Category: Writing

Earning Enough Grace

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Photo: Danielle Ayers Jones (DanielleAyersJones.com)

That title is supposed to give you whiplash. You can’t earn grace, much less “enough” of it. If you’re not actually sure what else you do with grace, or if you’re trying to find somebody who understands why this is a big deal to you… may I suggest a novel I wrote?

My ebook will be released soon, but meanwhile, you’re welcome to check out The Fellowship. This interview with my friend Danielle discusses what the book is, why I wrote it, and how I made a heavy subject approachable.

Danielle and I met when I was still in deep in my own Fellowship culture. We lived with three other young women for six months. They challenged my ideas, teased me, dragged me into conversations about topics I didn’t think we were supposed to talk about… and mostly, they plain liked me despite myself. That wasn’t the first time I ever experienced grace like that, but it was the first time I really recognized it.

So it was particularly fun, all these years later, for blogger Danielle to interview author Sara.

Read Part One: Earning Enough Grace

Read Part Two: Earning Enough Grace

And linger to browse Danielle’s blog, where she reads, cooks, thinks, homeschools, and takes beautiful pictures.

New Book FAQ

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Well, it’s more like a FAQIAPWAM (Frequently Asked Questions I Assume People Would Ask Me). I haven’t had anybody ask me all these questions, so I made some up.

Q. Why did you choose to write short stories?

A. Because I thought they’d be easier than a novel. (Pause for overwrought laughter.)

Q. Do they involve the same characters as in your novel?

A. No, they feature new characters in new settings.

Q. I loved your novel…

A. Thank you!

Q. … but its subject matter is a little heavy. Do you tackle the same issues in your stories?

A. No, the stories are much lighter. Substantial enough to make a good read, but without the difficult moments in my novel.

Q. What are the stories about?

A. They’re about ordinary people in ordinary life, making decisions that affect the outcome of their day—or their whole lives.

Q. So, not to be offensive, but ordinary people aren’t very exciting.

A. I’m not offended. After all, you’re pretty boring. Haha, just joking! The fact is, ordinary people aren’t boring; we’re all a complex mix of good and bad, wise and foolish. These are sympathetic and funny stories about people you feel like you know.

Q. I’m not convinced. Tell me about some of these ordinary people who aren’t boring.

A. Well, there’s McKee and Cheryl, who take a wrong turn in an unfamiliar town and unknowingly leave a very lasting impression. Or there’s Makayla, whose husband Hunter drives a big expensive truck even though all they can afford to live in is a trailer—plus she’s got a few issues from her first marriage that she hasn’t exactly fixed up. And you’ll want to hang out with Paige Parker—wife, stay-at-home mother of four, superspy, music tycoon, and fantasy wizard warrioress. Other stories involve discovering love in a canoe, Uncle Bobby laid out on the porch, and five pizza recipes.

Q. Hm, you’re right, sounds intriguing.

A. I thought you’d think so. For my longtime “knew-me-back-when” readers, the final story has a distinct Tales from the Creekbank flavor. You’ll like it.

Q. Will it be available in print as well as ebook, like your novel is?

A. As an independent author, I pay for everything. So I’m selling it as an ebook first, and will release it in print when funds allow.

Q. When is the release date?

A. I’m still wrapping up details, so for now it’s “November.”

Q. Will this make a good Christmas gift?

A. Absolutely. Amazon allows you to give an ebook as a gift. If you need a different format, I sell those too.

Q. I bet it would make a good birthday gift, too. Or just a friendship gift. Or maybe an inexpensive splurge on myself!

A. It’s like you’re reading my mind!

Q. So what about the dromedaries who can’t behave? What are the titles of the stories?

A. Oh, come on. You know what I’m going to say.

Q. I have to get the book and see for myself, right?

A. Enjoy! (I really think you will.)

New eBook Release

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Confession: my announcement actually has nothing to do with criminal camels. I bet you already knew that.

