other people and the demands I think they're making.

Lately I've been doing my writing first. In fact, I had done so the day of this call with Cynthia. But I still felt like I hadn't done anything yet that day, that my novel didn't really count as a productive use of my time. I got more affirmation from doing things for others than for myself, which really points to a skewed sense of value or importance.

Priorities

Cynthia encouraged me to select a specific period of time, and set priorities for that period. She suggested three or six months, or perhaps a season. I chose six months from May to October, and this is what I want to see in my life by the end of that time [I put this list together after our call]:

1. Writing: Complete first, second, and third drafts of my novel.
2. Work: Make a certain income per month with editing contracts.
3. Cohousing: Waive conditions on land purchase.
4. Websites: Post five times a week to gresik.ca and Wrestling the Angel.
5. Getting things done: Consistently do seven hours of work a day.
6. Exercise: Ultimate once a week, weights three times a week, yoga twice a week.
7. Household: Follow daily routine, finances updated every second day.

Cynthia asked me how I felt about setting those priorities. I was feeling discouraged, as though already I knew that I would disappoint myself when it came to that list of tasks. I feel like I work and work but there's nothing to show for it – I'll write but still tell myself I did nothing today. I don't think I can trust myself.

Struggling with my desire to honour my writing life, I told Cynthia about this illustration I came up with. If I were Wayne Gretzky, nobody would want me driving the Zamboni. They'd want me out on the ice, playing hockey, scoring goals. In the same way, I need to make sure I'm writing so that my gifts aren't misdirected.

But the villain in this scenario, the thing making me drive the Zamboni, is not my paid work. It's not other people, or those obligations I mentioned. The villain is me. I have to be the one to let myself have what I want, to come to this work without anxiety.

Cynthia asked me to think about a day where I did my writing, and then turned to my other work, and felt productive and at peace. I couldn't do it, couldn't imagine that reality. So she challenged me to do an inquiry on the question "What would allow me to let myself have what I want?" This inquiry would help me get at the underlying saboteurs, my beliefs about what it means to have what I want.

My other homework included finishing my priority list, and practicing making choices based on that list. Cynthia reminded me that when we do our important work first, we have a surplus of time and energy and resources for the other stuff. She called it a "bizarre inversion."

Next: May 2006

Intake Session, Part 2: Living My Values

In the second part of my intake session, Cynthia and I talked about strategies for living my values more fully. I gave each value a number from 1 to 10, to reflect how fully I was honouring that value right now. The first seven values were all 8 or 9 on the scale. Those results have come out of the last year of focus on my spiritual and creative life, for which I'm really thankful. The last two values, Giving and Order, were at 4, so we decided to focus on those.

Giving and Order

I have something of a love/hate relationship with these values. I desire them, and yet they can sometimes be pitfalls. For example, although I have a real yen to help people, I'm afraid of giving too much, which results in resentment, depression, doing things out of obligation. Sometimes I'd like to take the easy way out, and drop all my volunteering and helping, but that would not be true to myself.

I also really love order, but have a hard time maintaining it. I like things clean and tidy, I like detailed schedules, but then I won't put things away after myself, I let my desk get messy, and I throw my schedule out the window so I can lay around and read. Cynthia said that this value needs to serve me rather than the other way around. When I don't have enough order in my life, I don’t know what to do next – I'm out-of-sorts and overwhelmed. Addressing this value goes back to my intentions around "getting things done."

So what do I need to bring these values back into balance? Cynthia suggested that I notice when I feel depressed – when my energy sinks down, like a temperature gauge. When I feel that, I should look around and see what’s wrong. My values can help me make decisions. When things don't feel right, I should notice what value is not being honoured.

We also talked a bit about Joy, which I rated at a 6. For me, Joy is a lot about focusing on the present moment, and not worrying about the future or achieving my goals. It's about letting go of anxiety as my main motivator, and embracing excitement and positive energy in its place.

Meet My Gremlin

From my homework to create a characterization of my gremlin, the negative voice in my head that makes it hard to create...

My gremlin can be vicious. She likes to call me names, threaten and insult me. At other times she is piteous, depressed and hopeless. Then other times, she's practical, giving persuasive reasoning that allows me to avoid what’s difficult or challenging or important.

My gremlin is me—my twin self. She looks just like me. Same voice, same face. She’s my shadow. That’s why she’s so persuasive, because she can look or sound like my reasonable, adult ego self. She tricks me.

