Authors Taking Us Places

Since the publication of Prayer Wasn’t Enough, I’ve visited four places: Venice, London, Cheyenne, and Santa Fe. I’m in awe of the authors who took me to those far-flung cities. Each situated her or his story so well that I felt as if I were actually it that city with the characters.

During the past few days, I’ve worked on polishing a novel that takes place in first-century Palestine—a setting far away and long ago. I can’t go there, so I must research as I did for an entire year back in 2002. The manuscript has undergone numerous permutations since the idea first came to me in 1997 in a Stillwater, Minnesota, cemetery.

Walking along its looping pathways, I suddenly began to talk out loud. The words came from a biblical character. From what this character was saying, someone was interviewing him about Yeshua, the itinerant exorcist of the Galilee. (The Hebrew name Yeshua became the Greek Jesus.)

The next day, another character from Luke’s Gospel began to speak through me. He, too, talked about Yeshua. Returning home, I typed the two monologues that had been given to me. They led to the first draft of a novelette that emphasized a journey, but lacked a character who’d undertake that journey or the intrigue that would accompany him.

Each year that followed, I spent a few weeks trying to find the thread that would hold plot, character, scene, dialogue, suspense together. Slowly the book began to expand and take shape. By 2015, I was nearing a final draft that did most of what I wanted it to do. The plot worked; the characters came alive for me. With the emergence of the main character, a Pharisee, I found the suspense necessary to sustain a novel.

However, no matter how much I worked, I could never find a beginning that satisfied me. I tried one scene then another; one setting then another; one character then another. I tinkered, but never felt that the manuscript started in the right place. For the past four years, I left the manuscript alone, thinking that it would never see the light of publication.

Then, three weeks ago as I aired my frustration with a friend, she said, “Start with your two main characters.” Those words unlocked my dilemma. This past week, I found a place in the novel where the two meet at the River Jordan. Situating these two in that scene and hinting at their impasse became essential.

Once again as I had twenty years ago, I researched the Jordan. The chapter expanded as I found “telling” details that would put the reader by the river and that would appeal to a reader’s sense of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

Next Sunday, I hope to share with you the amazing happening of this past week—the happening that gave me the chapter I’d visualized but had never been able to write. The happening, which came from some deep place within me, was a surprising grace. Pure gift.

I hope you, too, are finding surprising things happening in your life. Peace.

PS:  I want to thank all of you who have read or are reading the convent memoir. Once again, I’d like to ask you to leave a review on Amazon if you haven’t already done so. That is, if you have the time and the inclination. Only if the book gets 70 reviews will it begin to appear on other Amazon pages as part of their promotion. Please excuse my crassness.