I’m just puzzled dromedaries can’t behave is the mnemonic device I use to remember the titles in my new short story collection.

That’s my real announcement.

I’m launching a new ebook next month.

Six original short stories that will make you laugh, probably won’t make you cry, and will remind you of your own world.

I’ll be posting Frequently Asked Questions to talk more about it. But you’ll definitely want to get a copy, trust me.

Blogging on Patheos Today

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I was invited to contribute to a “public square” discussion on Patheos. The question is, “Why do you homeschool?” It’s a really good question for any of us who came through Bill Gothard’s spiritually poisonous system.

Here’s my answer. It’s For the Children

I’m impressed at the lineup of authors that the editors editors pulled in for this topic. It gives a wide variety of homeschool viewpoints. Check it out!

Proving the Red Pen Wrong

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I try not to talk shop too much on my author blog. But I love the writing process, and occasionally I break down and indulge myself. If you’re a writer, you’ll understand. If you’re not, well, I’m sure this can apply to your life somehow– if you try hard enough. Isn’t that how we were taught to accept everything our authorities ever said to us?

ball-pen-1186363-1280x960If you’re a writer, you need an editor.

Yes, you’re a good writer. Nobody else can tell your story like you can. Your grasp of grammar is legendary. Writing is your passion.

I know! Me too! Guess what—we still need an editor.

Writers practice a form of telepathy, really. We allow others to see what exists only in our heads. Unfortunately, the connection tends to be glitchy. Some ideas come off half-formed, and there’s usually an unpalatable amount of self-therapy involved. Most people find it hard to grasp exactly what we’re trying to say. It’s the editor’s job to clean all that up.

Now, I really love to whine about being edited. For one thing, it’s expensive. You pay a good editor real money. But more than that, the process is painful. Every darn time. Getting a marked-up document back is demoralizing, embarrassing, and frustrating.

But after the initial shock… it’s also challenging. My life coalesces around a single, burning goal. I’m going to prove my editor wrong.

She thinks this plot point doesn’t work? Yes, it does. I’ll show her it does.

She questions whether a character would say this? Yes, he would. Maybe not quite like that… I’ll make it fit him.

She says this isn’t the word to describe this feeling… um… well, okay, she’s right that time. But only until I clarify the emotional tenor of the scene, and then she’ll be wrong.

I’ve worked with Lee Ann at Illuminations Editing for both my novel (released last year) and my short story collection (to be released this year). It’s been a bumpy ride in spots—okay, fine, I cried a couple of times over my marked-up document— but overall extremely rewarding. Going through my story document this morning, I pulled out a few editorial comments to illustrate what I’m talking about.* This, writer friends, is what you pay an editor to do.

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After knowing Curtis for 12 years, I doubt Jordan would actually verbalize a fear of being annoying. After all, this is how she would have always talked around Curtis. Dane made her second-guess herself, but I think it makes more sense to have her self-doubt happen below the surface.

Almost nobody else would pause at a quick exchange of dialogue and think, “Hm, I bet that emotion ought to be internalized instead.” But it does make more sense for that character, and the more consistent I am, the stronger the story is. I took out the spoken dialogue and just left Jordan’s inner voice.

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I deleted this exchange because it sounded forced and unnecessary.

The irritating really great thing about a good editor is that she pinpoints areas you already know are weak. I didn’t like that exchange either, but thought it was necessary. It wasn’t.

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“Went through” sounds vague. Depending on how you revise this sentence, you may need to remove the paragraph break and/or rewrite the next sentence so that the action connects and builds properly.

One of the rewarding aspects of a working author-editor relationship is how I can be nudged into a little more creativity.

The offending sentence read, “I went through my purse for my phone.” I could just ignore her comment. What reader is going to stop and think, “Went through is so boring. I hate these stories.” But… what if I made my character dump out her purse, and her phone slides underneath the coffee table? More energy, more interest. That’s better, and I always want the story to be better.

