Guest Jan Bear: Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach

Inside the Orthodox Writers retreat

It’s 9:30 a.m. at the annual Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach. The house has gone quiet after the morning greetings and breakfast and shared plans for the day.

Five writers (two are out walking on the beach) have taken mugs of coffee and gone to the place — in the house and in their heads — where creation happens. Two overlook the surf from an upstairs window. One looks out another room’s window into the dark, lacy limbs of a coastal pine tree. Two sit in the big living room, laptops on knees, writing in that companionable silence that comes with doing the same thing as someone else and not needing to talk about it.

Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach happens in late June every year, depending on the schedules of the participants. We meet at the Colonyhouse, in Rockaway Beach, Oregon, about midway between Cannon Beach to the north and Tillamook to the south.

The house, a beautiful and quirky log cabin from the 1930s, offers sleeping space for nine, a big stone fireplace, a full kitchen, shelves and shelves of books, and a view of a lake to the east and the ocean on the west.

But it’s what happens in the house that we come back for year after year. Every day from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m. are quiet times. Inside the house, we write, read, sleep, paint icons, or whatever we want to do, as long as we don’t disturb the concentration of the others.

In the evenings we gather around a big table for a home-cooked meal, wide-ranging conversation, and wine.

After dinner we adjourn to the living room for readings and the kind of critiques that come from writer friends who fervently want your success.

Retreat participant Bev. Cooke says she loves the sound of the surf and the lack of interruptions.

“I like being away from all my responsibilities so I can clear my brain to create,” said Katherine Hyde, a writer and editor who used this year’s retreat as an opportunity to experiment with YA fantasy.

Donna Farley, author of both fiction and nonfiction books, said she appreciates the company and the fact that “at the beach you feel yourself decompress and have quiet to work.”

The Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach has gone on for about five years now. Even though I organize it, I’m not sure myself how long it’s been. It’s one of those timeless things that seems like both forever and entirely too short.

Father Lawrence Farley, brings up C.S. Lewis’ observation of the slow-maturing of old jokes. Father Lawrence says that one thing he appreciates is the sense of community, “the slow maturing of old jokes, so that each year builds on the last year, so that one has a sense increasingly of family, of community, of coming back to people that you love and genuinely care about.”

Jan Bear writes about using content marketing and new media to market your book. She also blogs in a more leisurely fashion about writing retreats and getaways at Writing-Retreat.com. If you would like to be notified of next year’s Orthodox Writers’ Week at the Beach or other retreats, sign up for the Writing Retreat mailing list.

Writing Around the Ten Commandments

Tangled branches

Consider the following plot (a real plot, from a novel I’ve read, but with names changed to prevent a spoiler). Abigail is engaged to Bert, and Christopher is engaged to Danielle. Abigail and Christopher meet at a house party at a country estate, and of course, they fall in love. But because they live in a bygone era, honor takes precedence over emotion. Abigail returns home and marries Bert. Christopher returns home and marries Danielle. Years pass, events conspire. Bert suffers a terminal illness that terminates him. Danielle has the misfortune to be directly under a German bomb.

Drum roll, swelling tide of romantic orchestral music. Abigail and Christopher meet again, and to the great delight of all their friends and relations (who never liked either Bert or Danielle very much), Abigail and Christopher marry.

Is something wrong with this picture? What’s going on here for the reader? What about the writer?

As the reader, I’m being urged to hope for the breakdown of two marriages, and when Bert and Danielle die, I’m encouraged to heave a sigh of relief and urge on Abigail and Christopher as they move toward their reunion.

As the writer, what am I doing? The writer of this novel happens to be long dead, so there’s no way of knowing what she was thinking as she wrote the novel. But it is fair to state that she arranged her novel in such a way that the eventual marriage of Abigail and Christopher is what every right-thinking character (and reader?) hopes will occur.

One voice in my head says, “Oh, come on already. It’s just a story, and at least they didn’t commit adultery.” But the other voice says, “Isn’t there something faintly adulterous about being the writer of this story? The writer who deliberately kills off their deliberately unappealing spouses so the two attractive people can marry?”

I wonder at what point our fictional acts as writers touch on our real-life morality as human beings. At what point could a fictional creation become a real-life trespass, a figurative breaking of the commandments? Or is there no moral connection between fiction writing and real life?

What do you think?

