Why Do You Write Fiction? Part II: Things and Man and God (sorry no Latin)
In the first part (which has Latin in the title, and which you can read here, even here, I say) of this random, semi-coherent series about why I write fiction I made an inexhaustive effort to answer a basic question of legitimacy in the minds of some folks I come across (usually with good intentions) who are afraid fiction is at best a waste of time, and at worst an evil distraction from truth. I think I also took a firm stance against run-on sentences. Having thus preached to the choir, I continue on with the following answer to the titular question.
Why do I write fiction? Because I love and believe in the value of stories as powerful means of expressing the deeply human. Francis Schaeffer talked a lot about the importance of seeing “man as man,” and “the mannishness of man.” I think there is almost always a quality in the things we find in creation that can be explored and displayed as intended and that this will almost always be a good thing.
We must remember, as Lewis has reminded us, that God invents and the Enemy perverts. Things were made right, but were subject to corruption because of our father Adam’s sin. So there is a proclivity toward sin in what we do. Things are messed up. When things become perverted, bent and twisted we are certainly in trouble. But the bentness of most art we are presented with does not argue convincingly against the joys of sub-creation.
I feel a great passion to see the “thingness of things.” So I write partly in an effort to do a thing well. Whether I am successful in this pursuit might be irrelevant to the validity of the point. I think it’s a worthy goal.
I believe in common grace. I can think of many experiences I have had in receiving art where I was able to look past the artists to the Creator who made and gifted them. Frequently these folks cannot seem to turn around themselves –for a million reasonless, suicidal reasons. But their art speaks to the beauty realizable in the world God made. Nothing makes sense without a world God created -not reason, or beauty, or love.
Are these gifted and witless artist’s efforts often so bent that they are not worth seeing, and are actually harmful? Some will argue this, but I think that “Of course” is the obvious response. Without wandering into the murky grey of where to draw lines (which we all do, somewhere), I want to focus on the question.
I write to express joy, to display beauty, to invoke laughter, to inspire truthful thoughts, and many other things. These can perhaps best be summarized this way.
I want to tell stories that resonate with people on a level which invokes a proper sensibility toward God and the world God made.
I write because people are hilarious, because pride is universal and destructive, because there is something around the corner to surprise. (It may be death, or light, love, or destruction.) I write because the Christian story is so comprehensive, coherent, and beyond belief. I write because God is sovereign and profoundly good; because I am grateful, because I am made in his image, because I am struggling with the bentness of things in myself and in my culture. I write to relieve and direct pain, to be precise, to say enigmatically what is inscrutable. I write to say that there is that which is inscrutable and that which is so plain it takes years of deluding education to confuse us about it. I write to belly laugh at that kind of folly.
I write because this is my Father’s world.
I write for the thingness of things. I write for the mannishness of man. I write for the glory of God and service of my fellow man.
Frequently I think and write things that are very stupid. Maybe this is one of those times.
I’d love to hear what you think. I think of this kind of post as more of a foray into unsettled territory and less of a definitive, final analysis. Be patient with me -I am learning here. So if you have suggestions for improvements, or contradictions, or a good recipe for chicken salad, please do us all the honor of speaking up.
Wait, I need to add some Latin for effect. OK, here goes: barba tenus sapientes. Referring to mineself, of course.
A.S. Peterson has crafted a work of compelling historical fiction which begs the question, “Can this really be a debut novel?” With dogged fidelity, Peterson captures the spirit, manners, and social conditions present during the American Revolutionary War. We meet colorful, credible characters who navigate the high seas of life and love, dependence and independence, war and peace, truth and consequence, and despite forays into dark places, The Fiddler’s Gun is beautiful, lyrical, and redemptive.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
Janner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea.
I am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons).
A Randall Goodgame song is like a great independent movie. Characters deliver lines like they were lifted from a break room, a truck stop, or a downtown diner. Seemingly incongruent scenes are juxtaposed and plot isn’t obvious; in fact, narrative–a good story–is often more evident than linear plot lines. An indie movie, like a Randall Goodgame song, seems to tell itself. Rather than being rudely yanked by a chain through a sequence of contrived events, with a Randall Goodgame song, I have the sense that I’m being allowed a willing, but vicarious sneak peak into the real lives of his real characters.
