Networking Surprises and Inspiring People

Chad’s son, Eli

      I’ve been approaching Catholic dioceses around the country to offer by book, The Father’s Son, to parishes as a resource for Adult Faith Study, book discussion groups, parish reads, RCIA, etc. The response from diocesan leaders for Evangelization, Discipleship, and Adult Faith Formation has been humbling and encouraging. The real blessing in this outreach has been connecting with some of these men and women of faith and their obvious commitment to share the Catholic faith. While we are all aware of the dwindling attendance at Masses, especially for younger adults, some of these dioceses are energized and creating amazing parishes. One quote from an Alaska diocese read – “Our 18-35ish-year-old groups are really gaining some networking momentum through gathering social events, book, and bible studies, as well as prayer, adoration, and Mass.” That was encouraging to hear.

       One of the leaders I was blessed to connect with, Chad Judice, from the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana was a great and encouraging example of the leaders we have in the Church today. Chad is the Director of the Office of Catechetics in Lafayette, but he is also the father of his son, Eli, who was born with spina bifida. He has written several books on Eli and appeared on EWTN and other programs to share his incredibly moving story of love. When I conversed with him and then listened to his interviews, I choked up as a saw the type of man Christ calls us all to be. Chad seemed to get the kind of love Christ was trying to teach us about, but few of us see as deeply as he seemed to have a firm grasp of. What could have been a tragedy, Eli has brought joy and love to his family, and they have returned it to him. Maybe we only get glimpses of the love God has for us through our experiences, suffering, and fully trusting in God’s plan for us.

       Chad describes Eli with love and sees the dignity and joy of a young boy vs someone defined by a condition which they have.  One of the recommendations for his first book, Waiting for Eli, captured it well. "Thanks for being such a witness to the Gospel of Life. I would love to meet the little boy who has taught so many people the greatest lesson of all - to love unconditionally." - Fr. Michael Russo, Pastor Our Lady of Fatima Church.  Chad sees Eli’s life as a pro-life story. Most children diagnosed with spina bifida are sadly aborted, assuming the worst-case scenario – assuming that ending the baby’s life is the most humane thing to do.  Take a look at the videos on www.chadjudice.com and see if you agree with Chad and his wife, Ashley’s, decision to trust in God’s plan and loving choice of life.

      As I mentioned, I have met some great and passionately committed individuals with a vocation and mission to share the power of the Catholic faith and Christ to others. They may not all have as profoundly powerful a story as Chad Judice, but they all have a story and a love of Christ that comes across so clearly in their responses. I’ve been humbled and greatly moved and motivated by these people and I hope I can be a part of that mission to evangelize and be an example of the love Christ showed to us with his very life. We have an unconditionally loving father in heaven who sees us as his beloved sons and daughters, so I will end with a quote Chad included on his website.

 "One night a father overheard his son pray: Dear God, make me the kind of man my Daddy is. Later that night, the father prayed: Dear God make me the kind of man my son needs me to be." ---Author Unknown

Lessons My Mother Still Teaches Me Today

My mother was a beautiful woman in so many ways. She would have been 99 years old this week but died at 79 after being bed-ridden with Multiple Sclerosis for twenty-five years. It was during those years that she taught me the greatest lessons about life and the dignity of the human person. Rita Marie Doherty was the ninth and youngest child of Catherine and Patrick, immigrants from Donegal, Ireland who taught her about the importance of faith and family. At sixteen, she was taking care of the household after her mother died, and at twenty-one, she was married to my Italian father, Benjamin “Babe” Sano and started her own family.

 My father was the strict disciplinarian, while my mother probably trusted us too much, and would always take the time to sit and listen to our day. I can’t remember her without a smile on her face as she gazed into your eyes and made you feel as if nothing else mattered. In this world of busyness, her example of being truly present with her children and others seems to resonate even more to me today. We never had much money, never took a vacation, and lived simply. There was never any doubt that God was the center of her life and our family was her love and her vocation. She loved to walk, to garden, visit with her brothers and sisters, volunteer at church, and sing – she was happy.

