A Door on a Misty Landscape

'Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.' Iris Murdoch

I find this a really encouraging quotation. While Iris Murdoch is not very popular at the minute, she was a fine, prolific writer. And she started her novels with as little sense of direction as I do.

An online quiz once asked, ‘Are you a planner or a pantser’? I hate the phrase, but I understand the sentiment. While in life I’m a very organised person, in my writing I do ‘fly by the seat of my pants’. I have to. When I try to plan a story in advance, my characters simply refuse to co-operate. For me, stories start with the characters, and they seem determined to remain in control!

I generally write a plan after a first draft, and then desperately try and keep the second draft faithful to the plan. It’s not a great way of working. But it’s the only way I can do it. And I’m in good company. Gustav Flaubert said,

‘It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough to actually father them.’

So maybe it’s OK to not plan too much in advance. Fortunately, I’m not trying to write complex, plot-driven thrillers.

For me, writing is a bit like waking up in the Swiss mountains and knowing, without needing to look out of the window, that it has snowed overnight. There’s something about the quality of the light, the stillness of the air that tells me that when I open the shutters I will see fresh snow weighting down the branches of the pine trees.

I get that same sense with writing, a feeling that something is there, just out of sight but ready to be be seen. That’s when I need to grab a pen (or turn on my computer).

And I don’t think it’s so different with faith. Paul famously says,

‘For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.’ (I Corinthians 13:12)

While we are here on earth, we can only ever see and know a little of God. The full reveal has to wait until we reach heaven.

This is a similar idea to Murdoch’s misty landscape. Starting a novel, living a life of trust in God, both require us to step out in faith, without completely knowing where we’re going.

Sometimes the mist is thick, the mirror I’m looking in feels old and distressed. I glimpse very little of God. Then the idea that when I preach or write I could help anyone understand more about God seems laughable.

Thankfully God can work through us, even when we feel this way.

But at other times, the sun breaks through the mist, the mirror is new and bright, and my faith is renewed by a deeper vision of who God is.

I pray for those insights, and for the courage to step out in faith, in our lives and in our writings. That we can share our imperfect glimpses of God with others.