The Banya

“What pictures flash in your mind when you hear something about the public baths? Probable like most people, not very nice, do not have nothing to do with cleanliness, hygiene and enjoyable pastime. But it’s all superstition, friends. Currently, public baths, for example, up to 20 people, for the comfort of not much different from private ones… We are waiting for you to look in the Russian bath!”

-From www.banya-lefortovo.ru (translated by Google)

When my roommate John Mark and I began preparing to travel to Russia, we knew a visit to a banya would be in order. In our research we had read accounts of the renowned Hermitage Museum and the Mariinsky Ballet, but it seemed to us that nothing would display this country’s soul better than a steamy room full of naked old guys beating themselves with birch branches.

For the uninitiated reader, a banya is similar to a sauna, differing only in its steam, which is wet rather than dry. For centuries, Russians have visited banyas to wash, recover from illness, and enjoy community. As one Moscow banya claims: “In the life of a Russian man, the tradition of the washing bath holds a special place… banyas in Moscow bring the magical health benefits.”

Choosing the right banya was no easy matter. Like most tourists, John Mark and I were eager to escape other tourists. With this in mind, we bypassed any banya website written in English. Instead, we found websites made for Russians, and we relied on Google for a translation. Which is always a good idea.

The first website we found offered various banya experiences, including but not limited to the following:

-Russian bath on the 1^st person: 600 rubles, at one o’clock

-Starorussky massage – a broom in the steam room – 1 person (brooms not included): 1000  rubles

-Hovering in the steam room of honey – 1 person (honey is not included): 650 rubles

The banya also offered a service called “massage and the guy.” Massage and the guy was available for “honey massage the belly,” “lymphatic drainage massage,” and “massage cervical zony,” none of which sounded remotely appealing (or possible, considering my lack of a cervical zony). And although hovering in the steam room of honey piqued my interest—I’m only human—I worried this one was for pros only.

So we kept looking. After scrolling through pages of banya websites, we found Coachman’s Banya and decided it was the one. According to their website, “the walls of [their] baths remember Lenin, Dostoevsky, and Mussorgsky.” This would seem to go against our aim to avoid tourist traps, but the entry price of 150 Rubles ($2.17 USD) gave us hope that this banya was a local joint.

Owing either to a busy schedule or to sub-conscious trepidation, we waited to visit Coachman’s until our last day in Russia. Inside the poorly-marked building, a woman on the first floor sent us up three flights of stairs to the men’s banya. Walking through the door, we expected to find a lobby where we could pay. Instead, we’d entered directly into a dank locker room filled with wrinkled men in various stages of nudity. Inside a booth at one end of the room sat a dour man who would take our money.

When we travel, John Mark and I try to keep a low profile. We talk in low tones and try not to act blatantly American. I walked to the booth and blew my cover right away.

“One—um—one banya, please.”

I gave my rubles to the man, and he returned a few coins change. John Mark offered his credit card, but the man wouldn’t allow it. John Mark left to find an ATM, and I motioned to the man that I would return in a few minutes, but the man wanted me to take my money back first, an awkward process involving my counting back to him the change he had given earlier. John Mark and I descended the three flights of stairs, found an ATM several blocks away, and returned fifteen minutes later. So much for a low profile.

We found a locker for our clothes and walked into an adjoining room to shower. The room was lousy with naked men. I’d visited the Hermitage museum the day before, where I’d beheld the beauty of the human form in myriad paintings and statues. I’d seen men so elegant they resembled women, women so resplendent they looked like angels. Collarbones burst forth into marble wings.

The banya welcomed me back to Earth. No painting had depicted such lumps and sags; no marble bellies had grown so large as to fold into themselves. These men resembled nothing so much as spuds, which, if forgotten in a cool, dark place, might soon sprout roots. Looking at them and trying not to look at them, I thought, this is what I will look like in thirty years.

Not that my body is anything sculpture-worthy. After comparing myself to human perfection in gilded halls, there was a part of me that felt relieved to be back among my fellow unshapely men.

I showered and walked to a heavy wooden door in the back. This was it. I opened the door to an explosion of steam and walked in. My lungs seized and my eyes stung, and I stumbled toward a place to sit in the darkness. Several men shouted crossly at me, and I realized I had left the door open. I trotted to the door and closed it, trying not to laugh hysterically—my reflex response to awkwardness.