Sara Groves irritates me just a little bit. With each album she makes, she moves from strength to strength and is always raising the bar with the quality, depth, and lyrical ambition of her work. And as a fellow artist, that’s just a little irritating since it means the rest of us are going to have to work harder if we hope to keep up.
I am outside on my front porch. The yellowed leaves are methodically falling from the black walnut in the yard, my breath is chalky visible in the recent cold snap, and lately I have been exploring the unpleasant nuances of the dark night of a soul - my own, to be exact. It is a strange passion we live out on this over-glorified orb of rock hurtling through space at some rate that I’m sure would astound me were I to know what it was. It is an odd series of days, I am realizing, when you question your own faith more than you question your own doubt. And, indeed, it is these nagging questions which have prompted me to share my thoughts on Andrew Peterson’s 2003 album, Love and Thunder.
11-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute.
I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson.
Eric Peters’s body of work addresses a diverse range of topics, but hope is a recurring theme that gently percolates in the midst of it all. And yet, somewhere between the 2001 masterpiece Land of the Living, and Scarce, the flavor of hope that Peters’s work emits has evolved closer to a tone that is more resolute than what came before. And though the complexion of hope has a broad range, the lyrics from Scarce–while intermittently contrite and timorous as in previous efforts, are now strengthened and bolstered by roots that have grown deeper, radiating an underlying grit and security.
Having read The Great Divorce many times over the years, I’ve found this classic from the great C.S. Lewis to be full of startling clarity and depth on the differences between Heaven and Hell. The only thing both have in common is that both begin in the human will; we can either let Heaven enter us and rule in us to blossom into love and goodness, or allow Hell to infect and reign in our hearts by the daily refusal to submit to Heaven.
Even if you haven’t heard Room to Breathe, its still likely you’ve heard Andy Gullahorn. He’s what I’d call a heavy lifter by trade. He writes lyrics, plays guitar, arranges vocals and adds production help to the work of artists like Jill Phillips and Andrew Peterson.
Allow me to preface this by telling you that I am a great despiser of gushing reviews. I’d much rather write (or read) a scathing dismemberment of the latest Brett Ratner film or Terry Goodkind book than suffer through four hundred words of overblown hyperbole about even the best of things. But when asked to write some thoughts on Frederick Buechner’s Godric, no amount of distaste for high praise was able to intervene. I hope you’ll take what I say with the understanding that I do not say it readily or lightly.
“Frequently I think and write things that are very stupid. Maybe this is one of those times.”
Absolutely not! With exclamation mark, no less!
The whole creation groans. To cut off the artistic sensibility on the grounds of sin is, in fact, a suicidal ideation. We are saying we’d best remove ourselves from this world. There is nothing untainted in the human realm–not the people we work for, or fellowship with on Sunday, not the things we make and build. I would no more move out of my house to spend a Canadian winter (or summer) beneath the open sky than I would cease to read and write, and paint and sketch, and make music.
And even if a tree is God’s creation, while a house is man’s, a tree still dies. I think we’d best cling to the existence of beauty, however broken, as the shadow of a God who is not giving up.
[...] My new post is up at the Rabbit Room. [...]
To steal (adapt) from Rob Bell…at the Poets, Prophets and Preachers conference, he said we should not speak on Sundays because we have to say something; we should speak because we have something to say.
You write, dear brother, because you have something to say. And if you did not write, you would implode and this world would be the poorer for it.
Shalom
Hear, Hear! Or is it: Here, Here! hmmmm ….you get the picture (smiley icon)
To keep my head from exploding due to pent up ideas. And to inadvertantly embarrass my wife by explaining plot structure and character development when we have friends over for dinner.
S.D. Smith wrote, “I write to express joy, to display beauty, to invoke laughter, to inspire truthful thoughts, and many other things. These can perhaps best be summarized this way.
I want to tell stories that resonate with people on a level which invokes a proper sensibility toward God and the world God made.”
That (and the entire post) resonated with me… may God bless you in that endeavor more than you can even imagine.
“I write because people are hilarious, because pride is universal and destructive, because there is something around the corner to surprise.”
Bing! I can’t wait to read your book. I mean… I CAN wait, but I don’t really want to.
