Author and Novelist Glynn Young
I was interviewed by Wombwell Rainbow, a U.K.-based site that features interviews with local, regional, national, and international writers. The discussion ranged from reading and writing poetry to work ethics, writing, and favorite authors.
You can read the entire interview at Wombwell Rainbow.
A friend and fellow writer asked me if I edited my writing as I wrote or after I finished a draft. My answer was yes. I do both. I edit as I write, over and over again, and I edit once the draft is “finished,” if that’s possible.
The question provoked a deeper thought. Is it possible for me to separate editing and writing?
The answer is no, and I suspect computers have something to do with it.
I was trained in journalism. At the time, classroom technology consisted of Royal manual typewriters. Electric machines were available, but my journalism school couldn’t afford them. I taught myself typing on a portable electric typewriter, but in-class assignments and tests were done on the manual Royals. I can still remember the sound of 20 journalism students pounding on typewriter keys.
To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.
Photograph by Stanley Dai via Unsplash. Used with permission.
Reflecting on Writing a Novel
Dancing Priest, my first novel and the first in the Dancing Priest series, is free on Amazon Kindle this week.
It was published seven years ago, and it was almost a decade in the making. From an image inspired by a song, the story spent three years inside my head. In idle moments, or at night after I’d gone to bed, I slowly worked my way through the story of Michael Kent and Sarah Hughes. Over those three years, the story changed, incorporated new ideas and characters, shifted in its narrative arc, and shifted its location from Italy to Scotland.
When I finally began to transfer the story from head to computer screen, in the early fall of 2005, it came as a torrent. It took about three months, but when I stopped, I had a torrent of 250,000 words, sufficient for three novels. Then began the cutting, splicing, and saving chunks for later. At a writer’s conference or two, I showed excerpts to editors and agents. Editors liked it; agents didn’t. One agent told me that if it didn’t have a vampire or a werewolf, it couldn’t be marketed to publishers (this was at the height of the mania for the Twilight novels).
Dancing Priest eventually found its way into print. From that first behemoth manuscript in 2005, it was likely rewritten 20 times before it saw the public light of day. Writing is hard work. Editing is hard work. Marketing is hard work. Trying to market one book, write another, and hold down a full-time job is impossible work.
I’ve reread the book several times, and while there are a few things I’d like to change or edit, I find myself content with it. I’ve always considered it a love story for men, and the reactions of male readers have supported that. While a few (male and female) readers have thought Michael Kent a bit too perfect, male readers have generally seen the character as to what men aspire to. One reader said it should be required reading for teenage boys, because it offered a sense of “the nobility of doing right.”
The character I still feel the closest to in the story is Sarah Hughes. Her attitude to faith mirrored my own in college, as in, “You’re serious about this stuff?” How she comes to faith is a direct lift from my own experience when I was a senior in college. What happens to her when she begins to talk with the wife of the director of “College Campus Ministry” is an almost verbatim description of what happened to me when I began to talk with the director of Campus Crusade for Christ at my university.
If there is a single theme in Dancing Priest, it is the same theme that you’ll find in the three novels that have followed it: No matter how dark things look, there is always hope.
This week, you can access the free copy on Amazon Kindle here.
Dancing Priest, the first novel in the series, is free on Amazon Kindle this week.
Michael Kent…
A young man studying to become a priest finds love, and learns that faith can separate.
A university cyclist seeking Olympic gold finds tragedy, death and heroism.
A pastor thousands of miles from home seeks vocation and finds fatherhood.
Sarah Hughes…
A young woman living abroad finds love and loses family.
A university student meets a faith she cannot accept.
An artist finds faith and learns to paint with her soul.
Dancing Priest is the story of Michael Kent and Sarah Hughes and a love, born, separated, and reborn, in faith and hope.
Bishop Jeremy Smallwood was so practiced at nodding and smiling that he could have taken a nap while he listened.
Mrs. Brightman-Pennington, referred by many except to her face as Bright Penny, was talking. Droning, in fact, her voice acting like a sedative, a very harsh sedative, as if she could simultaneously put a listener to sleep while dragging sharp nails down his arms. Her voice had an irritating, vaguely condescending quality that, if their meeting exceeded the allotted 30 minutes, Smallwood knew would drive him to a criminal act.
His mind stuck on that phrase – criminal act – and he nearly jumped up from his chair. Instead, he calmed himself, offering a platitude here, a cliché there, anything to avoid alerting Bright Penny that he was coming unglued and his life, so carefully cultivated and constructed, was beginning to unravel.
With each of his nods or comments, Bright Penny would smile and continue to talk.
