Your Own Kind of Saint

On finding an original faith while avoiding Cafeteria Catholicism

A lot of you know that my day job is writing fiction.

What you might not know, if you’re not a writer, is that any writer whose attempted to create something that doesn’t totally suck goes through phases of sort of lightly copying others’ work.

I don’t mean copy-and-pasting—plagarizing is still a pretty obvious no no. I mean trying on others’ voices; being influenced by the style of other writers while you try to figure out what the hell your own style is.

This video on the gap between seeing great art and knowing your art isn’t great fuels a lot of accidental copying. You see someone else’s terrific work, and you want to make terrific work, so you sort of subconsciously try on what they’re doing as if it’s a pair of jeans.

When I’ve been reading a lot of Anthony Doerr my sentences are short, punchy, present-tense. I say a lot with few words; I try to paint a scene with descriptors that seem unrelated but are actually vital.

When I’ve been reading a lot of Deb Caletti, I’m the opposite—I could describe an apple tree for a page, tying it into some great metaphor that you don’t see coming until the final phrase.

When I’ve been reading a lot of J. Courtney Sullivan, snappy dialogue covers my pages; references to past childhood experiences and sarcastic add-ons. Sarah Addison Allen makes me want to inject magic into acts like washing the dishes and caulking the air vents. J. Ryan Stradel books leave me wanting to write about turning the mundane into the extraordinary with quaint conversations about the Midwest.

I think I do the same thing, I’m realizing, with my faith.