How I know it’s her: she talks in second person. “You’re lazy. You’re a drama queen. You’re never going to figure this out.” She exaggerates, talks in black and white extremes. She’s a pessimist. She wants to move away from fear and risk towards safety and comfort. She wants me to be normal, average, not to stick out from the crowd. She wants to make sure everyone else is happy with me.

She asks me to second-guess myself and my decisions. She calls me on every broken promise, every misstep or accident.

The thing is, I kind of like her. She does want to help. She belongs to me, she’s part of the gang. She’s annoying but endearing as long as I don’t succumb to her tirades and arguments. We can even joke from time to time. She plays a bit of the fool, overdoing her part, to help me see that I shouldn’t listen. And she feels better once she lets off some steam. By noticing the things that set her off, I can identify the problem areas and give them attention.

My gremlin would like me to do things correctly. She would like me to make something of myself, and not waste my time. She thinks that anxiety and brutal honesty are good motivators. She wants me to listen to other people because I don’t know what I’m doing.

She distrusts people who want to help me, because she’s afraid they will betray or reject me. She also distrusts people who want my help, because she’s afraid they will exploit and abuse me. She is suspicious of my desire to expose myself to others: she thinks I’m just showing off to get attention, that I’m being vain, and that I’m opening myself up to ridicule or humiliation.

Now that I've 'fessed up . . . what does your gremlin look like?

Intake Session, Part 1: Values

Values

Cynthia coaches her clients from the perspective of their values. By understanding what's important to them, what makes them feel alive and exuberant, she can help guide them to make choices that honour their values. I loved this concept, because it's very tailored to the individual. I'm not pursuing some Platonic ideal of success, but Alison Gresik's successful life, which may be very different from someone else's.

Cynthia explained that values are not so much about morals or ethics, doing the right thing, but are a "map for aliveness, a divine blueprint," and that our job in this life is to express those values.

Our conversation took the form of a treasure hunt and word game, as Cynthia highlighted various elements of my client questionnaire, and we batted them back and forth, tossing out images and phrases that described these values. She would ask me why certain things like cohousing, or giving workshops were important to me, and we would pull more words from the answers I gave.

Towards the end, when we had identified quite a list of values, she asked me which ones I was expressing when I wrote. I thought for a moment, and then said, "All of them." No wonder that writing is so important to me, then, if it encompasses all the things that make me feel alive!

My homework was to complete the list of values that we had started discussing, to put my values in order of priority, and to evaluate how well I was honouring them, on a scale of one to ten. The morning of my first day at the Festival of Faith and Writing, I pulled out a stack of index cards and began working. I wrote a central word in the centre of each card, and then a constellation of related words. As I worked, I felt myself caught up in an enjoyable flow--ideas fell into place easily and I had the sense I knew exactly what I was doing.

Alison's Values

GOD: Source, energy, faith, creativity, eternity, Amma, spirit

TRUTH/BEAUTY: Honesty, colour, art, meaning, language, music, nature

STORY: Progression, growth, epiphany, change, quest

COMMUNITY: Sharing, connection, world, coming alongside, support, network

PERSISTENCE: Willingness, loyalty, desire, resilience, wrestling the angel, commitment

EMPATHY: Listening, compassion, depth, understanding

CURIOUSITY: Research, learning, problem solving, reading, expansion, figuring things out, applying principles

INDEPENDENCE: Leadership, courage, money, freedom, risk, confidence

JOY: Silliness, laughter, sex, fun, humour, warmth

SYNCHRONICITY: Impulse, dream, the Web, signs, serendipity, intuition

GIVING: Abundance, generosity, value, contribution, reciprocity, helping

ORDER: Organization, neatness, system, discipline, routine

Intake Session, Part 1: Housekeeping and Gremlin

After I sent Cynthia my Client Questionnaire, we had the first of two intake sessions, each lasting an hour.

She first asked me if there was anything I needed to clear from my mind before our session, so I vented for a bit about spending the entire day on the church bookkeeping (I'm now the treasurer at Church of the Ascension). She said normally we might have delved into that issue, but for now we were going to concentrate on my values.

Ground Rules

But first, a bit of housekeeping and ground rules for our coaching relationship. She affirmed my confidentiality (which I routinely throw out the window here on my blog!), but informed me that she would take notes on what I say, and might ask permission to write about my experiences. She explained that our work is a partnership, and that if anything isn't working for me, I could say, "I'd like to redesign our alliance." She introduced me to the concept of intrusion, which she might use if I'm going on and on with a story and she wants to get to the heart of it. In that case she might say, "I'm going to intrude here. What's the bottom line? What do I need to know from this story?" Finally, she asked for (and received) permission to fail--she may not always say or do exactly the right thing. And who can? We're all human. But now we both know that's okay.

