Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

writing

The Greater Purpose of Your Work

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Earlier this week I met with five ladies who recently read Spiritual Misfit together as their book club selection. We sat around a large table in the back corner of the local Perkins. They bought me a slice of warm apple pie, and we drank decaf coffee, and we laughed; we laughed a whole lot, which, the ladies told me, is something they do often. They shared their favorite parts of the book — the infamous Cheez-It story, the buying-my-first-Bible story — and asked me some questions about the writing process, and the conversation meandered here and there as they shared bits and pieces of their own stories, too. We sat around that table in the back corner of Perkins for nearly two hours, and I tell you what, I could have stayed all night.

When I got home, I flopped onto the couch, kicked off my shoes and told my husband, “I needed that. That’s the part I always forget about.”

Spiritual Misfit sold three copies on Amazon last week. Three copies. I probably don’t need to tell you that’s abyssmal from a sales perspective.

But here’s the flip side, the part of the story I always forget: that piddly little number doesn’t tell the whole story. Not by a long shot. That dot graphed onto a long, plummeting line of diminishing sales doesn’t tell the story of five ladies laughing around a table in the back corner of Perkins. That number doesn’t tell the story of Julie’s copy of Spiritual Misfit, its pages festooned with no fewer than a dozen blue and yellow tabs, or the other Julie’s book,  notes covering the inside back cover in tiny script. She’d read the book twice, she told me.

That plummeting graph on Amazon.com, that weekly sales report, is missing one critical, unplottable part of the story: the greater purpose.

I listened to an interview with the cellist Yo Yo Ma while I ran this morning, and among the many profoundly beautiful statements he made during the show was this observation, about what happens when something goes wrong logistically during a performance:

“Whatever you practice for on the engineering side that fails is all right, because we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we’re communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It’s not about how many people are in the hall. It’s not about proving anything.”

I let that statement ping around the inside of my head for a while as I plodded down the path. I thought about how Yo Yo Ma’s words  relate to my own journey, both as a writer and a human being, and here’s where I ended up:

The “engineering side” of any pursuit – the planning, the practicing, the execution, the expectations, the numbers, the sales, the success — is important, but it’s not the whole story, it’s not the greater purpose. The greater purpose of Yo Yo Ma’s music, and my little book, and the dozens of other creations both large and small each one of us offers with open hands to the universe each day is in the communing, the coming together, that happens as a result.

Most of us don’t ever get to see that part. Yo Yo Ma probably doesn’t see it from his seat under the glaring lights on the stage. I don’t see it from my seat at my desk in the corner of the sunroom. Chances are, you don’t see the greater purpose of your work and your creation either, from wherever you sit right now. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Tuesday night I caught a glimpse of the greater purpose of my work, and it didn’t have anything to do with numbers or with proving anything, just as Yo Yo Ma said. Rather, it had everything to do with five ladies who gather around a table twice a month in the back corner of Perkins cafe.

Whew, That Was Tough

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Well hello there, friends…we’re all still standing after last week’s post, yes? Let me just say that I’m glad you are still here, truly.

In the aftermath of last week’s gay marriage post, a couple of people asked me why I felt the need to write on such a controversial topic. Their question wasn’t accusatory; they honestly wanted to know why I, a self-proclaimed controversy-phobe, would take on such a lightning rod issue. So here’s my answer to that question, in case you, too, were wondering.

For quite a long time now I’ve felt an increasing disconnect between how I present myself here and in other spaces online and who I am in “real life,” so to speak. And while I’ve never been intentionally dishonest here on the blog or on social media, I came to feel that some of my thoughts and beliefs, particularly those related to the LGBTQ community, had become something of an elephant in the room, like I was living the “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy. It felt disingenuous. Truthfully, I was beginning to feel a bit fractured – almost like I had an online identity and an in-person identity — and I was tired of keeping up appearances. I wanted to come clean here, to set the record straight.

