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Blogs by Richard French
Surprises and Changes 4/18/2016 3:29:58 PM
I spent my formative years in and around Boston, a mid-sized North American metropolitan area. After I finished my university studies in the Midwest and four years in the American army, I went back to Boston . with thoughts of writing uppermost in my mind. As I looked around me, I believed that most everything life had to offer was available in my home area and that I would have more than enough to write about where I was.
A friend of mine said that I should keep myself open to surprise, and more than one came my way. I joined a Lutheran congregation in my early forties and spent five years studying at a seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana and then served as a pastor in Sudbury, Ontario, a mining area 240 miles or 400 kilometers north of Toronto, for 17+ years. I moved to Toronto four years ago after I retired, though I still preach most Sundays and have plenty of time for writing, I foresaw none of this when I was forty and working as a clerk in a bank, knowing that I would have to find something else, because I have no gift for figures.
I cannot calculate the influence these moves and changes have had on my writing, especially the arrival of the Christian faith in my life when I was thirty-two, but I can say some things.
When I got to Sudbury, I took a look at what I'd written so far and said, "I'm in a new country, doing a kind of work I never expected. Should I change course or keep on with what I'm doing?" It didn't take me long to decide.that I would keep on the course I'd set for myself. This meant --
1. That my mind would be partly back in the U. S. while I lived in Canada, a situation that never stopped me from liking Canada quite a bit.
2. That I wouldn't know what was happening in Boston, or Botolph as I call it in my stories, after 1982 when I enrolled in the seminary. Even so, I've set scenes in Botolph or Boston many times in the late 1980's and '90's.
3. That the openness and tolerance and sociability of most Canadians would enliven my thinking.
4. That being away from the U. S., though not very far, would give me an interesting and useful outlook on the country I came from and still love.
5. That I would able to build up a collection of novels that I'm pleased with on the whole with more to come as I revise and receive criticism from other writers and work up the spirit to look for agents and publishers.