I sat. The room resounded with the sound of men beating themselves. I had read about the use of the venik, a bundle of birch branches soaked in water and used to beat oneself. Ostensibly, the practice draws blood to the surface of the skin and opens the pores. Somehow I had not imagined the beating to be so loud, so heartily administered, or to release such a pleasant aroma. The men employed the venik with gusto, boisterously whacking their arms, their chests, their thighs. I could feel the spray of their branches on my skin. They grunted and breathed; they loosed throaty yelps. It was hard to imagine women doing the same, only one floor above.

For me, there was something inherently masculine in the Russian banya. How many Russian men I had passed on the street, looking formidable and impassive. Here I saw these same men with guards dropped. Whatever burdens they carried through life, whatever bulwarks they raised to steel themselves, were here abandoned. Here they were only men. I wondered if they knew I was American.

John Mark sat beside me, and we sat and sweated in silence. Somehow, after anticipating the banya for several months, we had at the last moment forgotten to buy our venik. In the shower room, I’d noted rows of benches with buckets holding birch clusters. I considered taking one at random, but feared being confronted by a burly, nude man deprived of his birch. (Come back, birches!)

A man behind us lay down full length across a bench and enjoyed the beating of two friends on his back, buttocks, and legs. He seemed to enjoy it. As one banya’s website describes so poetically, “And what an unforgettable feeling of lightness and purity will give you an effective use of a broom experienced master!”

I wondered what a banya would look like in America, but I couldn’t imagine it. There is something too self-conscious in the American man, too well-groomed. Glancing discreetly at the other men in the room, at their slack, contented faces, I felt our key difference: None of them were thinking.

The heat rose. Or maybe it simply maintained its sweltering pitch. My body temperature climbed until sweat pattered on the floorboards between my feet. I couldn’t help thinking of an oven, and of poultry that I’d made edible in heat not much more than this. I finally fled the room and found the cold water tank in the shower room. I am squeamish about cold water, and also about tanks where hundreds of sweaty men have bathed, but none of that mattered as I climbed the ladder and dropped into cool, refreshing water. My muscles chilled. My whole body relaxed.

I was ready for another round.

At the door to the banya I found a trashcan of discarded birch clusters and stared into it enviously. Was I desperate enough to use another man’s venik? I grabbed the one on top and examined it, reevaluating my hygienic spectrum. These branches certainly weren’t “Used—like new.” The leaves were withered and still damp; worse, I had witnessed the most recent departure and could give their former owner a face—along with a belly and jocular buttocks.

I didn’t care. I hurried into the banya, climbed a platform where the heat was greatest, and commenced the beating. The leaves stung, and their bite only grew as the air baked them. My skin burned. I lowered my head and breathed deeply, letting my thoughts slow to a halt. John Mark came in from a dip in the tank, and he leaned forward so I could hit his back with the branches. I leaned forward while he returned the favor. All around, men were enjoying the “magical health benefits” of the sauna, and I too could feel the magic. Bowed and naked, sitting blankly in the primal heat, I felt like a man.

An Encouragement to Those Still Trying to Believe

It's been awhile, so I thought I'd post a short encouragement to anyone who needs it.

I was reading John 11. Jesus has barely escaped Judea with his life when He finds out that His friend Lazarus is ill. He waits two days and then decides to go visit. The passage goes like this:

(I've put in a few flourishes to emphasize how Jesus has some of the same social awkwardness as a homeschooler. No offense, Jesus. No offense, homeschoolers.)

Jesus: "We're going back to Judea."

Disciples: "Isn't that where people were just trying to kill us?"

Jesus: "Are there not twelve hours in a day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him."

Disciples: [eye roll]

Jesus: "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him."

Disciples: "If he's fallen asleep, he'll just wake up in the morning."

Jesus: "Lazarus is dead."

Disciples: "Who taught you to have a conversation?"

Anyway, here's the cool part, which I won't butcher by paraphrasing. Jesus then says, "For your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

1. Jesus was glad that Lazarus had died, so that his disciples could believe.

When things go wrong in my life, my first response is not naturally to believe. In fact, my first reaction is often to blame God--and also to say I told you so. You promised _____, but the opposite happened! I knew it, I never should have trusted you!

It's happened with all sorts of situations. I was believing for provision, but instead I got a speeding ticket. I was believing for freedom from sin, but instead I messed up more than ever. I was asking for healing, but I'm worse off than ever.

God, where were you?

Reading this passage, I'm wondering how many times Jesus has responded by saying, "I'm glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe."

Jesus sees our defeat, and he's somehow using it to help us believe.