It’s funny, back when I first began to claim my identity as a Christian, I hesitated to broadcast that to my “in real life” community, partially because I was afraid of being judged. The truth is, for non-religious people (which is not to say that my entire “real life” community is non-religious, but many of my friends and family are), the label “Christian” is not necessarily positive. As a person new to the faith, I was more comfortable claiming my Christian identity online, where I could talk about my faith with other Christians and not worry about being labeled in a particular way.  At some point during the last couple of years, though, something shifted as I began to realize that I was less religiously conservative than many of my online Christian peers.  At one point I even felt like I was “too Christian” for many of my in-person peers, and “not Christian enough” for my online community. That was fun.

Long story short, I reached a point in which I didn’t feel that I was being true to myself, and I didn’t feel like I was being true to you. And let’s be brutally honest about this: part of the reason I maintained this split identity for so long was because I didn’t want to lose readers. I know, it’s gross, but it’s the truth. I felt pressure — pressure to keep building my platform, pressure to grow an audience, pressure to present the best possible scenario of potential readers to my publishers. I’m not blaming the publishing industry entirely – my own ego certainly plays into this (i.e. more readers and more subscribers means I am more popular and more successful – yay, me!) — but the need to build a viable platform was definitely a factor.

The harsh reality was that last Thursday’s post about gay marriage was a huge risk for me. I lost 47 blog subscribers in two days, and that hurts – not only because my platform is still small and that loss is big (to put it in perspective, it would typically take around 6 or 7 months or longer to add 47 new subscribers to my email subscription list), but also because, well, it’s hurtful. I took the time to look at some of those readers who unsubscribed – I was curious if I knew any of them personally, or if they’d been long-time readers. And it hurt to know that in many cases, one post was enough to prompt longtime, loyal readers to unsubscribe. These were readers who had, up to this point, ostensibly found spiritual or other sustenance in my writing, in some cases for years, but were willing to or felt compelled to sacrifice that because of one point of disagreement (albeit a substantial point, but still). That was painful.

On a more positive note, however, I also feel relief. You know where I stand now, and even if we don’t agree on this particular issue, I don’t feel like I’m hiding anything important anymore. We can move forward in a more authentic, honest way. And as I said at the start of this blog post, I deeply appreciate those of you who have stuck around, particularly those of you who disagree with me. I really do believe that we can disagree, even on important issues, and still move forward in authentic relationship and in Christian faith, learn from one another and love one another.

So. For the record, I will not be making a habit of writing LGBTQ/Christian/same-sex marriage posts in the future. This is not my new “thing” – frankly, I don’t have the guts for it. I much prefer to delve into other deep issues, like the spiritual discipline of walking my dog.

I am heartened to know, though, that if I do step into a tricky topic every now and again, this is a place where we can engage in conversation, a place where we can come to the table, and a place where something that begins as a chasm might just become a bridgeable gap.

The Hard Work of Growing Authentic Relationships

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I think one of the hardest parts about being a writer, and specifically a memoirist, is that it’s often challenging to know where to draw the line, how much to tell, how much of myself and my private life to reveal. You’ll notice I don’t write much about my husband here, and that’s intentional. Brad is a more private person than I am, and so I try to respect that by not blabbing about his every little thing on the World Wide Web. I also write less frequently about my kids these days. Noah is in middle school – enough said, right?

But I’ve also intentionally chosen not to write about certain topics. Sometimes I avoid writing about these topics because they are controversial, and I like controversy about as much as I like flossing my teeth, which is to say, not at all.

On the other hand, sometimes I don’t write about certain topics because I’m afraid you won’t like me, or will be disappointed in me, or will see me differently or less-than. I’m a people-pleaser at heart; I don’t like to ruffle feathers or disappoint.

And sometimes I don’t write about certain topics because I’m afraid they don’t fit who I think you think I am. Does that make sense? Take time to read that sentence again, because it’s a bit convoluted.

