Does God have a formula for preparing writers? I’m hearing a chorus of “No’s.” God is much too wise — and, after all, look at the diversity of Christian writers.
As a mentor for Christian Writers Guild I worked with a pastor from Nigeria, a businessman from South Africa, an aspiring writer from New Zealand, and enrollees from all over the U.S. and Canada. Each represented a unique life journey on the way to sensing God’s call to be a writer. After all, in Psalm 139 the Psalmist declares: “For you have created my inmost being: you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made: your works are wonderful.”
I would like to hear your story, what memories were flitting through your mind as you read the title and the opening paragraphs. To get the ball rolling, let me provide the twists and turns in my story.
While I grew up on a pioneering farm during the Great Depression, my parents knew the importance of reading. Evening devotions initially included reading in turn as children from a German Bible, later an English Bible story book. After chores I was either reading books from the church library or the classroom library in school. In fact, I preferred staying in the classroom and reading a book to taking part in sports. I was cross-eyed from age five and usually found myself on the periphery of team games when leaders would choose team members.
When I turned 15 my Sunday school teacher asked me to correct lessons done by classmates, introducing me to indepth Bible study. The Christian high school I attended included a class in the Bible every day. We had to memorize significant passages of the Bible. What a difference they made when I was writing editorials, curriculum, and small group studies.
My senior year in a Christian high school I was selected as class reporter to the student publication, even delivering copy to the printer. Despite this, I did not recognize this as a signal for what he had in store for me. I certainly did not recognize I was a writer under development by God.
God used a mountain climbing accident and months in a mission hospital in northern British Columbia to open a window to the possible. I was paging through a new issue of Christian Life Magazine when my eye caught a quarter-page ad announcing: “You can write!” A closer look revealed Christian Writers Institute offered a 7-Lesson course “The Beginning Christian Writer.” The cost? $15. I could afford it, so I signed up. When the first lesson arrived I realized I had to get out of the hospital and to my typewriter. Some months later that happened, when as dispatcher in the British Columbia Forest Service on an island with mostly fishermen I was able to interview a new high school principal, two new ministers, a couple who arrived to lead VBS — and saw each lesson published in the local weekly. God finally convinced me he wanted me to be a writer.
The first week at a Bible college I went down the street to a denominational printer and publisher, asking if they had proofreading I could do. Indeed, they had and I soon was doing paste-up and proofreading for a youth publication. Two more years in a Bible college, five months of it doing college publicity on the side, had me also writing articles for a denominational weekly. Two weeks before I graduated I was invited to be founding editor of a new denominational weekly — and embarked on writing a weekly editorial, devotionals, even children’s stories. To my amazement, some of those editorials were reprinted in Christian magazines in the U.S. I finally became fully aware that God wanted to use me as a writer.
Years later I developed a workshop that challenged writers to expand their witness by writing for secular weeklies and Op Ed pages in dailies instead of just focusing on books. I’ve received some thrilling stories from writers who accepted the challenge and got a Christian witness into secular newspapers and magazines.
What is your story?
Here is my story:
I had two “heavenly fathers” growing up – my earthly father was a career Air Force officer who flew B-52 bombers for the Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the Cold War. The SAC symbol was an armored fist in the clouds holding lightning bolts and an olive branch, and it was posted everywhere on the base – buildings, cars, and even my father’s flight suit. I grew up thinking of God with the fist in the clouds up above, the same clouds where my earthly father spent much of his time on airborne nuclear alert. As a result I grew up with an orientation of fear and a desire for security. Both heavenly fathers were imposing authority figures to be approached with caution.
After my father retired, we moved to a farm near my parents’ small hometown, where I grew up. My “writing” career began when I drew military/superhero comics for my friends in grade school – passing them around in study hall. Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth came out around this time, and my friends and I became concerned about the coming apocalypse and the end of the world in nuclear holocaust. (This is not theoretical when you grew up with a base “alert klaxon” continually going off, launching nuclear-armed B-52’s into the sky to “execute their war plan” toward the Soviet Union until a recall is given.)
Since I did not expect reach old age, I was very concerned with my personal readiness for “end times” and spiritual issues and read copiously about these topics. Raised as a Lutheran, I also read a great deal about Luther and the Reformation era, and developed my understanding of Luther’s theology of justification by grace through faith. I envisioned a future as a pastor and as a teenager even assisted my local pastor by leading the church liturgical worship and giving sermons when he went on vacation. However my plans for seminary were diverted when my father, who was paying my tuition, decided that I should commute to a local state college and live at home to save money.
At the local state college, I spent three years as an “undecided” major, finally selecting psychology because I could finish all the coursework in my senior year and graduate on time. After graduation, jobs were scarce in my small hometown. My intentions toward seminary faded because I dreaded the thought of writing a sermon each week, being on call, and having people tell me all their problems. I finally found a job as a jail deputy in Minneapolis (my two older brothers worked in law enforcement) where I was continually on call and inmates told me their problems non-stop (but giving sermons was not required). I was just going to do work at the jail until I found something else, but a decade passed and I gained experience and seasoning working in an intense 24/7 secure facility processing 45,000-51,000 inmates a year.
It was while working a slow night shift in the jail that I read an article in TIME magazine, about authors (such as Stephen King and Amy Tan) getting huge royalties. I decided this was the answer for me and so I wrote several medieval fantasy novels and learned the processes of searching through the Writer’s Market listings, querying editors and agents, sending out manuscripts (with SASE, of course), and collecting rejection letters. Eventually I did acquire an agent for one of my novels, and it was published by a “print-on-demand” publisher and even optioned by a movie producer. But now the agent has retired, the options expired, and all I have to show for it is a box of books in my trunk, ready to sell copies to inquisitive friends and relatives. (I’ve recently published one of my other novels as an e-book on Amazon Kindle, and in hardcopy via Amazon KDP.)