2. Negative Nancy

The second encouragement I take away from this is Thomas's awesome response. He turns to the disciples and says, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Ha! Way to be honest, Thomas.

In my life, I have sometimes acted like one of the more awesome disciples. Peter, the water-walker. John, the breast-leaner (...ew?). But just as often, if not more, I've been Thomas, refusing to budge until God gives me a sign, and sometimes staying faithful with no greater expectation than to die.

Somehow God honors that. I mean, probably he'd prefer that we simply take him at his word. But I do take comfort from the fact that God doesn't kick Thomas out of his gang, that Thomas somehow makes it into God's inner circle.

How often I've thought that my unbelief exempts me from God's favor, that I will be shunned from the fellowship of believers if I don't believe with the same exuberance as everyone else. After all, what place does a doubter have among believers?

But in Thomas we see that God doesn't shun the doubter. In fact, reading this passage, I suspect that God sees the humor in the doubter's complaints.

So I want to encourage anyone who feels like I've been feeling: afraid of believing, because you've been let down before. There's hope for you. Maybe you're like Thomas, sticking around with Jesus, if only to fail with him. Maybe you're expecting defeat.

But you've decided you're not going to leave. You've decided you're going to stay with Jesus.

God has something to show you. I believe it. I believe that, for all the devastation you've experienced, this is not the final chapter of your story. God may even be glad for the odds stacked even higher against you (against him). If the story of Lazarus is any indication, God may be about to do something wonderful.

Crop Signs

The water rose to my chin, and splashes got into my mouth. I was quivering in the frozen water. The sound was deafening. “Let’s get out of here,” I gurgled… Swimming against the sub-zero current that was trying to bring me back into the bus was complicated.

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This is an excerpt from my first novel, The Captives. I wrote it in Junior High. The storyline is so convoluted that it’s hard to give a synopsis, but here goes:

On his birthday, a Christian teen named David is on his way to school when his bus crashes into a river. All his friends drown, but David escapes only to be taken CAPTIVE by a ruthless gang which is touring the country kidnapping Christian teens and martyring them. He falls in love with a fellow Christian prisoner, Megan, and together they lead a revolt against the terrorist gang.

Obviously, The Captives is a literary masterpiece. I can’t resist offering a few more of my favorite quotes:

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What I saw made a shower of fear grip me and shred me to pieces.

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I didn’t want to stand there anymore—and I had gained a little bit of strength—so I walked towards the road slowly, mourning the loss of my friends… Some birthday this was turning out to be!

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“Were there any survivors?” My mom asked it, hoping for a glimmer of hope.

“No.” Mom’s tears flowed like the unstoppable river that had drowned so many people earlier that day.

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The whole hallway echoed with cheers after Joe left. “Man, you were good!” “Yeah, you told him!” “I can’t believe you said that about his breathe!” “Too bad you have to die on a cross.” “I hope that you escape again and rescue us all!”

I yelled over the roar, “Thank you! But it wasn’t just me. It was God who gave me the courage.”

The applause thickened. “You’re too modest, Mike!” “I hope that your God saves you!”

                “I hope so too!”

----

I stopped working on The Captives around page 100. I can’t remember why, but I think it had something to do with how excited I was for my new project, The Warrior’s Heart. Here’s a brief synopsis:

A Christian teen named David is on his way to Argentina for a missions trip when his plane crashes, and he alone escapes by parachute to a mysterious island, only to be taken hostage by a ruthless band of natives. He falls in love with a girl named Megan, and together they hike through the mountains, escape an avalanche and keep warm in a frozen canyon by hugging through the night. Then they kill a dragon and save everyone.

I wrote The Warrior’s Heart for several years in high school, rushing to the theaters every December among a host of other teenage novelists who found inspiration in The Lord of the Rings.

However, I never completed The Warrior’s Heart. I stopped around page 100. I’m not exactly sure what happened. I remember reading through the chapters I had written and noticing their enormous shortcomings. I remember despairing of ever being a real author, and consoling myself by starting a new novel: The Five Fates.

I worked on The Five Fates for a couple years, wrote about 100 pages, and stopped.

Exactly a year ago, I started The Red Road. This week, I passed page 100. I can feel the chapters dragging behind me, slowing my momentum. The past few weeks of writing have been hard. Reading backwards, I am not proud of everything I’ve written. Looking forward, I’m not confident I can write anything better. Maybe it would be best just to start from scratch with a new story, a better story.

In some ways, writing has only gotten harder as I’ve grown older. I’m not the Junior High student writing about dragons anymore. Each year that passes adds greater stakes to dreams like these.

