Dreaming

Several years ago I set five goals for my writing: write, polish, learn, attend, and send.

I’m a prolific writer so the first goal wasn’t a problem. I’ve always got a pen and paper—or laptop—in my hands. The second goal, polish, was a challenge. I’m a perfectionist and felt my work was never at its best. With the help of other writers, however, I learned that polishing a story, article, or novel is just that—polishing. Polish, by definition means to buff up. When I spray furniture polish onto my piano, it doesn’t automatically shine. There is, in fact, a dull residue which only after lots of elbow grease—buffing up—begins to yield results.

I began to understand that though my writing starts out needing lots of work to make it shine that doesn’t mean I am doomed to fail. It only means I need to work until I get the results I want—just like polishing the piano.

For me that was a great realization—a blessing.

Since fifth grade, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I just didn’t know it was okay to work at making that dream come true. When I was young I wrote with enthusiasm, then I followed my mother around reading my work. Her response was constantly harsh and to the point: “Lori, writing is not your forte.” She didn’t believe I could become what I dreamed of being, and she feared I’d embarrass myself; her fears became mine.

It took a long time for me to start believing in myself.

Knowing it was alright if my words didn’t shine the first time I wrote them, or when I rewrote them the second time, or even the third, I came to the realization that I could help myself by striving to learn more about writing in general. I began to read more, books on writing and books in the genres I wanted to pursue, thus helping myself meet my third goal. Attend, fourth on the list, involved writing classes and being part of critique groups. I met lots of other writers and would be writers who shared dreams and goals similar to mine.

I become conscious that early on in my life I’d been lead to believe that writing—being a writer—was something you either could or could not do, like walking or talking. When I understood that (just like playing the piano with any degree of proficiency) becoming a writer takes time, effort, and practice I was able to let go of old fears and enjoy the process of becoming.

The last item on my list, send, became easier as well. I analyzed, versus agonized over, rejection letters and resumed polishing before I again sent my work out. In time my efforts paid off. I found many opportunities and enjoyed writing for the newspapers and magazines that asked for my work; it felt good to have my articles, short stories and essays—my own words and feelings—appear in print.

But there was something more, something I dreamed of for a long time: I wanted to write children’s books and novels.

Gathering courage amidst continued opposition, both interior and exterior, I set out once more with my five writing goals. I still have a long road to travel but I enjoy being on that road, grateful to know it's okay to do more than just sit by the wayside and wish.

The Right to Write

I remember as a kid being fascinated with words. I loved their feel as they rolled around on my tongue. I loved their slender shapes sprawled on the page. In fact, I became so enamored with words that by junior high I would sneak a dictionary into my room and spend the afternoon reading nothing but words.

Words like defervescence and boride and academe. Words like penicillamine and featherstitch and quire. And thus, is it any wonder my favorite book was The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norman Juster? (Which, by the way, if you've not read you simply must!)

But in the midst of all these wondrous words, I began to feel smaller and smaller. In the midst of their power, I began to doubt my ability to string them together in stories people would want to read. I still wonder that at times. Do you?

Yet, there is a special something deep in my heart that tells me the God of our spirits feels otherwise. He, who creates universes, knows a thing or two about the import of creativity. And He fashioned us in His image. Do I (or perhaps you) really think He would fail to tuck away within us the creative gift? Could it be possible we, in this one area, are NOT like our Father in Heaven?

I think not! Thus, the next time I feel impotent in my ability to self-express, I will shun the thought. And I hope you will, too. We are created in God's image ... and as such, we have the gift of creativity. We have the right to write! May we use that gift well, working with all these wondrous words.

Making Ourselves Understood

Words are a writer’s most important tool, more important than our computer, our cat, or our hot chocolate. Without them, books and articles can’t exist. And we can’t use just any old words—they have to be just the right ones, and completely understood.

