Writing—like the process of reading—is a solitary experience. She adds: “I read to know I’m not alone. I want my readers to feel comforted in their struggles and to learn by example from my characters that they can go directly to God with their doubts.”

Konkle’s protagonist is a believer, but her concept of God is flawed and full of anger, so “her transformational journey is about learning to talk to God, knowing Him personally. Too many Christians take their doubts to their friends, whose well-meaning advice may be full of spiritual-sounding clichés but [is] a poor substitute for speaking directly to God. Or they may only share surface-level doubts with their friends, unable to reach the level of vulnerability a character in a novel can model by going directly to God.”

As a result, though Konkle does not lay out a gospel presentation, her character finds the way to God because of the author’s fictional twists and turns—a basic definition of the organic method of writing she finds more effective than simply grafting a Christian message onto a plot or, worse, making the Christian walk sound too pat.

So, as in real life, not everyone in Konkle’s plot is transformed. For example, the protagonist’s brother, a homosexual, does not repent and change his ways, or die of AIDS, as some Christian novels might handle his story line.

“When religious faith is the theme of a book, or a part of a book’s characters, there is a tendency to let it overpower the plot and become predictable. It’s hell and damnation, forgiveness and salvation … with little room for gray between the extremes,” reads a review in The Capital Times of Madison, Wis. “That doesn’t happen [in Konkle’s novel, The Dark Oval Stone].”

The book took Konkle six years to complete. Most of the writing took place in Wisconsin, where she and her husband lived before moving to Illinois for his job.

The 37-year-old author describes her writing voice as “lyrical, spare.” Publishers Weekly complains that some of her characters are “overdrawn,” but Konkle says that the characters are the engine of her writing. The book began with her vision of the main character, Miriam. She worked for a year and a half writing and rewriting the first chapter to understand Miriam better.

“I had an image of a woman, working late one night, walking down the hallway in her office building. As she reached the middle of the hall, her steps slowed and the hair stood up on the back of her neck … . I felt her clammy fear and instantly wanted to know what she was so afraid of,” recalls Konkle. And then her book was born.

Miriam is Konkle’s messenger to her readers. Konkle wants them to discover a woman who’s had similar experiences with grief and fear, to meet someone with whom they can empathize. But she also wants readers to finish the book having encountered characters who are very different from themselves, giving them a realistic perspective of the world.

While her books aren’t autobiographical, the reclusive Konkle has gone through her own journey of grief—tempered she says by grace and love. She married her husband, Jeff, during college at the University of Wisconsin. They’d hoped to have children right away but struggled with infertility. Konkle experienced an intense grief that consumed everything in her life.

“I began to come to terms with the fact that I may never be a mother,” she says. In the midst of her grief, she saw her calling clearly. “I began to feel as if God was gently reminding me of that long-lost desire to write. There have been moments when I’ve doubted my ability but never whether I should be writing.”

Fifteen years after their wedding, she and her husband have no children, but Marsena Konkle has found her calling.

Before she dove headfirst into writing, she went back to school, finishing her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2001 at Vermont College—though now she concedes that getting a master’s isn’t essential to becoming a writer.

It certainly had its value, though. “It was during the first lecture on the structure of the novel that I nearly wept, feeling that I was exactly where I was meant to be.”

Now in the thick of writing, she understands some of the secrets to getting a good story from her head to the page. Foremost, she says, she seeks to create believable characters who deliver a freshness to the novel that would be lacking without them.

She dismisses pursuing “uniqueness” as a goal for writing. “It’s the fastest way I know into writer’s block.”

A cup of coffee from a nearby bookstore is one way out of the block. She browses through writers such as Richard Bausch (“best opening paragraph”), Ann Patchett (“three-dimensional characters”) and most especially Chaim Potok to invoke the muse. She has read Potok’s The Chosen countless times, studying his prose, character development, and plot construction.

To actually transfer her ideas to the page, she handwrites first drafts. “This gives me time to think over each word as I write it, without a cursor blinking impatiently for me to finish. For me, approaching an empty page is less daunting if I can doodle in the margins.”

