Part I: Why I Wanted to Write
Part II: A Long Road in the Same Direction
Part III: On Being Grafted
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Part III: On Being Grafted
Part I: Why I Wanted to Write
Part II: A Long Road in the Same Direction
So I've been accepted into my top choice for graduate school. To study at a school that has, for me, resonated everything I've always thought. The way faith has synthesized with art has, for even before I wanted to be a writer -- since I first read Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton -- been immeasurably important to me. But in words I've never been able to express. That's why writing as a television producer never satisfied me at my inmost. Never resolved that long-plucked note. You just can't fathom things like filioque and Incarnations and Atonements in twenty-second, less than 15-words-a-sentence news copy. But in fiction, after reading O'Connor, I had arrived at the conclusion that it was possible in fiction. And having always been a lover of theology and "deep-thinking", a kind of syncretism became, for the first time, a quantifiable reality. I could become a writer.
Five years later, in at Seattle Pacific for degree a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I'm still not anything like a writer. More like I'm this wild branch that's been granted this opportunity to be grafted onto this well-producing, abundant branch (read your Bible if you think I just came up with that). But that's really a good way of explaining where I find myself this morning. And how I feel about how things will now proceed for two years. It's just simply that: I've been grafted onto this tree of well-producing, inspiring fruit. And that I know have an incredible responsibility because who is to say that I can't just as easily end up un-grafted from it all. Don't think I haven't been on my knees in this past week expressing my utmost to God. At the joy. At the blessing. And for the hope of what now happens. Last night, in my devotions, I read this whole metaphor for Romans and it's hard not see it applying to me in this sense, considering where I am right now. And I got this sense of my new responsibility to being grafted onto this incredible community of writers to whom faith and art are not so much grafted, but have grown up from the same roots.
Part II: A Long Road in the Same Direction
So I've been accepted into my top choice for graduate school. To study at a school that has, for me, resonated everything I've always thought. The way faith has synthesized with art has, for even before I wanted to be a writer -- since I first read Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton -- been immeasurably important to me. But in words I've never been able to express. That's why writing as a television producer never satisfied me at my inmost. Never resolved that long-plucked note. You just can't fathom things like filioque and Incarnations and Atonements in twenty-second, less than 15-words-a-sentence news copy. But in fiction, after reading O'Connor, I had arrived at the conclusion that it was possible in fiction. And having always been a lover of theology and "deep-thinking", a kind of syncretism became, for the first time, a quantifiable reality. I could become a writer.
Five years later, in at Seattle Pacific for degree a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I'm still not anything like a writer. More like I'm this wild branch that's been granted this opportunity to be grafted onto this well-producing, abundant branch (read your Bible if you think I just came up with that). But that's really a good way of explaining where I find myself this morning. And how I feel about how things will now proceed for two years. It's just simply that: I've been grafted onto this tree of well-producing, inspiring fruit. And that I know have an incredible responsibility because who is to say that I can't just as easily end up un-grafted from it all. Don't think I haven't been on my knees in this past week expressing my utmost to God. At the joy. At the blessing. And for the hope of what now happens. Last night, in my devotions, I read this whole metaphor for Romans and it's hard not see it applying to me in this sense, considering where I am right now. And I got this sense of my new responsibility to being grafted onto this incredible community of writers to whom faith and art are not so much grafted, but have grown up from the same roots.
Part I: Why I Wanted To Write
Five years ago this month I put down a short story by Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", and I know it sounds trite but I knew in that moment I wanted to be a writer. For reasons I can only now see can I ascertain the validity in that revelation. Because it was a revelation. Because I was already a writer. I wrote television news copy. I produced hours of live, breaking and recorded news every day. And I was damn good at it, especially the writing side of it -- I even won an in-house "Best News Writer Award"! -- but it was ultimately un-fulfilling. Then I read a biography of some Catholic writers. One of them O'Connor and then I read O'Connor and then what fell on me fell on me hard and fast and I knew becoming a writer was my new goal. To write with such a manner and means (yes, that phrase is borrowed) as to include my faith, my observations of the world, to have those ideas that have always struck me be inhabited by worlds and plots, characters and settings. Becoming a writer. Yes. That's what I wanted to be.
