The Story Behind the Story

First, if you haven't read The Woman in the Window then go do that now, otherwise this post will make no sense whatsoever.

Second, I've had a few people ask me whether this story was autobiographical so I'd better clear that up before the cops show up at my door.  In order to do so I'd better give an account of my road trip last week.

Every year, usually in the spring I like to take a long road trip simply to relax, think, and get closer to God.  As for relaxing, the best way I know to relax is to get behind the wheel of my car, turn off my cell phone, and just drive (with total disregard for rising gas prices).  As for thinking, most of my best thoughts come from behind the wheel of my car.  As for getting closer to God, when I take a road trip I feel small because I get a better glimpse of God's glory in creation and thus God seems bigger (in the Narnia sense of the term) and therefore I am more conscious of my sinfulness and God's grace and always come back feeling more repentant, more dependant, and closer to God as a result.

I did stop in Wisconsin and spent a day and a night visiting some relatives which was great, but the bulk of my trip was spent driving back and forth across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  While there, I couldn't help noticing all the abandoned houses on the side of the highway.  I'd be driving through the dense forest out in the middle of nowhere and then suddenly I'd see another abandoned, run-down house with the windows busted out, the paint gone, and the grass growing out of control.  It occured to me for some reason that it would be the freakiest thing in the world if I happened to look at one of them and see a face staring back at me from inside one of the windows.

My thoughts had mainly been preoccupied with the book I had been reading lately, Sam Storms' Convergence: The Spiritual Journey of a Charismatic Calvinist, which is about his journey from cessationism to continuationism (which has made me even more skeptical of continuationists than I was before I started reading it by the way).  As I was driving, this story started to come together in my head (boy there's a lot of ways I could have phrased that, isn't there?) so I pulled into the Escanaba Super 8 for the night and started writing it.  So the only similarity between me and the main character is that I did stay in room 105 of the Escanaba Super 8 and it was raining very hard that night.  Other than that I didn't do anything illegal other than my frequent inability to remember to buckle my seat belt.

As far as writing fiction, this was my first genuine attempt at it and I never knew how much fun it could be.  Like Piper says about poetry, it's the closest we humans come to creation ex-nihilo.  "There's a [story] that does not exist anywhere in the universe and you must bring it into being."  (Even though I'm a creation ex-deoist, but same difference.)  Hopefully I'll be able to try some more in the future because I'm pretty much addicted now.

Comments

[Spinney]

I'm glad you enjoy writing because you are good at it.

[Micah]

~blush~

Hey, when are you gonna update your blog?

[Spinney]

I have a blog?

[Luke Middleton]

Still curious to hear more detailed thoughts on the Sam Storms book...

[Micah]

I want to hold off until I'm completely done with it. (I'm a slow reader.)

[Shannon Lewis]

Though I enjoyed Storm's book, it wasn't edited very well. I usually suggest that non-charismatic christians read only the intro, then skip to chapter 6, read to the end, then jump back and read 1-5, then read the final chapter. Personally, though I love Storms (his as of yet unpublished chapter on the Gift of Tongues for "Always Reforming" is masterful), I'd suggest Wayne Grudem's excellent "The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and for Today" as a much more convincing case.