Like Flannery O’Connor, John Steinbeck, and other authors who wrote before the era of computers, she often resorts to clacking out prose on her vintage Royal typewriter. The noise of the machine helps her focus when writer’s block stops her flow. If the typewriter doesn’t draw out her thoughts, she sits down and works crossword puzzles while her great aunt, who lives with Konkle and her husband, watches TV.

“Now that I think about it, I do a lot of crosswords.” After several drafts, she eventually turns to the computer.

But her main technique for writing is, well, to write.

“Write and write and write,” she advises.

And then rewrite. When her editor at Paraclete Press read her manuscript for the first time, she told Konkle that the novel didn’t have a plot.

“I fell off my chair,” Konkle recalls. But she got back up and rewrote. Now she’s in the middle of writing her second novel about a group of friends stuck together on an island after a terrible storm.

Excerpt from The Dark Oval Stone (Paraclete Press, 2006) by Marsena Konkle:

It was her mother who first planted in Miriam the idea that although death is certainly inevitable, it might be possible to walk with an eye toward heaven so that when the inevitable begins to pour down, she might be ready with an umbrella or by a quick dash might reach a place of safety. For as often as her mother whispered her own prayers of deliverance and help, she would entreat: Pray, Miriam, pray. Recite your prayers often so you will be spared. So you won’t know the pain I have. And so Miriam tried to say her prayers, fueled by the fear of what could happen.

The fear of what could happen. Without warning, her attention snapped back to the present. Myocardial infarction. Heart attack. Miriam’s mind stuck like a broken record. Fatal. Heart attack. It couldn’t happen. Paul was only 39.

In those first days of silence, when Job could do nothing but sit on an ash heap with his clothes torn, scraping his sores with a bit of broken pottery, did he think dully, “I would have bargained with You.” I would have given anything. Everything. But even those words were brittle autumn leaves—vacant crisps of their former selves. 

                                                               *****

Christine Schaub birthed her best-selling novels under a spotlight. To groups of 14 or crowds of 14,000 she performed stories she had written. And at each performance she recounted the story of a hymn writer, though the audience wouldn’t know whose life it was until she recited hymn verses at the end. The effect was a little like Paul Harvey’s radio series, “The Rest of the Story.”

“Ripples went through the crowd,” she recalls. Schaub knew she was onto something.

Eventually the hymn writers’ soliloquies became screenplays for television; then she fashioned them into novels: Finding Anna, published in 2005, and The Longing Season, published in 2006, both by Bethany House. The first tells the incredible two-year struggle behind the writing of the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.” The second is about John Newton’s early life, the backdrop for his writing of “Amazing Grace.”

Her own back story goes like this: A Michigan native, Schaub earned a degree in mass communication with a journalism focus and a minor in literature at Anderson University in Indiana. She’d also been a musician, performing from the time she could barely reach the keys and the pedals of a grand piano. Her years in front of an audience as a pianist led to the acting performances, which led to the teleplays, which morphed into the novels.

From poetry to news and now to novels, Schaub has written with many voices and styles. What she likes best is fast-paced fiction. A self-described “student of conversation,” Schaub sets herself to penning snappy and compelling manuscripts.

Now she’s cranking out an action novel, a genre she’s always been drawn to. She also plans to return to her dream of making her stories of hymn writers into movies.

When she talks about her writing, Schaub emphasizes the business angle. Stories need to be saleable. “I have a story to tell that will change lives—but will it make money?” she asks.

She’s pragmatic about writing only part time: It doesn’t pay all her bills. At 43 she lives on her own, working three days a week as a concert pianist plus teaching children and adults how to play. Those piano lessons are extraordinarily important to her, more than the supplemental income they provide. She encourages her students to put “expression” into every piece, even beginner tunes like “Home on the Range.”

“Like most writers, I piece together my income with a variety of talents—because very few Grishams walk amongst us,” she says.

So why does she do it? “I write because I’m a storyteller, and I tell stories best in print.”

Writing historical fiction has its constraints. To do it well, Schaub must devote a large portion of her time to research—even, she adds, “over-research.”

“Historical fiction readers are rabid fans, but they’re very savvy, so you have to know your stuff,” she explains. “Readers like details, details, details … and I’m happy to provide them.”

