Dancing Priest

Making the Time for Writing – and Honoring It

May 4, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

In On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, Ann Kroeker and Charity Craig ask this question: To what extant have you arranged your space and time to honor your writing?

I joke with my wife that only three poets in the United States make a living from writing poetry, and two of them are Billy Collins.

Expanding from poetry to writing in general, how many novelists actually support themselves by strictly writing? Likely more than you find in poetry, but it’s equally likely that the number can be counted – it’s not huge. James Patterson. Stephen King. Some romance writers.

The number is finite and knowable.

For the rest of us, we likely write whenever we can cram in a minute or 30 minutes or an hour. I write whenever I find a moment to write.

My first novel, Dancing Priest, spent the first four years of its existence as a story idea inside my head. Initially, I never intended to write it down. It started with a song I heard, and the image of a priest dancing on a beach. I developed the story as a mental narrative and delved deeper into it once I started biking. A number of scenes in the novel were created and elaborated while I rode the 10 miles (20-miles round trip) of Grant’s Trail in St. Louis.

I was also doing a lot of traveling, including a regular monthly trip (sometimes more frequently) to Alabama. Airline flights and nights in hotel rooms afforded the time for writing. Two hotels in Oxford, Alabama, provided the physical space for the writing of Dancing Priest from 2004 to 2007, the mental and physical narratives overlapping during this time.

I started writing the story down in the fall of 2005. Hurricane Katrina and getting my mother and aunt out of New Orleans had something to do with it. Perhaps it was seeing the destruction of the place I was born and grew up. Whatever it was, it was Katrina that spurred me to start writing the story down.

I immediately discovered that thinking a story in my head was infinitely easier than writing it down. The mental narrative included images – what the characters looked like, the settings, even the weather. The written narrative had to account for these things in words. The time required multiplied exponentially.

So, I crammed it in whenever and wherever I could – early mornings, late nights, and trips. There was no set time, because I was also a husband, a father (and soon a grandfather), a church deacon, an editor, an occasional freelancer – and I had a full-time job that, like most jobs, is something more than full-time.

To answer Ann’s and Charity’s question, I have no regular time to write. I have only what becomes available, or what time I can make available. Through 2015, that “schedule” allowed the creation of two published novels (Dancing Priest and its sequel, A Light Shining), the non-fiction book Poetry at Work, this blog, a weekly column at Tweetspeak Poetry, and occasional articles for other online sites.

In the late spring of 2015, the time available changed radically – I retired from the day job. With all the supposed free time, it took three years to write the third novel, Dancing King. Perhaps I did better with a demanding schedule.

But there’s a second consideration to that question asked by Ann and Charity – the idea of honoring your writing.

I could come up with a longwinded answer, but I believe it’s tied to the time devoted to writing – I honor my writing by making the time for it.

I’ll ask you the same question – how do you find the time to write, and how do you honor your writing?

Photograph by Jordan McQueen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

On the Power of Noticing

April 20, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

One very vivid memory I have from when I was five years old is from kindergarten. During recess in the front yard of the church which sponsored our kindergarten, a little girl and I ran around in our sock feet. We had taken off our shoes for some reason. When it was time to go in, she slipped her shoes on and ran inside. And I stared at my shoes. The laces were untied, and I didn’t know how to retie them.

Her name was Joy. My name felt more like terrified. We weren’t supposed to remove our shoes, even in the classroom.

How do I remember this? I don’t know, but I know it’s important for writing.

In On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, Ann Kroeker (co-author with Charity Craig) gives some advice courtesy of another writer, Dorothea Braude, in how to engage memory: “Set aside a short period each day: when you will, by taking thought, recapture a childlike ‘innocence of eye,’ the state of wide-eyed interest you have when you were five years old.”

Ann, like the rest of us on the planet, has to do more than simply sitting and thinking to recapture that “innocence of eye.” She has to write her thoughts and observations down, using whatever is closest at hand – a journal, a Word document, phone or tablet apps, or whatever else is handy (I’ve been known to write thoughts on grocery lists).

I carry a journal with me just about everywhere I go, including business meetings, church worship services, and sometimes even the gym. In the one I’m carrying now (its predecessors safely stored on a bookshelf above my computer), you might find rough drafts of poems, quotes (like the one by Dorothea Braude cited above), my notes from a poetry reading with Billy Collins, sermon notes, and odd facts like “During August 1914, the Times of London received more than 100 poetry submissions about the war every day.”