I’ve talked to military kids who grew up moving every two years. When they finally decide to stay in one place for good, a restlessness assaults them at the two-year mark. They experience an impulse for flight as strong as that of migratory birds, an impulse which seems wrong to resist. For them, breaking the two-year cycle requires a feat of perseverance, a breaking of wrong instinct.

I think this is common to all of us. Who knows what wrong instincts we are all harboring in our bellies, unbeknownst to others and perhaps even to ourselves? Only you can know what secret, often nonsensical, urges you must work against.

For my part, I must break the 100-page barrier (among many other, more sinister, impulses in my life). Communicating how I feel is half the battle. As any verbal processor knows, there’s great significance in winding your way toward the perfect words. Some conversations I’ll spend hours processing through the same vague impressions, turning over the same words again and again until I’ve come by that perfect, distilled image or phrase. When I find it, I may repeat the phrase for days or even weeks, trying to remember which friends I’ve shared it with so the revelation doesn’t seem rehearsed when I process it for the tenth time.

Finding a good phrase is like discovering a diagnosis for your sickness. These muscle pains, fevers, and wheezing cough aren’t just random symptoms anymore: they have a proper name.

There are many truisms we writers use to encourage ourselves. One of the most famous (and one that’s helped me from time to time) goes roughly like this:

Writing is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole journey that way.

I recently stumbled across a new metaphor that makes sense of how I feel today as I sit down to write:

Writing is like making crop circles without a ladder.

I start the day where I left off, tracing the previous day’s curve until I arrive at a dead end of corn. Then I start clipping away, projecting from the previous day’s trajectory to guess today’s. Some days I take a machete with me and cut stalks in wide swaths. Other days I bend them with tiny scissors, troubling over each stalk.

In the beginning I had a clear picture in my mind of what I wanted this crop sign to look like. But it’s been a year, and the picture is getting blurry. I don’t have a helicopter or plane, and even when I drag my stepping stool into the middle of the field, it doesn’t afford much perspective. The stalks rise over my head. I try to measure out the distance between lines and circles, but there’s no way of knowing whether it’ll look right from the sky. I’m lost in my own corn maze with a pair of scissors.

So there’s my picture, my phrase. It doesn’t solve my problems, because novels can’t be solved, only made. But at least I have a few words for why this is so hard. Like David from The Captives and The Warrior's Heart, I am committed to surviving, slaying my dragons, and—most importantly—romancing a girl named Megan.*

*The name Megan, like the dragons I'm slaying, is metaphorical. Just in case you were wondering.

Encouraged by Steven Curtis Chapman (and others things cool Christians don’t say)

I’m just going to come out and say it. Last month I cried while listening to Steven Curtis Chapman.

It was an accident! I was searching my iTunes for a soundtrack for a drive to Denver, and I happened to see a Steven Curtis Chapman album, leftover from when I helped my mom load songs on her IPOD, and I decided to listen to a few songs for laughs, and—

There’s no escaping it. I cried. Steven Curtis Chapman reduced me to babyish tears—maybe because I listened to him when I was a baby.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Steven Curtis Chapman—or perhaps you didn’t know he was still alive and able to sing—he is a Christian songwriter whose career began in 1987, one year before I was born. The Christian music industry we know today didn’t yet exist. Chapman was a pioneer, a description easily confirmed by a glance at his stallion mullet and a quick listen to his lyrics:

Saddle up your horses, we’ve got a trail to blaze

Through the wild blue yonder of God’s amazing grace!

I don’t listen to Christian—or any other—radio. Having worked many years for a magazine that marketed to Christian bookstores, I have a distrust for the industry. I thought I was inoculated against campy Christian lyrics.

But there comes a day when you’re driving along, just trying to pick up a lamp from IKEA, and BAM!—Steven Curtis Chapman happens. His golden retriever soul might make you weep, but he’ll wipe your tears with his luxurious mullet.

Alright, I’m getting carried away.

This has been a rough [week, month, year…?], which has made me extra susceptible to surprise jolts of encouragement, especially in musical form.

Music is emotional. Feeling complacently content, we hum. We get frustrated, and the humming stops without our noticing. If I want a quick gauge of how I'm feeling, singing provides an easy reference.

A few months ago I felt like God was asking me to sing to Him. I ignored Him. Far from singing, most of my prayer times had involved me sitting on my bed with a glum expression and praying with a weary voice. I knew that if I showed how miserable I was, He would feel sorry for me and respond.