A Reply to T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot

I belong to a Goodreads (www.goodreads.com) group called “Christian Fiction Devourers.” This rapacious title belongs to more than 200 people, mostly women, who love to read and talk about Christian fiction. As part of an ongoing discussion on what makes fiction “Christian,” a member of the group recently posted a quote from T.S. Eliot’s essay on “Religion and Literature,” written in 1935. “It is our business, as readers of literature, to know what we like,” says Eliot. “It is our business, as Christians, as well as readers of literature, to know what we ought to like. It is our business as honest men not to assume that whatever we like is what we ought to like; and it is our business as honest Christians not to assume that we do like what we ought to like. And the last thing I would wish for would be the existence of two literatures, one for Christian consumption and the other for the pagan world.”

Eliot’s words provide material for at least five discussions (I counted). I’d like to focus now on his wish to avoid “the existence of two literatures, one for Christian consumption and the other for the pagan world.” Here in the United States, I’d say we have exactly that. “Christian fiction” is a recognized genre, accorded separate shelving in major bookstores. It’s produced by Christian publishers, and it’s the business of the Christian Booksellers Association, a separate entity from the American Booksellers Association.

Plenty of Christians read plenty of books, fiction and non-fiction, that are not stamped with the “Christian” genre label. But does the secular world return the favor? Not usually. Penelope Stokes, author of The Complete Guide to Writing and Selling the Christian Novel, notes that nearly all the readers of a Christian novel are already Christian themselves. “People don’t read fiction primarily to have their values challenged or to seek out new directions in their lives,” she observes. “They read fiction that makes them comfortable, that entertains them or that relates in some way to their own life experiences.”

This is undoubtedly a disappointing reality to authors who possess that genuine, evangelical zeal. It would also be disappointing to Mr. Eliot, were he still able to participate in this discussion, because it shows there is a point on the literary spectrum where the division into “two literatures” takes place. But it is not disappointing to me. Very likely I’m about to expose a flaw in my zeal, but I think there is another way of looking at this problem, if it is a problem.

The women I’ve known in my life often read for comfort and companionship. They read when they are tired or let down, when they need a blissful moment to ease the pressures of a difficult reality. Sometimes the characters in a good book become real to them, like old friends they can visit again and again. The journey of a well-written character can provide encouragement or inspiration for the real-life journey of the reader. This is a good thing. It is not only the “un-saved” who stand in need of ministry.

Good Christian fiction can serve another purpose for Christian readers. It can give us a detailed view of how someone else, either the character or the author, applies Christian faith in daily life. Without being truly nosey, we often can’t see how our friends and neighbors are using their faith to make choices in their lives. We don’t know what they say to themselves when they get mad at their husbands or give in to their manipulative in-laws for the hundredth time. It’s not our business, frankly, but we might be able to learn from it if it was. A well-written book gives us this chance. If it’s good fiction, it’s true to life without being a factual account of real people (i.e., gossip). It’s our chance to see different ways of handling a situation, to try them out in our minds and see where they lead.

So, while I see your point, Mr. Eliot, I’m not dismayed.

Review: Rain Song, by Alice J. Wisler

Rain Song by Alice J. Wisler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of Nicole Michelin, a Southern girl who was born in Japan but now lives in Mount Olive, North Carolina. I don’t like spoilers, so that’s about all I’m going to tell you, except to say that the book is her own first-person, present-tense account of her journey to grow through the effects of her unhappy childhood.

I liked this book. I brought it home with a pile of other Christian novels, and I took almost all of them back to the library unread because they were sounding like the same old same old by page 2. But not this one. It reads like Southern chick lit, but Nicole is a Christian. The story held my attention because I liked Nicole, and because the author never interrupted her. At no point in the story did Alice J. Wisler jump in with her agenda and make sure I was getting the point. She just let Nicole tell her story, and she let me take from it whatever I would.

I’ve been in several discussions, on Goodreads, my blog, and in the “real world,” about the tendency of some Christian authors to let their agenda take over the story. This usually squashes the story flat, in my opinion. In fact, I must confess that I am only interested in Christian fiction like Rain Song, a story about a life-like character whose Christianity, like mine, is framed by her strengths and failings as a human being.

NOTE: I was interested to learn that Alice J. Wisler runs “Writing the Heartache” workshops, in which she teaches writing as therapy to people who are struggling with grief. She began doing this after losing her small son to cancer. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website at http://www.alicewisler.com/ .

View all my reviews

Is that Christian fiction?

