Selective Memory

I picked up an old book by Hallie and Whit Burnett, Fiction Writer's Handbook, at the library. It starts with a preface by Norman Mailer and it's been a while since I've read a book on the craft. It is very well done - more about the philosophy behind the writing process than most books with similar titles and goals. The authors take a wide view because as the editors of Story Magazine, they had a large and diverse number of examples to choose from.

One statement matches my process in writing Pastor's Ex-Wife well: "We absorb, we sympathize, we reject, we present, it all comes from our own selective memory in the end."

And so it does in my story of how one woman, Terry Soldan, achieved enough personal courage to return to the church pastored by her ex-husband, incognito, in order to shut the door on that abusive season so that she could step into a new place emotionally.

Enough

Sometimes things go terribly not the way you planned. Like today. I got to work early because a repairman was coming to fix the printer. He came. Then a few hours later when the paper smelled and looked like roasted marshmallows in the historic house built circa 1820 where our museum offices are located. In the meantime not much of what I had on my to do list was finished - it could have been if the printer had worked...Then the staffing fell apart for the weekend. Again, not my fault but my problem. Enough of these little things built up that by 2:30 I left work - no explanations - just "if you need me I'll come back." Granted, I am the director and I did work on both of my days off this week and now that the weekend staffing changed I'll put in at least a 20 hour one....so the dog and I went to the river where there were a large number of barges herded together at the bank chaperoned by one big river boat. But it was enough of a breather to somewhat calm my exasperation for a few minutes. Water does that - still waters....He leads me beside the still waters....

These are slight challenges compared to the pressure that builds in an abusive marriage over many decades sometimes. At some point someone just has had enough.

For the fictitious pastor's ex-wife in my novel, enough was when the last child graduated from high school and the still waters were at William's house, Terry's refuge from all of the church hurt that made everything that much more confusing because she couldn't untwist the lies about God enough to get a peek at His truth...pain does that.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Dead Butterfly Wings

My friend, Lisa and her husband, Gavin, were the first readers of Pastor's Ex-Wife. I emailed them a chapter every few days as soon as the first (but not the roughest first) draft was written. They responded with questions, things I needed to clarify, and they shared the emotions the story provoked in them. It made the writing process more real for me to have an audience whose questions often inspired the next chapter as it unfolded.

Oh, yes, I had an outline - really a plan, not an outline. I work best when I have determined certain requirements for each chapter - it had to move the plot forward, it had to include humor, it had to turn around a single unifying metaphor, it had to employ similes and a full range of sensory details....dialogue... an anecdote from my years teaching in an inner city school district, as well as a church building, a pastor, a congregation, a service and sermon.

I mixed and matched the church features like a crazy quilt - everything is based on reality but abstracted like a cubist painting to create a new fictional construct of a church that worked with the story.

I did not realize how important Lisa and Gavin had been to the writing process until last night.

I am working on a new novel (working title "Dead Butterfly Wings"). It is set in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and is a murder mystery which also treats the theme I dedicate my adult fiction to explore: authentic faith within abusive families.

Lisa and Gavin were my first audience for this first novel - Pastor's Ex-Wife. Lisa shared the background of the protagonist and pastor's ex-wife, Terry Soldan, so her emotional reactions predicted to me whether the story felt real, authentic, plausible....

Until yesterday, I did not have an audience in mind for "Dead Butterfly Wings." Now I do - a person to whom the book just may be dedicated. It won't be the same. I won't be showing him the chapters as they get written but I am writing as if I were telling him the story as it unfolds on the page. I don't even know whether he will ever read it. But, I learned a tremendous thing about how I write just by realizing that I am writing FOR someone specific. It motivates me to put my heart on the page more fully.

Thank you, Lisa and Gavin.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

A Link

A friend of mine tweeted the link to this blog by Kimberly Kinrade: http://lifarre.com/socialnetwork/pg/blog/read/1181/my-unbreakable-heart-why-we-stay. My fictional pastor's ex-wife would totally empathize.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.