In her office she has two fat binders of research from each book she has written. Five pages of research may become two sentences in a novel. But long hours are her cup of tea.

“I love research, especially when I’m forced to go to London and Paris,” she offers with a laugh. She visited both cities while working on her first two books, digging up documents like old maps.

When she actually gets down to the business of writing, Schaub does strict outlining to structure chapters. Then she begins with the last chapter, jumping around until she fills in the holes in the story.

She also writes spontaneously whenever a good idea strikes her. “The muse tends to show up at very inopportune times, [like] when I need to leave in 20 minutes for an appointment … when I’m driving between piano lessons.”

Life always offers plenty to write about, she says. Finding ideas is not the biggest struggle; it’s putting them down on paper. She doesn’t experience writer’s block, but she does encounter a new disorder she calls writer’s “I-don’t-care.”

“I’m easily distracted by laundry, ironing, Oprah, a good novel, cooking for friends,” she confesses. “Finally, after the umpteenth person has asked me, ‘How’s the book coming?’ I have a frank discussion with myself and start to care.” She adds that she’s never missed a deadline.

As someone trained to be a journalist, Schaub finds the editing process essential and satisfying. She puts her work through a vigorous self-edit, then gives it to readers with instructions to call her on clichés or insipid writing. Some may even be friends from her church, Covenant Presbyterian (PCA) in Nashville, Tenn., but she begs them to be critical.

After examining one of her manuscripts, Schaub’s editors at Bethany House told her to cut an entire chapter. Now she’s glad they did. “Editors are not out to destroy you—they’re usually right.”

Yet she wonders if criticism she hears of Christian fiction may be deserved—self-imposed by publishing houses who set their standards too low. “I often opine that Christian novels are morally sound but poorly written and in need of a heavy edit and rewrite. Conversely, mass-market novels tend to be wonderfully and creatively written but morally bankrupt. Now and then, a Christian writer like Ted Dekker comes along who can bridge the creative gap, but writers like Dekker, Francine Rivers, and Frank Peretti are in the minority.”

Like Marsena Konkle, Christine Schaub prefers not to be pegged as a “Christian writer.” In fact, she sees her motivations for writing to be parallel in some ways to those of an unbeliever. “I don’t think those writers have a different philosophy [of writing] than mine. They’re trying to tell a great story. That has merit, because storytelling is biblical.”

Schaub adds: “I want my readers to lose themselves in the story. But, as an historical fiction author, I also want them to trust me. I want them to trust that I’ve done my homework, that—although I’ve ‘made up’ certain dialogue and used other storytelling techniques—the story is true. And I want it to point them to the Truth.”

She recently heard from a reader who turned back to God after reading how a character in one of her books responded to the turmoil in his life.

Excerpt From The Longing Season (Bethany House, 2006) by Christine Schaub:

Newton faced the realities of his past.

Oh, he had suffered miseries and afflictions, but he had likewise experienced extraordinary deliverances—none of which were of his own design. He saw that now. And what had been his response to each rescue? Decadence. Insolence. Profane ridicule.

He looked deep into his black heart and thought there had not likely been—nor could there ever be—a reprobate, a sinner, such as John Newton. So there was no escaping his fate, and the elements all around the Greyhound seemed to confirm it. The wind and rain were almost surreal, everything boiling together in an eerie half-light … no up and down, no starboard or port. He faced the nightmare and suddenly wished to know the worst.

A rogue wave appeared out of nowhere, and Newton looked up at the crest 60 feet above him. The wave hesitated, then hit, rolling the ship almost entirely on her side.

The lee rail disappeared under the rushing water and Newton hugged the helm, his body hanging by the ropes in mid-air. The ship’s list was so severe the frothing sea slapped at the fiferails around the masts and surged down the hatchways. She stood on her beam ends, groaning with the stress of trying to right herself, and hung for a moment, neither capsizing nor righting.

Newton stared down into the roiling green water … stared deep into the yawning mouth of death.

Emily Belz is a senior at Covenant College and editor of the student newspaper The Bagpipe. Her articles have appeared in The New York Daily News, The Hill newspaper, and World magazine.