Skip ahead a year. Skip over that theology class on the Problem of Evil I took. Skip over the long hours trying to write. Trying to make something out of nothing. Skip over the doldrums of work, and the applying to switch jobs to become a television director. Pause and join me for this moment. Skip the applications. The scrambling to get recommendation letters and write and write and write.
It's now March of 2007. Isaac James Guest is due. Any day I'm about to welcome my son into this world. I am writing. But mostly I am waiting. Waiting to officially switch jobs. Waiting to go house shopping. Ohio State has rejected my application for grad school. But I am still waiting. Waiting for Isaac and waiting for Dayton. Dayton comes first. Acceptance to the M.A. program (I am still thinking maybe I'll duel degree with an MTS at this point and Dayton has a great theology program). But there are stipulations. I need to take two more English classes somewhere and do well in them.
But still. Acceptance. Still. It felt like morning had broken. Jen and I hugged and cried and were excited as we lay on our bed that Saturday morning before Isaac came.
It would take an entire year. A whole long year of a new job, a new son, a new house. But I completed the classes. Even re-applied to OSU (rejected!). And so with the classes under my belt I trucked down to Dayton for a Q&A with the director. I left. Drove home. Unsatisfied and confused and not really sure if the incredible sacrifice it was going to take with our family was going to be worth it.
Jen and I had a long discussion. Laid every possibility out. And the bottom-line was that it didn't feel right. Though I had worked and worked hard. Written and gotten better. Was ready to quit my job and head back to school. Though it all seemed aligned and strung up taught on the neck of a guitar, something was out of tune still. It wasn't right. Not yet.
Read Part II: A Long Road in the Same Direction
Skip ahead a year. Skip over that theology class on the Problem of Evil I took. Skip over the long hours trying to write. Trying to make something out of nothing. Skip over the doldrums of work, and the applying to switch jobs to become a television director. Pause and join me for this moment. Skip the applications. The scrambling to get recommendation letters and write and write and write.
It's now March of 2007. Isaac James Guest is due. Any day I'm about to welcome my son into this world. I am writing. But mostly I am waiting. Waiting to officially switch jobs. Waiting to go house shopping. Ohio State has rejected my application for grad school. But I am still waiting. Waiting for Isaac and waiting for Dayton. Dayton comes first. Acceptance to the M.A. program (I am still thinking maybe I'll duel degree with an MTS at this point and Dayton has a great theology program). But there are stipulations. I need to take two more English classes somewhere and do well in them.
But still. Acceptance. Still. It felt like morning had broken. Jen and I hugged and cried and were excited as we lay on our bed that Saturday morning before Isaac came.
It would take an entire year. A whole long year of a new job, a new son, a new house. But I completed the classes. Even re-applied to OSU (rejected!). And so with the classes under my belt I trucked down to Dayton for a Q&A with the director. I left. Drove home. Unsatisfied and confused and not really sure if the incredible sacrifice it was going to take with our family was going to be worth it.
Jen and I had a long discussion. Laid every possibility out. And the bottom-line was that it didn't feel right. Though I had worked and worked hard. Written and gotten better. Was ready to quit my job and head back to school. Though it all seemed aligned and strung up taught on the neck of a guitar, something was out of tune still. It wasn't right. Not yet.
Read Part II: A Long Road in the Same Direction
Part II: The Long Road In The Same Direction
Read Part I: Why I Wanted to Write
Apologies to Nietzsche.
Dayton was not going to work. So I trekked on. In 2008 I didn't reapply. I didn't hardly write much that year. Instead trudging along with work. With trying to write at work as a director. I think that year I wrote a lot though. I wrote a lot about Isaac. I've gone back over some of that writing. And while long term it wasn't at all what I hoped to write about (fiction vs non-fiction), it embodied a lot of the type of writing I wanted to explore. This idea that there is and was something large and ineffable at work in small moments. Read it all here. I am glad I did that writing. That I have a record of those experiences with Isaac that I have now almost all but forgotten. By the end of 2008 we were expecting Lucy. And so looking back not going to Dayton was absolutely the right decision. Things worked out immeasurably well.