Remember being sick as a kid? There’s a certain showmanship involved. You must show that you’re sick enough to stay home from school another day, sick enough to get out of chores, sick enough to justify lounging on the couch with a drawn face. But you must also be well enough to go to a friend’s house if they invite you over, well enough to eat the pizza your mom is making, well enough to enjoy the perks of being sick.

God asking me to sing was like asking me to give up my claims to sick person perks. No more looking miserable, no more begging out of duties, no more complaining about how bad I felt. I’d been feeling bad a long time, and I'd developed some fine tricks for surviving in conservation mode. I didn't want to lose them.

When God did speak to me, I was slow to respond. It was just so ridiculous. I would have been more apt to take action if he’d given me a prescription for more introspection, more analyzing, talking with a new mentor, reading a book about despair, reading a whole stack of books on despair. I could have read the heck out of those books!

But singing was stupidly easy. And it was the only thing I felt God might be leading me to do.

I started singing in my living room when my roommates were away. Haltingly, with pitiful, uncertain tones, I made up aimless songs with lyrics like, “I believe you’ve been really good to me,” and, “I think I still love you, God.”

It’s been awkward, but also really good. I’ve begun to thaw. I sing made-up songs to God, and it cheers me up almost against my will. The singing reminds me what it felt like to love God, what it felt like to be grateful. It’s almost like I could feel that way again.

I’ll admit, it’s hard to say that God is good, to smile, to tell people how lucky I am to be a son of God. The pain I feel is precious to me—so precious that I am loathe to let it go. I’m quick to add disclaimers to my praise. “He’s good but I’ve been let down before.” I prefer the position of a judge, evaluating a spread of feelings and experiences to decide whether God is in fact good.

In the Psalms, David continually writes phrases like, “I will open my mouth” and “I will not hide your goodness within me.” He is quick to openly declare God's goodness. I want to be like that. I want to acknowledge the good that has been done to me. There’s so much of it!

I’m not suggesting we ignore our deep pains. The Bible is clear that those who mourn are blessed, while those who laugh now will soon mourn. But the blessing Jesus spoke to those who mourn is a promise of coming comfort. For me, singing has preceded the comfort of the Lord. I sang of God’s goodness before I felt it, and somehow that opened the door for me to receive.

It’s not natural. Children of a skeptical generation, we tend to turn up our noses at exuberant adoration. It’s hard to stomach Steven Curtis Chapman’s optimism, his cheerful assertion that “God will finish what He started/No thread will be left unwoven… We’ll stand as the ones completed/By the miracle of His love.” But it’s hard to retain a callous attitude when I remember that these lyrics were written by a man whose daughter was tragically killed not too long ago, accidentally run over by a family member in his own driveway. And somehow he’s still able to sing. That’s something I can’t easily belittle.

I don’t know what God is asking of you, what key He will use to lead you out of mourning. But I want to encourage you to give in to His strange tactics. I want to encourage you to praise before you feel thankful, to stretch yourself for a sure and coming joy.

God has helped me worship Him, even when I felt I couldn't. God has been good to me.

Blog Hop: What I’m Writing and Other Reflections on Claiming Artisthood

A few weeks ago, my friend Meredith posted a blog entry answering four questions about her writing. When I read to the end, I was surprised to see that she had asked me and some other writers to answer the same four questions. So here I am, coming back to my blog after a long absence for this pleasantly self-indulgent exercise. Hope you enjoy it!

What am I writing and working on?

Last fall I quit my full-time job to begin writing in a more concentrated way. It’s been nearly a year, and even though I am once again working about 40 hours a week, I am still writing.

The main project is a novel, but I also dabble in short stories, songs, and essays when the mammoth weight of the novel gets too much.

Fiction:

The Red Road. This is the biggie. I started this novel in college for a novella class and placed the first fifty pages into my professor’s hands, if only to remove them from my sight. My A- earned, the novel sat mostly dormant for three years. Last fall, with much encouragement from friends, I sat down with a basic memory of the story and began to type, starting at the very beginning as Maria Von Trap recommends.

The novel follows two boys as they walk along a forbidden road to save their village. It’s a journey narrative, fraught with danger, brotherhood, and mythology. I spend nearly 10 hrs a week plugging away on this story. I hope that, many years from now, you’ll pick up a copy at your local bookstore if those are still a thing.