I like knowing that Cynthia has thought through these possible pitfalls, and given us language to address them.

Gremlin

Next, she brought up the concept of the gremlin, that voice that tells you you're not good enough, or can't do something. I have gotten to know my gremlin much better over the last year or so, using dialogues where I engage in conversation with my gremlin or lower self, and with God.

So I already know that my gremlin speaks in the second person: "You're lazy. You'll never finish this book." When the gremlin is active in my brain, I don't feel good--there's anxiety, depression, discouragement. Cynthia explained that the gremlin tries to keep us safe, and that rather than treating it as an enemy, or shouting at it to leave us alone, we should get to know it, and enroll the gremlin as an ally. She suggested questions like "What do you want from me?” “How can you help me?”

For homework, I was to do a Gremlin Characterization exercise, and describe my particular critical voice. Cynthia said the gremlin often gets active when we're going for what we want, such as at the beginning of coaching.

The Abyss of Illusion

A few weeks ago at breakfast I was reading a lecture called “The Abyss of Illusion – Freedom and Self-Responsibility.” I read how the abyss is created by our fear of not getting what we want—we are tense with fear and anxiety because we believe our lives are at stake.

I’m familiar with the idea of taking personal responsibility for the reality I create in my life. My therapist introduced the idea at the Conscious Creating workshop last year, and I’ve seen how it applies to my life and others’. For example, I was creating a situation of not having time to write—I couldn’t keep blaming my job, or Shawn, or other people. So as I was reading, I thought, I have taken 100% responsibility for my life. I couldn’t think of how I was still holding onto self-will in the way the lecture described. But I had a sense that surely I must have a blind spot, I couldn’t have rooted out this fear entirely, of not getting what I want. So I prayed that God would show me where I still hold onto this fear.

I didn’t have a very good day. I wanted to work on writing blog entries, and then answer email, but I was wrestling with aversion and discouragement all day. I didn’t want to face any of it. Walking at the end of the day, I asked God why I felt bad. The answer was that I was afraid to fail, at finishing my novel, at keeping in touch with people. I was so afraid that I thought I would die if I failed. And I remembered reading the lecture that morning.

I had also read this in Peter Block’s book, The Answer to How is Yes:

What we really want is both freedom and safety, but they are strange bedfellows. Freedom gets confused with liberty (which means we are not oppressed). Freedom is not doing your own thing, but just the opposite. It means we are the authors of our own experience. It means we are accountable for the well being of all that is around us. It means we believe that we are constituting, or creating, the world in which we live. This belief is rare for most of us, because mostly we feel helpless. At these moments, we wish for better leaders, better government, and someone else to create the conditions for us to be free. As if someone else can give us our freedom (p. 46).

I realized that I needed to allow myself to enter that fear, so that I could dissolve its power.

Then, after coming home from watching a movie, I found out that I had made a bad mistake. (You'll forgive me, I hope, for not going into details.)

Throughout the ordeal I wondered how I would go on the next day. I wanted to curl up in a ball, to succumb to depression. I felt horrible, and didn’t want to work on anything else. And of course, I recognized that I had fallen into the abyss. Before bed, I read Shawn the relevant sections of the lecture:

“When you cannot let go of your self-will, which may not necessarily mean that you want something bad or harmful, or when you cannot accept the imperfection of this world, which means that you cannot have life and people be according to your very own way, even though yours may be the right way, it seems to you that you have fallen into an abyss . . . There is a strong fear in you that whatever happens contrary to your will means danger.

Only after accepting your own or the other’s inadequacy in the areas where heretofore you could hardly do so, only after giving up your own will where you hung onto it as though your life were at stake, will you be able to truly convince yourself that nothing adverse happens to you. As long as this abyss exists in your soul, it seems to you that you are gravely endangered if you yield or let go. You seem to fall down into the abyss. The abyss can only disappear if you let yourself drop into it. Then and then only will you learn that you do not crash and perish, but that you float beautifully. You will then see that what made you tense with fear and anxiety was as illusory as this abyss.