To begin 2009, my sister-in-law and her three kids moved in with us for four months. I did almost no writing, but my reading habit improved. And though Jen and I had been talking about it before, we now became certain that once Lucy arrived in the summer I would quit my job, stay home with the kids and write and get into grad school the following year. And so Lucy came. And so I quit my job. And so I stayed home. It was an easy decision and a hard one. But I am blessed with an amazing wife who works harder than anyone I've known and who loves her job but loves her family with an incredible devotion and passion. And the opportunity to still live within our means and not have to put our young, young kids in the care and possession of somebody else has been a blessing, and it has been Jen's sacrifice. There were a number of reasons we decided on this course of action, in truth. We always talked about it being my sacrifice. My giving up my promising and steady, well-paying job in a horrible economy. But in truth it has not been my sacrifice. It has been my joy. And I know, as a result, it has been her joy as well. Not having to worry about the kids in someone elses care. To raise them like we have wanted to raise our kids has been the immeasurable blessing that I can't even now account for.
So I stayed home. Wrote and wrote. Got back from a weekend in Iowa and wrote and wrote more. And I applied to graduate school. And I didn't get in. Not anywhere. Not at any of my six schools. And so the next year, 2010, progressed along. A long road. I tried to write in different ways. To write in different places. I read more books than ever last year. Wrote more than ever. But after the sting of rejections. After the re-lacing of the bootstraps and sucking of it up, I enrolled in an online class through Image Journal and Seattle Pacific University. The school has a renowned MFA program -- though they were one of the six that did reject me -- and was where I wanted to go. So I enrolled in a class on Magical Realism with Gina Ochsner.
I cannot begin to account for the ways I suddenly became a better writer -- or at least feel like a better writer. That would probably take too long. Only know this: I saw my abilities as a writer could involve those same qualities I once wrote about with Isaac. That the infinite could inhabit the finite. That magic and hope and faith and joy are ultimately tied up in the same stuff. Gina was effusive and encouraging and inspiring. And I began to truly love what I was writing about, even if it stretched me more ways than I could imagine. Even if it became incredibly tough to write, I began to love and love and love writing. And so everything changed last year.
A year and a half at home with Isaac and Lucy was an incredible experience. I got to write about Isaac as a one-year-old and I got to spend my days with Lucy as a one-year-old. It has been a long journey. It has been a long road. From O'Connor to quiting my day job. From no kids to one kid to two adorable and joy-filled children. One year to two years and now going on five. Over 100 books read. More than fifty stories written. Isaac turns four on Saturday; Lucy turns two this summer. Jen is out of her residency and though working less hours, is still working harder in many other ways that have not been easy.
On this long road, nothing is ever easy. Nothing just comes upon us as simply as finishing a short story and in a Eureka! moment. Even if it did. Even if it was that easy it just isn't that easy. Because where you invest yourself, where you invest your love so you invest your life (I borrowed that too). And that's life. An investment of love. Easy in a moment, hard as hell over the months and months. A long, long road journeyed, steadily, unswervingly in that same direction.
On March 4th, 2011 I received a call from Greg Wolfe, the director of the Seattle Pacific University MFA program. He was calling me to tell me I've been accepted into the graduate program. To tell me that great writers like Gina Ochsner and Bret Lott will be my teachers. That locations like Santa Fe and Whidbey Island outside of Seattle will be my residency locations. That the past five years of this journey has reached something very much like a mountaintop.
Jen came home from work. I had already called my family. My friends knew. Only she didn't. She had another rough day at work. And as she was about to kick off her own well-trodden shoes I whispered in her ear that I had gotten a call from Seattle. And that was all I needed to say to her as she kicked off her shoes and jumped into my arms.
Read Part III: On Being Grafted
Apologies to Nietzsche.
