I wrote this last year. Since that time I've worked on my vampire fiction with a critique group. I'll have more to say the pros and cons of working with a critique from an autistic perspective in a future post. But what I want to share here is how the online Catholic Writers Guild writer's panel inspired me to revisit my vampire story.
Dark Fiction and Me
I wrote, though rarely finished, several manuscripts over the course of my life. And to this day, even though I am a very, though not entirely different person, I still like the one I wrote about vampires best.
The only problem is, I have no idea what to do with it. It is too dark. Too flawed. Too who-I-used-to-be.
So, you can imagine my excitement, when I learned that the Catholic Writers Guild 2022 online conference was offering a panel called "Harrowings: Trauma and Darkness in Catholic Fiction."
The CWG Panelists
There were four people on the Harrowings panel: a moderator, Dr. William Gonch, SciFi author, Matthew P. Schmidt, and paranormal and fantasy authors, J.B. Toner and Karen Ullo.
Although, I hadn't come to the panel to to ask about my own work, the question I found myself typing into the Q & A box was about one of my old, orphaned vampire stories. I wanted to know if it was possible to fix a story written back when I was a different person, alone in the dark.
The Advice I Was Given
Matthew P. Schmidt
When answering my question SciFi author Matthew Schmidt referenced his own book, World of Wishes, which he started seven years earlier and had just recently finished. Schmidt pointed out that the current plot of World of Wishes, hinges on a Catholic element, which wasn't even included in the original draft. This missing piece, which was added in revision, made it possible for him to finish the book.
Schmidt's comments helped me, because I realized that there were important Catholic elements missing from my story too. I hadn't included accepted vampire lore about the power of crucifixes and other sacramentals in the original manuscript. I could see how these elements might add depth to the story.
J.B. Toner
J.B. Toner, author of Whisper Music talked about Anne Rice, and the great Victorian poet Gerald Manley Hopkins who "burned the poems he wrote in his youth when he became a priest." Toner went on to say this, about Hopkins and writing and darkness:
[That Hopkin's burned his poetry] ...is kind of tragic but I get why – because I look back to things I’ve written in my life, when I was not being a good Catholic, and some of it is stuff that I am personally ashamed of because of the way it reflects on me as a person. But, that is a separate question from: Is it artistically good and could it benefit readers? And what we always have to keep doing is take ourselves out of it. Remove ourselves, remove our egos, from the process, because I’ve written this thing and if people read it it might make me look bad but it doesn’t matter…because it might help them. Go back to it with what you know now, read through it honestly - if you think that it has potential to be good - [and] maybe you can fix it in light of what you’ve learned since you wrote it - then I think it’s absolutely worth a second chance even if, maybe especially if, it’s very hard to do - because that’s really where the best writing comes from.
These comments meant a lot to me. Like just about anyone, I think, who grew up as an undiagnosed autistic, ridicule is triggering for me. My ability to deal with judgement around my writing is something I need to think about.
Karen Ullo
Karen Ullo, author of Jennifer the Damned (which I loved) and editor for Chrism Press, had some excellent advice as well. She began by referencing a beautiful, literate novel (which I also loved) called City Mother. Ullo edited this book for Chrism and shared a bit about the author, Maya Sinha. As it turns out, Sinha began City Mother before she became a Catholic then went back to it after and saw there were Catholic elements already embedded there.
Ullo went on to say:
The book couldn’t be written until she became Catholic because that’s what was missing from the story. And honestly that’s what’s missing from the story of our own lives, the story of salvation… I highly recommend the Sci-Fi fantasy critique group to bring to find those elements that can be teased out - Because I suspect, just like Maya, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee - so those element of longing, those elements of looking for redemption, looking for faith are always going to be there, no matter who wrote it at what point in time – if they were being honest. So it’s there, whatever it is, it’s there you just have to find it.
I appreciated this because I love redemption themes in romance and other forms of fiction, so I think it's worth looking for the redemption theme in my story.
Revisiting an Orphaned Manuscript
In the first few months, after the conference I took a stab at editing my old work. I was trying to take myself out of my own way, as J.B. Toner had talked about. But I couldn't really do it. So I didn't make a lot of progress on my revisions.
I decided to participate in the CWG critique group. As the weeks passed, I began to feel that putting my old vampire fiction up for discussion might be a good idea. Finally, I did just that.
I will be writing more about the pros and cons of writer's groups from an autistic perspective in a future post. What I will say here is that while I found the critique process challenging, I did finish the first draft of my story and am now rewriting it again.
About My Grandmother
My paternal grandmother was a widow before I was born. And while I didn't realize it when I was a child, I don't think she had a lot of extra money. I guess that's why instead of visiting often or even calling on the phone she sent me things. Like letters and clippings and eventually a binder.
