Write About Now

We don't want to be lied to. (Unless we do.)

"I'm not just preaching," a former pastor of mine would say. "This really happened." As shocking as the implication was -- that there was no guarantee when he was preaching that lilies weren't being gilded or the size of prize fish greatly exaggerated -- no one seemed to mind. They accepted, as we all do, that for rhetorical purposes the truth might have to be adapted to get at the truth. Or to be more specific, the truth of a narrative might have to be sacrificed to get at the truth of a proposition. The other way around, the congregation would have had a problem. Telling true stories to back up a false premise? No, sir. But if a true premise required for full emotional expression the invention of an articulate handicapped boy, a series of improbable coincidences, and a gripping climax ... well, it's just preaching.

When we talk about fiction as "the lie that tells the truth," that's the sort of lying we have in mind. An author conjures up a vision of the world, and that vision speaks to us about the truth of things. We accept the fact that, to get at these truths, the author just made up a story. Verisimilitude is nothing more than an exotic way of saying, "something like this might really have happened, if the world works the way we think it might. Or should." Viewed in this light, lying is not really lying, any more than self-defense is murder. What it has in common with real lying is making things up, but the motive's different.

Moral Fiction. Seriously.

I once considered titled my blog Snob Appeal, but in the end I worried the moniker didn't fit. Yes, I was a snob, but could I really claim to have an appeal? Probably not. But I'm particularly sensitive to snobbery. Not that I take umbrage; I'm more of a connoisseur. Mary Gordon's talk at the Calvin Festival was very fine in this regard, because she kept addressing her audience as "people who appreciate serious fiction," and contrasting our tastes with those of fundamentalists of every stripe.

The funny thing? This is the text of the article Gordon read, originally published in The Atlantic. I remember reading it -- and appreciating it. The second time around, I had my doubts -- not so much about the premise as the subtext.

Authors, Published Authors, and Multi-Published Authors

Remember the Great Chain of Being? A similar hierarchy exists in the writing world, substituting for animal, man, and God the similarly stratified author, published author, and multi-published author. The terms aren't as self-explanatory as they seem. Authors are people who write. Published authors have a book out. Multi-published authors have several books out. But there is a mighty gulf fixed between author and published author -- and not just any publication will bridge it. For example, you could spend a lifetime publishing short stories in major journals and still not be considered by some a "published author." Sure, you've been published, but not in book form. By the same token, if you publish your own book, the odds are it won't count.

Legitimate publication gets you airborne, but you're still hugging the treeline. Up above the clouds are the multi-published authors. Technically, two books will get you there, but to maintain your altitude it's nice to have four or more, to be releasing new titles regularly.

I have one book out, two coming up in 2010, and two more after that. This means I'm currently a published author on track to become a multi-published author. So I'm not complaining about the hierarchy. I understand why the distinctions are helpful to think about, since most of us would like to make enough money at writing to keep doing it and end up with a shelf of good books at the end of our run. But there's one thing I object to: the terms themselves. They're not meant to sound arrogant, but I think they do. Plus, they are aggressively inelegant, which seems strange for a gaggle of wordsmiths.

Whenever I hear someone say "I'm a published author," it sounds like an expression of insecurity. I don't want you to confuse me with all these wannabes. I'm a published author. Fortunately, I've never heard anyone refer to herself as a "multi-published author" (someone else typically does that for you), but the phrase makes me cringe. It's sort of like the equally awkward "multi-Platinum artist," except that it refers not to awards but to the literary equivalent of albums. Imagine calling a band with two albums out a "multi-recorded artist."

I was explaining all this at the Calvin Festival, chatting with Michelle Pendergrass and Jennifer Tiszai, and one of them asked, "Then what are you going to call yourself when you have multiple books out?" An author, I said. That's hard enough, most days. If someone comes up with less artless terms, I'll consider them. In the meantime, if you ever hear me talking about being a published author or a multi-published author, you have my permission to shoot me.

How Do The Heavens Declare God's Glory?

This was originally posted at The Master's Artist back in 2006, following the Calvin Fesitval of Faith and Writing. I've just gotten back from the 2008 Festival, so it seems apropos.

The heavens declare the glory of God. So begins the nineteenth Psalm. Since so many of us conceive of our life calling along similar lines -- bringing glory to God -- it seemed only natural for me at the time to say what I'm about to share. I was at Mick Silva's blog, reading his report on the Calvin Festival, and I came across this comment from Susan Meissner:

We've (myself included) allowed the message to mess with the mechanics 'cause we think it's "the message" that makes the book Christian. Why can't it be the other way around? Why can't it be astounding literary style that points to an astoundingly creative God?

To which I replied: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and if we aspire to something remotely similar for our work, we could learn something from how the heavens do this (and don't)." So far so good. When I went back later, though, I found that Kathleen Popa had left a message for me. "Yes, go on...."

So I'd been caught! I should have known better than to proof text.

Face the Music

What kind of music do you listen to as you write? I'm always fascinated by the answers people give, usually because I couldn't write to most of them. Heavy metal? No way. Country? Try again. One night a couple of years back, a novelist buddy let me read his latest manuscript right on the laptop screen, and as accompaniment he fired up the playlist he'd been writing to. That was wild, because the music and the words really fit. (He has much cooler taste than me, too.)

