INKBLOTS, Small Apprentices Under the Supreme Master

Solzhenitsyn wrote what he knew

Inkblots--cool autumn evening, maple leaves carpeting the ground, and three women and three men this evening, several regulars absent--and missed. We tried not to have too much fun.

I warmed over some of my address from last weekend's Fiction Festival on Solzhenitsyn. "It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). I want, more and more, to see myself as a small apprentice, giddy with delight to serve the Supreme Master Artist.

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aleksandr_solzhenitsyn.html

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aleksandr_solzhenitsyn.html

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aleksandr_solzhenitsyn.html

Sophia led off on her first fiction story since high school. She warned us it was gritty but purposefully so, to show the beauty that change and transformation bring. There is tension and ugliness in the altercation between the husband and wife. I feel it. Sounds, car horn. Delilah undergoing a crushing comeuppance. Opening chapter, then backstory. What are the senses she uses? Descriptive narration is a bit too heavy but could be spread out more, integrated into the dialogue and the rising action, even adding it as descriptors to your attributions. Great reentry into fiction writing.

We talked about swearing in our writing. Should Christian writers ever have characters swear in their writing? Solzhenitsyn uses pretty coarse language in One Day, but then we should never justify doing something using an anecdote in place of hard evidence. I try to be guided by how the Bible depicts evil in speech and action. Do you think Cain swore at Abel as he was killing him, or Peter as he betrayed the Lord, or the coarse Roman soldiers driving the nails in Christ's hands? How does the Bible show me this? Never in a gratuitous fashion, never in a way that titillates, never in a way that glorifies the violence, or the cursing, or the betrayal. I don't want any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph I ever write to serve as a stumbling block to readers, that nudges open the gateway and provides a conduit to sinning. For me, I don't want to write anything that sets me up to be fitted for new neck wear.

We discussed the tendency to put everything but the kitchen sink in our stories, a bad idea. John reads a later chapter of Saving Grace. Just like we used to... It's been a long time since we had a talk like this... Is this the best way to say this? Actually including the words in the dialogue is a set up for sentimentalism. It can feel sappy, inauthentic. We all know the feeling that comes over us when we hear it, a feeling that makes us want to divert our eyes, avoid eye contact with others in the room, that disjointed lurching inside of us that says, "Something is not working here."

How to fix it? Have her think this, not speak it. Saying it feels contrived. Her thinking it will seem perfectly natural. Grace has found Jesus and hopes that her boyfriend will too. Her lovely green eyes shone... Who is seeing this? When you move from your protagonist to someone seeing her eyes you derail the reader from the point of view you want him to see the world from. Next we are hit with a stunning revelation. Her mother had suffered the violation of a monster and aborted the child conceived by that violation. You have to change the name so that it does not violate the privacy of someone. Alisa said that you can use hard events from the past to inform the present, but here the mom's backstory overpowers Grace's story. Astute observation. I agree (though I don't think I could have put it that well). The mom's emotions are too raw for her to mentor her daughter. Sophia suggests that the mother be more veiled in her revelation with Grace filling in the gaps as she listens. Have the mom be more mature in her revelation. 

Alisa shared a bit of what is going on with the final editing and revision work on Swiftwater, her 1930s historical fiction novel, slated to release early 2017. There comes a point where it begins to feel over worked, too many cooks in the kitchen, to use a worn out metaphor, and how do you know if the editors are trustworthy? I always try to ask myself what is the kernel here? There must be some issue that needs my final attention in revision. Sorting out exactly what it is can be a challenge. We also talked about how there is no single author who does everything perfectly or even well. We need critics who go beyond simply stroking us for our strengths. Inkblots can helps us discover our strengths and hone them, and it can help us discover where the lead breaks on our pencil, our clunks, our default weaknesses that must be overcome.

Same pose as Solzhenitsyn...

On that note, I read two chapters from LUTHER IN LOVE, where I switch from first to third person, intentionally, when Katharina (first person) sets her pen to her memoir in third person. Why am I doing this? The climactic episode of the book is when the third person account meets Katie and Luther in their marriage. Up to that point in Luther's life she wasn't there. From then on it will continue from her primary point of view. Thanks Sophia for suggesting that Katharina needs more fleshing out in chapter 16. I will work on that.

I invite you to follow the sketches of Luther and Katharina's life I am writing in a series of blog posts around Reformation week called REFORMATION ROMANCE.

Next 'Blots meeting, November 8