First Feedback

by Allen Arnold

As writers, we receive no shortage of feedback. Editorial critiques. On-line reviews. Compliments from mom. And a grab bag of reader comments–
many helpful, a few bizarre, and one that couldn’t get past your grammar glitch on page 74.

We tend to base our art's worth on the reaction or reviews of others. But do you regularly ask God what he thinks of your writing?

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Appointments with our Audience

I just love God appointments. You know, those serendipitous moments when you happen to be at the right place at the right time to meet someone who needs what only you can offer? We're writers. We tune in to language, to emotion, to character--and sometimes our ability to listen puts us smack in the middle of a blessing we might have missed if we hadn't paused. 

A month or so ago, I was waiting for the Morehead City Library to open. The day was lovely, warm for early spring, and I basked in the sun, unfocused, enjoying the minutes until the doors swung open. A young woman dropped her books in the return bin and noticed the novel tucked under my arm. “You can just put it there.” She motioned behind her.

I loosed a smile. “I’m not returning this. I'm here to show them my latest book.” And I flashed the cover of Two from Isaac’s House in her direction.

“You’re an author?”

My grin widened as we chatted books and place. With a few key words from her or me, our discussion morphed to deeper questions about God and faith and churches, because she had trouble reconciling some folks’ stance on faith issues with what she thought God ought to be. I don’t know about you, but I love to talk about God’s heart. Don’t get me started, because before you know it, the preacher in me will take over.

She had questions. Lots of questions. New to the area, she wanted to find a place to worship, but she had real worries. She'd heard that churches in our neck of the woods have split over various definitions of big-sin/no-sin/who-cares-it's-not-sin.

So we talked about sin—hers, mine, and others’—and what God has to say about it all. Because that’s what it should boil down to, isn’t it? What God says and not what man says, including what God says about loving all who fall short. When we finished, long after the library had opened its doors, she gave me a hug, her eyes glistening with renewed hope. She'd needed the words along with the assurances about God's love. And she marched inside to check out my books.

Then, a couple of days ago, I stopped at a local crafts store to check pricing on replacement batting for our interior boat cushions. The gal who helped me bubbled with friendly cheer. “I like to buy locally,” I told her, “just as I hope folk will support their local authors.” (Yep, a shameless plug…you never know.)

Her eyes rounded. “Are you an author?”

I dug out a business card and handed it over.

And then the most amazing thing happened. I hadn’t mentioned my subject matter or the titles of my books. But she looked straight at me. “I’m a serial victim of abuse.”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by “serial,” but my heart broke. My mother-arms wanted to wrap her up. She told me her life was good now, but she still felt as if there were a chasm she had to cross, a place of perfection she needed to achieve for God to love her truly. That's one of my favorite topics, so I quoted Psalm 139, reminding her that God had called her forth. That God’s desire for her was to be. Just be. That He loves her—as she is. And that He has a plan for her.

“What sort of plan? I don’t feel as if I’m doing any good for Him at all.”

I laughed. “Look at you. Your smile, your kindness, your servant’s heart show His love to everyone who comes in here.”

Tears spilled.

A couple of days later, I took books in to her, let her pick which one she’d like me to sign for her. She'd already bought Becalmed. Now she chose Heavy Weather, even though it deals with abuse. “I can handle it,” she said as she hugged the book to her, the tears back.

I’d like her to read Sailing out of Darkness, because it’s about guilt and love and forgiveness. Maybe next time.

We each have appointments to keep. Sometimes it’s as simple as handing over a business card. Sometimes it involves looking another person in the eye and listening—and then sharing the love of God.

As writers, as authors, we tell stories, but sometimes our potential readers are folk wanting to tell us one. And to have us love them anyway.

What about you? Have you been listening recently? I’d love to hear your story.

