Interview with Robin Lee Hatcher

WOF:
You’ve written an amazing number of novels. Why did you choose “Christian novelist” as a career?

ROBIN:
It was just as I grew closer to the Lord I was no longer really happy writing general market fiction. I really wanted to be able to tell stories that honored the Lord. As I grew closer to God and tried to put more of my faith into books I was writing, I had the experience of having God “removed.” That was frustrating to me because I knew if I had taken His name in vain in my books that would have been left in. I called that experience one of the nails in the coffin of my general market career.

Ultimately, I had to know God wanted me to really do this as a ministry. When I got that answer from Him I headed in this direction. I’ve never looked back. I’ve been so much happier, writing stories that I believe will please Him.

WOF:
What does life look like for a writer? What’s a typical day for you?

ROBIN:
It’s actually pretty boring, just looking in. I’ve tried blogging about it and I do Twitter or Facebook or something like that and it’s the same thing every day: I’m writing, that’s pretty much my entire life. I get up in the morning and try to always have my quiet time first thing, reading the Bible and any devotionals that I happen to be using. Then I try to clear out my inbox email so it’s clean at the start of day, then I begin writing.

I write anywhere from 4-6 hours of new work and then the rest of the day is the business of writing, which is things like this interview, blogging, updating my Web site, answering questions from the publisher regarding cover copy or viewing some of their possible choices for the next cover. And of course, everything that comes from a publisher is due yesterday so there tend to be a lot of interruptions. When I think OK, I’m going to have these 4 or 6 hours dedicated to writing it doesn’t always work out that way.

WOF:
Are you the kind of person who plots out your whole story first or do you start with a character and go see what happens to them?

ROBIN:
I’m a total seat of the pants writer. The books begin lots of different ways; sometimes it’s a character, sometimes it’s a line, sometimes it’s a premise. With A Perfect Life it was sort of a question of “What do you do when the life you think you have falls apart?”

From there I have to discover who my main characters are. I do a little bit of stream-of-consciousness writing where I just write their past history. I sit down and let my imagination open and try to figure out OK, what has happened to these people in their lifetimes from the time they were little until the time the story opens? This really helps me know what will be their motivations and what will shape them for their future in my story. Then I just sit down every day and try to figure out what happens next.

I have many friends who are very detailed plotters and other friends who are more like me and some who fall somewhere in between. One of the things I’ve learned over the course of years is that at writer conferences I notice those of us who are more seat-of-the-pants go to the workshops about plotting and vice versa. I realized the truth is what we were seeking was an easier way to create than what we do. I finally had to understand that this is how God made me so . . . go ahead and work the way He made me. This is how I work best. If I plot out a story in advance, my subconscious goes “Well, now we know the answer. This is boring. I don’t want to know any more about it.” For me, it’s like being a reader—I get into it every day to find out what happens next.

WOF:
You tell the story from a number of different viewpoints, which helps give us some great insight into what’s going on. As a woman, is it challenging to write from a man’s perspective?

ROBIN:
You know, it really has not been for me and I cannot take any credit for that other than that I think I’m very much an observer of humanity. I have had a number of men readers say to me, “How did you make these men to think and say the things I would?” I don’t know. It seems to be a gift that God has given me—and rather a strange gift because I grew up in a family of all women. My dad died when I was a baby, my uncles were dead, my grandfathers were dead. I had aunts and female cousins—one brother, but brothers don’t count, they’re just a sibling—and I had one uncle. It was just a totally female family that I came up through. Maybe I’ve learned about men simply because I had to, because I came into it from a totally different perspective rather than living with them all the time. I wish I knew how I did it; I’d love to share it with people. I think it is simply that I am very much an observer of people.

WOF:
[SPOILER ALERT!] Brad and Katherine’s story ends well, but it could easily have gone the other way. Would you consider writing (or have you already written) a book where the relationship was not mended?

ROBIN:
I have ended books with certain aspects not tied up—Beyond the Shadows was a book about alcoholism in a home. It was a book about hope. Now I have lived through many years in an alcoholic marriage, so this was taken a lot from my own personal life and years of keeping a journal. The truth is that not every alcoholic marriage can be saved. My perfect answer would have been that mine would have been saved and it wasn’t. But in the book Beyond the Shadows it was about hope because what I learned is that Jesus is my hope and that’s what I had to cling to. So that’s what my heroine had to cling to—the knowledge that God was her hope even if things didn’t work out the way she prayed they would work out. I think the biggest difference in Christian fiction versus other fiction is that no matter how dark the circumstances there is always hope. Maybe the hope is only that you’re going to be with Christ for eternity, because any of us who have lived any length of time at all know that life is sometimes very, very hard and we don’t get what we want most.