My go-to soundscape is the Michael Nyman catalog. I can write to any of it, though the soundtracks to Carrington and Ravenous are particular favorites. The past couple of days, for the first time in my life, I've been grooving to Philip Glass. The music in question is his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. It's running on a loop in the background right now. Fertile sounds.

What about you? Any favorites?

What Athol Wrote ... About Me

If you missed Athol Dickson's comment on my earlier post, be sure to check out "Weaving In Jesus" over at his blog, What Athol Wrote. This started out as a comment he was going to post here, but it grew so long that he decided to make it a blog post. I'm glad, because it's definitely worth reading in full. I'm going to quote the conclusion, but the best thing is to click over and read the whole thing, so you get the complete context. Here goes:

"Christians of all people must attend to quality, because slip-shod work reflects directly on Jesus’ reputation among unbelievers. As with any theme in any novel, if the gospel is there it must be essential to the story, woven in from the outset as the very heart of the thing. This is the true message of Mystery and Manners, and it is not a Christian fiction issue in particular. It is Creative Writing 101."

The Big Question for Christian writers really isn't whether the Gospel will be present in our work, but rather how it will be present. The how might change from writer to writer, from book to book. One author might have a single spiritual novel in him, another might have none at all -- and still a third might write nothing but. The key, I think, is to do whatever we feel called to do as well as we can do it, and to make allowances for the fact that others pursue a different vision. Not that I find this easy. If I don't keep reminding myself to make allowances, I end up wanting the world to do things my way. Then I remember what a sad little world it would be, and I'm grateful for all the work being done that I'd never have countenanced in its conception, but am moved by once it's complete.

Thoughts on This Week's Dialogue

I'd like to thank everyone who dropped by this week for my dialogue with Becky Miller, and welcome anyone with a perspective to share to jump right in. After all this talk, I'd like to offer some thoughts of my own about the so-called "problem" of Christian fiction. I'm no expert -- just an imperfect observer -- but the conversation this week has brought some issues into focus for me. In no particular order:

(1) Things are getting better. A few years ago, I sensed a lot of defensiveness about the state of craft in evangelical fiction, but that seems to be disappearing. This is now something we can talk about openly without being accused of disloyalty, etc., and that's a testament to people's confidence in the rising quality of the writing. In the comments, I cited Athol Dickson's conclusion, in an Infuze interview, that evangelical fiction today is no better, no worse than any other genre. This rings true to me. Generally speaking, there's room for improvement, but that's the case on every shelf in the bookstore.

You Can't Always Change the World

I sometimes worry I've taken myself too seriously. Writing fiction is a playful pursuit, even when the subject matter is weighty. After all, it's about imagining, it's about making things up. You need a supple mind and a willingness to make unlikely connections. It's about more than just the successful application of theory. Nurturing the critical faculties is one way to build up artists, but there's a frequent side-effect: work-in-progress tends to be measured against the best work of the best writers. We have to keep asking ourselves, Is this great?

The difficulty is compounded when you happen to see yourself as part of a community that needs to represent itself better in the arts. Christian art these days has a sorry reputation, and since I'm both an artist and a Christian, I would rather punch holes in that perception than reinforce it. Problem is, if I go to the keyboard every day trying to roll that particular stone up the hill, all the suppleness departs from my work. I become just another crusading novelist, even though I'm crusading against crusades.

Write About Now ... And Not a Moment Too Soon

Welcome to Write About Now. I'm J. Mark Bertrand, and this is my new blog about writing and publishing. Since 2005, I've been writing about craft in fiction at a blog called, unimaginatively enough, Notes on Craft, but here I'm opening the topic up to include more than craft. What you need to know about me: I write non-fiction, but my real love is fiction ... and I'm an editor, too. Thanks to my MFA in Creative Writing, I have literary ambitions, but these days what I'm really interested in is crime fiction. Read as much as you like, push back and let me know what you think. With no further ado, here goes ...

Sponges and Conduits

Every author has his influences. Originality is a relative term. When we're asked where our ideas come from, an honest answer might be: "From other writers." Good authors borrow, great authors steal, and all that. Still, there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it. The author's mind is often compared to a sponge -- it's always soaking up ideas. I'm going to suggest that some authors behave as sponges, which is good, and others act like conduits, which is bad.

The sponge accumulates influences and gives them time to reconfigure in his mind. He takes what others have done but repurposes it in keeping with his own vision. When you read his work, you can probably identify some influences, but you aren't left thinking, "Hey, I've encountered this story before!"

The conduit is less artful, more derivative. He plunders whatever is popular and cranks out his thinly disguised version of it. In some cases, the process is so brazen that readers (or the author himself) can make one-to-one identifications. If you want to know the difference, it's that sponges are influenced while conduits merely imitate. There are some very successful conduits out there, writers who take every trend and crank out their own version of it, but I think there's something ultimately unsatisfying about such work. It's not just originality that's absent, but in some mysterious way personality seems missing, too.