Tweatable:

Unscheduled #appointments with #readers. #Hearts and stories in unexpected places.  @NovelRocket @WritingOnBoard http://bit.ly/1WVOhjJ

Normandie studied sculpture in Italy before receiving her BA, summa cum laude with special honors in English. Known for her women’s fiction—Becalmed (2013), Sailing out of Darkness (2013), and Heavy Weather 2015)—she ventured into the realm of romantic suspense with the release of Two from Isaac’s House. In early 2016, a novella, From Fire into Fire, will continue the Isaac House saga. Normandie and her husband spent a number of years on board their 50-foot ketch, Sea Venture, sailing in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. They now live in coastal North Carolina, where she takes care of her aging mother.
Normandie's Website
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Are You Listening?

by +AneMulligan  @AneMulligan

Do you look for a new word on which to focus throughout the year? I started this practice a few years ago, because of a friend and fellow writer, Julie Garmon. This year, my word is "listen".

Uh-oh. I'm in trouble. And it's only the beginning of January. Oh, I can listen to a conversation I'm involved in. I can eavesdrop on them, too. As a writer, it's important for me to listen. And I do - to the conversations around me.

But to sit quietly and listen to God? Not so much. I'm A.D.D. My attention span is that of a gnat. I try to empty my mind, which is hard when it's filled with voices telling you their story. But I try. I'll pray, then be silent and wait for God to speak to me. 

Within a few seconds of nothing, my mind wanders. It leaves on its own, anxious for the next adventure or something. Pretty soon I realize I've mentally left the room. I don't mean to, but I can't seem to help it.

Which makes this word so difficult for me. I guess God expects me to learn how this year. All I can say is He's going to have to smack me upside the head when my mind starts wandering. I will say, sometimes God has spoken quickly and I've heard Him in my soul. And it's awesome. 

Looking back, I realize there have been times when I was noodling on a plot or character, and God has "spoken" by giving me the exact idea I needed to make the story work. And yes, I remember to thank Him.

So this year, I'm going to work on listening more, for both those story ideas and for God to simply share something with me because He loves me. That in itself is a mind-blowing thought! 

What are you going to focus on this year?

Ane Mulligan writes Southern-fried fiction served with a tall, sweet iced tea. She firmly believes coffee and chocolate are two of the four major food groups. Novelist and playwright, Ane is the executive director of Players Guild@Sugar Hill, a new community theater and president of the award-winning literary site, Novel Rocket. She resides in Sugar Hill, GA, with her artist husband and a dog of Biblical proportion. You can find Ane at her website, Novel Rocket, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ and on her Amazon author page.

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The Art of Listening by guest blogger Ann Tatlock

Ann Tatlock is the author of eight novels. She enjoys teaching and acting as writing mentor at numerous conferences and workshops throughout the year. Her greatest joy is her daughter Laura, with whom she shares a love of life, laughter and Chihuahuas. Ann lives with her family on the side of a mountain in beautiful Western North Carolina. You can read more about her work on her website.

The Art of Listening

If you can’t figure out exactly who your characters are and what it is they ought to be doing next, it may be that you’re trying too hard. Your characters will tell you everything you need to know, as long as you’re willing to listen.

Maybe you remember that wonderful scene from “Finding Forrester.” In the movie, Sean Connery plays William Forrester, the reclusive Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who never writes a second novel and who hasn’t left his New York City apartment for years. Unexpectedly, he is befriended by a 16-year-old basketball player named Jamal Wallace who has a secret passion—he wants to be a writer.

Once Forrester reluctantly consents to becoming Jamal’s mentor, he brings out a couple of typewriters, starts tapping away at his own and tells Jamal to “go ahead.” Jamal says he can’t go ahead, he has to think first. To which Forrester replies, “No. No thinking. That comes later. You write the first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write—not to think.”

While I agree with Forrester (he is, after all, a Pulitzer Prize winner!), I would back up one step. Even before you begin to write, just listen. Just go about your business—clean the house, mow the lawn, pay bills, play with the kids—and at the same time try to be aware of the voices at the back of your mind that are telling you their story. Because if you’re a writer of fiction, that’s the best way to give your imagination the freedom it needs to work.

It’s impossible to explain exactly how this happens, but it may be something like this: Picture those times when you were about to say something but suddenly you forgot what it was. The other person says to you, “Well, it’ll come to you when you’re not thinking about it.” And it does! As soon as you move on to the next topic, your mind retrieves the lost item that had disappeared from the tip of your tongue.