On Thursday, I embark on a new challenge. There is a great need for languages in our ward, and we will be offering English, sign language, Spanish, and Portuguese as part of our literacy program. I’m the literacy leader, and appropriate calling for an author. My friend and I are tackling the English class. We have no special training and neither of us know the languages of our students, other than a vaguely remembered smattering of high school Spanish (and for me, high school was long, long ago.) When someone pointed out my lack of credentials to teach ESL, I pointed out that I was much cheaper than the classes taught by professionals, and that there are waiting lists for those classes. I’ll do until they can get a better teacher.

We are using the Book of Mormon Stories as the text for the religious half of the class. Since they’re meant for children, I thought they would be easy to teach. However, because a number of our students will not be LDS and a number don’t speak any English at all, I’ve realized this is harder than it seemed.

It’s easy to teach some words. Put up pictures of men and women, say the words as you sort them, and they will understand what the words mean. But then you get to sentences like this one: Many churches claimed to be true.

Many is doable, more or less. Churches can be shown. But what about true? You can’t put up a picture of the word true. I know what it means. I use the word all the time. I can define it—if you know enough English to understand the definition. But in an EFL class to brand new English speakers? The word true is challenging. What do you do with the word prophet, when you’re teaching it to people who don’t know what a prophet is and don’t have the words to understand the explanation?

Words are powerful tools, but they are more complicated than I really understood. When I sit down to write, I am beginning to more greatly appreciate those tools, and the importance of making my meaning understood, no matter what level of background my reader might have for the topic on which I’m writing.

Promises, Promises

Whether you realize it or not, as a writer you make promises to your reader. If you are writing a category romance, you promise a happy ending. When writing a suspense novel, you promise moments of tension so tight that the reader's palms should sweat. And so on.

But beyond the overall promise that a particular genre offers, there are smaller promises, too. Like the one - perhaps - on an author's page 6 which mentions in great detail, candlesticks. Why candlesticks? The reader will remember this for some time, that you spent great effort describing the objects. And if by the end of the book, candlesticks never factored into the story again, the reader will wonder why you bothered to mention them on page six.

Does this mean that you cannot mention any detail at all if not returned to later? Of course not. But what determines a "promise" is precisely the amount of detail you include early on. In other words, don't mention a gun hanging over the fireplace with intense writerly focus, if you don't mean to use it by the bad guy forty chapters later.

Readers love looking for "red herrings", even if you're not writing a mystery. They also like noticing "flaws" - you know, those kinds of images you eventually deleted out of the first draft, yet still remain with ghostly presence in the final draft. Things like three men at the shootout in chapter 14, scene 1, yet now only two men by the time you arrive at scene 2. The reader will go, "Huh? What happened...I thought there were three men?" They then spend several minutes flipping pages back and forth, trying to figure it out.

You might not notice the error, because your mind now has a reason for only two bad guys. But if you don't closely edit out your adjustments, you leave the reader confused - due to poor editing - and perhaps even worse, disappointed - when too much was made of an object early on in the story, never to be revisited again.

None of us like unfulfilled promises. That's why as writers, we seek only to emphasize elements in our stories that hold promise ... and make sure to revisit them when it really counts.

Learn new words...feed the world!

I've been playing at Freerice.com lately, during my lunch break.
http://www.freerice.com

Every writer needs a spectacular vocabulary in order to choose exactly the right word. Freerice.com is a vocabulary building game. You're given a word and have to choose among three possible definitions, some of which are the less common usage. It's great for SAT prep, but also great for writers.

There's an added bonus. Everytime you get a word right, the site donates ten grains of rice to the United Nations to feed the hungry. Ten grains may not seem like much, but combined with the grains earned by all the other word-hungry people on the site, it makes a difference. Yesterday, those of us who learned between turkey helpings donated 147,385,350 grains of rice. You can check their history to see how much has been donated altogether.

I find the combination very addictive. I like learning new words and I like feeding the hungry. As I watch the grains of rice fill my "bowl" and see the running total, I feel good, which of course, motivates me to play a little longer, but also to try to remember the words I miss so I'll get them right next time.

The game learns your abilities as you play, although it doesn't save from game to game. It gives you some test words to choose your level. If you miss several words, it slides you down. If you get several right, it slides you up. The goal is to make you keep learning without getting frustrated.