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This does not sound like a Makayla gesture or Makayla words—or maybe the gesture doesn’t sound right because the words aren’t how she would describe it.

In one particular story, I had trouble staying in voice. I kept barging in and talking like myself instead of like the narrator. Lee Ann never let me get away with it, either. I took out the gesture and reworded the dialogue so that it was no longer me talking.

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But just like I don’t ignore my editor’s suggestions, I don’t take all of them either. I’m the ultimate authority over this piece. She highlighted an entire passage with the comment:

This is all unnecessary to the story.

It wasn’t unnecessary. I needed to wrap up a loose end, and I needed to give a character more space after his introduction in the beginning of the story.

The trouble was a telepathic glitch—I’d written it sloppily, so it didn’t ring true for Lee Ann. So I cut down the dialogue and condensed the action. The scene doesn’t drag anymore, but the information remains.

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It’s a lot of work to revise a manuscript, maybe harder than writing it to start with. But if the marked-up manuscript is painful, there’s nothing quite like getting it back with, “You fixed everything. I love reading your revisions. It’s like magic.”

I proved her wrong. Life goal achieved.

 

*Lee Ann approves of “show, don’t tell.” When editing my novel, she had to mention it so often that she finally just shortened the comment to “S,DT” to save us both time.

A Little Collection

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In a completely self-indulgent blog moment, I’m posting pictures that remind me of my novel.

Writers are always — yea, even obsessively — looking for and collecting characters, settings, and elements from their stories. That means we find pictures of houses, random items, and, ahem, actual people who don’t actually know that they are being collected.

Case in point, I’m a little sad that I missed the chance to get a picture of a young woman in a red jeep the other day. It was a perfect Bekah picture. Unfortunately, the light changed and I had to drive away. Stupid traffic laws.

Anyway, here are a few little things from my Fellowship collection. You do have to have read the novel to appreciate them. (Haven’t read it yet? Click the link to get your copy.)

This unsuspecting couple at a coffee shop became Bekah Richards and Ty Williams. They’re not dead ringers for those characters, but they capture the right spirit. I’m going to pretend that’s iced tea in those glasses, though. Bekah’s is unsweet, of course.

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Another time, at a festival in another town, I came across Rob Branner. (The actual man had a British accent that was just devastating. But I bet Rob’s Southern drawl isn’t too shabby either.)

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Graveyards are a hobby of mine. No, really; my husband and I even walked through one during our honeymoon. I wander through the headstones, noting distinctive names, and wondering about the people’s whose lives have already come and gone.

It was at this cemetery, four or five years ago, that I found the perfect name for my church founder.

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I (reluctantly joined the trend and) color. I particularly enjoy pictures that let me think about the people who live in my head. There’s a marshmallow-roasting scene in The Fellowship, in which Bekah says she likes her marshmallows “burned.” Rob replies that the proper term is “Flambe.” When she eats the black, crispy, gooey marshmallow, Rob remarks, “That’s revolting.”

That line is actually a kind of an inside joke between DJ and me. On one of our early dates, I took him to Dairy Queen, where we both got Blizzards. I spent more time talking than eating, until my Blizzard melted. DJ — who, by the way, still didn’t have my official answer that we were actually a couple so needed to play his cards just right — looked at the brownish sludge in my cup and said, “That’s revolting.”

And I fell hard for that confidence.

In honor of that scene, I gave Bekah (in the red coat) a burned marshmallow. But this isn’t the scene from the book, which takes place in the summer. This is later, after the novel has ended but the characters live on to have marshmallow roasts over a fire pit.

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When I was working on the picture, however, I pointed out the tray in the lower right corner. I thought it was cheese and crackers, but I couldn’t figure out what the cylinders were supposed to be. Sushi?

DJ said, “I think they’re marshmallows, since you’ve got the graham crackers and chocolate…”

And I started laughing. I’d colored the roasting sticks green because I thought they were celery:

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Graham crackers, chocolate, marshmallows, and celery… now that’s revolting.

