What’s most exciting about this book to you?
The fact that it exists seems miraculous to me. All of my books have been labours of love, but Francie’s Got a Gun was also a labour of endurance and faith and enormous patience. It began as a hand-written draft; went through multiple iterations before finding a publisher; and there were long periods where I did not believe that it would enter the world at all. I returned to its pieces and voices over and over, and it would not let me go, no more than I could let it go. It was a seven-year fever dream from which I somehow woke with a published book.
Do you see it as a new departure for you, a continuation of earlier work/themes, or some combination?
I believe that Francie is a continuation and deepening of my interests and themes as a writer. Thematically, the book is concerned with memory and how it shapes our identities; and its shifting nature, dependent on perspective and unique to each individual no matter their shared experiences. I also wondered whether a story traps us or frees us from truths we come to believe about ourselves, or some combination thereof. What are the limitations of storytelling?
From a technical angle, nothing satisfies me more than playing with structure—complicated, puzzle-like, visual narrative shape that arises in my imagination in connection with plot. I “see” a book’s shape inside my mind, as if it were a physical structure—but a loose and fluid one, alive with texture and tone and movement. Very early in the story’s development, the image of the tree came into focus as the thematic centre. Layered atop that (and probably arriving a draft of two in) came this circular visual: I could see the the shape of each character’s narrative trajectory as if they were following the path of a labyrinth, each walking into that structure, circling around a private spiritual longing, getting closer or even standing in the centre, for a sacred moment, and then circling back out again. These visuals, entwined with this movement, guided the shape of the novel, and it gave me great pleasure to work with the imagery.
I acknowledge that this novel is the first that’s been more explicitly related to the spiritual life of the characters. I even included a scene from a church’s worship service, which is a departure for me. I wouldn’t say my fiction has been particularly “Mennonite”; however, I believe this is consistent with my upbringing, which was only partially rooted in the Mennonite church, despite both of my parents coming from Mennonite families, and my dad ultimately teaching at several Mennonite institutions. My four younger siblings and I had a peripatetic, religiously non-ideological upbringing, with experiences within church-based institutions mingled with other forms of worship and service, and other models of spiritual life.
In Francie, each character is on their own spiritual path, whether they know it or not; and I explored different means of tending to spiritual life, whether that’s tethered to a church, or a community, or a family, or through physical experiences and movement, or that which may come to fill spiritual loss or grieving or emptiness.
At this point in your career, do you see your work as “Mennonite,” and how or how not? (We know this is a ridiculously broad and fraught question, so feel free to respond in whatever way seems right to you.)
Being a Mennonite is one aspect of my identity. In the past decade or so I’ve become more involved in a church community, and that’s enriched my understanding of myself as a Mennonite; but my relationships with friends from other faiths, or who have left behind faith traditions and embraced other forms of collective experience, have expanded my understanding of my own faith identity. I pray to God, the creator, and I also pray with my body to a vast universe of which I am a brief fragment of life. I find comfort in worship services that leave room for the imagination, and that have in them some earthly beauty—voice, song, poetry, scripture. I’m not interested in the idea of an afterlife. Most valuable to me is a sense of community and being part of a larger story, a larger purpose, which I do find at my church, but not exclusively. Community, connection, relationships: these are my fundamental guiding lights. When I choose community and connection and stay attuned to and in relationship with all those around me, I am living out my personal faith.
Whether or not I can do this in my fiction writing is an open question. To be frank, I’m conflicted about whether or not writing is an adequate means of connection; writing for the sake of publishing a book … while this was my dream as a younger writer, the pain of writing in order to be published no longer seems worth its cost. My conceptualization of how to be a creative, generative being in the world has expanded radically since publishing Francie (in July, 2022). I felt almost obsessively compelled to write and publish Francie; in retrospect, it seems possible that I was trying to stake a claim as a writer, and I needed to publish again in order to believe in that identity for myself.
