Early-morning writing: criminal prosecutor guards his creativity

Jeffrey Wald sets his alarm for 4 a.m. and makes Cuban coffee so he can write before his kids rise. It’s a habit that allows him to exercise his creativity, and he does it the old-fashioned way: with paper and pen. “I’m a Catholic,” said Wald, 35, a criminal prosecutor and father of five who belongs to Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in St. Paul. “There’s something sacramental about holding a pen and seeing what you create.”

Q) You’ve always wanted to write, and 10 years ago you finally started. What was the impetus?

A) I had just come out of law school, and I got a lot more consumed with my career and success than I expected to. I’d always prided myself in not caring about that, and here I was, landing this coveted clerkship with a judge and swimming in that tide of American success. I didn’t want to be that guy. It was remembering who I am and what I care about and what makes me feel alive. It was about finding the first things that inspire me and enrich my prayer life and imaginative life and my capacity to love.

Q) How does fiction enrich your prayer life?

A) The heart of prayer is the imaginative life. It’s being able to read Scripture and have it come alive. A couple years ago, I went through the Ignatian prayer of imagination. You read these rich pieces of Scripture and place yourself there. Prayer is a life where you’re encountering the unseen God.

Q) And how does it boost your capacity to love?

A) The capacity to love comes with being able to see other people with empathy. The curse of human nature is we’re stuck inside ourselves. It’s hard to empathize. But literature allows us to step inside another person and see what it’s like. Hopefully, that allows us to do the same thing off the page, with our neighbors, in all their foibles and sins. They’re worthy of love, too.

Q) You’ve noted that the Church is in the midst of a renaissance in Catholic literature.

A) There’s been a real renewal, both individually and institutionally. Great Catholic writers like Kirstin Valdez Quade, Randy Boyagoda, Phil Klay and Christopher Beha are writing for big presses and getting reviewed in big magazines, and they’re all young. There’s no shortage of good stuff out there.

Q) What impact can great Catholic literature have?
A) Catholics have always recognized the importance of art — not as an end to itself, but as a means of expressing and approaching the mystery of our faith, the mystery of God’s love, our growing toward him in our imperfect ways. Catholic literature matters because it can be a spiritual work of mercy. And it’s at the heart of what it means to be human. We are storytellers.

Q) What is it about stories?
A) At the root of it is: There’s a mystery to our existence. As a Catholic dad, I try to convey truth, teach the sacraments, teach the truths of the faith. But at a certain point, you realize the Catechism is important, proofs are important, rationality is important, but it just isn’t going to get you there. You realize there’s this huge mystery at the heart of our existence that you can’t approach that way, by philosophical proof, but you can in some way approach through stories. They convey something that a proof cannot.

Q) There are so many attacks on the imagination. How can we guard it?

A) Turn off the news. Cultivate a habit of wonder, of curiosity, of seeing the world as the building of the Kingdom of God, not as something to be feared. Read a lot. Get outside. Have a garden, get in the dirt. Butcher a chicken. Take up backyard farming. We can be so removed from creation. We’re imitators to God, and nothing compares to God’s creation, of getting out and looking at a tree, getting your hands muddy, going on a hike.

Q) Do you dream about having your writing published one day?

A) There is that drive. But when I’m at my best, I’m not worried if anyone’s ever going to read it. There’s something that’s needing to be written. This morning, right after my prayer, this story I’ve been thinking about for 18 months just kind of came together.

Q) What made it click?

A) Who knows? I like to think it was grace and a bit of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it was just a particularly good cup of coffee. I’ve never taken a class in creative writing, and I’m taking my first online class with a set of five other Catholic wannabe writers. That can fuel me, if I’m putting a little more intentionality into it.

Q) How does your day job as a criminal prosecutor inspire your writing?

A) It’s really stretched my faith. It’s forced me to ask: What would salvation look like for this particular person? This person might never find himself in a Catholic Church, and yet the Lord is going to give this child the opportunity for eternal salvation.

Q) Do you ever pluck a person and drop him into a story?

A) No. I think that can become one-dimensional. I may come across a simple story, and there’s an element of my willfulness in it, but if I’m at my best, there’s stuff that happens that I’m a little surprised by.

Q) Writing on paper first helps you get it out.

A) I don’t know if it’s because you can type too fast and not have to think about it. Or if it just feels too final for me. It takes some pressure off, that what I’m putting on paper is not the final product. I can go back and make notes on the side, scratch stuff out or draw a circle around one thing that I know will be the ending.

Q) How does it feel to have this side gig?

A) I would love more time to do it. But I’m so fortunate that I really love the job I have right now. This was a breakthrough for me. I don’t have to live by myself in the woods, eating mushrooms, to do this. I can be a normal guy with a normal job, and I don’t have to write eight hours a day. I can write 10 minutes. And if I get an hour, fantastic! It’s rare to make a living off your writing, and I have no illusions that that’ll happen, and I don’t even know if that would be the best for me — my holiness, my life, my faith.

Q) What do you know for sure?

A) I know that I am loved. I’ve always had a deep sense of God’s knowledge of me, his plan for me, his love for me. I know his hand in my life. I know my parents’ love, my wife’s love, my children’s love. So maybe the power of love, how that’s the center of human existence. And secondly, I know that I’m way too serious. I know we need more laughter. Love and laughter — there’s something about those two things that are so vital to our faith and what it means to be human.