I write mostly so people will like me. Because I like the people whose creations moves me. Sometimes I write for more noble reasons, or more likely for unknown reasons, and when I go back and read or listen to things I’ve written during those times, I can hardly believe it was me that wrote them or sang them or played them.
And of course sometimes I just write for the mannishness of Manimal.
I write to say that there is that which is inscrutable and that which is so plain it takes years of deluding education to confuse us about it. I write to belly laugh at that kind of folly.
That just about sums it all up
Amen Don!
To further elucidate that point, there was a front page article in the Atlanta Journal commenting on federal stimulus money possibly used to save jobs for our state’s (GA) art programs.
In this article, we have this gem of a quote from the kind of person that seems eerily similar to one of Sam’s Fledge Chronicles characters:
“This is shockingly irresponsible government. Somebody needs to tell Washington that we’re in a serious recession,” said Kelly McCutchen, executive vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. “The average Georgia family is worried about paying rent and utility bills and not going to the opera on a Saturday night.”
Yeah Kelly, everyone knows Saturday night is reserved for the Monster Truck Pull at the Georgia. Dome or better yet wrasslin’!
Someone asked me in an interview recently, “Why do you write songs?” And I thought of my answer, but I didn’t know how to verbalize it. I know that I’m a grouchy individual when I go a long span of time without writing. I know I feel good and excited when I do finish a song. I know that lines, song ideas, and fictional stories pop into my head when I’m going about my every day life and I think, “Man, somebody oughtta write about that.” And then I remember that I can be somebody sometimes. Writing: it’s just what I do. It’s my bag, baby. Eventually, though, all of my reasons why seemed best summed up by the answer that I finally got to, and that is basically that I write because God gave me the desire and the ability to do it, so I figure He wants me to. I’m grateful for the fact that He gave me the ability and desire, so using what He gave me, in my eyes, thanks HIm for that. It shows Him that I’m grateful and that He didn’t waste His time on me. People can certainly use a God-given talent to do un-Godly things, but that shouldn’t mean that the general use of the talent should get the bad rap. We were given our talents as a tool to reach others through Christ. The Bible’s already been written, so why exactly would God still be giving humans the talent of writing if folks are only supposed to read the Bible? Even still, the Bible was created by Divine Inspiration, so it’s in a league all its own.
I got some feedback on a tune of mine recently and a handful of folks felt the storyline was too gruesome and immoral because it talked about suicide, adultery, pre-marital pregnancy, and probably some other acts of sin (wow, I sure know how to write a good pick-me-up song). No doubt about it, the folks in the song are immoral, but when I hear a song like that, I see the consequences of immorality (which are never desirable) and living a life where God isn’t welcome, thus drama ensues. No, everybody shouldn’t be expected to like it, but there are cases when focusing on the sin makes you miss God in the bigger picture.
For whatever reason other folks write (and this means you S.D.), I’m glad they do. I’m glad they do.
Stacy
Thanks for the encouraging word Sam… I think it’s a wonderful thing to reflect truth in really great art… whether it’s in beautiful ways (for example, Andrew Osenga’s Early in the Morning) or in ways that are hard and challenging (like what Stacy’s describes), it is instructive without intending to be.
“I think of this kind of post as more of a foray into unsettled territory”.
Well, Sam, I think you have a lot of pioneers traveling with you into that unsettled territory. May I stake my claim next to yours?
The land is green and lush, with gentle hillsides bumping up to the soaring mountains. The wind rushes along and sweeps up my awe, taking it where, I know not. The valleys are dotted with trees, and there, hiding, is a burbling creek full of life, bedrock, and blessing.
Yes, it will take years to build a cabin, clear the land, dig a well, and be productive. The years will be hard, and we are far from the settled lands. But we live and sing, and rejoice.
And our children will breathe the air of wisdom and freedom. Its smell will fill their senses, infiltrate their dreams, and they will always be happy in its presence.
Amen, Sam!
We write and read and watch movies because we are human. My old church used to think that the only thing we should be doing (apart from work and going to service) was winning souls. And this only involved giving tracts or knocking on doors. I think we should be praising God with every breath, and I think art is high worship. We were made to enjoy God forever. I think we save souls when we do this, and it hits and influences those around us.