That is not how I feel today, two years on. I do not need to be a writer, or be known as a writer.
I value my writing life for the connections it’s brought, and the ways that I’ve been able to listen to and bring forth and make space for others’ stories, thanks to the skills I’ve learned and gained as a writer.
Is there a brief excerpt, or a poem if this is a book of poems, that we can reprint as part of this interview?
I would love for you to reprint the prologue. [See excerpt below.] I went back and forth with my editor about whether or not it belonged in the novel, which seems impossible now—it’s the beating heart of the whole thing. It’s the framework, and the philosophical question that’s posed by the narrative, and maybe, just maybe, answered in part by the voice of the tree near the novel’s end—or, not answered, but held and examined.
The question asked—about rest, about finding peace, about not fighting so hard—that is my question, of course, and it comes back to me over and over again, in my writing life, particularly. To write Francie’s Got a Gun took such a fight of determination and grit and persistence. I admire the woman/writer who brought this book into being. But I may not wish to sacrifice on that scale again, for a book. I will do it if it brings beauty and connection into my days and hours; but if the sacrifices required are harmful to me or to those around me, I won’t and don’t believe that I can justify it, for myself personally.
I hope for writing to be a form of spiritual seeking in and of itself, a path to pursuing and resting in beauty and truth, especially emotional truth. It isn’t, always. There are some very dark and ugly currents that run through the desire to “be a writer,” and I’ve been willing to sacrifice and risk a lot on the altar of publication. My ego wanted to declare its existence, maybe?
So I’m resting in the possibility that there may be other reasons that compel me now, assuming writing continues to invite me into collaboration. I have faith that my life's purpose isn’t wound up in literary accomplishment, and that whatever it is that speaks through me is clear and loving and beyond my human capacity to grasp and define.
I do love that about writing a book—it doesn’t become what I’d imagined, or even what I tried to make; its existence is beyond my capacity to explain. The images and emotions evoked by reading words on a page, or listening to them in audiobook form, seem to arrive from a mysterious source, a deeper capacity to love and forgive than is in their human author (and maybe that is what I am trying to learn, or glimpse, by writing fiction—how to love and forgive on the scale of a creator).
Excerpt from Francie’s Got a Gun:
Prologue
Begin
Do fragments make a whole?
You wake in the early hours before your alarm sounds, and you wish you had someone to tell about this feeling washing your body. Of terror. Nameless and blind and hauling you back through time. What was it like to be you, when you were unformed and whole, innocent and brave, when everyone watched and nobody saw?
Breathe, breathe breathe, you remind yourself.
Breathe in. But also, breathe out.
You are curled tight on a futon on the floor, dim dawn light filtering through the high, uncovered window. You can hear the birds.
You remind yourself who you are: a strong woman, tough, ambitious. You’ve left behind childhood. You’ve earned the degree you could afford, and a job, and you talk to your mom and your brother, or text with them, regularly, and you’ve been training your body since you were a kid, and this summer, on the weekends, you’re back to competing in road races, a half marathon, a triathlon, whatever you can sign up for and afford to get yourself to.
You’re never going to win, never going to be the best, but that’s not why you do it.
Why do you do it?
You set one hand on your stomach and one hand on your heart.
You stretch out flat on your back. You could say that your body has a spirit or a soul, but when you search for it, try to see it, it cuts out, like a firefly flickering on and off and gone in the night.
You’re not old. You’ve barely begun. Your capacity for growth feels infinite, but limited to your body.
Maybe you’re okay with that, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re torn, like your muscles, day in and day out, seeking endurance through suffering.
But what if you don’t want to suffer? What if you’re done with all that? What if you want to rest, to relax, to forgive, to turn toward everything and everyone with hope and open arms?
What then? What now?
If you keep running through the same story, can you come around to a different end? (1-2)
Further Reading:
My website and blog are at carriesnyder.com
I’m on Instagram at Instagram at carrieannesnyder