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Part of this disconnect is simply a natural by-product of writing publicly. The truth is, you can’t know every facet of who I am just by reading what I write here twice a week – even if you’ve been reading all five years that I’ve been blogging, and even if you’ve read my memoir. I’m not saying this to be snobbish, but this blog and my memoir, even though they are about me, aren’t me entirely. They don’t fully represent me; they don’t reflect every facet of my personality, who I am inside and out. Part of that is because I have presented myself in a certain way, not to be deceptive, but simply because that’s what happens, even in in-person communication. And part of that is because you have interpreted me and defined me in certain ways according to who you are and what you believe.

All this to say, I might dip my toe into some new topics here in the coming weeks and months. Some of these new topics might come as a surprise – they might not fit your expectations of who you think I am or who you think I should be. You might think they don’t fit with the person I have presented to you these last five years. You might even feel like I have deceived you in some way.

I want to tell you that it’s okay if you feel this way. I want to assure you that it’s part of the process of growing in relationship with one another. Just like you reveal bits and pieces of yourself a little bit at a time when you are forging a new in-person friendship, the same can be said for these slightly strange but-no-less-real online relationships. I would ask that you offer grace and the benefit of the doubt – in the same way you would offer grace and the benefit of the doubt to a friend you know in person.

And I will do the same. I will offer you the opportunity to disagree with me, the grace and space to say, “I’m not too sure about this,” or “I don’t feel the same way,” or “Can you explain why you see it this way.” I will offer you the space for conversation and deeper connection, and even the space to step away, if that’s what you should choose to do, though I hope it won’t be.

I hope, even if we don’t see eye to eye on everything, that we can still walk forward in growing our relationship. Because I have to say, getting to know some of you in a real way has been, hands-down, the biggest blessing of blogging, and a gift I never expected to come out of an online community.

How to Know If You Still Love What You Love

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So I’ve been thinking a lot about writing and publishing over the last couple of months, because, you know, I almost quit the whole darn thing and all. Thankfully the time and space away from my computer gave me the opportunity to stop hiving and hyperventilating for a few minutes, take some deep breaths and figure out why I write and if I really do want to keep at it.

A package arrived in the mail a day or two after I announced my writing hiatus. It was from my Aunt Kathy. She’d sent me a beautiful, hard-bound copy of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. On the inside cover she’d inscribed, “Just a little reminder of how much you mean to all of us…thank you for the gift of you.”

Call it serendipity or divine intervention or something in between, but Rilke’s words slid into my mailbox at exactly the right time. The funny thing is, I’ve read Letters to a Young Poet before. I even quoted from it in Spiritual Misfit. But you know how sometimes reading something again is like reading it for the very first time? That’s what happened with this book, right from the get-go. When I opened to the first chapter, I read the words Rilke had penned to his young writer friend Franz in February 1903:

“Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, ‘I must,’ then build your life upon it.” 

Must I write? That was the question I asked myself again and again, day after day during November and December.  “Do I have to write?” I pondered. “Is it an integral part of who I am and how I live?”

I didn’t hear an answer right away. Truth be told I got a little panicky. I assumed not hearing an answer right away surely meant the answer was no…which meant I’d chosen the wrong path and made the wrong choices and really messed everything up for good this time…which therefore meant at 44 years old I didn’t have a clue who I was or what I wanted to do with my life.

Yeah. That kind of panic.

Turns out, I did finally hear an answer. During those weeks I stepped away from the din of the Internet and the clang of social media and the pressure to produce words, I realized the answer is yes. I have to write. If I don’t write, I don’t know what I think. If I don’t write, I don’t know who I am.

Writing forces me to dig, to wrestle, to think more deeply. Writing helps me know who I am and who I yearn to become. Writing offers a backward glance to where I’ve been and a glimpse toward where I’m going. Writing helps me see and hear and understand Truth in a way that no other spiritual practice – not prayer, not Bible study, not worship — is able.