WOF:
Katherine’s best friend Susan is not a Christian and that does not change by the end of the book. That’s an interesting twist in a Christian novel; why did you decide to do that?

ROBIN:
Probably because it seemed more real for that particular story. I think every story demands different things. Once you get into it these things just come to you as an author, realizing that life doesn’t all tie up in a pretty little bow all the time. One of the criticisms you see frequently in reviews of Christian fiction is that you have the “expected salvation scene.” Now, I’ve read lots of Christian fiction and I would say that more than 50 percent of the books don’t have those “expected” scenes for unsaved characters. I’ve certainly written them, but it was when I felt it was important to the story, that it made sense for the story and for the character to come to Christ at that moment. It didn’t make sense for Katherine’s friend.

Too, one of the things I wanted to show is that we continue to walk out our faith before the people in our lives. We have to trust God with the answer. The very first time I shared the Lord with anybody they got saved. I’d been a Christian, like, two weeks (you know, when you’re still bouncing off the walls); I shared with her about Christ in the morning and I came back in the evening and she’d accepted Christ. I had this rather skewed idea of how this worked and had to learn it doesn’t always work that way.

Actually, the people you impact the most is when you just live your faith, you don’t preach your faith. There’s someone special in my life who has been part of the business world with me and over the years we’ve developed a dear friendship. I had just been complaining to the Lord what a poor witness I was for Him because I never really talked to her about my faith. She’d read my books; she knew many things about me but she’s very, very bright and I always feel unable to debate. We were with someone else; she said to this other person, “You know I’m not a Christian.” This other woman said, “Yes.” Then my friend said, “Well, if anyone could change my mind it’s Robin, because she lives what she believes.” It had only been a matter of a day or two since I had taken that to the Lord saying I’ve made no difference, what a poor witness I am. It really taught me a good lesson to just keep being faithful, keep being open, keep being authentic.

I had someone respond to an article that was not in a Christian venue: I had been asked what my writing day looked like, much like you asked me, so I shared that I began my day with Bible reading and prayer. It was pretty much as simple as that; there may have been another time or two when I said something else. At the end of the interview the interviewer asked me “Is there anything else you’d like to tell the readers?” I sort of had this throw-away line; I laughed and said, “I’m pretty open. I’ll answer just about anything except what I weigh.” They put that in the article. Well, I got an email from someone who said, “Did you mean that? Will you really answer any question?” I said, “Well, try me, we’ll see.” It turned out to be about my relationship with God. We had dialogue over a number of weeks covering a number of things and this person came to Christ. It began with me just being me and just being honest: “This is what my day looks like and it includes the Lord.”

WOF:
What does it say about Katherine that her best friend does not share her beliefs?

ROBIN:
I think it shows she loves people. She has God’s heart to love those around her. I don’t think anybody comes into our lives that God doesn’t mean to be there. We can either be influenced by them or we can influence the other direction. But I think it has to start with love. If we don’t truly love people we can become judgmental; I think we have to be very cautious about that. One of the things I learned early on is not to be surprised when the unsaved act like the unsaved. Oftentimes I act like the unsaved!

WOF:
Brad was innocent of the charges against him, but he still felt the need to ask Nicole for forgiveness. Why was that?

ROBIN:
There are real danger zones between men and women. When you’re married, you’re supposed to be married completely. Unfaithfulness isn’t always a physical act; it’s sometimes sharing a part of ourselves that belongs only to our spouse. He allowed Nicole to come into a place that was a dangerous place for them both, so that’s why I believed it was important for him to ask forgiveness.

WOF:
What do you enjoy most about being a writer?

ROBIN:
Typing “The End”! Getting there is really hard work. Hearing from readers is always good; getting a nice review is always good. I don’t get my greatest joy from writing—I get my greatest joy from having written.

WOF:
What’s your least favorite thing?

ROBIN:
Probably being in the middle of the book and seeing the deadline rushing towards me way too fast!