Q & A with Chalice Stories

How long have you been writing fiction?

I wrote a novella as an honors thesis at Brown University (more than a half century ago!), which led to a grant I used to write a full-length novel. Mercifully, neither of those was published, but the experience gave me a taste for writing fiction and was the reason I pursued a Ph.D. in Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago. My professional career focused on religion, but students in my seminary and university courses can attest that I often used literature when teaching theology. And I regularly taught a course titled “Literature from Around the World.” So when I retired from full-time teaching, it seemed natural to try my hand again at writing fiction. If people ask about my profession (usually, “What did you do?”), I now tell them “I am a novelist.” It was a joy (most of the time) to teach theology and participate in ecumenical and interfaith activities, but it is remarkably satisfying to think that, in my seventies, I have embarked on a new career!

What is your writing process? What routines help your writing?  

Writing fiction is such fun that I don’t consider it “work.” It helps me, however, to keep a work-like schedule, writing from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., four or five days a week. This schedule frequently gets interrupted–I am “retired,” after all, and living in beautiful San Diego!–but I still manage to spend lots of hours each week at my desk: outlining, researching, writing, rewriting, and rewriting some more. In this sense, creative writing is like praying. It’s not simply a matter of waiting for the Spirit to blow or for inspiration to strike. Just as our capacity to pray can grow through the discipline of regular prayer, even when the Spirit seems absent, so there is a necessary discipline involved in mastering the craft of fiction, even when the creative juices aren’t flowing freely.

What was your biggest surprise in writing this book?

The biggest surprise–delightfully so–was the emergence of Abigail as a central character. When I started work on this novel, Matthew’s children had a very secondary role. There comes a point, however, when the characters begin to speak to each other in my head, and writing involves listening to that conversation. As I listened, Abigail emerged as a key source of insight, and I could feel her growing anxiety, even as she added warmth and humor to the story. It has been a while since I hung out with a nine-year-old, but I hope I was able to create a credible, if precocious, kid of that age, one that readers find memorable. I like her a lot!

What is the greatest challenge for you of writing fiction?  

Over the past forty years, I have written several non-fiction books in the field of theology, and it has been somewhat of a challenge to shift from such expository writing to imaginative fiction (although there are those who think theology is fiction!). The first drafts of The Nominee (the first novel I wrote in retirement) were, in places, too didactic, and I had to remind myself that the story, through its plot and characters, must be pre-eminent. Preaching is a great thing to do, but not in a novel! 

Another challenge, to borrow a phrase from Graham Greene, is “to smell the dry rot in the timbers.” In other words, a novelist must be able to tell when something doesn’t work, must be willing to throw out what she or he has written, no matter how felicitous the language, if it doesn’t advance the story or hold readers’ attention. I try to trick my brain by writing early drafts longhand, on scrap paper folded in half, so it is mentally easier to discard. Thankfully, I am not cursed with perfectionism, which means I don’t usually labor unnecessarily over a text or suffer from “writer’s block.”

Where in your book does fact end and fiction begin?

This is an important question, especially for readers who may recall my own flirtation with church leadership. As I say in the Author’s Note, most fiction contains an autobiographical kernel; but, in the case of The Nominee, it is more than a kernel. I was the nominee to become General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1991, and the broad outline of the book–a seminary dean, nominated for a leadership position, facing opposition, some of it threatening, because of his support for the LGBTQ community–reflects my experience. The Nominee, however, is still very much a work of fiction. The other characters are creations of my imagination; all of the dialogues and most of the scenes are invented; and the plot was shaped in order to highlight specific themes and evoke particular emotions.

I could, of course, have made up a fictional denomination and position titles. But what for? There are novels about Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Baptists. Why not Disciples of Christ? There are stories about popes and bishops. Why not a general minister and president? Keeping the denominational labels, however, does make the autobiographical kernel more obvious.

I have come to realize, while writing this and subsequent novels, that fiction is generally stronger when it is “imagined” more than “remembered.” But even memory can be untrue to the “facts” of a situation or event. My memories of my nomination are, themselves, acts of interpretation, efforts at making sense of the welter of experience. Giving novelistic shape to experience can, at its best, allow deeper truths to shine through.

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?  

Like any novelist, I hope readers get wrapped up in the story, are moved by, even identify with, the characters, and want to find out what happens next. But I do have other hopes related to the novel’s themes. While 2024 is not 1991, animosity toward lesbian, gay, and transgendered neighbors remains all too prevalent. As I put it in the Author’s Note, many in this nation still seem to believe that what is normal for them should be the norm for everyone else and are willing to make life miserable for folks unlike themselves. So I hope this novel helps raise awareness of the ongoing struggle against discrimination–and does so while telling a compelling, entertaining story.

I hope that this novel, though set in a church context, is of interest to people outside the church. The Prologue was added, in part, to emphasize this point: “Any politician would recognize the challenges [Matthew] had faced, any aspiring leader would understand the issues. Even those who never set foot in a sanctuary.” The Nominee feels particularly timely in an election year and in a country fractured by culture wars. At the same time, I hope this is also a word to the church. Too often churches, of whatever denomination, echo, even amplify, the prejudices of the culture. Don’t Christians have something to say to our society about leadership–how to select and support it–in this contentious era?

What is your current writing project?

The Nominee is the second novel of mine to be published, the first being Summer of Love and Evil, a coming of age story set in rural Iowa in the late 1960s. My third novel, A Rooftop in Jerusalem, a forty-year love story set against the backdrop of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict (also timely!), is under consideration by several publishing houses. Currently, I am working on a new novel, also set in Jerusalem, called Becoming Nathanael. It is a story about grief, and the possibility of finding religious faith in an age such as ours.