I hope you’ve all enjoyed Oj?Æchan‚Äôs Funeral.¬† Publishing it in blog format has been an experiment, and I would appreciate any feedback you have to offer.¬† Should I have published the story in full?¬† Was it weird to read fiction on a blog (which usually has op-ed, links, and personal journal type entries), in a narrow column, and then to have the opportunity to comment on it?
I have a long story (I’ll just reveal that it involves a radical, kind of punk-rockish Jesus who runs a coffee shop) that I want to publish as I’m writing it, and I’m debating whether or not to write it for publication as a novel, and post it as a serial, or to write it as a series of blog posts (likely written by the main viewpoint character).¬† Either choice would hugely impact how the story is told.¬† I’m still weighing the options in my mind.
Enough about the format.¬† Let me tell you a bit about Oj?Æchan‚Äôs Funeral.¬† My Oj?Æchan passed away in late October of 1991, when I was serving as a district leader in Kawasaki, Japan.¬† The events and most of the details of the wake, the funeral, and the cremation are fairly true to life.¬† The same can be said of the two flashbacks and the details I reveal about my extended family.¬† The two biggest fictions are the creation of Elder Christiansen and the ethereal encounter at the end.
Elder Christiansen is modeled on one of my companions, but is mostly in the story to add tension and to make it more believable.¬† In real life, I got permission from the Area and Mission presidents to travel alone half-way across the length of Japan to attend my grampa’s funeral.¬† Missionaries rarely travel without their companions, and I didn’t want Mormon readers to be distracted by the notion of a solitary Elder.
The doubt narrative is a fiction as well.¬† I wrote this story six or seven years after the event, and it reflects my concerns at the time of writing.¬† To answer one of Bored in Vernal’s questions, some of the seeds of doubt were probably planted during my mission, but they took a long time germinating.
I wrote the final encounter scene during one long lunch break in the LDS Church Headquarters, when I was working there as a contract programmer.¬† I heavily revised every part of the story except for that last section.¬† It’s pretty much pristine.¬† While writing that section, I was able to fully accept the loss of my Oj?Æchan.¬† As fictional as it is, it was and still is very real to me.
The story itself served as springboard for my self-conception as an author (the first story I ever submitted to anything, and it both won first prize and got published) and it also made me realize that I’m fascinated with death and ritual, which is my primary scholarly focus.¬† It also got me noticed by and involved in the Sunstone community, which was a godsend for a suffering, solitary skeptic.¬† Finally, I get to share my Japanese heritage and upbringing through the story, which is an important part of me that doesn’t get out enough.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Miko // Apr 19, 2007 at 9:27 am
I was iffy about commenting at first. Part of me wanted to say “change the tense of that verb in the third paragraph” and another part wanted to comment on the story before I knew where it went. It was nice that other people commented eventually, it made it easier.
I’d love to read your punk-cafe-Jesus story. It reminds me of some irreverent reverence my friends & I partook in when we were in college. If you’re interested in criticism, I would recommend that you indicate which kinds you’re interested in: character critique, grammar, plot, &c. I know (personally) that writing is a very intimate process, which can often equate with criticism against a work translating into criticism of the author, which it rarely is. Giving guidelines to your readers/commenters can help stay away from that.
And give us more!
2 SunflowerP // Apr 19, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Was it weird to read fiction on a blog (which usually has op-ed, links, and personal journal type entries), in a narrow column, and then to have the opportunity to comment on it?
Not at all, for me. Writers making use of the community/communication functionality of electronic media (in various forms/tools, depending on what technology was available at the time and/or to that writer) to present their works - either in finished form, or to receive critiquing and feedback - has been part of my world for years.
I’ll second Miko’s suggestion that you be explicit about what sort of critiquing you’d like to see. There’s so much potential ground, from “did you know there was a typo in [indicate place]?” to discussion of themes and how well they were conveyed, that some direction for our focus would be useful.
Miko:
You used the phrase “irreverent reverence” and shocked my socks off. This is a central concept for me personally, and I’ve used that exact phrase many times - but I don’t think I’ve had occasion to use it here. Typically people hearing it either say, “oh, what a wonderful way to express it,” or object to the apparent oxymoron; I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered someone else who came up with it independently (though it seems to me to be a natural and obvious construction).
If there’s a story behind where it came from, I’d be delighted to hear it, but that’s not why I’m mentioning it. Mainly, I’m just saying, “Way cool!” - it’s a deep-level confirmation that MoF is a community where I’ll mesh (it reassures me that, though I and my terminology seem to come from a different spiritual framework than most folks here, my lexicon won’t require extended explanation); and if your experiences are anything like mine, you appreciate every occasion where someone gets the expression.
Sunflower
3 Alan // Apr 19, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Hey John,
I wanted to just send you an email, but couldn’t find your address anywhere. I felt a need to write you a message though.
I just want to say how much I love your podcast. You have a soft/comforting voice and manner of speaking. Yours is one of the very select few podcasts that I intend to save (all of them). The only downside is, they stopped. I understand, life gets in the way… no problem/pressure to restart from me.
4 Alan // Apr 19, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Oops, sorry, I submitted too early because the shading made it look like the button wasn’t active, and “alarmedly”, I clicked it to test.
Anyway, I’m also an undergrad CS graduate, and you mentioned you worked in the field, so that added another element I could identify with.
Excellent site (technically/layout, etc) with great content, by the way. I just wish I had time to really dig into it… I put it into my “To Revisit” folder, so hopefully I might be able to chip away in the future. I will check out the two podcasts in your links section right away though, since I can listen to those on the go.
