writing

When the Story Emerges from the Words

July 17, 2019 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

I’ve been working on a story, and Michelangelo pops into my head.

He has nothing to do with the story. And I’m not writing about art or sculpture on Italy or the Renaissance or anything related to those subjects.

But something happens in the process of writing that story, and it has to do with something Michelangelo said about sculpture.

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it,” he says, “and it it’s the task the sculptor to discover it.”

He follows it up with a slight variation: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved it until I set him free.”

I think the quotes were a bit presumptuous, but it is Michelangelo who says them, so who am I to judge?

And then I have something like a Michelangelo moment.

I don’t see a statue in the rock, or an angel, and I’m writing, not sculpting. But I learn exactly what he means.

It seems like I’ve been working on this story for years, and I suppose I have. Parts of it go back a decade or more. Most of it is new, but it has a history, a past.

I’m well into the story, working it over and over, editing and adding and deleting, and suddenly something almost jumps out from the page. I’ve typed something that happens in the conflict between a father and a son, and I can’t for the life of me figure out where it comes from, because it isn’t in the outline, in my notes, my mental plan, or in any version previous written.

I stare at what I’d typed. Why did I write that?

Then it hits me. What I’d written was the whole point of the story. It was what the story was actually about, what it has really been about from he beginning. And it has simply, or finally, emerged from the words.

Completely thrown, I reread the story from the beginning, some 90,000 words worth.

It was almost too obvious, except it isn’t. But it’s there from the very beginning, slightly submerged below the surface, the whole idea that the story has been turning toward, never breaking the surface until it almost couldn’t help itself.

I did not plan this, I admit to myself. Or did I?

I read through section after section, figuratively smacking myself upside the head. How did I miss this? How am I writing a story with the main point that close to being obvious, yet I still miss it until it starts screaming at me?

That angel in the marble had suddenly broken cover. He was out in the open, shaking his head. What took you so long? I’ve been trapped inside this piece of stone until you finally wised up. A little slow on the uptake, are we?

I go back through the story again, closely reading it, seeing the places where it almost emerges but doesn’t. I start editing, to make a suggestion here, hint a possibility there, make a clear-cut indication in another place.

The story has fundamentally changed, but this is what it has really been about from the beginning.

Michelangelo was right.

Photograph by Akash Patel via Unsplash. Used with permission.

In Praise of Reading Poetry

February 26, 2019 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Like most of us, I read poetry – a lot of poetry – in high school and college English classes primarily because it was assigned. I was much more interested in fiction (Dickens!) and noir mysteries (Dashiell Hammett!) than I was in Tennyson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Elizabethans.

My attitude changed with T.S. Eliot and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It was first published in 1915, and Poetry Magazine published it only as a favor to Ezra Pound. The editors were so uncomfortable with it that they placed it at the back of the issue. But it was our first great modernist poem, and it changed poetry forever. A high school senior, I read that poem, and I was mesmerized. I went to the local bookstore and bought a small paperback edition of Four Quartets (I still have it; it’s now more than 50 years old).

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

Photograph by Thought Catalog via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Reflecting on Writing a Novel

December 20, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

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.

Where Do Our (Fictional) Characters Come From?

October 12, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

My wife has said, more than once, that the main character in my Dancing Priest novels is an idealized version of me. The first time she said it, I disagreed. There were some things I shared with that character, but I never planned to write about making an idealized version of me.

After considering it, I thought, well, maybe. I thought about it some more, and I reverted to my original thought. Nope, he’s not me.

Not one of the characters across my four novels are disguised versions of real people. Instead, they are composites of people and experiences.

In Dancing Priest, Sarah Hughes has a conversion experience that is almost exactly taken from my own.

In A Light Shining, the political operative Josh Gittings is based on several people I’ve known from the political world.

The communications man in Dancing King is based on many of my career experiences, especially in crisis communications. His uncanny ability to spot what’s happening and ferret out what’s behind a crisis is based on too many of my own experiences. (I say “too many” because sometimes I was heeded, and sometimes I was not.)