He didn’t want to listen. Not today. All he wanted to do was to run to his Mini in the cathedral parking lot, drive to the Bristol airport, and hop a plane to Brussels. From Brussels, he would promptly lose himself, somewhere in Europe. Anywhere. His French was tolerable enough; he could find a village in Belgium or perhaps Provence.
Bright Penny had shifted her subject from missions to the cathedral gardens; he couldn’t remember how she had made the transition. He glanced at his office window to the gardens outside. She was saying something about charging extra for a garden tour, and he realized she was saying that visitors could pay extra if they wanted to see the gardens.
“We’re very proud of our gardens, of course, Mrs. Brightman-Pennington,” Smallwood said, “but they’re not that spectacular to charge visitors an extra fee, surely.”
“It’s what they could be, bishop,” she said, and then she was off and running on yet another stream of consciousness monologue.
He felt like screaming. Instead, he dug his fingernails into his legs where his hands rested. He briefly glanced as the phone message left by his secretary. Please call as soon as convenient. He would like a meeting as soon as possible. And a phone number for a Detective Merwin with the Bristol police.
His hands were sweating, and he felt slightly faint. He knew why the detective had called. He couldn’t help but know why. The news stories had been pouring out of London for days. Priests arrested. Boys abused. Pedophilia rings.
Eleven priests had been arrested, their names published in the news reports. He knew two of the priests. Both had been sent by Canterbury, the archdiocese Bristol was officially part of. He had seen their personnel files and had immediately protested. Then he received a call from his former seminary head, telling him to man up and be a team player. That was code. Follow your orders, or someone will remember the good old days at seminary.
The priest hood had been part of his life as far back as he could remember. He was a third-generation Anglican cleric. His grandfather had been a parish priest, his father had been dean at Durham Cathedral, and now he was a bishop, with bright prospects for his career. His father would often mention Lambeth Palace as a career aspiration. Smallwood had attended St. Simon’s because that’s where his grandfather and father had attended. As he was the only son, it was expected. And he did what he had to do to get ahead and excel. He’d become a team player.
He’d hated it. He’d hated St. Simon’s, and he’d hated the priesthood. No one who knew would believe. Including his wife. And his father.
None of the news reports mentioned anything outside of London. At least yet. But he knew it was only a matter of time. Too many transfers from parishes and dioceses all over Britain.
The media had already anointed it a “crisis.”
He knew it worse than that. There were more priests. A lot more.
His hands were trembling. He tightly clasped them together to stop it.
“Bishop Smallwood,” Mrs. Brightman-Pennington said, “have you heard a word I’ve said?”
“Of course,” he said, offering his trademark smile that often dazzled her and other female parishioners.
“Do you feel all right?” she said. “You look positively ashen.”
“Actually,” he said, grateful for a potential end to the meeting, “I’ve been fighting the beginning of a migraine all day.”
“And here I’ve been prattling away,” she said, promptly launching into a discussion of everyone she knew who suffered from migraines, how they coped, and some of the folk remedies they had tried, with mixed success.
His secretary discreetly knocked at the door and entered. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Bishop Smallwood,” she said, “but you have that scheduled meeting.” She smiled at their guest.
He stood and thanked Bright Penny, and said he hoped to continue their discussion soon. She beamed, talked a few more minutes, and then left.
After seeing Mrs. Brightman-Pennington out, his secretary returned.
“Detective Merwin is insistent that he see you today,” she said. “I’ve told him your schedule is full, but he became rather demanding. And rude.”
Smallwood nodded. “Let’s bump that meeting with the deacons to another day. That should provide enough time. Tell the detective I can meet with him at 4 p.m.” He glanced at his watch; it was now 2 p.m. There was a flight to Brussels at 3:30.
“Is this about the news reports from London?” she said. “I saw the list of names.”
“More than likely,” he said, displaying a sense of calm and perspective he didn’t feel, “they will need to check on the backgrounds of the priests arrested.” How many had passed through the diocese since he’d been bishop? Thirty? Forty? He’d lost count. How much more had been covered up, parents calmed down, discreet payments made, counseling arranged?
She nodded and left. He could see she was unconvinced.
Should he call Gwendolyn? He knew his wife was volunteering at school today. She wouldn’t be home until 4 or 4:30. Should he say anything? This could be just a perfunctory conversation with the detective, just the routine thing they did.
Should he say anything to the children? Joan, their oldest, was at St. Andrew’s. Peter, 15, was in school in Bristol. Elliott, their youngest, was 9 and attending school at St. Edward’s, where Gwen was volunteering.
Andrew Brinley. His name came unbidden and unexpected. His close friend, doing seminary together at St. Simon’s. Jeremy had been a team player; Andrew had not. Jeremy got the plum assignments and was shortlisted for the next archbishopric opening. Andrew, whom he had not talked with since seminary, had been banished to some obscure failing church in Scotland. He’d turned the church around. A remarkably gifted preacher and pastor. A man who loved serving. The priest who a 15-year-old boy named Michael Kent to his church, a boy who believed he was being called to the priesthood, the man now sitting on Britain’s throne.
