Conversation with Athol Dickson

For a musician, dancer, painter, sculptor or architect, exploring the human condition in ways that transcend words may come a little easier than it does for a writer. Their media support it almost automatically; in fact, their media almost mandate it. But for a writer, a person whose medium is words, exploring the ineffable is a challenge on a different level. It is an added burden, because it is so easy to simply write what we mean. If a painter wishes to reflect upon the joy he experiences at sunrises, he has no choice: one way or another, he must simply paint the sunrise. His only hope lies in the possibility that in so doing, he has captured that sense of joy beyond words we have all felt at sunrises. (Some people view painting only as a technical challenge and give no thought to joy at sunrises, but I am dealing here with art, as I defined it.) Our painter’s technique may be representational (to the best of his ability) or it may be deliberately abstract. Either way, his medium compels him to concentrate on the sunset as he seeks to speak of joy, instead of concentrating on the joy. Our painter might be a poor craftsman, and because of that his painting might miss the mark completely in terms of expressing his experience, but at least his medium will not lead him into the trap of trying to express himself directly and thereby ruining everything. On the other hand, a writer can write (with total accuracy) "The sunrise was beautiful, and gave me joy." We will assume this writer is an artist, albeit a bad one; he is indeed thinking of the joy at sunsets. Note also that his use of his medium is impeccable from a "craft" standpoint. But he has completely missed the mark in terms of expressing joy. His medium, words, has tempted him to speak the unspeakable, and thereby ruin everything. Again, the painter has no similar temptation. How can he, when his medium itself will not support it? One does not write with brushes. So that is one way the study of art is helpful to fiction writers. It reminds us that our goal is neither to accurately tell the story (a technical challenge only), nor to accurately explain experiences (and thereby rob them of all meaning) but to do something in between those things, and in so doing, let our words touch on something beyond words.

Similarly, art can inform literature by providing fiction writers with alternative systems within which to think. I touched on one example in a recent blog, describing how Rembrandt expressed something beyond words about holiness, through the use of what painters and sculptors call "negative space". I related Rembrandt’s techniques to Christian living, but it relates as easily to writing. Every novel contains (or should contain) the literary equivalent of negative space. But how can that be expressed in words? Considering such questions is very valuable. I also find it helpful to consider the use of words in terms used by other kinds of artists to describe their methods and modes of thought. Other ideas from sister media that can widen and improve my writing are the use of color to inspire emotion, the use of line for definition, the use of surface texture to harness light, and so forth. Again, after these concepts become understood from a sister medium’s perspective, the question becomes, "How can I do something similar in words?" Sometimes those kinds of ideas transfer into literature almost without modification. An attention to rhythm, for example, can be very powerful in literature almost exactly as it is in music. Also, if a writer considers these ideas on a metaphorical level, all of them can yield productive fruit in the use of words. The negative space idea is an example of that. Rembrandt used large areas of lightness and darkness to alternatively absorb and accent certain characters in his painting. Are there words which are light, or dark? Can they be used to absorb or accent a character in a work of fiction? There are other ways to apply negative space to literature, but you see my point, I hope.

J: I’m a big fan of Art Deco and Craftsman-style doo-dads: houses, buildings, signage, furniture; I love it all. But those two styles of artistic expression, though they came of age during basically the same time, are completely different. Art Deco was very "modern." Very urban. Bourgeouis, maybe? Craftsman style seems very earthy. Lots of dark stained wood. Comfortable and warm, unlike the chrome and silver and smooth lines of Art Deco. Maybe I’m stretching a little too much here, but we seem to have a similar division today in books and literature. There’s a camp that’s very homey, warm, and down-to-earth, and a camp that’s very sleek, metallic, and "modern." To be fair, there’s quite a bit in between. But there’s a big difference between traditional CBA fiction and the kind of stuff being published in Relief journal. Is it fair to draw a comparison between fiction today and those artistic styles of the past, or is that an over-simplification?

