The Gift for Chapter One

Last week I shared with you the twenty-year history of my work on a novel that takes place in first-century Palestine. That is what the Roman conquerors called the area that the Jewish people referred to as Judaea, the Galilee, Samaria, and the bordering lands.

I explained that since 1997, the novel has gone through countless permutations since I first heard within myself the voice of a biblical character talking about Yeshua, whom most people now call Jesus.

In 2002, after writing a manuscript, which a biblical professor at a local college said lacked authenticity, I began to research the Jewish people, culture, and religion of the first-century of the Common Era. I used the reading list that the professor so helpfully suggested. During that year, I read all thirty-six recommended books.

The next year, I began to write. Slowly, and over several different drafts, a novel emerged. Due to health concerns, I put it aside for four years. Recently I returned to it, only to discover that it lacked a gripping first chapter and a sense of place.

For years, I’d struggled with the beginning. Two weeks ago, a friend’s comment helped me discover where to start—with a scene in which the two main characters meet again. They have not seen one another for thirteen years. The main character—Ephraim—has always felt disdain for the other man—Yeshua.

The manuscript now has them meeting at the Jordan. During this past Easter week, I added to the chapter details I’d researched about the “muddy” Jordan and the thickets that edged the river’s banks.

They meet; they argue. There’s dialogue, tension, the beginning of a plot that introduces suspense and intrigue. But something was still missing. Ephraim came off looking mean-spirited—a rigid man, holding to a grudge. Yet he’s the main character. It’s essential that readers like him. Root for him. I knew that somehow I needed to show that he was in the midst of a crisis of faith. Then readers might feel his anguish and begin to empathize with him. But how to do that in this particular scene?

I was typing along on the computer, adding a detail here, a detail there about what they both wore or the river setting—trying to help readers “be” at the Jordan with these two characters. I typed. Typed some more. Still felt a lack in the chapter.

Then suddenly—without conscious decision on my part—Hashem begins to speak to Ephraim. (Hashem is the name the Jewish people at that time used to refer to their God—the Almighty One.) I typed the words given to me. Ephraim responds. And there—THERE—is the one thing the chapter was missing: the introduction of the crisis of faith that is central to the novel. A thread that weaves the novel, helps hold it together.

I didn’t plan their conversation. Truthfully I didn’t know how to introduce it in the chapter although their combative dialogue appears throughout the rest of the novel. These words, introducing the crisis, came as pure gift.

Peace.

Postscript:

This week two bloggers read Prayer Wasn’t Enough and wrote about it. If you have the time, inclination, and interest, please read Arkansas Patti’s review here. Her wonderfully entertaining blog is called “The New Sixty.”

Judy Grout, whose website is “Judy Grout, Author,” posted an interview with me this week. You can find her three questions and my replies here.  

Photo of Jerusalem model from Wikipedia

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.

Today's Women and Men of La Mancha

This year my birthday and Easter coincide. That feels like a harbinger to me of a new path for my life. Easter is a time of renewal. For many, a renewal of faith. Recently President Jimmy Carter, one of my favorite people, wrote a book—now published—called Faith. Last week, Judy Woodruff of the PBS Newshour interviewed him on air.

When Carter described the topic of his book, he spoke of the faith we put in many things. For instance, we trust, or have faith in, democracy. We may have faith in our parents. Faith in ourselves. Faith in our abilities. So what he’s talking about, as I understand it, is the faith we have in what makes up the tapestry of our life.

Many years passed before I could have faith in my writing ability. Now I trust that I can craft a good sentence that will speak to readers and be accessible to them. Today, Easter, my faith in my writing is being renewed because of the reviews and e-mails I’ve received from many of you about the convent memoir Prayer Wasn’t Enough. I thank you for this Easter gift of faith renewal.

Beyond that, I find another deep faith within myself right now: faith in the March for Our Lives 

Movement.

This past month we saw many young people marching and demanding new gun control. They are not protesting the 2^nd Amendment; they are not asking for the elimination of all guns; they are not denouncing all gun owners. They are simply saying that we need to raise the buying age to 21; that we need a fine-tuned background check; and that we need to rid our culture of assault rifles, which are human killing machines. That message seems moderate to me. And the young people delivering it with such passion seem to me to be faith-filled. They have faith in their ability to bring about change.

And I have faith in them and in their commitment as they take on the NRA and its membership.

As I listened this past week to the CD of “The Man of La Mancha” I saw the youth as Don Quixote come back to lead us to the impossible dream. Back in the late 1960s, I saw this musical on stage in Dayton, Ohio. It inspired me then; it inspires me now. Don Quixote embraced an unimaginable quest; he tried to reach an unreachable star.

The dream of many of today’s youth may look impossible; the quest may seem impractical; the star may seem unreachable. But listen to that musical: Don Quixote changed many lives, particularly Sancho and Aldonza, who, at the end, claimed the sweet name of Dulcinea. These youth are our contemporary Don Quixote. It may seem—given the strength of the NRA—that they are tilting at windmills, but I have faith that they will ride on to glory. And take us with them!

Peace.