Alison Strobel is the author of six novels, the most recent of which is The Heart of Memory, a story about Savannah Trover, a beloved Christian author and speaker, who undergoes a heart transplant. Post operation, Savannah loses her faith and grows increasingly angry with God. As her comfortable Christian life falls apart, Savannah must figure out what caused the sudden change in her spiritual life, and fight to regain the faith she once had.
Alison answered a few questions about her new novel and the writing life…
How did you get started writing for a living? What are the upsides and downsides of being a novelist?
I’ve been writing ever since I was five. The “for a living” part was never really part of my plan, but God brought an editor from Waterbrook Publishing into my world about a month after I’d finished writing my first novel. I’d had no plans whatsoever to pursue publishing; the manuscript was sitting in a 3-ring binder in my closet at the time! When he heard about it he asked to see it, and four months later I had a two-book contract. Problem was, I only had one book. I started writing number two during my third year of teaching and discovered how difficult it was to teach and write at the same time. As much as I loved (and still love) teaching, I knew that if I had any chance of all at making a career of writing, that was what I really wanted to do. So I quit teaching to take on a less time-consuming job, and the rest is history.
The upsides of writing… There aren’t as many as you’d think. It’s definitely not a career you pursue for the perks. The biggest upside is when you get that first copy of your book in your hands and realize you finally, FINALLY did it. This just happened to me for the sixth time last week and so far it’s just as thrilling as it was when I held my first copy of Worlds Collide. The second biggest upside is when you get letters from people saying how much your book has touched their life. Actually, come to think of it, THAT is the biggest upside: knowing your work is being used by God to change hearts. For me, anyway.
The downside to writing…. Oh, the list is so long! The stress of wondering if you’ll make your deadline; the nail-biting days or weeks after turning in a manuscript while you wait to hear whether your editor likes it or not (or, as has happened twice to me, to hear whether or not your editor likes the general idea but wants you to rewrite the entire thing); the agony of staring at the computer screen and having absolutely no idea what to type next. Negative reviews, rejected proposals, a negative balance in the sales column of your sales statement, seeing authors with less skill and lame stories shoot to the top of the bestseller list while your highly-praised but as-yet-undiscovered-by-the-masses work languishes in the warehouse… It’s definitely not a good line of work for people who have a thin skin. Your pride takes an awful lot of hits.
In The Heart of Memory, Savannah, a formerly devout Christian active in ministry goes through a faith crisis and at one point even stops consciously believing in God. What drove you to write a story that grapples with the issue of doubt in a believer’s life?
Honestly, it wasn’t the concept of doubt that drove me to write this book so much as it was the mystery of cellular memories. I read an article about a decade ago about organ transplant recipients who began experiencing weird changes in their personal preferences–food, music–and in some cases started ‘remembering’ things that they knew had never happened to them. It made me start thinking about what kind of influence the heart of a Christian might have on the life of an unbeliever. I almost wrote the book from that angle, but then tried flipping it to explore how a hard-nosed atheist’s angry heart might affect a devout follower of God, and that was when the idea really gelled.
But then, when I started writing the book, I started thinking more and more about the influence people these days allow their emotions to have over their faith. They don’t feel loved by God–so he must not be real. They don’t feel His presence–so He must not be present. It’s such a slippery slope, and completely denies the truths of Scripture that tell us God is present, He is with those who love Him. It has nothing to do with how we feel or don’t feel about it. So, anyway…the doubt aspect of the book, though it eventually became a central theme, was actually not even something I thought about until I actually started writing.
In the novel, Savannah experiences a medical phenomenon dubbed ‘cellular memory’ where she takes on the tastes, characteristics, and emotions of her heart donor. Is cellular memory something fictional you came up with or is it a real medical anomaly? If it’s real, where did you first learn about it?
