February 14, 2008...7:11 pm
Michael Snyder–On Creating Russell Fink
The idea for the novel entitled My Name Is Russell Fink grew out of three separate short stories I composed over a period of nearly a year. The similarities and threads between stories were purely accidental. I borrowed liberally from one and sparsely from the other two. Prior to writing my follow-up novel, I penned another short story or two and plan to continue this regimen until it stops working! Truth be known, I love the short story form and would write scads of them if time permitted.
From the aforementioned stories I figured out Russell’s snarky attitude, his struggle between his art and vocation, the rather awkward circumstances of his love interest, and the defining moment from his childhood. The rest was making it up as I went along.
What I wanted to accomplish in the writing was pretty simple. I want to tell the absolute truth as seen through the imperfect lenses of imperfect characters. I think we as Christians are sometimes afraid to give voice to the truth as our characters see it. But THE truth will always trump our (and our characters’) misguided stabs at it. There’s real freedom in that. One of my favorite byproducts of seat-of-the-pants writing is discovering some of the themes that emerge along with the characters.
What I hope the book accomplishes is almost as simple. First and foremost I hope it’s a good story told well. It would thrill me to know that people laughed some and cried some too—even on the same page. And although I don’t intentionally write with themes in mind, I do hope that readers will see that no amount of dysfunction or neuroses is able to derail God’s redemptive purposes.
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