Writer's Update: Not The End

Sometimes the struggle is real, so that you know the struggle is real...

Welcome to August everybody! The kiddo starts school in a scant 2 weeks (we’re breaking it to him gently) and all the things we didn’t do yet this summer is careening together into what might be our busiest month this year.

But in a good way. Mostly.

First, some numbers. Then a story.

July was not my most stupendous month of writing ever. Switching from one series to halfway through a book in another series still takes some time, and for three weeks I was putting up some pretty small numbers. Then I ended one chapter with a bang—and unforeseen bang, at that—and the following Monday and Tuesday wrote the entirety of the next 3,000ish word chapter in an accumulated 1 hour an 45 minutes.

So Book Five of The Triumvirs is trucking along, and should be First Draft complete still by the end of October or so.

Those are the numbers.

Tuesday night, I was at a wall. I’d had another reminder of how tight our finances were, and I was fed up. I warned God that if He didn’t so something very big and very soon, I was walking away from it. Finding that “real job” everyone says writers need to give up and get—one, if I’m honest, that should be commensurate with someone holding a Master’s degree in Natural Resource Management, and 10 years experience in environmental/parks and recreation.

Now, maybe that will still happen. The main reason it has not is that this other job, the one that makes us oh so constantly mindful of our bank account, has also been the absolute best job to keep writing consistently in large volume. Which I feel like is still important.

I just didn’t feel like it was that important Tuesday night.

So, Wednesday is usually my “Wild at Heart podcast episode” day. And despite my depression, I did start listening to it on my way to work. But I couldn’t tell where the episode was going, or why I should listen to it. And I really just wanted to listen to some music while I mowed.

So I did, for the first park. At the second, I thought “well, I should at least hear what the man (and his wife) have to say.”

Turns out they were calling out spirits of death—not necessarily physical death, but of things coming to an end. Marriages, good works, whatever it was. That they were being warned and warning others who would listen that the evil forces at work in our world were pulling out all the stops, “prowling around like roaring lions” seeking those they could get to kill off something that needed to keep living.

Because part of my frustration is the growing (it feels like) sentiment that Christian writers need to stop writing things that are so darn…Christian.

That including any kind of obvious Christianity in your fiction is “preachy” or “bad writing.” And “here’s all these literary greats of olde that didn’t get preachy.”

So my Spirit Wind series that I’m coming to love very, very dearly; that is some of the best character and story work I have ever done; that, when I reach the climax—wherein the protagonist Rae-Anna literally preaches—and I get so excited for all the truths that the story has been working toward and finds its fulfillment in her “sermon”: those books are in danger of being immediately disliked, DNFd, low-starred simply because the public sentiment seems to be “don’t be too Christian.”

This may seem self-serving, but if I could implore you: allow yourself to grow in your faith even through fiction. Allow for the possibility, if you don’t already, that a good writer can put Christ explicitly in his or her book and it is still a very good story. That “preachiness” is an effect of bad writing, not simply the result of anything containing explicit themes. (I’m sure some would argue a strong theme is bad writing, so I’ll be addressing this in a future Writer’s Craft.)

Because in the Western World, I see as many Christians in need of stumbling across a profound and accurate Christian worldview as I see non-Christians who might need it. That denominationalism has so fractured the body of Christ, and the ease with which one can call themselves a Christian and face no real persecution (red cups at Starbucks during Christmastime is not, after all, real persecution), that even churchgoers still need to be reached with the gospel.

Do all Christians need to write explicitly Christian books? You know, I’ve not yet sorted through all I feel about that. At the very least, I cannot fathom entering into the sin of the world in the name of “reaching the lost” or “eating with sinners.” Jesus not once copied the sins of the “wicked and adulterous generation” in order to preach his Father’s Kingdom to them. He never condoned them, either. At best, the sins were a springboard into awakening sinners to the spiritual realities that he was always all about.

So, maybe what I’m saying is, let’s at least cool our jets about modeling Tolkien or Dostoevsky. If those and their ilk are your heroes of the faith—tremendous. Maybe something closer to Bunyan is my hero.

(John. Not Paul.)

And I’ll try to cool my jets about “how dare you call yourself a Christian and write a story that I can’t see the Kingdom in.”

At least until I’ve explored more Scripture about this type of thing, and can put together an essay about Christian Craft.

That’s the story. Thanks for listening.

—Danny