So I repeat: the abyss cannot disappear by itself. It can only vanish from your soul and your life once you have made the plunge into it. The first time it may call for great effort on your part, but each time you try it anew it will be easier.

The next morning, I journalled:

Daylight Savings Time has kicked in, so it’s dark again until six a.m. Right now it’s raining; I can hear the wind and the rain on the window. I am feeling the peace of this moment. I am scared about falling into the abyss. I am angry with myself for making such a crucial mistake. I am daunted by the effort it will take to fall into the abyss and keep going. But, at least I can see what’s happening. At least I’ve got God with me, helping me see and be strong and brave.

Several months have passed since this experience, and I still can't think of that mistake without pain. But I'm grateful for the chance to see that, even though I screwed up, yes, I'm still alive, the world has not ended.

Living a Life that Matters

On the drive home from Grand Rapids in April, I listened to an audiobook by Harold Kushner, called Living a Life that Matters. You may know Kushner as the rabbi who wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I was completely gobsmacked when it became clear that Kushner was basing the book on the life of Jacob, the Biblical patriarch, and using his wrestling match with the angel as the central metaphor.

I couldn't take notes (yeah, cause I was driving) but from what I remember, Kushner talks about how many people think that in order to be important, they have to abandon goodness. He uses Jacob's cheating, deceiving ways (duping Esau out of his birthright with a bowl of pottage, getting the blessing from Isaac by pretending to be Esau) as an illustration of someone who ignores his conscience in order to get ahead.

Then Kushner shows that when Jacob is on the receiving end of such deception (tricked by his father-in-law Laban into marrying Leah, whom he doesn't love), Jacob realizes that's not the way to live. The angel he wrestles is his own conscience, bringing him back to a life of honesty and integrity.

I very much related to this struggle between conscience and success that Kushner writes about, but in the opposite way he intended. Kushner is addressing people who pursue success at the expense of conscience, using fraud or cruelty to claw their way to the top. I've never had trouble trying to do what's right. My problem lies in allowing my need to be good to override my desire to do what's important.

When I respond instinctively to the dictates of goodness (or more accurately, niceness or submission, the requirement that no one be mad at me or disappointed with me), I deny myself the time and energy I need to do my own work. The help I give others should occur within the context of the priorities that I determine; otherwise, I become a resentful and bitter giver. This dynamic contributed a lot to my burnout at Carleton a few years ago.

So, I was really pleased to hear a detailed exegesis of what is now my favourite Bible story, and I recommend the book (even though I took the opposite of Kushner's advice).

FFW: Last Day Fatigue

Final post on the Festival of Faith and Writing ...

Patricia Raybon

Saturday morning I started off at Patricia Raybon's session on "Your Story, God's Glory: The Creative Connections to Prayer." She's a black journalist and teacher from Colorado who wrote a raw, honest memoir about prayer called I Told the Mountain to Move.

People responded very positively to this session, I think in part because she was so demonstrative about her love for Jesus, and everyone was a bit shell-shocked from Salman Rushdie the night before. She spoke about what writing and prayer have in common:

Bad writing and prayer is:

1. Trying too hard: Good writing is never strained. Don't fight through the material. "Prayer is not gritting your teeth, it's falling in love." (Richard Foster)
2. Not inspired: The first person in the Bible filled with the spirit was an artist: "See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship." (Exodus 31)
3. Rambling: Prayer is about listening, enjoying God's presence. We're already in God's presence, we just need awareness.
4. Fear
5. Too long
6. Cliched: Never write a sentence you've written before. Never pray a prayer you've prayed before.

Good writing/prayer

1. True: Referring to her memoir, Raybon said she has been asked "How can you tell all your business?" She replied, "Because my life is what God gave me. I don't have to hide its messiness."
2. Yielded: "If I yield it to God, it's better." Let go of being in control.
3. Still
4. Relinquished
5. Precise: Lean and clean, not cluttered. Jesus asked Bartimeus, "What do you want me to do for you?" and Bartimeus replied, "I want to see."

Salman Rushdie

Some tidbits from an interview with Rushdie:

• Writing a novel is an act of optimism. You must assume that what you're doing is of value.
• Some people will never like what you write.
• Advice to young writers: If there's a way you can not do it, don't do it. There are a lot of books out there. If you have the temerity to add a book, it better be one that you can't avoid writing. It's easier not to write than to write. Write necessary books, necessary for the writer as well as the reader.
• Any totalizing idea, which seems to have a monopoly on the truth, naturally results in the killing of huge numbers of people.

