Reachin', Writin', and a Rhythmic Tic

I am on sabbatical this semester, which you might assume would mean more blogging than less. Obviously, you would be wrong. I am working on a writing project that makes it hard to justify writing blog posts. Here's an update on my progress.

My original aim was to take on a topic similar to my academic book published in 2002. I was going to treat apologies and the discourse of humility as a counter to apologetics and the militant rhetoric in our current culture. I had in mind to prop up my arguments with serious background reading and well-placed interviews, all directed toward literary nonfiction for a relatively broad audience.

This idea didn't take for three reasons. First, I found the book I wanted to write had already been written by a psychiatrist and a sociologist. Second, even though my original idea was probably more overtly spiritual than the psychiatrist's and the sociologist's, I decided the particular angle I wanted to take on the topic would make a really good magazine article, but would not warrant a book-length work. Third, my informal survey of readers found that they (and I) were...just not that into it.

So, I shifted my focus to a collection of nonfiction essays. I would still treat the original topic, but I would expand the project to include a broader commentary on cultural practices, faith, and rhetoric. This found no traction either, for similar reasons as above.

Then, I got very excited about doing a collection of essays that were more memoirish in nature: a collection of creative nonfiction, not unlike the work of Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, or Frederick Buechner. I started collecting essays and making plans for a unifying rhythm or theme. I sent out my first essay to some editor friends. They were very encouraging and gave me some tremendous help with my writing; but they kept asking, "Where's this going? What is the book about?" Days and weeks passed, and I could not get the focus I needed. In the meantime I had accumulated a couple hundred pages of writing with nothing to hold them together.

In a fit of frustration, I flew to Colorado and retreated to a mountain cabin with a writer, artist, musician, therapist friend of mine. We spent time writing (he was editing the third draft of his novel) and talking about our projects, our souls, our insecurities, our addictions, our failures, our hopes, our families, our truths, and our gods.

After one particularly frustrating night of work, I was prepared to declare that I had no business writing, that I had nothing to say, and that I was a fraud. I was contemplating ways I could move to another country and change my name to Reuben. I was about to toss my laptop through the window, and Jeff stepped in and calmed me down. For the next two hours he wove a tapestry of grace and encouragement that got my mind going again, in a whole new direction.

I'm writing a novel.

It's a reach. Long fiction is terribly intimidating, even downright scary. I worry about my mental health. But, I decided that this project has been trying to get me to this point from the beginning. There is a tale that needs to be told, and it needs to be told in the medium of the novel. The Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin once argued that if you want to impart a truth or message, don't prepare a speech or an essay, write a novel. By putting many voices (heteroglossia) in play, you create a much more textured meaning than a monologue.

I hope to use much of the narrative compost I've accumulated (a reader of The Reach might recognize the kernel of a story or two), and the original idea about apology will likely show up, but the story will be able to go places the previous incarnations could not take it.

The morning after I made this creative and spiritual breakthrough, my computer crashed.