Brimley hadn’t been a team player, Smallwood thought bitterly. He had kept his integrity intact.
Everything had gone according to plan until this.
He would leave. He would drive home, pack a suit bag, and get to the airport. He knew there were ATM machines at the airport. He couldn’t face his family, and he couldn’t bear the idea of facing his father.
Avoiding the main door to his office, with his secretary seated outside and the next appointment waiting, whoever it was, Smallwood slipped through the door to the garden making his way to the cathedral car park. Within minutes he was home, grabbing a suitcase and throwing clothes into it. In his study, he opened the petty cash jar, the funds inside ostensibly to be used for needy parishioners. It was diocesan money. He quickly counted the 220 pounds. He could get more at the airport ATM.
He shoved the cash into his pocket, suddenly realized he was wearing his clerical collar. He rushed back up the stairs, stripped off the collar and short, and found a polo shirt and jacket.
Smallwood glanced at his watch. It was now 2:35. He could still make the 3:30 p.m. flight to Brussels.
He raced out the side door to his car. A man was leaning against it. The man smiled.
“Bishop Smallwood? I’m Detective Merwin with the Bristol police.” The man looked at the suit bag in Smallwood’s hand. “I believe I’m a bit early for our appointment. I hope that’s not a problem.”
This story is based on a scene in my upcoming novel Dancing Prophet.
Top photograph by Kiwihug via Unsplash. Lower photograph by Ryoji Iwata, also via Unsplash. Both used with permission.
My introduction to series fiction happened in college. I was checking the sale table at a B. Dalton’s Bookstore and found God is an Englishman by R.F. Delderfield, a novel about the Swann family set in mid-19thcentury England. Not long after, I realized there was a second volume, entitled Theirs Was the Kingdom. And a couple of years later, the third and final volume, Give Us This Day, in the series was published.
I loved those stories. Delderfield had created an entire world built around the coming of the railroads and how one man realized that there was opportunity in the routes not connected by the railroads. He builds a business empire upon that realization. It was (and is) good, old-fashioned storytelling at its best. I still have those three books.
Writing a fiction series seems to have become popular in the 19thcentury. It’s not the same thing as serial publication, which is how Charles Dickens published his novels – a chapter per issue of a periodical. One of the best-known series in the 19thcentury was the Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope, comprised of six related novels. Trollope also write the six-volume Palliser series.
The currently popular Poldark television program on PBS is based on the 12 novels written by Winston Graham, written in two periods, four from 1945 to 1953 and the rest from 1973 to 2002. And a beloved series still being published are the Mitford novels of Jan Karon.
Fiction series are not limited to adults; in anything, they’re even more popular among children. I grew up on the Hardy Boys. Other popular children’s series at the time were Nancy Drew, The Dana Sisters, the Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, and others. Today, my 8-year-old grandson is deep into the Boxcar Children series.
Having written three novels in a series, with the fourth now in editorial production, I can explain why fiction authors tend to write related books. Dancing Priest began its manuscript life as some 250,000 words, almost enough for three novels. (For a word-count comparison, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is 587,000 words.) (Tolstoy could get away with that. Few if any novelists could get away with that today.) I ended up splicing it into a novel of 92,000 words, a manuscript of 70,000 words that was eventually expanded to become A Light Shining, a manuscript (a really rough manuscript) of 45,000 that grew to become Dancing King, and some 35,000 words that eventually made their way into the fourth novel in the series, tentatively entitled Dancing Prophet.
What happened was this: as I constructed what became the world of Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes, the construction grew, it expanded over time, it became more elaborate and detailed, and it became too big to be contained in only a single book. What was one rather large manuscript was transformed into four novels.
There are potentially more. I have story ideas and even extended fragments and outlines for additional books. I’m not sure if I will go there, although it’s difficult to resist when you’ve connected with a character who won’t appear for another two or three books. Perhaps what will happen, or what should happen, is that these fragments and outlines will make it into a story collection.
But I know what it is for an author to publish a series. You come to inhabit a fictional world, one of your own creation. It becomes incredibly familiar. You see things in the real world and almost without thinking apply them to your fictional world. You read a newspaper story and translate it to your fictional world. Sometimes you get surprised and discover that something you wrote becomes reality. That’s happened to me at least three times during the writing of the Dancing Priest novels.
Little did I know when I picked up that copy of God is an Englishman.
Top photograph by Jake Hills via Unsplash. Used with permission.
An award-winning speechwriter and communications professional, Glynn Young is the author of three novels and the non-fiction book Poetry at Work.
