Han Nolan: The Long Journey

At the Festival of Faith and Writing, young adult writer Han Nolan told the riveting tale behind her novel When We Were Saints. Her theme was that we learn the most lessons during struggle, and that each book is a new path, even if our skill in craft carries over.

Nolan had a contract for a book due in two and a half years. She had just finished her book Born Blue, and was tired of her voice. She felt she had said it all, and needed a major departure from her previous work. She went hiking in Greece with her husband and some friends, and was taken in by the landscape and friendly people. Finding a book that offered a study of a Greek mountain village, she said to her friend, also a writer, "I think I'd like to write about Greece in my next book!" The friend replied, "You should write what you know. I don't see how you could write about Greece." And the idea disappeared.

Back at home, nothing grabbed her. Then the publisher called, saying they now needed the book in two years, not two and a half. Nolan, indignant over her friend's comment, reflected that she had written about many things (the Holocaust, drug use, a man who melts) that she had never experienced! Writing what you know, she decided, had more to do with writing about the human condition, the heart, its emotions and losses.

So Nolan embarked on a book about Greece. She did lots of research, and came up with a first chapter that had a very different voice. She thought she was out of the transition period, and none too soon, since she had one more year to finish the book.

Then everything fell apart.

Her daughter was working on a carrier in the Navy, that was called into bombing service after September 11, 2001. Nolan walked around in a daze--forget writing! The only things she could manage to do during this time were to 1) pray, 2) meditate, 3) journal, 4) run, and 5) walk. So she decided to put the Greece book away and work on something easier, anxious that she was running out of time. Normally it took her two years to write a book, and she was down to one! When she worked, she felt like she had never written before.

Around Christmas she had some ideas about a grandfather dying, pointing to his bad son and saying, "You have always been a saint!" So she started researching the medieval period, and cathedrals. Then she picked up the Greek book again and finished fifty pages of it.

The National Book Award organization called and wanted her to chair the Young People's Literature panel in 2002. Why not? she thought, it might pull me out of my depression. (She was also teaching in a graduate program at this time.) But reading entries for the NBA only made things worse. She was sick of books written in the first person, sick of angry teenagres or parents who couldn't cope. But when she read great books, she became self-conscious about what her books lacked. She couldn't enter into her own stories and characters--analyzing writing while writing was death to her writing.

After the NBA award ceremony (she said she didn't remember a word of her speech, but here it is on the Internet) she re-read the fifty pages of the Greek novel, which she finished before the summer. They were terrible.

[Are you getting tired yet? This story was a marathon narrative! We were all feeling Nolan's struggle and frustration. And speaking of marathons . . .]

Nolan was training for a marathon. Out for a run with her husband, he stopped to take his pulse, and discovered his heart was out of rhythm. He ended up in intensive care.

So, forget Greece. Nolan had to write her way to centre. The search for truth in writing was like a search for God. But she wrestled with writing a blatantly religious book that would be based on her idea about the grandfather's dying words, "You are a saint!" She grew up in church but didn't talk about God outside of church. They were private about God outside of the family. Praying aloud in her writer's group was like walking around naked. She didn't want to write about God.

But when you're writing about what you're scared of, that's where you need to be, Nolan told us.

So she was struggling to write in third person (the story wouldn't work in first person), and had no inspiration. Anxiety was making the screen of imagining smaller and smaller, until she felt she had no screen, but was writing blind. She wrote from 5 am to 5 pm. One weekend, she set aside Saturday and Sunday to make a big push on the novel. She finished forty pages on Saturday--on Sunday, her daughter became ill.

Whether you have to write a book or not, life just keeps happening! Nolan learned to her chagrin.

She could get no extension from her publisher (in fact, the publisher wanted the book even earlier!) She was down to a few weeks. Finally, she finished the book, put on some music in the living room, and began her dance of joy. As she danced, she realized that the ending was all wrong, and went back to rewrite the last fifty pages. Again, finished! More music, more dancing . . . the ending was still wrong. She rewrote the last fifty pages again. This time, she did not do the dance of joy!

Nolan ended with what she learned from all this struggle:

• "I was the one who had been torturing myself, because of my thoughts and beliefs about myself."
• When she froze, frightened in panic, her imagination closed down. On her next book, which she was able to write with pure joy in three months, she no longer felt like she was looking through a pinhole.
• Thinking that her style wasn't good, or that she needed a new one, caused problems. She needed to accept herself, and not try to force a transition.
• Her belief that her stories took two years to write caused needless anxiety. In the end, she was able to write the book in three months. She had all the time she needed. And what was left out (all her early false starts) were just as important as what went in.
• She could have postponed the delivery date with her publisher.
• She can write without inspiration, not knowing what word would come next. Worrying and thinking didn't help writer's block--only writing helped.
• Take a leap of faith--God meets us in midair. Trust, don't panic.
• Sometimes we have to learn something over again.

I hope you found some encouraging words in that harrowing story! I'm so glad Nolan shared it with us.