I'm not sure I buy the "there are too many books already in the world" argument. What does it hurt anyone if another book is published? He's looking at things from a scarcity angle (only so many books can be published, only so many can be read, and your book will push out someone else's [better] book). I prefer to take the abundance angle (good books create their own readers and their own markets).

Molly Wolf

Lunch was a discussion with writer Molly Wolf, co-editor of the KnitLit books, and publisher of a weekly email letter called Sabbath Blessings. We talked about "Webworship: Using the Internet to Develop Your Spiritual Voice."

On the subject of writing about oneself on the Internet, Wolf said "Throw your soul out there. It's safe because it's God's."

Literary Representations of the Spiritual

My last session of the Festival was a more academic presentation, of two papers on "Wendell Berry, Marilynn Robinson, and the Refiguring of Reality" and "Can We Really Represent the Transcendent? The Novel and God." Very good stuff but I had to concentrate hard. Bradly Fruhauff talked about "refiguring" as a way of representing religious experience not as allegorical or symbolic, but historical. Refigured events draw their meaning from pointing to a more perfect future existence. Life gains meaning because of its participation in the larger theological scheme. Writers use sacraments and comparisons to Biblical stories, not as a key to meaning, but as intimations of a larger narrative.

I found this interesting because I think that's what I was trying to do in Brick and Mortar. Many of the characters and events echo Biblical patterns, but they are still meant to be "real" and historical, actual occurrences, rather than merely abstract symbols representing the Biblical stories. I find myself again writing about religious characters in my current novel, so it's a good reminder of how to handle that connection between fiction and Scripture.

Other ways to represent the transcendent or spiritual in fiction are by maintaining the sense of mystery (which prevents allegory, because it points forward to something outside history) and focusing on the characters, and the limits of what can be known.

By this point I was so worn out that I went home and skipped the closing session with Walter Wangerin. But all in all an extremely satisfying experience. Probably my best Festival experience ever, most especially because of all the friends (new and old) that I connected with there.

Other web writing about the Festival:

Christianity Today
J. Mark Bertrand
David Taylor
Christine Ansorge
Dave Long

FFW: Sundown, Day 2

Continuing the Faith and Writing Festival narration ...

Friday afternoon I went to a session on "Trimming the Sails: The Art of the Essay," with TIm Bascom, Charles D'Ambrosio, and Paul Willis. (I bought Paul's new book of essays, Bright Shoots of Everlastingness, from WordFarm). One notable comment came from Tim Bascom, about wanting to write in one form but being better or more successful in another (Henry James and his failure at playwriting comes to mind, as does Faulkner, who really wanted to be a poet.)

Bascom said that he tried his hand at fiction, but it kept coming out too abstract. Essay writing forced him back to the particular, and he thinks that he will return to fiction now with a new skill in realism.

This Heavy Silence

Next I went to the Paraclete Press booth so that Nicole Mazzarella could sign my copy of her novel, This Heavy Silence. (Except that I bought the book the day before and left it at home, so she couldn't sign it. Rats.) Just the night before, they announced that This Heavy Silence had been chosen as Christianity Today's fiction book of the year for 2006! Very exciting. I'm really looking forward to reading the novel. Nicole and I only had a few minutes to chat, but it was great to reconnect.

Strangely enough, as soon as Nicole was finished signing books, we went to hear an interview with Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead. And what book won the Christianity Today award for fiction in 2005? Three guesses.

Understanding Fiction

And just before going to the interview, I got some great news from Image, a journal of the arts and religion. They would like to publish my latest short story, "Understanding Fiction," if I'm willing to revise it. It was so neat to get an acceptance in person, from the editor Greg Wolfe himself! I went to the booth to introduce myself, and he recognized my name. He asked if I'd gotten a letter from them yet (I hadn't) and then told me the good news. I'm quite happy to revise the story--I know I rushed over the ending, trying to get it ready for a reading. So I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day. It'll be my first journal publication since 2003, and I've long aspired to appear in the venerable pages of Image.

The evening session was given by Salman Rushdie. I think it was very brave of the organizing committee to bring a confirmed, opinionated atheist like Rushdie to a religious writing conference. I sensed a chill over the crowd at times, as he described his objections to the "poison" of religion, which has perpetrated some terrible suffering in the world. But he was also funny and interesting to listen to. It was a good counterpoint to the "echo chamber" effect these conferences sometimes develop, when everybody mostly agrees with each other.