And certainly the speechwriter in Dancing Prophet comes from my own career background, including sitting with an executive for an entire day to write an emergency speech while he did other work.

I can say my characters come from experiences, but where do their personalities come from? Likely our families, our friends, people who’ve influenced us or protected us, mentors, people we’ve have bad experiences with, even casual acquaintances.

For example, the villain in Dancing King, the PR operative Geoffrey Venneman, is a composite of several people I’ve known over the years. He serves his clients, yes, but he is all about serving himself. He looks for the main chance. He has no qualms about hurting others and that, in fact, is part of the game. He can affect a wounded innocence when it’s helpful to do so. His anger becomes uncontrollable when he’s thwarted. Yes, I knew people like this and had to work with them. It was not a pleasant experience, because you always had to be on guard.

In the writing process, however, I don’t consciously create characters. They seem to emerge as the story develops or when this kind of character is needed. Sometimes I know what kind of character is needed at a particular point, but the birth is an agonizing labor, requiring rewrite after rewrite.

I’ve had one exception to my “no real people” guideline. In Dancing Prophet, one character is based on me, less his experiences and more his personality. I admit it. Almost all of his actions and reactions in the book track with mine (that’s almost all, not all). I didn’t realize this until I was in the middle of rewrite #2 or #3, and then I saw it. The character had emerged, unconsciously, from my own life. He’s not an idealized version of me. In many ways, he is me.

It was a shock. For a time, it stopped all progress on writing the book. I had to take stock. What was I trying to say here, or understand? Was I trying to tell myself something? I had to try to answer these questions and others before I could continue.

The answer I came to was this: this character feels broken. It doesn’t stop him from having a successful career and a loving marriage. But it shapes him in obvious and less-than-obvious ways. And sometimes, in the midst of that brokenness, a character has to step forward and do something courageous.

No one ever said that writing would be this hard. No one ever said it would be this revealing.

Photograph by Hudson Hintze via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A Novel about a Crisis

October 3, 2018 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

More than once, my wife has pointed out that my 2017 novel Dancing King and my new novel Dancing Prophet tend to pick on the Anglican Church, and specifically the Church of England.

It’s a fair point; the major tension in Dancing King is between the king, Michael Kent-Hughes, and the Church of England hierarchy at Lambeth Palace. Michael is speaking at churches for the need for reformation, and then makes a blow-out speech at a conference of bishops. Lambeth strikes back, however, employing all sorts of stratagems and accusations.

In Dancing Prophet, scandal erupts. What looks contained to one church is actually broader and deeper, involving churches and dioceses across the country and well beyond. The introductory sentence reads this way: “The match that ignited the reformation of the Church of England was lit by three teenagers.”

The heart of this story was written more than a decade ago, and then rewritten (many times) over the years. In one sense I did pick on the Church of England – the idea of the scandal in Dancing Prophet is actually inspired by the real institutional crisis the Catholic Church has been struggling with. In the story, Michael will realize that the situation is beyond reformation; the church as he’s known it is gone.

Dancing Prophet is fiction, but like all fiction, it can’t help but reflect the times in which it’s written. When the history of our times comes to be written, it may be title (or subtitled) “The Age of Institutional Crisis.” Our government structures aren’t working; the sorry spectacle of a U.S. Senator questioning a candidate for the Supreme Court about the references to body noises in his high school yearbook isn’t even funny as much as it is tragic.

Our language has become the language of extremes, suggesting a mutual contempt that’s hard for me to fathom. I’ve stopped reading the editorial and op-ed pages of my hometown newspaper; there’s virtually nothing in it that one could call a reasoned argument. Lots of polemics, to be sure; lots of barely disguised contempt for any opinion, belief, or value other than what the editorial and op-ed writers agree with. Snark rules.

The church universal is in crisis as well. Mainline Protestant denominations in the United States are in membership free fall. Evangelical megachurches are afflicted by their leaders abusing women and elder boards refusing to believe it, until significant damage is done. The Catholic Church is being torn apart. This looks like a winnowing of the church to me, a winnowing that will leave a smaller and perhaps stronger church.