AD: Art never happens in a vacuum. There are always reasons for how art is happening, be they social, political, theological or whatever. So I think it’s very fair to seek to learn from comparisons of architecture to fictional modes, so long as we compare "apples to apples" in terms of remaining within the same environment or climate that influences both, or at least remain very conscious of the differences in creative climates. For example, I don’t think we can learn much by comparing Chartres cathedral to A Clockwork Orange if the question is "What can a comparison teach us about art?" We might learn a lot about changes in culture, but the creative minds behind them stood in such radically different places, it’s hard to see how we could learn much about art strictly through the comparison. Even the differences between them would be different for different reasons, if you see my point. But to compare The Canterbury Tales to Chartres might yield some interesting artistic fruit. Chartres was finished about 100 years before Chaucer was born, but the climate of Chaucer’s time was probably pretty similar to, and certainly directly inherited from, the socioeconomic and theological forces that caused Chartres. So the overt symbolism in them both, the remarkable innovation of both, and the lofty goals of both, for example, speak volumes about how artists were responding to that time and place, where humanity was then, what was important to us then, and so forth.

The other thing your question makes me think about is the simple fact that architecture (all art, really) is a reflection of human character. We have all kinds of people in this world. Some could be described as "homey, warm, and down to earth," while others are "very sleek…and ‘modern’". This fact informs both the artist, and the patron of the arts. It influences what is done, and how it is received. So to say that one style or form is superior to another on the basis of one’s preferences is tantamount to elevating one kind of person above another. That should give artistic critics pause.

J: I admit that I tend to see writing in very artistic terms. That it’s more than just telling a good story. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most venerated forms of human communication. If you go back into the distant past, you see characters you can understand and relate to. Go back to Chaucer’s time and the characters of the Canterbury Tales could just as easily be people we work with, or some of our family members. You could say that storytelling, in it’s most basic form, has existed just as long as people have been on the Earth. I know it’s tempting to think of a book as "just a book," but given human society’s insatiable demand for story, there’s got to be more to it than that, doesn’t there?

AD: Yes, absolutely. You’re touching on what I tried to say about your first question. But rather than speak of "just telling a good story," I would put it a little differently. To me, telling a good story means lifting words to the level of art. Again, communicating the ineffable about our condition. If someone rises beside the campfire and says, "Today I killed a bear. He almost killed me first, and he hurt me, but I managed to stab him in the heart," well, that’s just not a good story, is it? It tells us nothing about us. We do want to know all the basic facts and details, of course, but more importantly, we want to hear how this man felt, where he found the strength, how it changed him, and so forth. We want to make some sense of this thing that happened. We might ask those kinds of questions and he might elaborate a little. "I was scared, and that made me strong, and afterwards I realized just how fragile life can be." So now he’s taking it to a "higher" level, talking about life and so forth, but still his story is not good. We know life is fragile. Hearing it said that way tells us nothing new. But if he includes some little detail, apparently unrelated, it can take us straight back to that confrontation as if it had happened to us, and in so doing, teach us things about ourselves that cannot quite be said aloud. "His teeth were inches from my nose, and his breath smelled of blueberries, and I thought of my wife’s blueberry pie, and I thought he would probably like it as much as I do. Then I fought a little harder." There. Now we have a good story. Now we’re getting into art, something deeper than the words he’s using, deeper than the simple facts. So maybe it would be useful to think of "story" rather than "words" within the context of that painter trying to express the joy of sunsets. Writers who don’t understand or desire communication of the ineffable may think in terms of words and give us all of the important facts. Writers who seek to speak of truths that transcend words, may think in terms of story and give us something "unimportant," which takes us beyond facts. That’s a bit too easy, because of course one must command one’s words to tell a story well, but it does approach the difference between "craft" and "art" in a slightly different way, so maybe it will help our understanding.

J: You deal heavily with themes of redemption in your work. Secular humanist authors abound in popular fiction and seem to have bought the post-modern idea that there isn’t anything to be redeemed from. Or that redemption is meaningless. It makes sense that a Christian author would deal with redemption because it’s the central message of Christianity. But not everyone agrees on what being redeemed means, or even how it’s achieved. You blogged recently about this topic. Can you talk a little bit about what role you feel redemption plays in Christian fiction?