Two books were highly influential in my writing of The Heart of Memory. The first is Change of Heart: A Memoir by Claire Sylvia. She was a heart/lung transplant recipient back in the 80′s who experienced drastic changes in behavior post-surgery. She’d been a dancer, very feminine, very healthy in her diet–but days after surgery was craving beer and chicken wings, neither of which she’d ever had any taste for before. She developed a swagger in her walk, a more bold and brash personality, and a host of other odd changes…and through research came to meet the family of her donor, who turned out to be a male motorcycle enthusiast. I’d read about her story in the magazine article I mentioned earlier that I came across back in 2001.
The second book was called The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Power and Wisdom of Our Heart’s Energy by Dr. Paul Pearsall. He first began to explore these phenomena after noting several bizarre changes in his body prior to a heart attack that nearly killed him. Believing his heart had been trying to warn him of the impending attack, he began to study the ways in which our heart affects memory and other aspects of what we normally consider solely brain-centered activity. One amazing story he recounts is that of a young girl who received the heart of another young girl who had been murdered. The murderer had never been found–but this heart recipient began to have dreams of a man that was later, based on the ‘memories’ she began to have, determined to be the killer.
A lot of the reading I did about cellular memory revealed that mainstream science mostly dismisses these people’s experiences; most doctors and even transplant recipients consider the concept to be myth. But because there are many people whose experience undeniably supports the idea that there is some kind of transfer from donor to recipient, be it of energy or memories or what-have-you, I decided to go ahead and use the theory as the basis of the story. I’m a little nervous about what people will think; it certainly does sound a little out-there. But then again, so did the theory of germs, and we all know what a major change in public health ensued once people accepted their existence and started washing their hands!
How do you deal with writer’s block?
When you’re writing on a deadline, you don’t have the luxury of indulging writer’s block. You HAVE to keep writing. So you just do. Usually it means gritting your teeth and hating every single word you write, convincing yourself that you are not, in fact, a writer at all, but a charlatan who has managed to pull the wool over some publishing house’s eyes and wrangle a contract. But then you realize that, even if that IS true, you STILL have to produce a book for them. It helps–sometimes, anyway–to remember that the book you turn in is NOT the book that will be published–that there are many hours of editing both on your end and your editors’ that will fix all the lousy spots and redeem all the hours spent hating your work.
What types of books do you like to read during your downtime? What are some books you’ve enjoyed lately?
Women’s fiction is my usual go-to–Jodi Picoult and Lisa Samson are two favorites. But I also love Douglas Coupland‘s older books (Microserfs is on my top 5 list), Terry Pratchett (an off-beat combination of social commentary and fantasy, with a liberal dose of fantastic British humor), the earlier work of William Gibson (dystopic futeristic cyberpunk–seriously!), and even the occasional romance (Jenny B. Jones is a new favorite). But I’m also in a book club, so that forces me to read all sorts of things I normally wouldn’t, including non-fiction which I admit I normally avoid. A couple recent favorites were The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein–a book club selection–and Promises to Keep by Ann Tatlock.
What is the main thing you hope readers take away from The Heart of Memory?
That it’s not your emotions that define what is true. That our feelings are unstable and can change in a heartbeat (no pun intended, honestly), and that God and Scripture are the standard against which we should measure truth, not whether or not something feels real or true.
What are you working on now? Will we be seeing anything new from you next year?
I just turned in my sixth novel–Composing Amelia–which releases September 1st with David C. Cook. My husband and I are about to start brainstorming some new children’s projects, and I have four or five new novel ideas I’m going to be plotting in the coming months, with the hopes of securing some new contracts by the fall. I don’t currently have any other contracted books, so I’m in that scary limbo-land of wondering if I’ll ever sell another book. I’m praying I do, but if I don’t, it just means God’s got something better, and I can’t possibly be bummed about that!
To learn more about Alison and her books visit AlisonStrobel.com and follow her on Twitter @alisonstrobel. You can also read my review of The Heart of Memory and purchase a copy here.
I totally want to read this now!