How simple misunderstandings make all the difference.
It is a little known fact, even among my friends, that I trained at university to become a librarian. During those 3 years, I discovered I had made a ghastly choice and, upon graduation, promptly embarked on a bookselling career which lasted all of 2 years. Fast forward several more years and I have finally worked out that my love of books is best expressed not in trading them but in actually writing the things!
During my first summer’s work placement en route to qualifying as a librarian, I spent some time on the mobile library run. This, incidentally, was back in the days of card files and tickets like tiny manila folders that held the book’s details whilst out on loan. The previous week, the driver had had to make an emergency stop, jettisoning the wooden boxes of cards and tickets throughout the length of the vehicle. It would be several weeks before all were safely correlated. Anyway, I met a lady – I’ll call her Mrs Evans – who required help selecting her next batch of reading material. She seemed fairly ambivalent as to genre, but added darkly, ‘I don’t want any of that ayeaye- aye.’ Being only nineteen, and innocently averse to ‘that sort of thing’ myself, I asked my colleague for advice. ‘No aye-aye-aye,’ I whispered, behind my hand. Her responding laughter took me by surprise, until she clarified that the lady wanted no ‘I – I – I.’ It wasn’t adult content that she found offensive, but novels written in the first person.
More than a year ago, I completed my own first novel. A few friends read it and declared it passable, so I began sending out the manuscript to publishers and agents. The ensuing rejection letters came as no surprise. Although I had day-dreamed of having publishers pushing past each other to get to me, I was realistic enough to know this was unlikely. I also knew that, although completing a full-length novel was commendable in itself, I hadn’t yet written a good enough one. If readers wouldn’t ‘shelve it,’ I would.
Undeterred, I began a second novel. It’s wonderful starting something new: the fresh page, the high hopes, the thrill of the journey! It’s so much harder actually finishing. After 92,000 words, I’m very close to the finish line but have stalled because, once I’ve reached the end, I know I’ll have to face the same round of editing and re-writing and approaching publishers and so on, potentially with the same outcome as before.
Recently, however, I found myself waking up with a barn-storming thought: how about I re-write the first novel in the first person? Pushing aside the thought that Mrs Evans would have hated it, I made a start. The story began to take on a life of its
own. I could now go more deeply and satisfyingly into my protagonist’s head. The insatiable need for nosiness, the sense of sneaking a peak into her diary, made for more gripping writing and, of course, reading. None of this should come as a surprise, should it?
We all have our stories to tell, and we naturally tell them in the first person, unless one is from the nobility. Even on the relatively simple scale of sharing our faith, telling the story of what God has done in and through us is far more compelling than trying to argue our corner. Writing our own story, and reading those written by others, whether in a journal or memoir or fi ction, encourages an exploration of feelings and responses. It is not even so much the ‘plot,’ the day-to-day events, but our reaction to what has happened, the highs and lows of shuffl ing through life.
In August, my own story was published in the form of a devotional. And this is how else our story can be powerful: using our own experiences to demonstrate the faithfulness of God and, hopefully, to draw our readers closer to Him. Truthfully, I consider my own life to be all about Him – Him – Him, but in order to communicate it, I will insist on I – I – I. Sorry, Mrs Evans.
Together Magazine
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