Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

ACFW

How My Novel Originated in the Family Bible

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When I was young child, I asked my father what the package was that sat on a shelf in his closet. It was wrapped in brown grocery bag paper and tied with twine. “That,” he said, “is the family Bible, and one day it will be yours.” 

That day came during a visit home to New Orleans about 25 years later. Apologizing for the sorry state it was in, my father thought I might find someone in St. Louis to restore it. Instead, I did the time-honored thing and put in on a closet shelf. I did find a conservation box to store it in, and I did handwrite a copy of the four pages of family records. But it sat on the shelf, just as it had sat before.

But as I studied the family records, I noticed that the entries for births, deaths, and marriages were all in the same hand, presumably that of my great-grandfather Samuel. He’d even signed his name on an inside cover page. Samuel was something of a family legend, a legend which my later research showed was almost entirely untrue. But he’d certainly written all of the entries.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

How a Troublesome Manuscript Was Saved

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Hold on to those unfinished or problematic manuscripts. You never know when they’re due for a rebirth.

You pour everything into creating a manuscript. You type “The End.” You smile and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. It’s done. You finished it.

You set it aside for a few days, and then you reread it.

You see a problem, but you know it can be easily fixed. You read on. Another problem, and another theoretical fix. You plow on, right to the end, and you realize what the problem is.

The problem is the entire manuscript. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t tell the story you want told. It doesn’t tell the story the characters want told. And you think to yourself, “All that work. All that work.” 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Scott Graham via Unsplash Used with permission.

Research Can Teach You a Hard (if Useful) Lesson

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I learned a very hard lesson while writing a historical novel. I learned how hard it can be, and it’s hard for both the research you do and for the research you have to ignore. 

I’m writing a novel that takes place in two historical periods – the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, and 50 years later, during the run-up to World War I. The story was loosely based on a story handed down in the family about what had happened to my great-grandfather. The emphasis is on the word “loosely,” because the more I researched, the more I discovered that what was passed down as a family story had very little basis in fact.

Because I discovered this about 40,000 words into the manuscript, it stopped me cold. For weeks. I kept hoping I was wrong, but I learned my extended family had two oral traditions about my great-grandfather. And the version passed down to me was the wrong one, or perhaps I should say “more embellished.” It made a great story, but it was flat-out wrong.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: Some of the 1,700 Union cavalry troops who rode through Mississippi in 1863 during Grierson’s Raid. 

Why Poetry Can Make You a Better Writer

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Like most of my generation, I read poetry in English classes in high school. It wasn’t until I was a high school senior that I read poetry that stuck in my head. And it was T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Four Quartets.” I read poetry in college as well, but my English literature professor gave brutal tests that put me off poetry for years. 

My professional career eventually led me to corporate speechwriting. I enjoyed the work, the executives I wrote for liked what I did, and I had that sense of “this is what I was meant to do.” It was a good friend, one who wasn’t a speechwriter, who suggested that if I were really serious about it, then I needed to read poetry. He sent me three books – the collected poems of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas. He told me to read them and others on a regular basis.

And I thought, seriously? No speechwriter I knew read poetry regularly. Most then and now would read books about current events, developments in science, politics, and a lot of speeches written by others. But poetry? Really?

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph by Nick Fewings via Unsplash. Used with permission.

When Research for Your Historical Novel Changes Your Understanding

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For more than a year, I’ve been researching / writing/ researching / writing a historical novel set during the American Civil War. It’s loosely based on the experiences of my great-grandfather, but the more I write and research, the looser it becomes.

I thought I knew the basic story of the war. What I soon learned is that, for a very long time, historians focused on the war in the East, which specifically meant Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. But in the last two of three decades, the war in the West – in particular, Tennessee and Mississippi – has come to be recognized as almost as significant as that in the East.

It was certainly significant for both sides of my family. My father’s family experienced the Battle of Shiloh and Grierson’s Raid (the basis for the 1959 movie The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne). My mother’s family experienced the Union occupation of New Orleans (starting in 1862), both the Creole French and German immigrant sides of the family. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: John Clem, who “enlisted” in the Union army at age 9 in 1861 and became a soldier at age 12.

When You Face Too Many Ways to Open a Novel

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How many openings can a novel have? Let me count the ways.

I’d never experienced the problem of too many ways to open a novel. Five novels, and five fairly straightforward beginnings, meant that I never struggled over how to open a story. Somehow, I always knew, and it wasn’t an issue.

Until now.

I began to write the draft like I always had. I had an idea, and image, in my mind, and that’s how I’d start the story. I wrote it. I read it over several times. It seemed to work. I started writing beyond the opening, and I bogged down. 

Something seemed slightly off, and I knew it was the opening. So, I reworked it. And reworked it. I revised it to the point where it was almost unrecognizable from the first version. It still didn’t work. I discarded it and started over. I tried something entirely different. At one point, I thought I had it, finally, only to realize I didn’t. I went back to the first and tried it again.

To continue reading, please see my post today at ACFW. 

Photograph by Ankhesenamun via Unsplash. Used with permission.