The binder came with only a couple pages but then she started sending me more pages to fill it. And so several times a year I'd receive a package of 2 or 3 or 4 photo album pages filled with brightly colored pictures.
Those pictures weren't anything special by ordinary standards. Most were simply cut from magazines and carefully arranged under the plastic film that covered each page in the album. But somehow those pages impressed me so much that I still remember the pictures. A pile of leaves raked up by group of kids. A little dog in a bright red coat. A school bus in the rain.
My grandmother came to visit us once or twice a year and when she did she slept in the spare room next to mine. And I remember how one Christmas Eve we sat together on the bed in that room while she told me the story of the nativity. I will never forget the chills that ran up and down my spine when she told me about the glory of the angels heralding the miracle that was the birth of Jesus.
And I have long thought that the presence that was there with us in the room that night was angelic in nature.
My Grandmother's Gift
The next day, on Christmas, my grandmother gave me a little white Bible. I don't remember getting it and I suspect it didn't impress me as much as the other presents I received. But I did read it - off and on, all through my childhood.
I would like to say that I kept reading that Bible or that it was one of my prized possessions but that would not be accurate. What is accurate is that my life veered off the rails and I returned to the Bible my grandmother had infrequently. and that it spent most of the years between now and then in a succession of dresser drawers and boxes.
And yet, somehow, out of the things that mattered more and all things that have come and gone, that little Bible is one of the few things I've hung on to.
In 2012 I moved into a new (old) house. I was still deeply involved in New Age spirituality. But when I was unpacking I decided to put the Bible my grandmother gave me into my china cabinet alongside my tarot cards and crystals.
And, in 2017, when I began to make my way back to the Faith those things went the way of other mistakes, great and small, and the little white Bible stayed.
And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy... - St. Luke 2:8-10
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About this Poem
I wrote the first version of this poem when I was 17 or 18 and, even though I rewrote several years later, it is still awkward. In many ways, it is, and was, more symbolic than literal. Because even though it is about the city of Detroit, out of all the cities I have lived in, I probably knew Detroit the least.
It is true that I was born there but it is also true that we moved to the suburbs when I was still quite young and then to Indiana when I was 13. Meaning that, aside from the occasional event or shopping trip, I spent most of my childhood in the suburbs. Things were not, of course, all good winds. As I think is evident between the lines of the poem.
When I was old enough to drive, I went back and forth between Indiana and Michigan almost every weekend. I spent most of my time there in closer proximity to the city. A few years later, after the birth of my son, I moved to the Northeast Appalachian Mountains near to where my maternal grandparents lived. And stayed there.
I never went back to Detroit. And I never went back to Indiana either.
A Short Dream
Childhood was such a short dream.
Michigan, all good wind and apples
giving way early to Detroit,
The hard city nights chain linked
and dangerous.
Childhood was a dozen ponds,
soft with algae, reed encircled,
one big Rousseau - with no explanations.
We trouped through the wind-breaker days,
the almost time for dinner evenings.
That's all.
Later there were barbecues
and cousins coming.
Sweet purple and white nights
of wet grass, wide lawns, air and space.
We spun beneath all the pale moons until
we fell drunk upon wet earth,
toadstools, violet skies and Venus.
The Church stood in its own
pale bright light.
Pastel coasts, dark communions
and a light which said
Eternal Life
But all that I've seen passes.
Through yellow lit tunnels,
dark houses huddling behind
the street lights.
A clear cold world of dark cars
and black glass,
A galaxy of light like China Town
at New Year's.
And in the end it was Detroit
that somehow captured me.
In spite of, because of
the rummage sale sidewalks
rain on the windows.
In the end
It was Detroit.
Empty shops, empty streets
and too much light
in too much darkness.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples...
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress...
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7
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It's been a long time since I'd thought about how hard blogging was for me, in the beginning, but when I decided to start this blog, I remembered.
I remembered how I didn't want anyone to know about my first blog or read what I had written. I remembered how I decided to hide it. Or at least hide it from everyone I knew. Doing that wasn't hard for me. I had been hiding things all my life. To just keep on hiding suited me just fine.
While I eventually got comfortable with other people reading my first blog - all my old insecurities came rushing back when I thought about blogging on autism. But I did want to do it. Partially because I felt isolated, but mostly because I have always worked things out through writing.
So, I revisited my old orphaned journals and misplaced poems and half finished manuscripts. I thought about all the false starts and the writing that I had loved, then hated. I saw those fragments, those bits and pieces, stretching across the entire course of my life like stepping stones in the dark and I knew that following them had saved me.
And I wondered if writing here might serve that same purpose
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