A Review: “Gave Me a Deeper Understanding”

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Gretchen Louise at Kindred Grace has posted a review of The Fellowship. 

Different people notice different aspects of the story. Some have remarked on how easy it was to get to know the characters. Some recognize specific teachings or experiences. Some love the often-irreverent humor, and a lot of people held out hope that it wasn’t really lost. (What wasn’t? Hm, looks like you should read the story.)

What Gretchen highlights is the fact that “the familiar” is a very strong force. It’s often easier to stay in a bad but familiar situation than risk a new, possibly better, one.

But I think what stood out to me most in The Fellowship is how comfortable the familiar could become. As much as Bekah loved the taste of freedom, the rules that had bound her for so long were so very compelling… At the same time, I was given a much deeper understanding into the mindset of those who are unwilling to leave unhealthy and even dangerous situations.

Read the entire review here, and linger to browse her beautiful site.

A Review: Written with Grace and Finesse

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Carrie over at Reading to Know has reviewed The Fellowship. She was pretty reluctant to read it; after all, a book about this topic (spiritual abuse in a seemingly godly community) at this time (Gothard, Phillips, Driscoll, Duggars…) can’t be anything but an excoriating vendetta in 331 pages, right?

Carrie writes:

I was prepared to be on my guard when reading this book but I should have known that Sara would have me relaxed within just a few chapters. Although the point of the book is clear – to poke holes in a lifestyle of legalism and show its dangers – she does it with grace (har, har) and finesse. …I was hooked on the story of Bekah from the get-go. …Sara tells her story well and with her usual good humor which had me laughing out loud for several minutes once or twice. And again, I heard her arguments as to why there is a great need for those who have grown up in the ATI (or any legalistic) culture to see and understand grace.

I didn’t write a vendetta; I wrote a real story about realistic people. I wrote it so that those who were in a “Fellowship” can see that they were indeed wronged; and so those outside can understand what it’s like to be on the inside.

Check out Carrie’s entire review. And browse around to see what else she’s been reading. You’ll be there a while.

A Reading List

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So if you happen to be somebody who writes about spiritual abuse and recovery from legalism (just as a random category), you probably have a huge personal library of books on the subject, right?

Well, I guess so. If you’re not me.

I haven’t actually read piles of books on the topic. I seek out actual personal accounts. I also tend to find themes of self-empowerment, grace, and freedom in books that don’t have anything to do with cults.

But there are a few particular books that stayed with me and influenced how I wrote The Fellowship. You might enjoy the same elements I did.

**

The Gift of Sarah Barker, Jane Yolen.
I discovered this book when I was a teenager. I don’t remember many specific details, just that it hit me deeply.

Set in the 1800s, it’s the story of a teenage girl, Sarah, whose mother brought them into a Shaker cult (not to be confused with the Quakers, a completely different sect). This sect taught that sexual love in any form was sinful—they didn’t even allow marriage. (Not surprisingly, the Shakers died out, although Aaron Copeland immortalized their catchy tune “Simple Gifts” in his Appalachian Spring.)

Sarah tries very hard to fit into the sect; but her imagination, her longing for a life beyond, and her attraction to one of the young men keep sabotaging her own efforts.

This book could have been a story of oppression and sexual darkness. But Yolen instead showed many warm moments in the community. It wasn’t all bad; I understood why Sarah doesn’t really want to leave until she has no real choice.

The book seems to be out of print now, which is a shame. It’s worth tracking down.

When Sparrows Fall, Meg Moseley
I don’t like Christian fiction in general. The genre tends to feature flat characters, trite storylines, and pre-packaged answers. Several years ago, I opened Sparrows expecting more of the same.

I was very happily disappointed.

This is the story of Miranda, a young widow with several children whose pastor has decreed that their church is relocating to another state. He pressures her to sell her property, give the money to the church, and move with the rest of the congregation. Miranda has spent her whole married life being a submissive woman, but she digs her heels in and won’t sell.

