I'm having problems. 

Oh, I'm making my deadlines. Ideas are coming. I'm solving problems when I need to. I've jotted capsule outlines for eighteen of probably fifty scenes.

The problem is, I've gotten so engaged with the world of the novel, I don't much care to live anywhere else. Which is discouraging, because I've got a wife and a six year old daughter, and a condo in Arizona I'm trying to sell, and a Dodge pickup I'm trying to sell, and a day job as president of Perelandra College. And a crucial election is coming next week. And somebody trashed the U.S. economy, which isn't helping me sell the Dodge or the condo.

Maybe all that put together is why I'm thinking about Olga, and why it seems to me that anybody who might read this blog any time in the near future would do well to consider Olga.

Beware, a digression (from Writing and the Spirit): The vows of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, are “poverty, chastity, obedience and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The order also has lay members who take the same vow. In their case it means living modestly, reserving sex for marriage, following the guidance of a mentor, and serving the poor wherever and whenever feasible.

As artists, we’ll be lots healthier if we think of ourselves as having taken a vow to cheerfully accept poverty if that’s all the wealth we’re given (and to share the wealth if we get financially blessed); to be chaste in our artistic vision (not be seduced by the commercial or trendy); and to be obedient to the inspiration of the spirit that moves us. If we live in such ways, our art will be of service.

My first class in graduate school at the University of Iowa was with John Irving. I remember an admonition he gave about money. He suggested that serious fiction writers should take an attitude like poets do, conceding that they’re never going to make a living with their art and they need to support themselves some other way.

A couple years later, with The World According to Garp, Irving made a fortune. Which poses a problem for writers like me.

Sensible poets accept that writing poems alone won’t support them, since hardly any poets make a living that way. But more than a few fiction writers make heaps of money, so even the sensible among us may hope to cash in.

My friend Alan Russell and I were on a radio show with Tess Gerritsen, who turned from medicine to writing thrillers. Offstage, Alan asked Tess if she ever regretted giving up doctoring. She said, “Well, you can make more money writing.”

I choked on my gum.

Return to thinking of Olga: My friend Olga was a poet. This past week, while thinking about her, I've decided that asking myself What would Olga do? makes way more sense than asking that mind boggling question What would Jesus do? Because Olga was human, like me, only better at it.

The cliffhanger: For more about Olga, come back next time.

 

Installment 3: Beginning and Structuring a Novel

While staying a jump or two ahead of the one-page-a-day October pace I set (other work is killing about 40 hours a week), in my scene-to-scene brainstorming, I’m attempting to build a supporting cast I can feel compelled to write about, and which has some historical connections.

The story is set during Prohibition. Tom is a nightclub dance orchestra musician. The sister he’s raising is of the wayward sort, and I’m beginning to suspect she hangs out at some speakeasy. And one of my earliest and most consistent impressions of Pentecostal Christians, which the victim at least used to be, is that many of them lead double lives. Meaning the victim could well be involved in, or be suspected of being involved in, some underworld shenanigans.

Also, the victim is a black fellow married to a white woman. The Ku Klux Klan was on the rise in the 1920s and had begun to make their presence known in LA. So Tom needs to investigate the Klan’s possible involvement, even though readers would have just cause to lynch me if at the end they learned these most obvious suspects did the murder. Still, Tom’s duty as a tough guy detective is to stick his nose into some Klan business and get it punched, or carved like Jake’s in Chinatown.

And the Angeles Temple needs to play a role in all this intrigue. After all, the victim was a Sister Aimee devotee, and was found hanging in the park across the street from Aimee’s temple.

So this week, my toughest and most critical job is to find the most effective ways (that will lead to the most gripping scenes, conflicts and character developments) to send Tom out snooping into the secrets of these three sinister or potentially sinister (in the case of the church) organizations or cultures.

Another challenge I’ll need to tackle before long is deciding whether to create other suspects or to consider the bootlegging underworld, the Klan, a mega-church, and the kingpins of the LAPD (who are covering up the murder) enough. How about William Randolph Hearst and his infamous newspaper empire? Shouldn’t I rekindle their infamy, I wonder.

And here’s one more puzzle. Why is Tom Hickey willing to risk his life to learn who killed somebody he hasn’t seen in years, when he has no claim to a professional stake in any of this? He’s not yet a cop or PI. 

I know why he should be willing to take some chances. The problem is, he doesn’t know what I know yet, and I’m not sure how far along in the story he should begin to learn it.

All this stuff is making my head spin.

I'm only two days late. Not bad, considering (if you'd like to know considering what, shoot me an email).

I got the gumption, started writing, and even set tentative deadlines and a plan to meet them. I intend to write a page a day through October (while I'm learning who the characters are and making notes on the rest of the novel) and two pages a day through November. So by December, I'll have 90 pages that no doubt will turn into 100 or more once I fill in some of the blanks I'm leaving until after I visit the setting and read more about the era. 

Maybe some of my gumption came from reading about Aimee Semple McPherson. I'm astonished by her charisma, ambition, and fervent devotion to her ministry in conflict with an apparently desperate need to be adored. 

My novel isn't about Sister Aimee, but I see her and her Angeles Temple functioning as a sort of backdrop. The murderer and the victim, as well as some informants Tom Hickey finds, have belonged to the congregation. I'm inclined to place the action during the 1927 inquest into Sister Aimee's 1926 disappearance, which she called a kidnapping, but which news hounds and investigators thought more likely a romantic fling. 

Although Sister Aimee is tangential to the story, I'm hoping to discover enough about her to allow Tom or his mentor Leo insights into the source of her astonishing power to draw and hold followers and to build a worldwide church out of nothing.