This isn’t the time for reasoned arguments. This is the time for rule by the mob. I watch the news coverage, and I see the mob racing through the halls of Congress, screaming at senators and congressman. This is rhetorical violence approaching physical violence.

Some have compared this to the declining days of the Roman Empire; it’s closer, I think, to the declining days of the Roman Republic.

This is the world partially depicted in Dancing Prophet. Michael Kent-Hughes has been thrust into a position he never expected and never sought. He is not only dealing with ecclesiastical failure; he is also dealing with politicians increasingly reluctant to take responsibility and a London governing authority that ceases to work due to political disfunction.

Early in the story, two of the leading characters in Dancing Prophet are discussing how Michael came to occupy his position. Here was Michael, with no military background, no royal upbringing, and in fact nothing to recommend him for the position of king. He was a Church of England priest, and a young one at that, without any hierarchal experience.

And here’s what one of the characters says:

“God picks the man needed for the job at hand. And isn’t it fascinating that Michael had essentially been exiled to the hinterlands as a child, reared completely away from anything even remotely royal, felt called into the priesthood when he was relatively young, and was then sent to the outer edges of the Anglican world, away from the center and all that the center implied. God was preparing Michael, as surely as you and I are sitting here. And He was less interested in military and palace experience and far more interested in raising up a man after His own heart.”

And that’s the hope of Dancing Prophet, that even in the darkest times, God is raising up men and women after His own heart.

Top photograph by Micah Williams via Unsplash, and lower photograph by Oliver Sjostrom, also via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A Speechwriter for a King: A Story

August 28, 2018 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Jonathan Crowe stood on the sidewalk along Buckingham Palace Road, staring at the security entrance for the palace. He glanced at his watch. He was 10 minutes early for his interview with Jay Lanham, head of communications for Buckingham Palace who, at only 30, was already becoming legendary in UK public relations and media circles. Lanham was the communications man for King Michael and had successfully fended off a series of almost brutal public attacks on the king.

Lanham, and the king, were looking for a speechwriter.

Jonathan was 26 and a reporter at The Guardian. He was five foot ten, with closely cropped hair, a slight beard, and a medium-dark complexion. The only person he had ever written a speech for was himself, and that was for presentations he had made at university. But Lanham had seen Jonathan’s newspaper stories, and had read dozens of them, in fact. During the initial phone interview, Jonathan had been impressed with just how well Lanham had read his stories. Lanham also knew a considerable amount of Jonathan’s background, including his family’s Jamaican heritage, where his parents worked, that he still lived with his parents (a reporter’s salary alone wasn’t sufficient for almost anything in London), and that he attended St. Paul’s Church in Brixton.

Lanham had both reassured him and slightly alarmed him when he said that palace security had already done background checks.

Buckingham Palace Dancing Prophet — Buckingham Palace

“It’s standard procedure, Jonathan,” Lanham had said on the phone. “But it’s also more than that. This speechwriting job reports to me, but you’re going to have ongoing access to the king. He takes his words seriously, and he doesn’t want bureaucratic layers between him and his speechwriter. In fact, he’s made that a condition of the job. We have to make sure that all of his staff pass security checks.”

Jonathan had already had a videoconference interview with Josh Gittings, the king’s chief of staff. Gittings was also legendary, but it was of a different kind than Lanham. He’d served for years as the prime minister’s hatchet man and chief political operative, until he was dispatched to San Francisco by the PM to help Michael Kent-Hughes and his family during The Violence. And Gittings seemed to have had a fundamental change of heart – some called it a religious conversion – while in California.

Jonathan shuddered at his memories of that weekend the previous October. The royal family had been assassinated, and what amounted to open warfare between Muslim extremists and British nationalists had turned London and the country into a war zone. Trying to cover the story, Jonathan had been chased and shot at by a Muslim group and almost caught by a skinhead group looking to attack anyone they thought might be a Muslim.