Dayton was not going to work. So I trekked on. In 2008 I didn't reapply. I didn't hardly write much that year. Instead trudging along with work. With trying to write at work as a director. I think that year I wrote a lot though. I wrote a lot about Isaac. I've gone back over some of that writing. And while long term it wasn't at all what I hoped to write about (fiction vs non-fiction), it embodied a lot of the type of writing I wanted to explore. This idea that there is and was something large and ineffable at work in small moments. Read it all here. I am glad I did that writing. That I have a record of those experiences with Isaac that I have now almost all but forgotten. By the end of 2008 we were expecting Lucy. And so looking back not going to Dayton was absolutely the right decision. Things worked out immeasurably well.
To begin 2009, my sister-in-law and her three kids moved in with us for four months. I did almost no writing, but my reading habit improved. And though Jen and I had been talking about it before, we now became certain that once Lucy arrived in the summer I would quit my job, stay home with the kids and write and get into grad school the following year. And so Lucy came. And so I quit my job. And so I stayed home. It was an easy decision and a hard one. But I am blessed with an amazing wife who works harder than anyone I've known and who loves her job but loves her family with an incredible devotion and passion. And the opportunity to still live within our means and not have to put our young, young kids in the care and possession of somebody else has been a blessing, and it has been Jen's sacrifice. There were a number of reasons we decided on this course of action, in truth. We always talked about it being my sacrifice. My giving up my promising and steady, well-paying job in a horrible economy. But in truth it has not been my sacrifice. It has been my joy. And I know, as a result, it has been her joy as well. Not having to worry about the kids in someone elses care. To raise them like we have wanted to raise our kids has been the immeasurable blessing that I can't even now account for.
So I stayed home. Wrote and wrote. Got back from a weekend in Iowa and wrote and wrote more. And I applied to graduate school. And I didn't get in. Not anywhere. Not at any of my six schools. And so the next year, 2010, progressed along. A long road. I tried to write in different ways. To write in different places. I read more books than ever last year. Wrote more than ever. But after the sting of rejections. After the re-lacing of the bootstraps and sucking of it up, I enrolled in an online class through Image Journal and Seattle Pacific University. The school has a renowned MFA program -- though they were one of the six that did reject me -- and was where I wanted to go. So I enrolled in a class on Magical Realism with Gina Ochsner.
I cannot begin to account for the ways I suddenly became a better writer -- or at least feel like a better writer. That would probably take too long. Only know this: I saw my abilities as a writer could involve those same qualities I once wrote about with Isaac. That the infinite could inhabit the finite. That magic and hope and faith and joy are ultimately tied up in the same stuff. Gina was effusive and encouraging and inspiring. And I began to truly love what I was writing about, even if it stretched me more ways than I could imagine. Even if it became incredibly tough to write, I began to love and love and love writing. And so everything changed last year.
A year and a half at home with Isaac and Lucy was an incredible experience. I got to write about Isaac as a one-year-old and I got to spend my days with Lucy as a one-year-old. It has been a long journey. It has been a long road. From O'Connor to quiting my day job. From no kids to one kid to two adorable and joy-filled children. One year to two years and now going on five. Over 100 books read. More than fifty stories written. Isaac turns four on Saturday; Lucy turns two this summer. Jen is out of her residency and though working less hours, is still working harder in many other ways that have not been easy.
On this long road, nothing is ever easy. Nothing just comes upon us as simply as finishing a short story and in a Eureka! moment. Even if it did. Even if it was that easy it just isn't that easy. Because where you invest yourself, where you invest your love so you invest your life (I borrowed that too). And that's life. An investment of love. Easy in a moment, hard as hell over the months and months. A long, long road journeyed, steadily, unswervingly in that same direction.
On March 4th, 2011 I received a call from Greg Wolfe, the director of the Seattle Pacific University MFA program. He was calling me to tell me I've been accepted into the graduate program. To tell me that great writers like Gina Ochsner and Bret Lott will be my teachers. That locations like Santa Fe and Whidbey Island outside of Seattle will be my residency locations. That the past five years of this journey has reached something very much like a mountaintop.
Jen came home from work. I had already called my family. My friends knew. Only she didn't. She had another rough day at work. And as she was about to kick off her own well-trodden shoes I whispered in her ear that I had gotten a call from Seattle. And that was all I needed to say to her as she kicked off her shoes and jumped into my arms.
Read Part III: On Being Grafted
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