Lory Widmer Hess
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Reading was my passion from a very early age, and authors seemed like gods to me, as they connected with the creative impulse and gave it form. I could think of no greater vocation than to do what they did, producing more of the kind of books that made my life meaningful, even bearable.
The problem was that I couldn’t seem to write those kinds of books. My childhood reading centered in myths, fairy tales, and fantasy fiction, which took me on exciting journeys through worlds full of danger, beauty, and enchantment. They struck me as revealing a reality that was “truer than true,” a magic behind the everyday world. But when I tried to write in a similar vein, my efforts fell flat; they seemed false and contrived, not emerging out of a source other than my rational brain, and unlikely to interest or convince any readers.
Writers talked of how their stories came to them, often in unexpected ways, sometimes pulling them in surprising directions, with their own logic and integrity. But no such stories were coming to me and asking me to tell them, or if they were, I wasn’t able to hear them. Being a published writer seemed like a dream I’d have to give up.
Decades later, after I’d started a book blog — an experience I wrote about in this article — I had a better grasp of the kind of writing I enjoyed, and could do well. I might not be able to produce the kind of three-decker fantasy novels I’d loved as a child, but I could share reflections about my reading and how it intersected with life, giving it meaning and even bringing a healing impulse. I loved writing my blog, and had some success publishing essays elsewhere, but producing a whole book of this kind of material seemed a remote possibility.
Then a crisis in my personal life shifted many things, including my writing habits. I hadn’t written poetry for many years; the poetic spark, too, had seemed absent from my constitution. But suddenly, over the course of a couple of months during which my life seemed to be falling apart, ideas for poems surged in and I started to write them down, sometimes two or three a day. It was a tremendous help for me to experience this creative impulse in the midst of destruction; it seemed like a gift from some beneficent source, giving me courage to persist through a time of darkness.
Some of the poems were based on the three stories of Christ raising people from the dead in the Gospels, which I’d decided to study during a very challenging winter season. I didn’t initially set out to write poems, but that was one result my study produced. The stories were so mysterious and raised so many questions that I wanted to unfold them by imagining a narrative from the point of view of the people being healed. This, too, was a great help to me in my own crisis, which involved a kind of death and rebirth of my marriage and family.
Later, after a certain resolution had been reached and I’d moved with my husband and son to Switzerland, I had new challenges, including health issues that culminated in gallbladder surgery. While recovering from the surgery, I thought of the Gospel healing stories again, wondering if I could write more poems based on them. Though at first I didn’t imagine I’d complete the whole series, eventually even the briefest and most cryptic stories showed me a way into their world. Over about six months I wrote fifteen more poems.
Now I had quite a bundle of writing in hand, and I had to say I thought it was not bad. But what would others think? Might they also find these poems a source of consolation and hope, as I had? If that were possible, I would love to share them with the world.
The poems alone were not enough for a book, though. Could I fill them out somehow? What if I wrote essays to go with each poem, incorporating some of the background material I’d researched as I was writing, and connecting the sequence into a whole? And what about adding anecdotes from my own experiences, indicating how the healing and creative energy at work in those long-ago stories could be seen also in an individual person’s life today?
It was a good idea, but in my hectic life it was hard to find time to sit down and compose all of this material. Participating in the Writer’s Room workshop offered by Authors Publish last November helped, by giving me focus and encouragement as I connected with a community of other writers working on their own projects. During the seven-week workshop I finalized the sequence of poems, wrote an introduction, drafted the essay sections, and outlined the memoir sections. In December, I completed and polished the introduction and first three sections, preparing a proposal I could send to a publisher.
I already had one in mind: Floris Books, a small independent house in Edinburgh. They were particularly looking for nonfiction based in the spiritual world view, anthroposophy, that had been an important part of my journey, and I’d had professional contact with them through one of my jobs as an editor for another anthroposophical organization. I knew I could trust them to do quality work, and to effectively reach an audience interested in this kind of content, while also having full international distribution channels that would make my book widely available. I thought Floris would be the perfect home for my book; if it didn’t work out with them, I could consider other options.
I sent my proposal to Floris in January; they responded within a month, asking if I had a completed draft ready. I’d been working on one in the meantime, and was able to send it. In April I received the happy news that Floris wanted to publish my book. Though it was more personal and emotional than the titles they’d published so far, which tended to be fairly intellectual and formal in nature, they were excited to branch out into something new.
I was excited, too, and quite amazed and humbled as I looked back over the journey that had brought me to this point. When book publication had been my aim, it had seemed a discouragingly huge and far-off goal that left me unsure I could ever make it. But when I just took each step as it came, becoming aware of what was needful in the moment and trusting in the process, I was led there in the end. I couldn’t imagine a more magical story than that.
Lory Widmer Hess lives with her family in Switzerland, where she works with adults with developmental disabilities and is in training as a spiritual director. Her first book, When Fragments Make a Whole: A Personal Journey through Healing Stories in the Bible will be released by Floris Books in Spring, 2024. Visit her website and blog at enterenchanted.com.