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All this hallelujah revelation isn’t to say I know where I am going in both my career and my calling as a writer. It’s not quite clear just yet how I am to “build my life” upon writing, as Rilke advised. It may be that I will venture back into the traditional workplace. I may land another book contract. I may do something in-between or something utterly and entirely different. I don’t know. And I won’t lie. The not knowing is still kind of killing me. The wilderness is not my happy place, and I will kiss the ground and turn cartwheels when the branches part and I finally make my way into the clearing again.

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In the meantime, though, I’ve learned a few important things about myself and about my calling as a writer.

I’ve learned that I need to write, no matter what – that’s first and foremost.

I’ve also learned that I need to write for myself. Please don’t take this the wrong way.  I know it sounds all oogy and selfish, and in some ways it is, but the truth is, I lost my way for a while there. I was so focused on “writing for an audience,” “growing the platform,” “writing to fill a felt need” and “being strategic” that I completely lost myself and my love for writing in the process.

Believe me when I say that I hope and pray what I write speaks to you and resonates with you.  That’s the truth. But the other equally important truth is that I can’t write solely what I think you want or what I think you need.  Some writers are really good at this, and they do it authentically and honestly. Some writers manage to weave a targeted message with a “felt need,” all while writing from their heart. The ability to do that is truly a beautiful and unique gift, but I don’t have it. I stink at it.

Instead, here’s my game plan for 2015. I’m going to write for myself. I’m going to write what the Spirit moves me to write. And I’m going to trust that at least some of my words will touch you and resonate with you in exactly, perfectly the right way.

I know. It’s a very fancy game plan. It’s pretty much directly opposite what I told my agent I was going to do two months ago, which was all “strategic” and fancy. She just fell over in a dead faint. Someone fan her, please.

Anyway, here’s to 2015, the year I embrace happier, healthier, more authentic writing…wherever it may lead me. I hope you’ll stay for this leg of the journey, because here’s one other thing I know for sure: writing is a lot less lonely with good company. And I’ve so enjoyed and appreciated yours every step of the way.

 

Not Okay with “Okay” {and an opportunity to receive a signed book plate for Spiritual Misfit!}

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book and birdsA few years ago a literary agent turned me down after he read my query letter and a couple chapters of my manuscript. After I received the rejection, I responded to his email with a question. “So is it the lack of platform,” I asked him, “or the quality of the writing…or both?”

He answered quickly. “To tell you the truth, Michelle, it’s both,” the agent wrote. “You don’t have a strong enough platform yet, but the bigger issue right now is your voice. Your writing is okay, but your voice needs work.”

Staring at that terse reply on my computer screen, I felt like I’d been flattened by a steamroller. Fourteen times.

“Okay? Okay!? My writing is ‘okay’? My voice needs work?” I ranted at the computer. “Two years it took me to write this stupid book, and you tell me it’s ‘okay’? That it needs work? Are you kidding me?”

…Spiritual Misfit was rejected more times than it was accepted, but as they say in this business, it only takes one “yes.” I’m writing a little more about the story behind the book for the “Moving Beyond Mediocrity” series over at The High Calling. Join me over there…

But first, I have a fun little offer for you. If you’ve pre-ordered (or plan to pre-order) Spiritual Misfit, I’d love to send you a super cute, signed bird-on-a-wire bookplate with a personal note from me. Now, if you’re like me (up till about three weeks ago), you have no idea what a bookplate is, so let me tell you. It’s a lovely little sticker that you can afix to the inside cover of your book – a way to get a signed copy without actually handing over your copy for me to sign in person! Just complete this form, hit send and you’ll received a signed book plate in the mail. I wish I could send you all a box of Godiva chocolates, too, but, well, it wasn’t in the budget. Want to pre-order Spiritual Misfit (and psssst, I hear they are already arriving in the mail, even though the official release date isn’t until next Tuesday!), click here. Thanks, lovelies!