One evening in the jail, a sergeant asked me to edit a draft procedure for him, since he heard that I was a writer. This eventually led to a specialty assignment in the training unit, writing the facility policy and procedure manual, doing inspections, and compiling accreditation documentation. I found that I enjoyed this type of administrative work, and after a few years I found a similiar role with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, writing statewide procedures and coordinating prison/agency accreditations. I did this for another decade, later taking a role as policy and compliance director of a secure treatment program for civilly-committed sexual psychopaths, where I have worked for the past eight years integrating complex regulatory requirements into policies and procedures, with systems of compliance assessment.
During my years working for the state, I completed an online MS in criminal justice. I found that I greatly enjoyed the world of academic scholarship, gathering and assimilating literature and writing research papers. I even became involved in writing some “white papers” and other analyses for state agency heads. One of my graduate professors suggested that I should pursue a Phd, but I deferred that due to the time and cost, and lack of clarity as to what career goal it would enable. (Now that I am approaching retirement eligibility, I am thinking about this again – perhaps a role as a part-time adjunct, etc.)
One writing project evolved when friends in my church group commented on my interesting insights applying concepts from criminal justice to spiritual issues. I wrote a series of “cop devotionals” called God is my Backup and acquired a literary agent to represent me to major Christian publishing houses. Several publishers initially expressed interest, but because I was an unknown without a body of followers or existing ministry, no contracts were offered, and I eventually gave the devotions free of charge to an online daily newsletter (Corrections Staff Fellowship), where I have received several “fan letters” indicating that they were helpful.
After my father passed away, I compiled a trove of photos, documents, handwritten mission logs, newspaper articles, and family stories into a chronicle documenting his career from WWII through Vietnam. This was popular with my relatives and I enjoyed doing it, so I wrote a similar chronicle about my mother, a depression-era orphan with an 8th-grade education who became an unwilling military wife when my father was recalled to service after WWII. I then went on to compile extant family genealogical information into related chronicles about my grandparents and great-grandparents, tracing the eight branches of my Norwegian immigrant ancestors as they established their lives in southwestern Minnesota. (I have considered preparing these chronicles for mainstream publication, but would have to sift out private family information which might reduce general public interest.)
Most recently, I have written several nonfiction articles for CORRECTIONS TODAY magazine, as well as several op-eds in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune. In 2016 I won an “honorable mention” for an essay in the “Great American Think-Off” philosophy competition. My most recent piece “Bearing the Civic Sword in Times of Increasing Technological Complexity” (mentioned above), was published as part of a conference on “Fear and Wonder of Technology” in November 2016 at Redeemer Presbyterian in New York.
Over the years I have jotted down ideas for an opus regarding the pervasive encroachment of technology as it influences and constrains society, putting everyone under continual surveillance and influencing our behaviors and habits into commercially-driven stimulus/response cycles while contributing to the erosion of politics and public discourse. But I am not sure where I am going with it just yet.
I have also completed a first draft of a loosely-autobiographical “jail novel” that involves George Washington accidentally time-traveling to the present day and becoming incarcerated in a major metropolitan jail, trying to figure out the modern era and how to return to his own time before he undergoes involuntary cognitive restructuring.
With retirement on the horizon, I am on the cusp of a season of change and watching for God’s leading for my next epoch. As an “artisan of information,” I am at a crossroads where I might pursue academic work, social commentary, fiction writing, or even a unifying personal memoir about my own career trajectory. I need to discern what is in the wind.
Hi Les,
Thank you for sharing your story, and encouraging others to do the same.
I grew up on a farm as you did, although a generation later. The depression had run its course during my parent’s younger years, but there were times in my own childhood that it seemed to be rearing it’s ugly head once again. German was my second language as a child, although sadly I didn’t retain much of it.
I always loved to read, and devoured books in my youth. I couldn’t get enough, and remember being given a stack of about thirty books following a church yard sale. I thought surely I must have died and gone to heaven! This was my intro to the writing world, enjoying the fruit of the labours of others.
Life happened, including marriage, children and now grandchildren, and gradually writing became more of a reality for me. As a pastor of some twenty years now, I’ve had some practise! Daily journaling, and weekly sermon writing were my formative efforts.
About eighteen years ago, I produced a non fiction work, which I of course, in my naiveté, felt worthy of publishing. Knowing nothing whatsoever of the publishing world, I approached a few people I knew or had heard of, and offered them samples of my manuscript. Sadly, none shared my enthusiasm, and I shelved my manuscript and my dreams of book writing, for the next sixteen or seventeen years.
About a year ago, a still small voice suggested that I write a work of fiction, which quite frankly had never occurred to me. To my surprise and delight, a character appeared and took shape, and a story began to unfold. I subsequently produced a fictional manuscript, as well as the beginning of a second of what is becoming a trilogy.
I’ve discovered more about the publishing world in the past year than I ever thought possible, and still I know very little! One lesson I’ve picked up, however, is that patience as a writer is definitely a requirement! The process is intimidating, challenging and so far, not all that rewarding. Having said that, it’s also been fun, and the personal satisfaction of seeing a story unfold has been epic!
There’s really nothing that compares to the feeling of watching characters develop, and a story take shape. I’m not yet published, but someday I will be. It is my understanding that perseverance is a virtue, one which as a writer I’m working diligently at!
It’s a world unto itself, this world of writing, the exploration of which I’m enjoying immensely.