 In her forties, she noticed some physical things happening to her body. By the age of fifty-four, the woman who loved to walk miles to Mass every morning was now bedridden and totally dependent upon my father and us for everything. The most interesting thing was that she didn’t feel angry or cheated. She trusted completely in God and His plan for her, no matter what the path was in front of her. “Take up your cross.” She continued to greet everyone with an enthusiastic smile and a positive attitude toward life. Over all those years, I never heard her complain or feel as if she was a victim, as she focused only on giving whoever came to visit her full attention. Her body atrophied and she could not feed herself (“this too shall pass” is what she would always say), yet her faith and trust in God only grew. She still had a mission in life and she took it on every single day.

 What stood out for me was that she knew she was beloved by God and He was her only real source of purpose and worth, and while she was ready to go many times over those twenty-five years, her patient waiting for heaven showed the depth of that faith and trust. Regardless of our circumstances, she taught me that we always have a purpose and a mission to others – to let them know we are all the beloved sons and daughters of a loving God. She let me know that, no matter what this world brings, it is a small part of our full existence. She let me know what unconditional, self-giving love was all about and how it was the only true source of our happiness. She let me know the dignity of all human life from the start – and she let me know how much I mattered to her, every single day.  I know she is alive today, smiling down on her family, letting us know that she still cares and she still loves us. What better gift can a parent give to their child?

So You Want to Write a Novel?

                  In my teens, I remember thinking it would be cool to write a book someday, a real story that would have an impact on people and one I would be satisfied with. I didn’t need to have it published or read by a lot of people. I guess it was an early version of a bucket list item for me, but I thought of it more as living life as an adventure. At fifteen, I thought about what I wanted out of life and how to make it meaningful – how to make a difference. I used to listen to neighborhood men in their seventies talk about regrets they had in their lives and it usually boiled down to their priorities and relationships. There was a book in there somewhere.

               Well, for the next forty of so years, I got busy with life—school, work, marriage, family, etc. Along the way, I struggled to find a story that would click. Small scenes would visually pop into my head, but no story. Priorities of faith, family, friends always resonated and grew for me as I sadly watched these things diminish in the cultural. More people seemed lost, hurt, or busying themselves with entertainment and diversions to avoid thinking about the purpose and meaning of life. I also continued to meet amazing people that did not drift with the cultural. The encouraging thing was that, within everyone, there was more going on inside that I could often see from the outside.

During those years, I wasn’t writing, but I kept reading and taking classes. Two classes, in particular, stood out for me. One was in faith and the other was in psychology. In each, I was moved by several nuggets of profound wisdom that seemed to address the nagging questions most people seemed to be struggling with about their self-worth and the roadblocks we often suffer in our search for self-acceptance and then experiencing self-giving love for others. The idea for a book called, The Father’s Son, took hold and started to build. Characters and interactions between them played out in my head and didn’t disappear, as they had for so many stories in the past.

              I spend about five years doing research for the book and loved pulling together gems of wisdom, learning about the history and events of the locations, and formulating the story, but there was one problem—I wasn’t a writer. I had a story in my head, but no experience writing outside of work related stuff. I heard about the agony of writers crafting each phrase of each sentence to draw the reader in and move the story, but how was I going to do this? Well, my wife often chuckles about my overly positive nature and self-confidence—especially when I sent the first 734 page draft to three publishers without any professional editing!

I guess I just had to start and see what happened—an it did. As my fingers typed as fast as they could to keep up with my thoughts, the story seemed to flow. Characters arrived that I hadn’t planned on and scenes materialized as I let the story unfold, eager to find out where it would take me. I couldn’t believe how much fun I was having dong this that spring and summer of 2015. I sincerely felt as if the Holy Spirit was doing the work and I was going along for the ride, but I loved the process. As I wrotem there were particular scenes I wanted to be emotionally powerful and I worried about getting them right in a way that would resonate with any potential reader. I think the most satisfying experience was when I finished one of those scenes and felt as if I had captured what I had envisioned.

