In February of 2010 and 2011 I participated in the annual Catholic Writers Conference Online by giving a workshop entitled “Ten Commandments for Catholic Fiction Writers.” I’d like to start the New Year—and properly launch this writing blog—by taking those workshop notes and using them to build a series of articles on the challenges facing Catholics who write novels—especially (not exclusively) novels with overt Catholic themes.
What Chesterton called “the novel with a purpose,” in this case a Catholic one.
I might as easily, it is true, blog about the challenges of writing a “Christian novel” or a “Jewish novel” or a “political novel.” Given the universality of (fallen) human nature, the pitfalls and challenges are nearly identical whenever a novelist deals in themes close to his or her heart. (And we writers always do, don’t we, whether we’re conscious it or not?) As Chesterton put it in his essay,
A Catholic putting Catholicism into a novel, or a song, or a sonnet, or anything else, is not being a propagandist; he is simply being a Catholic. Everybody understands this about every other enthusiasm in the world. When we say that a poet’s landscape and atmosphere are full of the spirit of England, we do not mean that he is necessarily conducting an Anti-German propaganda during the Great War. We mean that if he is really an English poet, his poetry cannot be anything but English. When we say that songs are full of the spirit of the sea, we do not mean that the poet is recruiting for the Navy or even trying to collect men for the merchant service. We mean that he loves the sea; and for that reason would like other people to love it.
Many writers, alas, when writing stories built around their “enthusiasms,”often devolve into the very creatures Chesterton says they need not be: propagandists and recruiters to a religion (or theory or cause). Readers loathe this when they recognize it, often even when they sympathize with the cause in hand. It is death to a good story. In the blogs that follow I’ll be tackling this and other pitfalls related to the writing of Catholic novels.
Note: I view myself as a practitioner and student of the Catholic novel, not as an expert. There are few enough of those, and fewer, if any, who blog. But after several decades mucking about in the field as a novelist, a small press publisher, and a reviewer of Catholic fiction, I’m beginning at least to recognize many of the questions involved, even if I feel inadequate in the suppliance of answers. So regard this series (which will no doubt be interspersed with blogs of a more general writing nature) as an exploration and a pilgrimage, not as a series of tutorials.
You’ll know which blogs are part of the series by the “Ten Commandments” scroll at the top. I hope many of you, novelists and readers alike, will join in the conversation about what makes for good (and bad) Catholic novels.
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