When my wife and I went to Amsterdam and Paris for a belated 25^th wedding anniversary trip, I carried a travel journal with me, dutifully recording each day where we went, what we saw, where we ate, and what we bought. It was not only helpful for correcting faulty memories later, it was also useful for helping to keep track of expenses and anything that might have to be declared for Customs.

I did the same thing these past six years for our trips to England. Except these travel journals are slightly different. In addition to places visited and places we ate, they also include drafts of poems written while on a train to Oxford, notations from ads on the tube in London, a few comments about Salisbury Cathedral, observations from a walk in St. James Park, street names and directions for my Dancing Priestnovels, and any number of things I noticed and didn’t want to forget.

Traveling is helpful for writing because you’re seeing the unfamiliar and the new. You’re looking at something with new eyes – those “eyes of innocence.” I’ve actually written the first draft of a novel because I looked at something familiar – an old apartment complex – with a completely new eye.

Like I said, I don’t know how this works, but for writers, it’s critical.

Photograph by Peter Hershey via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Christmas in Edinburgh

April 16, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

In my novel Dancing King, Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes have something of a break from London, when they go to Scotland for Christmas (with a slight interruption with Michael’s sermon at Southwark Cathedralin London). It’s a relatively short part in the narrative, but two important things happen.

First, Michael has a conversation in the stable with his guardian father, Ian McLaren. Ian and his wife Iris were surprised – shocked is a better word – to discover they become the guardians of a six-year-old boy. Childless themselves, they raised him as their own child, and he still calls them “Ma and Da.” And Michael gets his degree from the University of Edinburgh, which is where he meets American exchange students and twins David and Sarah Hughes in the first novel in the series, Dancing Priest.

McLarens barn — This is a converted barn (now a vacation home) but is the idea for the McLaren stable

Their home, known to the family simply as McLarens, is some 40 miles from the center of Edinburgh, positioned in a somewhat rural area that’s hilly (as a boy and teenager, Michael does considerable mountain biking on the property). Although born in southern England, Michael considers Scotland and Edinburgh as “home.”

Edinburgh is on the eastern side of Scotland. The inspiration for McLarens is actually on the western side. The address for the home and rather famous gardens of An Calais the “Isle of Seil, Argyll, and Bute,” near the village of Ellenabeich. The gardens were first established in 1930, and it took considerable renovation and blasting of the terrain to plant them. Then, as now, the gardens feature azaleas, rhododendrons, and roses.

For the Dancing Priest novels, I “borrowed” the house and gardens, moved them to east side of Scotland near Edinburgh, and expanded the size of the property. I created a barn / stable for equine veterinarian Ian, and it’s there in Dancing Kingthat he and Michael have a long talk on the morning of Christmas Eve. The scene is meant to show the closeness and tenderness in their relationship and even add a bit of humor. It was not in the first draft of the manuscript but came during the editing process; it was one of those ideas that suddenly began to spill from my head on to the page in front of me. And it turned into one of my favorite scenes in the book.

That afternoon, Ian leads Michael, his adopted sons Jason and Jim, the baby Hank, Sarah’s brother David and his son Gavin, and Michael’s best friend Tommy MacFarland on the annual McLaren Men Last-Minute Christmas Eve Shopping Expedition to downtown Edinburgh. Their first stop is Jenners Department Store.

Jenners, often called the “Harrod’s of the North,” was the largest independent department store in the U.K. until 2005, when it was bought by House of Fraser. It’s a beautiful, and old, store, with that classic Victorian architecture and a spectacular grand hall. And it’s there that Michael’s friends and family learn firsthand how life has changed for Michael and his boys. They’re recognized as soon as they step through the doors, and Michael feels the obligation to speak to the growing crowd.

What the Scotland scenes show is that Michael Kent-Hughes has the continuity of a loving family and the press of new and demanding obligations.

Top photograph: the home at An Cala Gardens. Photograph of the exterior of Jenners is by Stuart Caieand the interior by Christian Bickel, both via Wikimedia.

Writing and Publishing

April 6, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I started reading a novel recently where what mattered to the writer most was being published. I stopped after four chapters. The writing was bad. What got the book published was lust dripping from every page. I suppose some authors would be thrilled to write like that if it meant being published.

I wasn’t. You might call me the reluctant novelist.

I worked on my first novel, Dancing Priest, for years before I showed the manuscript, or even a piece of the manuscript, to anyone. I wasn’t uninterested in publishing it. I did join online groups, followed what everyone was saying about publishing, followed the blogs of agents and publishers, sent our query letters to agents, and talked to editors and others writers. And I was reading a lot of fiction, both in the general and Christian genres.