The mind and the imagination—what a wonder! Especially when our inspiration comes from the Holy Spirit. The word “inspire” in fact means “God breathed.” Just as God breathed life into us (Genesis 2:7), He continues to breathe life into our minds and souls so that we may create works of beauty that glorify Him.

Before I start a novel, I pray for God’s inspiration and I listen. And then my characters rise up and become real, three-dimensional people with minds of their own. They tell me everything I need to know for the story to take shape, and though I’m the one who must sit at the keyboard searching for the right words and putting the scenes in order, they are always there, guiding me and correcting me whenever I take a misstep.

Believe me, they have minds of their own. They don’t like it when I attempt to change their story. When I tried to kill off Doc Eide in my first novel, A Room of My Own, he made me feel guilty and out of sorts for days until I realized he had no intension of dying. Thankfully, I relented and let him live. The story is much better with the good doctor alive at the end.

Ditto with Howard Draper in All the Way Home. As far as I was concerned, he was going to meet his Maker on that lonely back road in Mississippi. “Not on your life,” he said. “Kill me, and your readers will rise up and revolt.” Of course, he was right. Had I succeeded in doing Howard in, the story would have been ruined. When All the Way Home won the Christy Award, I could hear Howard--still alive and playing his violin somewhere in that place where all satisfied characters reside--saying, “Told you so.”

Tillie Monroe of Promises to Keep was another character full of surprises. She first came to me about 25 years ago, long before I was a published author. I tried to write her into a novel, but the story fell flat. “What’s the matter, Tillie?” I asked her. “Not time yet,” she replied. “I’ll let you know when it is.” That dear old woman patiently sat around for a quarter of a century before finally showing up in force. “All right,” she said. “Now’s the time. And here’s the story.” While she spoke, she was sitting on the front porch of a house she used to own and she was reading the morning paper. And there begins the first chapter of Promises to Keep.

Now you may wonder whether I tried to kill Tillie off. I can’t tell you, of course, or I’ll ruin the ending of the story for you. But I can tell you that she rather snippily said to me, “You do tend to lean toward killing people, don’t you? And you’re not even a writer of murder mysteries.” I like to think that she and I came to a good compromise on the story’s ending, though that’s all I’ll say about that.

Like the proverbial pounding of a square peg in a round hole, it doesn’t work to force characters to be who we want them to be or do what we want them to do. They are their own people, and the story belongs to them. They will tell you their names, and you must accept them, even when the name seems ridiculous. (I told Satchel Queen of Every Secret Thing that Satchel was a boy’s name, and that the only Satchel I ever heard of was an African-American baseball player while here she was a young white girl. I tried to change her name to Susannah, but my attempts were useless. Satchel said she wouldn’t tell me her story if I didn’t call her by her real name.)

They will tell you what they look like and what their dreams are and where they have been and where they are going. Sometimes they will come upon you suddenly, when you may be halfway through the book already and you had no idea any other characters are involved. But there they are and you must include them, because the story won’t be complete without them.

As someone who believes fully that Christians must be thinking people, still I offer my first word of advice to writers both published and not-yet-published: Don’t think. At least, not at first. Instead, get into the habit of listening. Give your characters the freedom they need to become fully formed people, rising up to populate that wonderful world of your imagination. First, they will surprise and delight you and then, in turn, they will surprise and delight your readers.

Promises to Keep

Eleven-year-old Rosalind (Roz) Anthony escapes an abusive home life when her mother decides to leave her husband and take the children to another state. Leaving Minnesota behind and settling in Mills River, Illinois, the family is surprised to wake up one day and find a stranger on their front porch, reading the morning paper.

That stranger is 70-year-old Tillie Monroe, the former owner who aims to die in the house her husband built for her and where she lived all her married life—before her sons sold the place out from under her. Tillie’s insistence on coming home proves a godsend for the family in ways they could never imagine.

Alan Anthony has followed the family to Mills River, but reveals himself only to Roz. What Roz wants more than anything is for her daddy to quit drinking, to be the good man she knows him to sometimes be, and to take his rightful place as husband and father. He promises to change. But should Roz trust him?

To read my review of Promises to Keep, click here.

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