Somehow, palace security had learned about that as well.

He had dressed carefully for the interview, keeping in mind that he would eventually interview with the king as well. He was wearing a blue suit, white shirt with a muted red tie, and tan shoes (he had polished them just that morning.) He hadn’t said anything to his parents or his sister, or anyone else, about the interview. At breakfast, his mother had noticed he looked a bit spiffier than usual but kept her words to hos nice he looked. She hadn’t asked any questions, but he could see she suspected more was afoot than just another day at The Guardian.

He’d tell them if things worked out. He didn’t expect to be offered the job. He believed he was likely the diversity candidate. Michael might be new to the monarchy and being a royal, but this was still old-boys network Britain. Still, he knew that they had to gone to significant lengths to learn about his background.

It was time. He walked inside the security station, gave his name, and presented his identification. The woman security officer checked a list, nodded, and smiled. A second officer assisted him in providing a basket for his watch, wallet, and whatever was in his pockets. His portfolio was sent through x-ray, as was Jonathan himself. Everything went smoothly.

The security officer walked him through a hallway. He expected to be escorted to Lanham’s office, but Lanham suddenly appeared through a doorway, smiling and holding his hand out to shake Jonathan’s.

“It’s good to meet you, Jonathan,” Lanham said. “And call me Jay. My office is close; we’re actually in the administrative wing now. Do you want a coffee or tea, or water?”

“Black coffee would be fine,” Jonathan said.

They entered an area containing a suite of several offices. Lanham introduced him to several communication staffers in the area and then walked to the small kitchen included in the suite. He poured the coffee for Jonathan and fixed a tea for himself.

St. Matthew's Church Brixton Dancing Prophet — St. Matthew’s Church Brixton

Lanham’s office was spacious and comfortable but not opulent. One wall included several screens of television news channels, newsfeeds for twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and a scrolling list of news stories from Reuter’s, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and several other wire services. One screen contained a scrolling list of stories from all the major UK newspapers, including The Guardian.

“How is your time today?” Lanham said.

“It’s fine,” Jonathan said. “I had holiday time and some comp time stored up, so I took the day off.”

“No other appointments?” Lanham said.

Jonathan shook his head. “No. “

“Well, that’s great, then,” Lanham said. “I hope you can stay for lunch. His Majesty asked me to check to see if you might be available.”

Jonathan felt his heart pound. “That should be fine.”

“It will be just the two of you,” Lanham said. “I have a luncheon and the king usually likes to have some time alone with people he’s interviewing.” He smiled. “Don’t let this throw you. The king likes to move quickly. And he’s fairly certain that we’ve found the right candidate.” Lanham sipped his tea. “Based on our background and reference checks, and our phone conversations, both Josh Gittings and I have recommended you to the king as the best candidate. Josh and I have interviewed others, but you’re the only candidate to talk with the king. We’re that convinced. I’m that convinced.”

“I’m surprised,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t expect this. I thought my meeting with you today was a step in the process.”

“It is,” Lanham said, “but as far as we’re concerned, it’s close to a final step.”

“Can I ask an impertinent question?” Jonathan said.

Lanham laughed. “Absolutely.”

“Am I here because of my Jamaican heritage?”

Lanham shook his head. “No, you’re not. We’re not asking you to join the staff here at the palace because you’re a black man. Let me explain how we did this.”

Lanham sipped his tea. “We never advertised this position. We put feelers out to people who might know good candidates for speechwriting. A lot of names came back, and we screened them carefully. We put out more feelers and received more names. We narrowed the list to three, and then we went about collecting samples of their writing – articles, blog posts, newspaper stories, speeches, whatever we could find. We then gave each a designated letter, A, B, and C, and we removed any and all personal references. We gave the three sample sets to the king. He saw no resumes or anything else that would identify the writers. This was about as blind a test as we could devise. What he knew was that all three were well qualified; it was my responsibility to make sure of that.

