June’s Words and Wine Wednesday featured author is Greg Garrett, whose latest book, Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination, explores the reasons why people tell tales about death and the afterlife. Also a professor of English at Baylor University, preacher and the Writer in Residence at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Garrett has proven incredibly knowledgable in film, literature, religion, theology, and just about anything else you can think of. The Writing Barn is thrilled to welcome him for Words and Wine Wednesday on June 24th, 7:30PM-9:00PM. Please RSVP to attend this FREE event, and in the meantime enjoy this great Austin Author Spotlight Q&A:
Austin Author Spotlight
with Greg Garrett
What did you find most challenging in writing your latest novel?
My last novel, The Prodigal, was a really strange and wonderful experience, since I was co-writing it with the legendary spiritual writer Brennan Manning. The challenges were big. He wanted a story that wrestled with the big spiritual themes of love, grace, and forgiveness he’d spent his life writing and teaching, and it’s always a dangerous thing to start a novel with a theme or an idea. He was also very close to the end of his life, so I knew that once we’d agreed on some characters and a story, I’d be doing the writing. But that was also a gift–I’ve written over twenty books, and I’m not particularly good at close collaboration! But the good news: we found a character to tell a story about. That’s always the most important thing. What I tell my student writers, whether at Baylor, at the Writers League, or in other venues, is that stories are about people. You have to write about people who are recognizable, and let the themes develop organically. Otherwise, no matter how good your motives, people will put up walls against your message. I was pleased and more than pleased with the way The Prodigal turned out, and the response was terrific. Great reviews, a book club sale, and several foreign translations so far. You know you’ve told a universal story when people respond in that way.
When writing, do you have a specific process or routine?
Because I teach full time, I’ve evolved a set of practices that work for me. I journal year-round, but unless deadlines dictate otherwise (and sometimes they do) I save the heavy lifting for Christmas and summer “vacations.” Then I tend to find some times to escape my daily routine for some long weekends and weeks in the summer where I can focus only on the writing. My wife, who is a professional communicator, and who knew who I was when she married me, helps me make that hard thing work. I have a sabbatical from Baylor next year, so I’ll be going to the Gladstone Library in Wales in January and July to write, and probably doing some work closer to home. Bethany has invited me to come and do some writing at the Writing Barn, and I’m absolutely going to take her up on that next year. So should any of you needing some time and space to write!
We feature a post on our site called Rejecting Rejection, where authors discuss their reactions to past rejected works. How do you, as an author, deal with rejection?
Not well. Nobody does. Even now, when I’ve published with major publishers and been interviewed in almost every major market, I still have book projects that don’t go anywhere. But as I always tell my students, you know that you’re a writer because you write. And I write whether or not anyone else is going to read it. I hope, of course that people will read it. But the fiction and nonfiction projects that draw me are things that I have to write. I can’t not write them. And anyone who wants to write has got to have that tenacity. It’s the most important quality a writer can have: determination. I’ve had students with amazing talent who were devastated by rejection. And less talented writers who worked and worked and kept trying and ultimately broke through the barriers.
Like anything worthwhile in this life, the odds are stacked against you. Tell the stories that matter to you. Do the work. Control what you can control, which is your writing, research, and market research, and don’t worry about the things that are completely out of your control.
How has your career as a professor at Baylor influenced your writing process and identity as an author?
Everyone who writes needs a day job. I have a come-to-Jesus talk with my students every semester where I tell them that in my 30 years of writing and knowing writers, I can count the number of writers who don’t have a day job on my two hands. One of them, by the way, is John Grisham. Who used to have a day job. So I encourage them to find work that’s congenial to their call to write.
For me, teaching has been that. To do it well takes a lot of creative energy–hence my writing only during breaks–but it’s also a chance to talk about writing with brilliant minds, and to learn day in and day out. I love teaching at Baylor, and I also love working with the Austin Film Festival, where every fall for twelve years I moderate panels with writers and filmmakers on story. For me, the chance to talk about stories–wherever it happens–improves my ability to write stories.
I have also, by the way, been supported by Baylor in ways that are essential. They’ve given me money to take writing classes, supported my writing and teaching, and paid me well to be a writer who teaches. Whether you’re a lawyer, doctor, carpenter, seamstress, or ditch digger, it’s essential that you find a job that makes it possible for you to write. And if you get a six-figure advance, well done you.
But until then, you need a job!
Greg Garrett is the Austin, Texas author of twenty books of nonfiction, memoir, and fiction. BBC Radio has called Greg “one of America’s leading voices on religion and culture,” and he has written on such topics as spirituality and suffering, film and pop culture, U2, Harry Potter, faith and politics, and contemporary Christianity. His latest books are Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination (Oxford University Press), which explores the stories we tell about death and the afterlife and why we tell them, and My Church Is Not Dying: Episcopalians in the 21st Century (Morehouse), which explores stories from the Episcopal and Anglican traditions and their value for the contemporary world.