The privilege of writing inner experiences: part 2
Writing fiction as a practice in empathy, self-expansion, and meditation
In my previous post, I observed that writing a scene for the first time is a slow, patient process in which story time is significantly dilated. Writers must hold themselves for a long time in whatever emotional space the story involves in order to translate those experiences into written words.
Here’s a personal example of this process. During our 2022-23 homeschooling year, my son and I did Daniel Schwabauer’s One Year Adventure Novel program together as an elective. In the story I drafted, A Gift for King Felix, which is set in medieval Germany, a young shepherdess named Ba (short for Bathilda, a name she doesn’t discover until the end) is thrilled to learn that the king will soon be visiting her village. But she’s horrified when she discovers a plot to assassinate him. She attempts to warn the authorities but is repeatedly rebuffed and thwarted until the only option left to her is to…well, I won’t spoil it!
After Ba first witnesses the conspirators hatching their plans in an old cave, she informs the magistrate that one of the ringleaders is the highly respected village blacksmith, Klaus, a local hero who years earlier had defended the village from a barbarian invasion. The magistrate has a soldier accompany Ba back to the cave to find evidence to support her accusations. But, to her shock, there’s none to be found. The soldier, consequently, per his orders, binds her hands and leads her back to the town square, attracting a crowd of onlookers. We join the story there:
Herr Ingmann shoved me face-first against the post that still bore the announcement of King Felix’s visit. Other guards strung the rope through a high ring and yanked my arms upward, lifting me to my toes. I protested, but my weak voice barely registered above the noise of the crowd. A rough hand tore at the back of my dress, and my bared skin bristled in the cold breeze.
A bell rang and the crowd became quiet. The crier uncurled a parchment and read, “For the iniquity of bearing false witness against her fellows…”
What? False witness? How could…wait!
“…the accused, Ba Schaefer, is sentenced to seven lashes and public display until sundown. Signed, the Honorable Burgraf Helmut Aberlin.”
Punished? What? No! Dear God, no! What’s happening? I tried to scream, but my voice failed. Above me, Herr Ingman nailed the sentence onto the post. The hollow echo of the hammering drove itself into my outstretched body, into my knotting gut, into my very soul.
I struggled uselessly against the ropes. Oh, my King! I thought. I have failed you! I have failed you!
A sharp crack assaulted my ears as searing pain shot across my backside. My whole body tensed with the shock and my head snapped backwards, crying to Heaven through watering eyes. The crowd cheered and laughed.
Another crack, another sharp surge of pain. The welt on my head throbbed with renewed intensity. More laughter, more cheering. The third lash. My body jerked of its own again and my toes lost what tenuous hold they had on the stone. I spun sideways, scraping my face against the post. Rough hands pushed me back into place for the fourth lash.
My teeth clenched over my tongue, opening another wound. Blood dripped from my lips. And yet behind the anguish of my lacerations, my heart ached even more. I had failed beloved King Felix, failed to give him warning of the conspiracy. If only I could give him the gift of his safety, of his life. But all I have to give you, O King, is my pain….
And then—as the fifth lash struck me—through the darkness of wet, hard-pressed eyes I saw an image of Our Lord Jesus being scourged before Pilate, bearing his injustice.
I shook my head to dismiss the image. I could not be so worthy to presume to emulate Christ! And yet—the sixth lash tore at my skin—the image forced itself on me with a resolute insistence and, with an equal force, somehow calmed my fears, so much so that the seventh and final strike barely registered to my awareness.
The image faded as the departing clank of armored footsteps told me that the acute phase of my punishment was over. I dropped my head and gave myself to tears as warm blood streamed from my back and lips. Yet the peace of the vision remained. Christ had borne his sufferings with calm faith and seemed to bless me to likewise bear mine.
As you can see, Ba is deeply devoted to the King; devotion is a key quality that I want to express through her character. I also give her a bit of mystical experience here because I plan for her to eventually become a saint over the course of four books that together comprise a memoir, given that the story is told in the first person. Her character, too, is appropriate for the concept of mystical realism that is the focus of this Deus in Fabula newsletter: she starts off as a more or less normal peasant because I want her choices, driven by her devotion, to guide her to that higher destiny, rather than any inherent advantages.
All that aside, when I drafted this passage I endeavored not so much to visualize the outer aspects—there’s not that much descriptiveness here, in fact—but to live Ba’s experience with her and through her. Sequestering myself in my office at a time when I knew my family wouldn’t disturb me, I repeatedly visualized Ba in this scene and deliberately imagined her pain in my own body. I tensed and shook, acted out her movements, and cried (quietly) to Heaven. I wept with her, literally, tissues in hand. And I shared in the thrill of her vision, all the while typing and retyping the words on my laptop over the course of about two hours.
Consider that last detail: although the written scene of about 500 words happens in probably two minutes of story time, it took me at least fifty times longer to visualize, feel, and write. That means that although I didn’t experience the same immediacy or intensity of being lashed as Ba, I dwelt in both her pain and elation for a much longer time. That’s why I so appreciate what Fiona Valpy must have done to write those scenes in The Dressmaker’s Gift in which the two women undergo torture and harsh internment in a concentration camp!
Yet for all that, I consider such activity both a gift and a privilege.
Writing fiction as meditation
Writing scenes like this is a practice in empathy and a practice of expanding my awareness beyond myself even if it’s “just” in imagination. Consider this: visualization is itself a core meditation technique, which is to say, a technique to concentrate on God, on one of God’s aspects such as Light or Peace, or on an avatar or saint such as Christ, Mary, Saint Francis, Krisha, and so on.
For this reason, I consider the time required to fully visualize and feel a scene to be a gift. Such meditations are worth much more to me than writing efficiently or reaching some arbitrary word count because growing closer to God is the whole reason I’m writing in the first place.1 For what is the experience of God if not one of calm, deep feeling, or, as Paramhansa Yogananda put it in his poem, Samadhi, “tranquilled, unbroken thrill, eternally-living, ever-new peace”?
To go even further into the question, all this is why my exploration of fiction focuses on spiritual, devotional, and mystical realism rather than just sticking to well-established genres and their associated tropes. For me, it’s not enough to just play with emotional intensity. Although expressing agitated emotions might be necessary for a story, I much more want to visualize and express those calm, deep feelings of God’s presence, such as Ba’s vision of Christ. In fact, sharing in Ba’s vision was much more inspiring to me, the author, than this bit of story might suggest. That understatement is purposeful, because in Ba’s overall character arc—a positive mystical arc leading to God-realization—this is only the first glimmer of something that grows slowly over the course of her life and through many other ups and downs. In a longer story, that is, I can’t reveal too much too soon and must give the character, and the reader, time to grow into it all.
And the fact of the matter is that I, too, have to grow spiritually to get to the point where I’m ready to try visualizing the kinds of deeper mystical experiences that I want to give to Ba.
But that, too, is a gift and a privilege, and something to look forward to.
Why, then, do I not just “meditate” in silence all the time rather than bothering with writing? Because I’m frankly not that good at it, and if I push too hard I become exhausted and discouraged. As my (late) friend Vasudeva Snitkin once compared us “normal” people to saints who meditate 23 hours a day, “Well, most of us can’t meditate effectively 23 hours a day. We can’t even meditate ineffectively 23 hours a day!” But I can exercise elements of effective meditation through writing, art, and various forms of serviceful activity, knowing that they’ll gradually accumulate to the point where longer periods of pure inner communion are natural.