I attended a writer’s conference, and even had a session with an editor who had read a portion of my manuscript and then a group reading session with an agent and other writers. Both sessions were personally encouraging. I kept at the writing. I even kept writing after an awful experience with a review and an editor that taught me that some Christian publishers were no different than general publishers. It’s a business, like any other business, and it is business considerations that rule over everything else, including what kind of quality is published.

So, when a small publisher approached me and said they had heard I had a manuscript, I said no. It took almost a year of prodding before I finally agreed to let the publisher see it. When they came back with the offer to publish, it took six months for me to agree. I was still reacting to that negative experience with the Christian publisher, and I also understood what kind of effort would be required to market and promote the book. I already had a full-time job that was about 50 percent more than a full-time job.

We went ahead and published. And I was right to have been worried – the amount of time required was huge, in reverse proportion to the result achieved. The same thing happened with the sequel, A Light Shining.

But I learned a lot. And that made the entire experience worth it.

In On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, Charity Craig (co-author with Ann Kroeker) quotes author Anne Lamott, who frequently sees people at writing workshops who are less interested in writing and more in being published. “The problem that comes up over and over again,” she says, “is that these people want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You’ll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them.”

Charity and Ann both describe their own experiences with trying to be published. Both eventually got there, but not because they wanted to be published. They wanted to be writers first; they wanted to tell the story they had in them to tell. They both eventually realized that sometimes, and perhaps most of the time, it’s better to concentrate on the writing and making your story the best it can be before rushing out to try to get published. And sometimes life intervenes, and your writing dreams get put to the side.

The writing is what matters.

Photograph by Helloquence via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Talking with Megan Willome about “Dancing King”

March 2, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Writer Megan Willome and I had a long conversation about Dancing King, writing, fiction, characters, the use of emotion, crowd scenes, and even bicycles in London. She had read all three books in the Dancing Priest series.

“The stories haunt you, and not in a scary way. They serve as almost an alternate history: What if the Athens Olympics unfolded like that? What if England had a king on the throne instead of a queen? Like any good alternate history, it has enough true details to make it seem real. So real that I find myself thinking The Violence from book 2, A Light Shining, was as real as The Troubles.”

You can read her discussion and our conversation at Megan’s blog.

Writing to Make Faith Attractive

March 1, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

It showed up as a comment on a blog post, and it stopped me in my tracks.

“Whatever your plan is…I do hope you continue this series of books. May God direct your thoughts and plans with His plan. I loaned the books to a friend of mine to read, and her comment was after reading the first one (Dancing Priest), ‘If I wasn’t already a Christian, this book would make me want to be one.’ That is a powerful testimony. Keep writing. There is power in the written word when it directed by God.”

A comment like that leaves you surprised, almost shocked, humble, and then almost fearful.

You ask yourself, “What is it I’m doing here?”

I’ve been known to answer that question about the novels I’ve written with “I’m just telling a story.” It’s a story that was on my mind and my heart for years – almost five years – before I typed the first word. By the time I began writing it down, it was almost uncontrollable. I couldn’t type fast enough.

I came to a stop at 250,000 words. I still hadn’t poured it all out.

The Dancing Priest series is now three published books. More may come. One is in process. But I read a comment like that and I tremble.

The books haven’t exactly been blockbuster bestsellers. I’d starve in about four days if I had to live off the royalties (and the royalties would cover only food for four days). But when you hear things like “the best description of lifestyle evangelism I’ve ever read” and “that scene, that scene of Sarah’s speech in the hospital, I cried” – and you hear them from men – you know something else may be going on.

At the end of 2013, I almost stopped writing. Two novels and a non-fiction book in three years, my mother increasingly ill and reaching the end of her life, absolute craziness at work, keeping up a blog, writing two weekly columns – it all nearly did me in physically and emotionally. When Michael Kent-Hughes says in Dancing King that giving a sermon physically exhausts him, in many ways that’s me saying writing physically and emotionally exhausts me.

But after three novels, I know that I’m about more than “telling a story.” It’s that comment: “If I wasn’t already a Christian, this book would make me want to be one.” These may be “Christian novels” but they’re not really written for Christians (although Christians seem to like them). Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes may be attractive and sometimes inspiring heroes, but it is their faith that’s the real hero of the story. It carries them through separation, through tragedy, through mistakes they make, through literal attacks on their lives, and through constant attempts to smear their reputations. If this series continues, their faith will carry them through a lot more. And they don’t emerge from all of this unscathed; Michael bears literal and figurative scars. But it is faith that inspires these characters to carry on.

It took a reader to help me understand that a good part of what I’m about is making faith attractive.

Photograph by Samantha Sophia via Unsplash. Used with permission.

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