“Churchgoing.” This is a short story about a seminary student visiting his mom’s church during Christmas break. His high-minded sensibilities clash with the church’s charismatic exuberance, pushing him uncomfortably toward an O’Connor-esque encounter with grace. This story is a ton of fun to write, and I sometimes embarrass myself by laughing out loud at my own writing. I haven’t shared fiction publicly since college, but I hope to post “Churchgoing” on the blog when it’s complete.

Non-Fiction:

You may have noticed that my blog has been dormant for awhile. This is due in part to the amount of focus The Red Road demands, but also in part to the difficulty I’ve had making sense of my life. Every now and then I’ll record a partial thought on my computer, dipping a ladle into a boiling pot to see if anything has congealed. The thoughts that emerge generally land in one of two categories, which will eventually form the basis of two blog series:

“Recovering Narrative.” Recently I’ve struggled to form a meaningful narrative from the disjointed pieces of my life. “Recovering Narrative” discusses various crises of faith, confusion over where my life is heading, and the way God has led me painstakingly back toward a meaningful narrative.

“In Defense of Beauty.” I’ve been gathering material and writing notes for this piece for many years now. I’m fascinated by the ways we avoid beauty, insisting on mediators which inoculate us to its influence. “In Defense of Beauty” is my love-letter to the world, the kind that’s written both to praise and provoke.

Music:

Does anyone remember that one time I promised to have a homemade CD out by April 2014? Does anyone remember how that never happened?

Well I’m SORRY! I’m still working on that, although not very consistently. I’ve been pretty disappointed by the sound quality of what I’m able to do at home. I really should take a month off from writing the novel to make some headway on this project. I should also lower my standards—a lot. But let’s be honest, neither of these is likely to happen anytime soon. I guess the world will have to wait.

I am, however, writing some songs. My current favorite:

“Eyes Facing Out.” This is a simple ditty I’ve been turning over in my mind for several months, concerning the strange way God made us. I think it’s really interesting that we can’t see our own faces or really even hear what our voices sound like, that we need others to see and hear us.

If you’re interested in any of these projects, give a shout out! Your encouragement keeps a tired writer going!

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

My work differs from others’ in one key way—it is unfinished. I know that’s a big copout, but I’ve always been a restless policeman. (That’s an attempted pun on “cop-out.” It doesn’t really work. Pretend it does and laugh!)

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that my work is unfinished. That in itself sets it apart from nearly every work that has inspired me, encouraged or chastened me, and ultimately inspired me to write. When I compare myself to Marilynne Robinson or C.S. Lewis, I am comparing my beginning endeavors to their finished work. I have no access to their scribblings, their embarrassing false starts, the dirty layers hidden beneath years of revision.

I’ve sometimes compared writing a novel to building a plane. It can’t fly at all till the work is mostly done. A constant labor of faith and imagination is required to believe that such a heavy thing will ever get off the ground.

Why do I write what I do?

In a broader sense, I write novels because that is the form that best facilitates the way my mind works, allowing space for interconnectedness and slow-brew revelations. I enjoy the marathon pace.

In a specific sense, I’m writing The Red Road because I promised I would. I have been a novelist since I was young, but I have never finished a novel. There are many days when I don’t feel any affection for this story (and many days I do). And there’s no guarantee I’ll be published. For me, writing The Red Road is mostly about becoming a person who can persevere beyond aborted projects and half-formed ideas, becoming a person who finishes things that matter.

How does my writing process work?

People often ask me if I’m done with that novel I’m working on. For the next several years, assume the answer is no. A better question would be, “How’s the novel coming along?” An even better question would be, “Would you like a generous coffee patron?”

Flannery O’Connor describes novel-writing as “a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.”

I like that quote because it makes what I do sound EPIC. In reality I’m just sitting at a coffee shop, typing, my hair and teeth fully intact. I quietly add paragraphs and pages to a work that seems not to grow longer.

I keep a tally of my writing hours in an excel spreadsheet like a budget. The danger is to think I’ve been writing when I haven’t. The numbers keep me honest (mostly).

When I sit down to write, I try not to rehash my identity as a writer. I try not to question whether my work has any worth. A year ago, I made a decision through prayer and a lot of consideration, and I have to trust it. The right time for self-doubt was approximately 75 pages ago. Which must mean that now is the time for faith.

I’m not going to tag more friends, because I don’t know enough bloggers. But do yourself a favor and check out Meredith’s blog, Very Revealing. My favorite entries so far are “My Mustache Brings all the Boysto the Yard,” “Walking off the Career Path,” and--what has to be the most encouraging thing I've read in a long time--“Learning How to Run (well, walk).”