AD: Any Christian knows the importance of redemption, so I won’t address that here. In terms of redemption as a fictive theme—any fiction, not just "Christian"—I think the question that must be faced by those who wish to write stories about the meaninglessness of redemption is, "Why?" I mean, why bother? From an artistic perspective, to write a book that leaves us with that message is a foolish enterprise, at best. Of course there are foolish moral and theological ramifications involved with writing such a book, but here I am speaking as a novelist, not as a Christian. The mere writing of such a book belies the theme, because of course the writer does not really believe what his book says. Again, if he did, why would he write at all? Every novelist who attempts to express the ineffable is concerned with theme, and everyone concerned with theme believes in some form of redemption. Every novelist wants to express something he believes is at least meaningful enough to justify a significant investment of his time. He may say he has no hope to offer anyone, but he says that even as he hopes to gain something for himself by saying it. Do you see what I mean? Unless he is a total fool, no one who truly believes redemption is impossible would waste the time and energy to write a novel saying so. It would be no use for us. It would be no use for him. It would be a total waste of time, not because the theme is false, but because it is a logical impossibility to use "no theme" as a theme while remaining honest. Even the presence of cathartic value in fingers pressing buttons on a keyboard rhythmically, like a Buddhist chant, implies some form of redemption, if only for the one doing the typing. So authentic nihilists in the philosophical sense do not do art, and any artist who claims to be a nihilist is not being honest with himself. Thus—and here’s the bottom line—such novels are bad art from the outset. And it must be repeated: I am not making a moral judgment here. I speak as an artist, a novelist.

But you asked about the role of redemption in Christian fiction. Such a massive subject! I guess a place to start would be to say it is the form of a novel’s redemptive theme that makes it "Christian," or not. If all novelists believe in some form of redemption, (and I believe they do—see above), does their work’s redemptive theme point readers toward the Christ, or elsewhere? I don’t really want to get into a discussion of the ever-present question, "What is ‘Christian fiction’", because I think all Christians know what "pointing toward Christ" means, and anyone who insists on parsing that idea too finely probably has ulterior motives. If we define "Christian" as a "follower of Christ," then I do think all Christians know how redemption is achieved, at least the fundamentals. It’s enough to observe some part of what we all know. But every soul approaches Him along a path with many signposts, so it is a mistake to say one signpost is more valuable than another, when God has already determined that each one is necessary to lead someone to the next. I think there is far too much discussion of this topic among Christian writers, and not nearly enough getting down to the business of installing signposts wherever one happens to be. It’s all redemptive in the Christian sense if it points in His direction and no other. Just do it!

We could talk a little about ways to do it, but that’s not really what you asked.

J: I’m as guilty as the next guy of being tempted to perpetually theorize, so let’s get away from the theory and talk about the practical implementation, then. Your book The Cure has a redemptive theme. But Riley Keep’s redemption may look different to some readers than what they might be expecting. I think your recent blog post on this topic covers that ground pretty well--there’s no sense in repeating it here, so could you talk a little about how you approached this aspect of the story and give us some ideas for dealing with redemption in our own writing?

AD: In The Cure, as in all my novels so far, I knew what I wanted to say about the theme before I started writing. I recommend that for anybody. There’s a school of thought that says, because we are redeemed we can just start writing and the redemptive theme will come, as if we are pure lights which cannot fail to shine. Maybe that’s true for some people, but I have dark days. I may be redeemed, but I am still a sinner, so my words are not going to be holy writ. I behave one way today, and another tomorrow, and who knows which part of me will do the typing at any given time? So I would be a fool to assume that something fine and redemptive is guaranteed to surface if I just set out writing. Some might be able to count on that, but for my fellow writers who are also fellow sinners, I strongly suggest thinking through the redemptive theme beforehand. Then you have a chance of getting it right whether you’re living the theme at the moment, or not.

J: Some writers describe their creative process as almost "channelling" a story. Like the story comes from somewhere outside themselves. Personally, I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with this because it seems too New-Agey to me. I’ve even heard Christian authors say that God "gave" them a specific story to tell. How can you argue with that? Maybe He did and maybe He didn’t. I do sometimes feel befuddled by the mystery of the creative process, though. I read the words I’ve written and I wonder where they’ve come from. Am I just being too pessimistic and distrustful? Does the Holy Spirit prompt us to write about certain things? Or tell certain kinds of stories?

