Until a decade ago, most of my writing efforts had been non-fiction, with articles on specialized subjects a staple. I received an award for a piece about collecting Indian cents that appeared in an obscure journal. My first published book explored problematic clergy dynamics. Although I’ve written poetry all my life, in periodic spurts, I hadn’t produced a decent short story since creative writing class in high school. Fiction was not my forte.
During a family conversation in 2003, an incident from my childhood came to mind, an out-of-body experience that happened when I was seriously ill. That recovered memory stayed with me for days, accompanied by reflections on other extrasensory episodes in my life. This led me to make notes for what I thought of as a spiritual autobiography. At the time, I had been mulling ideas for my next book, and now I had one with energy behind it.
But outlining the project proved unsatisfying. It felt like an ego trip, which my Scandinavian nature was uncomfortable with. Telling the story honestly and accurately would entail long, boring chapters interspersed between the interesting stuff. Sticking to the facts in chronological order would produce a choppy narrative. And the event that triggered the idea for the book, the OBE, happened only once and was forgotten for decades.
One morning in the shower (where creative ideas often burst forth), it came to me that the remembrances precipitating my desire to write about mystical things could be better handled in a novel rather than the constrained format of biography. A novel would allow me to tell a truth much larger than my own peculiar circumstances.
Freed now from the requirements of non-fiction, the shape of a novel quickly developed. I would use elements of my own story as a starting point but expand them in imaginary ways that were not autobiographical and also include extra-sensory material from other people I’ve known. My out-of-body experience was a one-time event, but what would it be like, I wondered, if someone learned to do that at will? The first outline included a beginning, an end, and a few major episodes in the middle, with a lot of detail yet to be worked out. I knew where the story was ultimately going but not all the twists and turns along the course. Four major characters and five secondary characters easily came to mind to carry the plot.
But did I know how to write a novel? The only way to find out was to start typing. As an established writer, putting words on paper was easy for me, and the more I wrote, the more ideas came to flesh out the narrative. Knowing what would happen at the end facilitated character and plot development as the work evolved.
To be honest, however, the first draft was loaded with deficiencies. Parts were poetic while other parts seemed more like report writing. Some of the dialog did not ring true. The motivation for certain characters to act as I had made them act was not shown or was inconsistent with my portrayal of them. And of course, there were hundreds of typos and more than a few syntactically awkward sentences. A number of smart people read the manuscript and provided invaluable feedback, for which I am grateful.
Revise, revise, revise! Multiple drafts (I lost track of how many) were necessary not only to produce a well-crafted piece of fiction but also to find my authentic voice as a novelist. It took years but the effort paid off. The Floating Boy was well received, more books followed, and I’m now in the process of polishing a fifth novel for publication later this year.
That’s how I made the leap from non-fiction writer to novelist.