They’re called “Christ figures,” characters who are designed to call Jesus Christ to mind. Perhaps they have a special power for good or suffer an innocent death at the hands of evildoers. Perhaps they are depicted standing tall, with arms outstretched, reminding us of the cross. But does the literary use of a “Christ figure” make the story a work of Christian fiction?

This question came up in a conversation with my husband, in which we discussed two movies that depict Christ figures. One is “The Green Mile” (1999, Warner Brothers), in which Michael Clarke Duncan’s character, John Coffey, is endowed with a special gift for taking on the pain of others. He is a Christ figure because of this gift and because of his eventual death as an innocent man destroyed by the evil in the world around him. The second movie is “Platoon” (1986, MGM), the classic about a young man coming of age in Vietnam amidst the moral and spiritual turmoil of war. In this movie, Sergeant Elias, the character played by Willem Dafoe, is a Christ figure. He is a good man, played in contrast to Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), who has gone over to the dark side. Sergeant Elias dies unnecessarily at the hands of his enemy, and he falls to earth in a hail of machine gun bullets, with his arms outstretched and his face turned up to God.

There is no question that these two men, John Coffey and Sergeant Elias, are intended to bring Christ to our minds. We are meant to draw a straight line between their innocent deaths and the innocent death of Jesus, another Man who fell victim (at least in appearance) to the evil of others, not to any evil inherent in Himself.

But is “The Green Mile” a Christian movie? Is “Platoon”? Why do they allude to Christ? For what purpose?

How do we define “Christian fiction”? Is any story with Christian elements or Christian-themed allusions a work of Christian fiction? Or is that title reserved for the works of writers who are Christians themselves and who wrote their faith into the story deliberately, with the hope of sharing it?

What do you think?

Do you read the end first?

No need to read the end first. Know it by heart.

Kristina from Pennsylvania says no. “In my opinion, that destroys the suspense of the book completely! The excitement of the ending is dimmed if you know (for sure) what is coming, and I have no desire to spoil it for myself!!!”

Annie from Virginia says yes. “I almost always read the last chapter of a book first. It may be because I like a character and want to make sure they end well. Or I think I have it figured out and can’t wait to find out that I’m right.”

Charity from Kansas has a foot in both camps. “Depending on my mood (and how suspense-filled the book) I probably give in and read the last couple of pages of a book about 50% of the time.”

The more I ask this question, the more it reveals to me about why people read fiction. Most people decide to read the end first or refuse to do so because it helps them get what they want from the experience of reading. Kathy from Maryland always reads the last chapter first. “I found that I was more relaxed reading this way, not pressing on to see how it ended; it was a much more peaceful way for me to read and, after all, I was reading for relaxation!”

Annie also notes that perhaps one reason she always reads the end first is because “my life is so full of unknowns that to truly escape I have to know exactly where I’m headed.” But Cheryl from Washington never skips ahead. “I love surprises and would not read the end first because it would rob me of the joy of the unknown.”

Jodie from South Carolina won’t let herself read the end first, but when she can guess how a book will end, she still wants to read it. “…with romances, most of the time you can guess how it’s going to end, but the excitement, for me, is watching them get there! I enjoy the journey WAY too much to just jump to the conclusion!” For Charity, the same effect is produced by the opposite decision. “Knowing how the story concludes makes me appreciate the twists and turns even more.”

Interestingly, there appears to be a “mama clause” to the rules about reading the end. Kristina may not read the end for herself, but “if I am screening a book for one of my children, I WILL read the end of the book.” Kathy also commented that reading the end first helps her avoid books with R-rated content, which is much harder to do when you’ve already become involved in the story and want to know what happens to the characters.

Charity, who is a librarian, observed that technology has begun to affect the way she reads. “Now that I am reading more books on my NookColor, that ratio (skipping to the end 50% of the time) is going down because it is not as easy to flip to the back of the book.” Why isn’t it, I wonder? Reading the end first appears to be a widespread human practice, so why didn’t the Nook-makers take it into consideration? Perhaps there aren’t enough of us who admit to peeking at the end, leaving the Nook-makers unaware of the problem.

Will the increasing use of electronic readers drive us to toe the line and read from page 1 to the end? Or will we bend them to our habits? Perhaps next year’s Nook model will have a special red button in one corner that says “End First Please.” After all, what’s wrong with wanting to know how the story ends? We can’t “read the end first” in real life, however much we wish to. How much is fiction the story of our human lives? How much is it the place we go to escape them?