Wrong angle?

With my first book, After the Dream, I started with the angle of tragedy and pain.  I started with my spiritual healing and insights and built a story around it.  I wasn't so much trying to tack a story on an agenda.  That kind of story is thin and preachy.  I was trying to show my own pain through metaphors, through the safe veneer of fiction.  The morals and meanings did not have to be tacked on.  They were at the core of the story.

Now, with my second novel, Pigs Fly, I have some spiritual content mixed in with a good story.  But I started with the characters and then the story, not the meaning.  Now, I'm going the reverse route and trying to weave meaning into a complete story.  The thing is I don't want the meaning to feel tacked on.  I want it to feel like an intrinsic piece of the story.

Now, there are thin stories that are merely a vessel, an excuse to preach.  That's what "The Last Mimsy," "Golden Compass," and "Pinocchio" appear to be to me.  The stories fall flat because they're more about the moral than they are about the story.  That, for me, is a problem.  However, there are so many stories that are all about story with little meaning or significance past the story.

I would like to hit a balance between the two, where I employ meaning in my story or employ story in my meanings.  I just fear that because I started with the story in this case and almost entirely left out the meaning until I have a first draft, any meaning I add will feel tacked on.  The whole reason I'm writing right now is to share meaning along with story, not just one or the other.  I guess I'll keep that in mind as I proceed with revision.  

An Audience

It’s kind of fun having fans.  Several of my beta readers for After the Dream have expressed excitement over my next book, Pigs Fly.  I’ll mention it in conversation, and they’ll tell me how much they’re looking forward to it, or they will bring it up and ask.  It’s not a big fan base, but it’s nice feeling appreciated.  It gives me hope that I will find a reasonably sized audience for it.

The same is true with my readers’ group who is helping me with my middle-grade children’s book series, Doomimals.  Multiple people have expressed excitement over the story and want to share these books with their kids.  But the best praise I’ve had so far is in my teenage niece’s delight in it.  She is not easily pleased, and she’s older than the target audience.  I know my kids have had a lot of fun helping me come up with ideas for chapter titles and story events and characters.  The harder part will be making sure these books are not just exciting but meaningful. 

For me, it’s not so much about being appreciated, admired, or even paid.  It’s about helping people.  It’s why I write.  It’s why I do what I want to do:  to touch lives.  I’m sure I will enjoy having strangers come up and tell me they had fun reading my book.  But the comments I’m looking forward to are the ones about how the story, its events, its spiritual content, etc. helped people. That’s the kind of commentary that will truly mean I’m fulfilling my calling in sharing the stories I’m here to share.  I don’t want my words to remain flat, black and white letters on the page.  I want them to help people feel understood, overcome hardship, and find healing.  Otherwise, I’m missing the point.