Bret Lott - Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian

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Letters and Life is nothing less than an invaluable gift to the body of Christ. Let no serious believer who aspires to serious writing neglect to read it and to be encouraged, instructed, and blessed by it. A wise, wonderful, and desperately needed primer on what it means to be a genuine Christian writer and artist.

Eric Metaxas, New York Times best-selling author, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy ; and Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

Like all great storytellers, Bret Lott is a bridge builder: his characters cross into our lives and help us know ourselves more truly. In this lively collection of essays, Lott is determined to bridge another gapthe sometimes uneasy tension between the world of literary fiction and the broader community of faith. Along the way, he demonstrates that reading literature, far from being an elitist indulgence, is at once deeply pleasurable and a transformative spiritual experience.

Gregory Wolfe, editor, Image ; author, Beauty Will Save the World

Bret Lott has dared to write an impossible booka serious and candid set of meditations on what it means to be a Christian writer living in a secular society that neither respects nor even understands his faith. I can hardly imagine a more difficult topic or a more necessary one. Letters and Life has the courage to explore a question at the heart of contemporary culture: How do we reconcile the spirit and the imagination?

Dana Gioia, poet; former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

Bret Lott is one of Americas finest writers and editors; this book reveals him to be one of our greatest mentors to writers of faith, as well. Letters and Life brims with wisdom and advice to all who bear the call toward an authentic journey of a writer. It is a gift for all readers who desire to know more about the creative process and to infuse their creativity into their lives.

Makoto Fujimura, Founder, International Arts Movement and Fujimura Institute; artist; author

Praise for Bret Lott (from reviews of Jewel )

Lott is one of the most important and imaginative writers in America today. His eye for detail is unparalleled; his vision where he looksis like no one elses in this country.

Los Angeles Times

Bret Lott has a gift for making the ordinary seem luminous.

Boston Globe

Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, on Being a Christian

Copyright 2013 by Bret Lott

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Why Have We Given Up the Ghost? originally published in Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion 43 (Fall 2004): 7991.

Writing with So Great a Cloud of Witnesses originally published in Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion 69 (Spring 2011): 7585.

Humble Flannery originally published in The Writers Chronicle: The Journal of the Associated Writing Programs 34.1 (October/November 2010): 1823.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

First printing 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible ( The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ), copyright 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked NKJV are from The New King James Version . Copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-3783-7
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3784-4
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3785-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3786-8

_________________________________________________

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lott, Bret.

Letters and life : on being a writer, on being a Christian / Bret Lott.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3783-7 (hc)

1. AuthorshipReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. FictionReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

PN171.R45L68 2013

_________________________________________________

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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With thanks.

Part 1

Part 2

The author would like to thank the editors of the
magazines in which these essays originally appeared:
Why Have We Given Up the Ghost?
and
Writing with So Great a Cloud of Witnesses
in Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion
Humble Flannery
in The Writers Chronicle

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.
Were every one of them to be written,
I suppose that the world itself could not contain
the books that would be written.
John 21:25

Notes on Reclaiming Literary Fiction

My name is Bret Lott, and I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our L ORD ; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. A MEN .

So thats where Ill start this book.

Id also like to start by saying that neither the title of this particular essay nor the book itself will be a sermon. Rather, it will be, as far as I can tell at this beginning of actually writing down what I think I want to say, an examination of my own story as a writer, and why this is a question that haunts me, no matter how many books I have written.

And what really is literary fiction? What Ive always known it to be is fiction that doesnt sell very well. But when my students ask me point blank what the difference between popular and literary fiction isand they ask this question a lotI tell them that literary fiction is fiction that examines the character of the people involved in the story, and that popular fiction is driven by plot. Whereas popular fiction, I tell them, is meant primarily as a means of escape, one way or another, from this present life, a kind of book equivalent of comfort food, literary fiction confronts us with who we are and makes us look deeply at the human condition. Henry James said that it wasnt the rare accidentthe plotthat made a story worth our attention but the human attestation to that plot: how people deal with their histories rather than those histories in and of themselves.