John, thanks for sharing yourself with the world. I know my life is a little better for having known you even to the relatively small extent that I do.
BTW, your wife seems very nice/sweet as well.
BTW2, I live in Walnut Creek, CA.
My best regards to you, your family, and those you care about!
5 Miko // Apr 19, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Sunflower: the exact story is that a very dear friend of mine started a band called Christs on Bicycles, because that was an explative in Ireland when he visited, as in, “oh, Christ on a bicycle!” and he really liked the phrase. They had a fantastic logo of a hippy-looking guy in sandals and a robe, with flowing hair & beard, on a bike. It was a yellow diamond kind of street sign image. Anyway, it wasn’t that we were really trying to take the Lord’s name in vain, just that it was a fun phrase, a fun concept (WWJDrive & all that), and a moment to not take religion too terribly seriously. So, I guess I wanted my phrase “irreverent reverence” to convey “not taking religion too terribly seriously”. Recognition of Jesus as a guy who probably would like my friend’s music, would probably ride a bike, and would probably be counted as a “hippy” today is irreverent in the sense that it does not involve a church. But it also recognizes that He was a major force in our lives, in the lives of others, that He was our Brother in the sense that, we love him dearly but would probably put a tack on his seat & find it funny.
Short Answer: I don’t know if I’ve ever used it before, but it didn’t seem like a new concept when I typed it just then…but I don’t think that I heard it somewhere & repeated it.
Here’s to finding a place of people who think like you
6 John // Apr 19, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Alan, thank you for your kind remarks. I’m slowly in the process of reviving Atheist’s Prayer, so please keep checking back! Jana blogs at http://pilgrimgirl.blogspot.com, if you want her non-audio version.
Thanks, everyone, for responding to my little fiction experiment. At this point, I don’t think I want to hear technical critiques on this space, though I’d love to hear your responses to the stories.
Every time I look at my stories, I find all sorts of things that I want to tweak, but resisted for the blogging format in the interest of getting these up in a timely manner (Miko, I think the verb tense that you didn’t like was actually added by my editor for publication, and it makes it technically accurate but stylistically awkward). I’ve been done with this story for several years now–I don’t plan on working on it any more. I’ve got new stories to obsess over.
I have venues for story critiquing on a technical level (Jana, online and face-to-face writers’ workshops, readers that I’ve worked with in the past). I may ask some of you this favor, but probably via email and not in this public forum. Most writers’ workshops are fairly intimate, and I’m not sure I’m ready to open up critique to anyone who happens by. I think I’m more interested in entertaining you with stories and in provoking a thought or two. And I hope that you can read more for pleasure–I don’t want to make you work too hard.
That said, my future stories are probably going to be much less polished–maybe the conversations that we have in the comments may actually feed back into the creative process.
7 Jonathan // Apr 20, 2007 at 7:24 am
John - great writing! I am very curious, though - you mentioned that the two supernatural occurrences were fictional, but have you ever experienced something similar yourself in real life during the time when you believed? This is probably an awkward question, so I can understand if you don’t want to answer it…
8 Miko // Apr 20, 2007 at 7:43 am
…I just kinda pulled the example out of the sky, I don’t know if there was an awkward tense at that precise moment… sorry
9 Elaine Frei // Apr 22, 2007 at 11:39 am
John…I just finally read all four installments of your story. It is wonderful, eloquent and moving. Having read it all at once, rather than as the installments were posted, I’m tempted to say that I would have rather seen it posted all at once, but I don’t think the serialization hurt it at all. You seem to have found just the right places to cut off each installment.
It was not “weird” at all for me to read fiction in the context of a blog. That might just be because I have seen it done other places, so I’m used to that to a degree. I would certainly encourage you to do more of that here. One of the things I like most about Mind on Fire is that it presents me with food for thought. Your story certainly has presented some interesting questions to think about (which I won’t go into here as it doesn’t really seem to me the right place to do so). That makes it not out of place at all.
10 John // Apr 23, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Jonathan–the ghostly encounter was fictional. I’ve had one meeting with an apparition (with a rational explanation) that I’ll describe in a blog post some time soon. I’ve had wonderful mystical experiences that I now consider subjective and internal but which I once considered as coming from an external divine source.
What is the other supernatural occurrence you mention?
np, Miko! I found one even if you didn’t.
Thanks, Elaine–I’m thinking that the next one will be a single post.
11 Jonathan // Apr 23, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I was thinking of the two supernatural occurrences you mentioned in your story - the witnessing training experience of a feeling of peace and the ghost visitation at the end of the story. You did say they were fictional, but I was just curious to see if you ever had similar experiences that you would have at one time considered supernatural.
I just had a scary one in January. I couldn’t understand why I was up all night one night very angry at a Christian acquaintance from our current church from being a real jerk. I decided to pray about it because it didn’t seem like natural anger. I asked God to help me understand where the anger was coming from - I was frustrated, tired, and wanted to sleep - tossing and turning all night, and just laid down after getting in a small fight with my wife at 3:00 in the morning. All at once, I saw in the corner of the room a cloudy/dark form that looked vaguely like a human shape. I wasn’t frightened so much as estatac that I finally found out the source of my anger. I reached over to tell my wife who was just going to sleep herself, and I saw the thing out of the corner of my eye quickly reach out to me with too long an arm, and covered my face. I went unconscious. My wife and I had pretty bad nightmares until morning. I remember the next morning something that kept nagging me. It fit the description of Miko’s visitor.
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