            When I had finished writing and my own round of editing, it was time to solicit beta-readers. Luckily, I have a great family who would gentley tell me if I was kidding myself. They certainly helped to fix a lot of the tortured English I had learned from growing up in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts. The Boston accent was strong and the grammar was highly challenging, to say the least—but the story and the characters resonated. When my brother told me that I should seriously try to have it published, I was moved and humbled by his comment.

            Well, finding a publisher that would accept a submission from an unknown author is almost impossible these days. I did find two that would agree to review the 235,000 words (most novels are ~90,000 words) manuscript. I can’t tell if they actually read it, but both rejected it and said they published very little fiction. I solicited more beta readers, but now from more objective sources—people who were experts in the field and didn’t know me from Adam. One of those readers was an author and book publicist who was reserved in her initial response. I had to push her for a truly objective opinion and she said that there may be a good story in there but “the quality of writing needed a lot of work.” I guess I could have been upset or embarrassed, but her honesty was the best thing I could have heard. I searched and found a very good developmental editor in Michelle Buckman, who believed in being encouraging but very honest with her assessment and recommended edits—especially when it came to reducing the length “to let the gem inside shine.”

            After three years of editing, cutting, reshaping, and fixing grammar, the story got better, more readable, and more realistic in size for a publisher to entertain. This part of the process certainly wasn’t as much fun as writing the story, but I loved improving the story and the quality of writing. It was what it needed, but I still didn’t have a plubisher. Along the way, what I did find were a lot of wonderful people, publishers, editors, professors, leaders of faith formation, etc. who were willing to respond to me in an encouraging and supportive way, and to provide great leads—often going out of their way to do so. I am eternally grateful for their willingness to share their wisdom and for their thoughtfulness.

            At this point, I was being told to self-publish vs seeking a traditional publisher, something many people are doing—but I was led to a small publishing company run by two of the most wonderful people I have met along the journey. Because of them, the novel, The Father’s Son, has been officially released and I am spending my time trying to get the word out. I think the writing bug has definitely taken over, as I have written five other stories during this process. It’s funny to think that I couldn’t come up with any story for all those years, and now the ideas don’t seem to stop. I’m not complaining, as another one is percolating right now. I hope to have some of the other stories published at some point.

            As you can see from the above, I am no expert at writing or storytelling. I just found that I love imagining and crafting a story, and more importantly, sharing it with anyone interested. If you find yourself interested in writing a story that moves you, but don’t know where to start, I would recommend a few things that people have shared with me.

1. Read other books with an eye of how they hook you in early, their style of writing, how much they leave to the imagination of the reader, how they engage the characters, and they way the move the story along.

2. Think of a story that means something to you. Use people and places you know so that you can focus on telling the story.

3. Network. Reach out to writers, publishers, experts in the field connected to your story, and ask them for specific help. Most will not respond, but it is surprising how many are more than happy to help encourage you along. There are also lots of artitles, sites, and books on the process. Example: Jane Friedman: Helping Authors was helpful early on for me.

4. Join a writer’s guild where you can get advice and critique of your work from others as you go. They are usually great groups of people who know where you are and are still learning themselves. This is a great place to network and grow. When I started, a member recommended the free version of Grammarly to help with grammer/spelling edits. Simple advice but a great find.

5. Build a social media platform early so that you can build followers and find good people to network with. When your book does come out, you have a following that you can get the word out to. e.g. your own website blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pintrest, etc.

6. Start writing every day—blogs, letters, practices scenes, or your book. When writing your book, have a good outline of the story flow and the main characters, but be open to letting the story within that framework unfold and new characters appear. That was the fun part for me.

7. Don’t give up. You will get more (many more) rejections and non-reponses than you will get responses, but it is worth it. It similar to looking for a potential spouse, you only need one.

            Thank you for reading this blog and I hope it sparks some interest to give your novel a shot. If you are a faith-oriented person, I found praying on this very helpful. The main thing is to believe in your story and yourself and being willing to work at it. I still have a long way to go there, but it does feel good to see the first book being published. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Good luck and good writing.

Jim