AD: There’s a scary thing happening in our culture today, this whole "word of faith" theology, where you turn on the television and watch a man say, "Come to such and such arena next Saturday at six and be healed by the power of the Spirit!" Bring your money too, of course. But I’m not talking about the money. I’ll leave that for Ole Anthony and Senator Grassley. I’m talking about the notion that miracles can be scheduled, as if divine inspiration is under pressure in the plumbing at all times, and all we have to do is turn the spigot. That’s hogwash. God Almighty schedules miracles, and no one else. So it might be true that a person gets a divinely inspired story—the whole story, start to finish—but I very much doubt if he or she can do it on a deadline. Writing that way is just not professional, if you see what I mean. I do pray for inspiration (a lot!) but I don’t expect God to deliver the whole story. I ask Him what He wants me to write about, to lay some message or concern on my heart in such a strong way I cannot get it off except through the exercise of this gift He’s given. I ask Him to help me use that gift as I go along. But then I get to work. I brainstorm. I write a synopsis. I outline. I write a rough draft. I rewrite it, at least once. I send it to my editor, and when she or he responds with concerns and suggestions, I make revisions accordingly. I do "work as if working for the Lord," but there is NOTHING sacred about my words, and that’s where people get in trouble. If they really believe the Lord God called them up to the top of their own personal Mt. Sinai and gave them words, then woe unto any editor who presumes to change one jot or tittle! Yet, strangely, most of the novels allegedly written that way seem to need revision the most. How many of those TV healings really take? I’d say the ratio of readable novels that were given straight from God is about the same, at most.

Before a lot of true believers start posting indignant comments, I am NOT saying there’s no such thing as Divine inspiration. Of course there is! At the very least we can say every good thing is divinely inspired in the sense that common grace is the basic stuff of existence. And I do believe it’s possible some novels have been written in a burst of inspiration from the Lord that lasted long enough to take the author through the whole rough draft start to finish. But I do not believe anybody ever filled a bookshelf with novels written that way, just as I do not believe a man can go around healing people on demand according to a schedule. If anyone truly "receives" a novel like that, he or she is participating in a very rare event, indeed. Moses parted the waters one time only, is what I’m saying. He did not follow that up by going into the water-parting business.

J: I had a pre-conceived notion, when I started working on my Creative Writing degree, that most secular readers were averse to discussions of spirituality and faith in fiction. I’ve found, however, that the opposite is true. In workshop, the other writers almost always responded favorably to scenes that involved wrestling with faith. The conflict between religion and spirituality can be great fuel for a story. Secular readers aren’t nearly as disinterested in these things as I’d thought. It seems the key to it is approaching the subject honestly, rather than dogmatically. Characters who fear they’re wrong about how they see the world are more likely to get an empathetic response from a secular reader than those who seem to think they’ve got it all wrapped up in a nice bright bow. (Not really a question, per se, but an observation...take it where you will. :)

AD: I think you’re right about secular readers being interested in faith themes. The first professional editor who read my first novel was not a Christian as far as I know, but he surprised me by saying I should dwell more on the spiritual sub-themes. I did that, rewrote it on that basis, and then heard the same thing from a Jewish agent in New York. She said, "Give us more of that Christian stuff. That’s where this story is most real." So I rewrote it on that basis just a little more, and here I am. Now, the New York publisher who made the first offer on that book did ask me to change "Jesus" to "God" in order to appeal to a wider readership, so being open to "discussions of spirituality and faith" doesn’t necessarily translate to openness about Jesus. But there are very few true atheists in the world. Almost everyone knows there is a God, and finds that fact fascinating on some level.

As for your second comment about readers feeling more empathy for characters who feel they’re getting the spiritual part of life wrong somehow, again, I think you’re right. We’re talking basic character arc theory, a truth that applies to writing any kind of novel. There has to be some kind of flaw in Our Hero in the early going, something worked out in the end. It stands to reason that we don’t much want to read about a person who has everything all figured out, a hero who is Mr. Perfect, because what is left to learn? And why should we care about him, when common sense tells us he cannot be real? Even Superman has to deal with Kryptonite.

