In Defense...

In Defense of the Cheesy Christian Novel.  And Why I Will Never Write One.  Probably.

I haven’t posted anything lately, but it’s not because I haven’t been writing.  I have been writing.  A lot in fact.  37,000 words in one month.  Interestingly enough, that’s not meeting the goal that I had, or rather that National  But it’s 37,000ish more than I would’ve written otherwise.  Certainly it’s a freaking ton more fiction than I’ve written in years.

Novel Writing Month sets, which is 50,000.

Speaking of which, in preparation for this month, I went back to the last major fiction I had attempted, which I worked on, fairly religiously my first year of teaching.  I would go to the Coffee Grind and sit and write for a few hours.  It was actually pretty spectacular, other than the part where the reason I did it was because I didn’t really have friends. 

But anyway, going back to that novel made me laugh at some moments, it made me wince at others and it made me oddly proud for brief sections.  (As a side note of how much has changed in nine years, I had people waiting for pictures to be developed and others leaving a message on an answering machine.  Yikes.) But I never finished that novel that I started, for several reasons, the largest of which is that I never figured out (and still haven’t) how to tie up the main part of the plot that is driving the story.  The point of the story is the character development, but there was a fairly major vehicle that I would really need to resolve.  Have no idea how to do it.  Never knew where I was heading with it while writing.  Yikes again.

Yeah, this one is not great.  Whoops.

Another thing I did this November was weirdly go back to reading Dee Henderson.  Dee Henderson was (slightly shamefully) one of my favorite authors when I was about 20.  Maybe even earlier than that.  But she wrote a series of Christian romance novels that, in the Christian community were fairly acclaimed.  And to my credit, I hadn’t really even thought about them in the last ten years.  My reading tastes had matured, I assumed. 

But for some unknown reason, I went back to them.  At first it was just the one, then it was two more, and before I knew it, I had not only re-read my favorites, but was starting to read her new stuff that I had never read before.  It was my shameful little secret.

But, pride got in the way, because in order to come close to my reading goal on Good Reads and not look like I’ve become basically illiterate, I might have to post what I was reading on that site and put it out there. 

And then I started to wonder, why was I so ashamed?

No, these novels are not great works of classic literature.  Yes, they are slightly too staged and the characters handle things slightly too perfectly and their lives are slightly too exciting.  But, the thing is, there must be a reason I was so enjoying them.  So here is my defense—these books offer a little glimpse of how it would be nice for life to be.  And since I’m reading them as a mini pleasure escape for a few hours—not as something I want to think too hard about—that’s okay.  Also, the theology, at least in Dee’s stuff is solid.  Granted, I’ve never met anyone who came to you with a blunt, honest, well articulated question about the core tenant of Christianity out of the blue, but the core of what she’s getting at is spot on—the power of prayer, does God love us, why do bad things happen, how do we handle things when the world gets us down, how do we react when people we love get hurt? Those are real questions.  And though some of her situations might seem forced, her theological answers and the relationships she develops between characters never are.  So I go back to them, like an old blanket for the past, and feel warm and wrapped up in it. (That said, Undetected was just blah.  Did not care for it.)

But all that to say, my old novel from ten years ago would fit much more easily into the Christian novel world (it’s not a romance though) than anything else.  And that’s the other reason I don’t think I finished it.  It would be a pretty great Christian novel.  If I was willing to make it a romance, it could probably win a RITA or a CHRISTY award.  But I don’t think I want to write a Christian novel.  Because the thing is, in large part, only Christians read them.  And I’d rather write a boundary-crossing novel that is written by me a Christian that anyone can read and not feel the need to classify it as any way but a novel.  And it would be so much harder to make it that.

So Rachel and Liz, Sophia and Mark, my most detailed, complex creations, flounder in an unfinished world.  That might only be finished because of them, because I feel invested in the relationship part of the story, in their stories, and I want to finish it for those fictional characters who feel so real.

When people have asked me if I’d ever write something that would be a “Christian novel,” I’ve always said no.  But silently in my head, I think I’m saying, “I mean, probably not anyway.”