Someday I Will Reach "The End"

I'm getting closer! Last week I finally finished the third draft of my novel. I went to my writing group meeting for the first time in six months, and got so inspired. Plus one of my writing friends offered to read the draft for me, but I had to finish it within a week. Nothing like a deadline to get me working.

What a feeling of energy and freedom to finish that draft. I keep my to-do list on my Palm Pilot, so when I checked off that item, I could see the day I added it to the list: September 9, 2006. Crikey. Almost a year and a half that task has been dogging me. And now I'm through at last. It felt like taking a huge boulder out of a river, and finally the water can flow again.

The day after finishing, I printed the draft and gave it to my writer friend. We meet on Thursday to talk about her comments. I've enlisted several other readers, and it's energizing to think of people finally reading and responding to what I've been working on these past few years. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now the challenging part. What to do with the manuscript when it's finished? All along I had intended to look for a literary agent, but now I'm not so sure. The book is about a family that attends a Charismatic church, and the characters and plot are steeped in Christianity. Will that play for a mainstream audience? I don't know.

My current plan is to submit the book proposal to the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, which is happening in mid-April in Michigan. They have a service where they'll take your proposal and make it available to interested publishers and editors. I know that my novel fits squarely in the Christian literary genre, so we'll see whether there are any takers for that market. If not, I'll have to try my luck elsewhere. This is an intimidating part of the process, because I'm torn between finding the best possible situation for the book (which for me right now means the widest reach--more copies printed, broad distribution) but not over-reaching and tying up the book in lengthy submission processes that don't pan out.

One step at a time. Right now I'm enjoying the euphoria of hitting such a major milestone. The positive vibes have spilled over to the rest of my life, and I'm decluttering the house and finishing tasks that have been sitting around forever. Boy, it feels good.

Understanding Fiction

I'm very pleased to say that my short story "Understanding Fiction" appeared in the Winter 07-08 issue of Image, a Christian arts journal. I've loved this publication ever since I first laid eyes on it in 1995: the full-colour art reproductions, the compelling stories and poems, and the thoughtful essays on the intersection of "Art * Faith * Mystery" (as they put it). Image was my entree into the world of Christian literary fiction, and I have them to thank for introducing me to writers like Ann Patchett, Ron Hansen, and Shusako Endo. So it's a big thrill to see my story typeset in their elegant pages. (National Catholic Reporter has a great profile piece on Image.)

I wanted to write a bit about the genesis of "Understanding Fiction", but so as not to spoil the plot for those who haven't read it, I'll tell my story after the jump.

In March 1999, I read Invisible Writer, Greg Johnson's biography of the writer Joyce Carol Oates. I was especially interested in the time JCO spent teaching English at the University of Windsor in the 1960s and 70s. My mother grew up in Windsor and was a nursing student at the university (pregnant with yours truly) while JCO was still a professor there.

I wondered whether JCO and my mother ever crossed paths. I wondered what might have happened if they had. Then I started writing it down.

The first version of "Understanding Fiction" was short and artsy, almost like a fairy tale. I was inspired by anecdotes of JCO's unkind treatment towards a few students in her classes, by Flannery O'Connor's comments about the dangers of reading fiction symbolically ("[A student asked] 'what is the significance of the Misfit's hat?' I said it was to cover his head" [Habit of Being 334]), and by my mother's impatience with the way studying fiction in school seemed to take all the beauty out of it.

When my writing group critiqued that version of the story, they liked it but wanted more. More detail, more texture, more story.

I put the story aside for several years. When I came back to it, I had enough distance from the initial version to re-imagine the story with an entirely different tone and sense of realism. I worked towards a narrative closer to JCO's own dense prose style. The characters became more nuanced, particularly the professor, and the themes of identity and connection revealed themselves, as Nan tried on images of herself as student, nurse, reader, and mother, climaxing in her visceral encounter with "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."

"Understanding Fiction" was the first story I produced using a new creative method: I drew up an outline of scenes and quickly free-wrote a long first draft (15,000 words) which I then whittled down and polished into the present story. I threw out most of that first draft, but writing so spontaneously, without stopping to edit or second-guess, allowed the best elements of the story to emerge, rather like panning for gold in a heap of river silt. I have continued to use that creative process for my longer fiction, and it has made writing so much more enjoyable for me.

I read this story to a receptive audience at an Institute for Christian Studies conference in Ottawa on my birthday, and also at Redeemer University homecoming, in honour of my own English professor's retirement.

I was tickled to see this comment from an Image reader (posted to a previous blog entry):

Good short story in Image magazine. I am a middle-aged nursing student with a literary slant. I told my nursing instructors a few times that we should be reading Walt Whitman. "He had an attitude towards the body. He looked at a body and saw a soul." They, my instructors, try to ignore me. I just started working in a nursing home as a LVN (licensed vocational nurse). For nursing to have a soul a nurse has to be open to art, lit, beauty or grotesqueness. At least that's the way I see it (i.e., a body). The nursing student in your story is learning all the skills and habits of a modern nurse. But it is when she is wounded or terrorized by Flannery O'Conner's grotesqueness that she gets soul. I hope to be such a nurse in the nursing home this year. Good luck on your novel. Steve Barrett

Steve's words made me think about how, although Nan has turned her back on nursing as a paid profession, she carries the soul of a nurse through the rest of her life. I like that. Thanks, Steve.