Then she suffers a bad fall. In the city a few hours away, her brother-in-law, Jack, gets a call saying that he’s been named guardian of the children while she recovers.

Jack shows up to do his duty by his half-brother’s family. He quickly gets drawn into the weird world of Miranda’s church. He challenges the church’s beliefs, goes out of his way to help her and her family (and oversteps the line a couple of memorable times), and eventually finds out the secret that keeps Miranda tied to her house and her life.

I fell in love with Jack, grieved and then cheered with Miranda as she rediscovers herself, and identified with much of the spiritual abuse. I finished the book with new inspiration. If this was Christian fiction, then I could write it. Specifically, I could write that story inside me that just kept eating at me.

The Devil Wears Prada,* by Lauren Weisberger
I happened upon this book, having heard nothing of it, and pretty much inhaled it. At the time, I wasn’t really sure why it drew me in and then stayed with me. I don’t care about the world of high fashion and I didn’t have grand ambitions to work for New York magazines. The main character — although about my age when I read it — lived such a different life from mine it was laughable. (She sleeps with her boyfriend before they’re married? She has her own apartment in the city? She wears pants and sexy clothes without worrying about modesty?)

Years later, I understood its appeal to me. The book shows how a well-meaning person can get trapped in a subculture where everyone obeys an all-powerful leader. And not just trapped, but voluntarily submitting to it–even while hating parts of it. It also showed the fallout among those she loved. Her choices came with a real price.

All that said, I remember this book as a pretty light read with some pretty funny spots.

Ella Enchanted*, Gail Carson Levine
This retelling of Cinderella is one of my all-time favorite books. Ella was “blessed” by a fairy with the gift of “obedience.” She must obey any order given to her. Obviously this presents small problems — anybody can boss her around — and very large problems — anybody can order her to kill, steal, and destroy. She keeps the curse a deep secret. But things get complicated when she befriends and then falls in love with Prince Charmont… and then her malicious stepsister finds out the secret. She has to cut off all contact with Char for his own protection, and then must find a way to break the curse.

This book plays into the cult theme with the idea that Ella must obey, but finds little ways to get around it just to retain her own self. It’s also got some of my favorite lines in it, like, “I’m afraid of heights. And it’s only gotten worse as I’ve gotten taller.”

Girl at the End of the World , Elizabeth Esther
Several years ago, I followed Elizabeth Esther’s blog. I knew she grew up in her grandfather’s cult. Compared to what she went through, my experience was Lite Spiritual Abuse with Low Sodium and No Added MSG.

I also knew she wrote a memoir of her experiences. But I was immersed in writing my own book, and besides, I knew hers would hurt to read.

I should have trusted the blogger I knew back then. Elizabeth writes honestly with a twist of snark that makes it all easier to take in. Her experiences were painful—I am still cringing before Grandma Betty’s ice-blue eyes that demanded complete broken submission about once a week. But Elizabeth also gives moments of beauty, like when she and her husband first connected under a sky of stars. She highlights a few bright, caring people who passed through her life and left a mark of grace on her.

Girl is quick read, except for the frequent necessary pauses to put down the book, dash outside, and breathe in a big gulp of fresh air. As I read it, I was struck by the parallels between her “Assembly” and my “Fellowship”—the fear, the control, the in-jokes, the tight community, and the secrecy.

**

These books helped me understand and process the world I came out of. After all, it doesn’t matter what the outward trappings are; if a system has one person in authority with no accountability, they all operate from a rotten core.

And here’s to recovery that involves good dialogue, a tight story, and no out-of-context Bible verses.

 

*Movie? What movie? I ignore movie versions of books I like.**

**Except The Help, which was well done. Hunger Games was all right, although I saw only the first one. I liked the first two Narnia movies, hated the third one. Divergent was a disaster. I saw all of the Harry Potter movies, but I won’t sit through them again. I watched all nine hours of The Lord of the Rings twice, and God says I don’t have to watch them again.