J: I think there will always be a market for well-written novels. Is it fair to say that the outlook for writers that aspire to be full-time authors is probably about as good as it’s ever been; that working hard at your craft and putting in the due diligence it takes to create a quality product will pay off if you just stick with it? An artistic life has never seemed to carry with it the guarantee that you can do it full-time. There’s always been a risk associated with choosing writing as a career. Do you generally encourage people who want to make writing a full-time career to go ahead and pursue it? Or is this a bad time to be contemplating a career move?

AD: There’s a risk associated with choosing any art form as a career, and it’s never going to be a good time to start, if we measure "good" with money. So I would only encourage someone to quit their day job and focus on writing fiction if they have already written several novels that sold well, or if their great aunt Edna died recently and left them lots of money. Near as I can tell, there are just three ways to make a living as a novelist. First, you could write an actual breakout bestseller, but this is extremely unlikely as anyone can quickly see by comparing the number of novels that actually sell big numbers to the total number of new novels published every year. Second, (and this may be the most certain route) if you are a reasonably good craftsperson, you could write three or four reasonably readable novels every year, year after year, but the compromises associated with that kind of assembly line approach mean it is not for those who wish to pursue expressing the ineffable in any sense that requires a lot of thought. Third, you could write one good novel after another, taking as long as it takes to do your very best on each one, and slowly—over a decade or two—build up a loyal readership to the point where it finally becomes possible to sell your work for a living wage. If there is a fourth possibility, I don’t know about it.

J: I’d like to go back to something you've mentioned a couple times: this notion of the "ineffable" in fiction. In one of my poetry classes, a phrase we latched onto in discussing what poetry does, exactly, is "the unsayable said." In dissecting poetry, I actually learned quite a bit about creating things with words. One of the concepts that sticks with me is that often you don’t really know what you’ve got until you read it. Those second and third layers of meaning seem to come into stronger relief in the revision process. Is that true for your own creative process? Do really only know if you’ve touched on the "ineffable" once you’ve got the whole thing laid out and now you’re going back over it after having gained some distance from the initial creation of the work?

AD: "The unsayable said." I like that. And I like the way you described it in terms of bringing layers of meaning into stronger relief. That sounds like a sculptor chipping away at a block of stone. It’s a good analogy. You’ve probably heard the old story about Michelangelo telling someone the figures are already there in the block of marble, waiting for him to free them. Rough drafts are that way for me. Artistically speaking, in terms of saying the "unsayable," there’s a kind of fuzziness in even the best rough drafts. In those early days after the rough draft is written, I’m sometimes convinced I’ve finally written something right the first time, but that just naïve enthusiasm. It’s never true. You could say writing a rough draft is most like cutting the block of raw stone out of the mountain in the first place. The secret to writing a good rough draft is not in getting the final form right; it’s in knowing which part of the mountain to go to for your stone. But if you do that right, the heart of the story will be waiting in that rough draft to be uncovered, or freed, during rewrites and revisions. The secret to rewrites and revisions is knowing which parts to chip away.

If I might switch analogies, it’s as if the subconscious knows the truest path from start to finish, the path that most directly stretches through everything needed to make the story work on all the many levels a novel can achieve, but I can’t quite see the surface of that path at first. So I map it out as closely as possible in the first draft, knowing the path will be covered up with wordy rubble here and there as I travel down it, but trusting that the rubble can be cleared away through rewrites and revisions (usually with the help of a good editor). I started down this path with a map in hand, a theme in mind, remember. I picked this path in particular. I’m not going to just start walking and hope to arrive. So with the theme always hovering in the back of my mind, I find little clues left for myself along the way. Phrases and paragraphs I wrote that touch on the heart of the story, that say, "Dig here; clear away this bit; there’s something good down under this." If I did not have something to say or something specific to explore when I set out, I don’t know that I could count on finding much below the rubble.

Athol Dickson is the author of the Christy-award-wining novel River Rising. His novel The Cure is out now and his novel Winter Haven is coming in spring, 2008. Be sure to check out Athol's blog, but you might also be interested in his memoir The Gospel According to Moses, which is based on his five years of Torah study under the Rabbi of a Reformed Jewish temple.