Earlier this week, I featured Rachel Phifer’s lovely novel, The Language of Sparrows, which kept me in such pleasant company on a long flight. Today I’m equally delighted to feature the author herself on Story Matters.

Rachel, welcome. This is your debut novel. What sparked your writing journey?

I’ve always been a writer. I filled notebooks with stories from the time I could hold a pencil, but being a novelist seemed like an impossible dream. So I did the practical thing. I became a teacher and then negotiated contracts for a hospital. I didn’t get serious about writing until I had kids. It didn’t make any sense, of course. I was working full time and taking care of my family. I had to get up at four or five in the morning to write and would edit during my lunch breaks. I didn’t know if I’d ever be published, but becoming the mother of two little girls made being true to God’s call rise to the top of my priorities.

What inspired you to write The Language of Sparrows?

 There are so many different sparks that it would be hard to pin them all down. As a former teacher, writing about a gifted teacher and brilliant student losing her way seemed to be a natural fit. I’d read a couple of novels about brilliant students (The Chosen by Chaim Potok and Echoes by Maeve Binchy), and I wanted to try my hand at my own version. I taught in a school very similar to Nick’s, so I felt I had the background I needed.

I wrote the scene where Luca and Sierra meet as one of my first scenes. I tried him out as a woman, then a man. This person just appeared in my imagination and once I began writing, he sprang to life. All I knew at first was that he was an old immigrant, and that he’d been through something terrible. I considered giving him a background like the civil wars in El Salvador or Colombia, but I’d had several friends in college who were from Romania. They had incredible stories about how they got to America while the Iron Curtain was still up. Their stories made Romania more concrete to me. I did a little initial research – watched some fascinating interviews with Romanian Orthodox priests who had been imprisoned and read Richard Wurmbrand’s autobiography, Tortured for Christ. From there, Luca’s story fell into place.

 You grew up in Africa, the child of missionary parents? How does that affect your writing?

I grew up in Malawi, South Africa and Kenya. Primarily, growing up in Africa impacted me by making me a writer in the first place. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a disproportionate amount of writers who have missionary and military childhoods. With a constantly changing culture-scape, it’s easier for kids to sit back and watch people than it is to join in, and moving from country to country gives you an exposure to so many unusual stories. And of course, books and writing are something you can take with you wherever you go.

As far as impacting my stories themselves, I would say my background has given me a love of different cultures, and that definitely weaves itself into my writing. It was a little intimidating writing through the eyes of Luca and Carlos, but I loved trying to see the world through Romanian and Latino eyes too. As a missionary kid, I also see that faith, while universal, is filtered through our cultural, emotional and even our denominational background. So I try to make each character’s faith story true to his or her life story.

Do you have any advice for beginning writers?

The best piece of advice I ever got was to finish the first draft, no matter how terrible it is. I had no idea how to edit a story until I had written the story from beginning to end. Any serious editing I did before that was largely a waste of time.

I would also say to remember that you’re building a world in the reader’s mind, so bring in the five senses. Invite the reader into your world. Above all, help them see the story, but don’t forget to help them hear the church bells ringing and feel the heat from the evening fire as well. I love Anton Chekhov’s quote, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Thank you so much, Rachel! 

Friends, you can connect further with Rachel online at RachelPhifer.com. And check out this clip for more of a behind-the-scenes look into the writing of her novel.