WHOSE STORY IS IT?

As I slowly recover from the soul-sucking trauma of nursing school and struggle to figure out how to function as a 21st-century adult female - with full-time job demands, concerns for adult children, responsibilities of caring for an elderly parent, social commitments, etc. - I am also trying to resurrect at least some semblance of consistent writing. There are so many stories to tell!

A couple months ago, I committed to writing here at the blog once a week on Sundays. Weekly blog posts have proven hit-or-miss, but thankfully, this small effort at consistent writing seems to be knocking rust off the machine and greasing the gears.

In late May, the idea for a new book budded.

I need to detour down a bunny trail here to give you a glimpse into my rabbity brain. I love to write. Writing helps me process and make sense of life and the world around me, and often - because God is very kind - writing enables me to connect with other people. This is a precious, precious gift, because connecting with other people is a challenge for this severe introvert.

Sharing thoughts and experiences here at the blog is pretty easy, when I have the time and I am not so completely exhausted that my day-to-day consists of waking sleep. Writing a story is very different. Story writing requires consistent, disciplined, focused time submerged in a story idea that captures my attention and holds my imagination.

I have been praying for a spark! - a captivating idea for a story - for months. Late May, God answered that prayer. With my brain buzzing with excitement, I sat down at the keyboard and began to write.

Chapter One...

Forget Stephen King's writerly advice: 1000 words a day x 100 days = first/rough draft. I am grateful for 400-500 words a day, two or three days a week. My engines are slow. I'm okay with that - I'm just glad they are running again.

Six chapters into this new story, I sat studying the main character one evening this past week, wondering where she would take me next. I like her. I care about her. I hope she will make it from the difficult place she is now to some place more solid, more joyful, more life-giving.

Contemplating this new character, I asked myself a familiar question: "Whose story are you telling, Camille? Her story? Or yours?"

All the characters in the fiction I've written before are, well, fictional. They no doubt contain bits and pieces of individuals I have encountered over the years, plus larger chunks of myself, but the characters are not real people. Their stories may resonate with my story, but their stories are not the same as mine. Still, so much of myself is poured into these characters, how could they not think and sound and act at least a little like me?

So I wrestled with that question - "Whose story are you telling?" - and I wondered: "God, is there a point to this? Is this really a story worth telling? Does anybody even need or want to hear this story?" (I went back to God because I truly believe the story idea came from him in the first place and because, whether it did or not, he is almost always the first one I run to with questions. God doesn't always answer my questions in ways I understand, but I know he hears them all and I know he cares.)

The next morning in my daily Bible reading, I read Acts 2, the account of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The people gathered in Acts 2 began to "speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." Verse 6 tells us that "at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language" (emphasis added). The conclusion of this massive outpouring of the Holy Spirit: "there were added that day about three thousand souls [who believed]" (verse 41).

I have been told multiple times over the course of my 60 years that I over-spiritualize everything. And frequently, I over-personalize things, too. Well, there it is. Thankfully, God knows me and he knows how to communicate with me. He does not dismiss my questions; he answers them in ways that speak to my over-spiritualizing, over-personalizing heart.

I read the first half of Acts 2 again, and then I read it a third time. I felt like God was saying, "Camille, I have given you a distinct voice, a particular life experience, a language that will speak to the heart of someone else who does not know me yet. Press ahead."

Whose story am I telling? I am telling my story, and the story of a fictional character named Marietta Louise Mosby, and the story of a person I have never met, and ultimately, God's story.

Because every story is God's story.

And so, I will press ahead, 500 words at a time.