“When he came back to us, it was your writing set he singled out. And what he told me was that all three were technically and professionally excellent, but it the samples for candidate A he felt the most comfortable with. And more than that, it was candidate A’s writing that demonstrated someone writing from his heart.”

For a moment, Jonathan said nothing. Then he spoke. “You’re doing a terrible job of convincing me not to accept this position.”

Lanham laughed. “To continue. After he picked the samples of candidate A, then we showed him your resume. He read it, and he personally called one of your references.”

“The king called one of my references?” Jonathan said.

Buckingham Palace Terrace — The terrace at the rear of Buckingham Palace

Lanham nodded. “He called your vicar at St. Matthew’s. And he was circumspect. He didn’t say you were being considered for one of the top communications positions at the palace. He asked the vicar what he could tell him about this young man who had come to his attention. I was there when he made the call. And so you know, your vicar said nothing about your race. He talked about your service at the church and two ministries you were involved in, tutoring of at-risk children and the choir. When he’d hung up, the king looked at me and said, “’See, I was right about him writing from his heart.’

“And that, Jonathan, is how you came here today,” Lanham said. He then summarized Jonathan’s starting salary and benefits. “Your office will be next door here to mine. We have normal 9 to 5 working hours, but there are times for various emergencies, crises, and things that suddenly happen. You should expect to see a lot of the king, sometimes with me and sometimes on your own. And I know this is all rather overwhelmingly, so we don’t expect an immediate answer. But you are officially being offered the position of speechwriter to King Michael.”

Lanham stood, and Jonathan followed suit. “It’s time for you to see the king,” he said. “If you have questions, we can talk on the way or you can call me afterward. I’ll be off site when you finish lunch, and a security officer will see you out.”

They walked down a hallway toward the back of the palace.

“The king is currently in the library,” Lanham said, “His office is still be renovated; the construction manager discovered an old broken pipe and some rotted wood, and Mr. Epworth, the master of the House, has been having to jump through hoops to get approval from the landmarks commission to make the repairs. Have you been to the palace before?”

“No, I haven’t,” Jonathan said.

“The library is actually two rooms across from each other, underneath the Music Room. The area gives out on to the terrace, and I believe that’s where the king said he’d be for lunch.”

They turned a corner and continued to the library area, where Lanham stopped.

One of the front gates of Buckingham Palace

He handed Jonathan an envelope. “This is the official offer,” Lanham said. “If you find the terms acceptable and decide to accept, simply sign one copy and return it to me.” He turned and continued walking. Jonathan followed him up a short flight of steps and through the door to the terrace.

It was a brilliant June day. The sky was blue without even a hint of a cloud.

“By the way,” Jonathan said, “I accept the position, assuming the king approves.”

“Good,” said Lanham, smiling. “I’m very pleased. And I think King Michael will be very pleased as well. I’ll let you tell him.”

Jonathan could see a man sitting at a table set for lunch. His back was to them and he was reading something.

“Sir?” said Lanham.

Michael turned and stood up, a huge smile on his face.

“You’re Jonathan,” the king said, extending his hand. “I am so pleased to meet you.”

Jonathan shook the king’s hand and remembered to bow.

Two hours later, Jonathan was again one the sidewalk on Buckingham Palace Road. He stood for a minute next to the gate, out of the way of the pedestrians and the lines waiting to buy tickets for the palace tours, beginning at the end of June.

He knew he had just spent the most remarkable three hours of his young professional life. He and the king of Great Britain had just finished talking and developing a rough scheme for speeches. He would need to give notice at The Guardian today; he would start working at Buckingham Palace in two weeks.

He thought about his vicar, who had said such kind things. He thought about working for one of the top communication operatives in the country. He thought about the man he would be working with and writing speeches for.

And he thought about the looks on his papa’s and mama’s face when he told them about his new job. His father the janitor. His mother the worker at the dry cleaners. He thought about what they had sacrificed for him and his sister. He thought about the position of trust he had been given, and, there at the fence, he said a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.

This story is about one of the characters in my upcoming novel,Dancing Prophet, to be published this fall.

Top photograph by Ian Baldwin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

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