There are 100 levels, but I read few people make it past 50. I keep hovering around 40, up a little, down a little. I am going to make it to that magic 50.

Ideas are like crystals

by Patricia

In The Right to Write, author Julia Cameron wrote that ideas are like crystals in the mind of an artist. Now, I'm not a chemist or a mathemetician so I can't give you all the details of how and why crystals form and the results that occur when they connect. Actually, I'm not sure if I can explain how and why ideas form and what happens when, like pieces of a puzzle, they begin to lock into place. All I know is that when I am writing a novel, scenes and snippets enter my mind, one after another. Getting them into a document in some form of logical order is sometimes a struggle. Occasionally, ideas surface, only to be discarded, trumped by ones that make more sense as part of the plot. One thing I have learned, though, is that the scenes that play over and over in my mind usually have some significant meaning and are meant to be included in the story.

One example of this occurred during the prewriting of the last book in the Kevin Kirk Chronicles series, The Final Farewell. (Prewriting includes all the time spent meditating on the story.) Two scenes played over and over in my mind and wouldn't go away. First, I kept seeing Kevin sitting on the bank of the Mississippi. Second, I saw Kevin at Fort Defiance, Ill., standing at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

I'm no psychologist so I can't claim to understand why these visions returned, over and over, and how I could know internally, instinctively, without knowing logically, why they were important to the story. It was as if they were the pole, the magnetic north my story compass was meant to point to.

The moment in the writing process did come, however, when I realized why these events were important.

I am, for lack of a more sophisticated term, a symbolic thinker. I'm sure that's why I am fascinated by parables in the scriptures and literary allusions. These two moments at the river are symbolic for Kevin. At the confluence, as he observes the two awesome, powerful rivers merging to make a whole, he realizes there are forces larger and more powerful in his life than he has been able to comprehend. On the riverbank, for the first time in his life he is keenly aware of the concept that, like a river, "time stops for no man." You either sink, swim, or sit on the bank and live the rest of your life afraid to ever make a move.

As I look back on the process of creating the story, I understand why these scenes are relevant to the decision Kevin must ultimately make in the story, how they are almost like tools that unlock a compartment of knowlege inside himself, helping him understand his own weakness and to have confidence in his faith. But at the time I was in the creative process, the scenes were snippets of time that, at the time, didn't appear to connect to the story at all.

The point of my rambling is this: Don't discount those recurring scenes, those odd bits of vision that keep popping up in your mind. Don't dismiss the snippets of action you daydream or visit over and over in your sleep.

Your brain may be trying to tell you something.

Words have lives of their own

by Terrie Lynn Bittner

There is a section in my first book that was done somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The book’s target audience got it, and often said it was both funny and true. A reviewer, however, took it seriously and was offended by it. Because I hadn’t labeled it tongue-in-cheek, as I had a section on stupid questions, and because I have a quirky sense of humor that often escapes people, there were those who didn’t get it, and therefore missed the unspoken message of the segment.

In a conversation, you have an opportunity to solicit feedback and make on-the-spot clarifications. When we write, or when we speak in a formal setting, we often don’t. Our words stand alone. It doesn’t matter what we said, only what people think we said. Recent debates over a General Conference talk last week make this issue very clear. People heard the exact same talk, and some were excited and motivated, while others were hurt or angry. They heard the talk in context of their own personalities, lives, and beliefs. The speaker had a motive, a purpose, and a message, but couldn’t control what people took from the talk.

As writers, this is a good lesson for us. There are many ways to say most things. There is no way to be certain every reader will hear our information or message the way we meant it. Words take on their own lives when they reach the reader and we can’t control it. We can try to anticipate it, however. As we make a lifetime study of words, we can try to learn not just the dictionary meaning of the words, but the emotional meanings of the words as well. For some, junk food is a lovely phrase, filled with thoughts of treats and happy indulgence. For others, the same term is filled with evil thoughts of people who don’t care about health. When we choose to use the phrase, we have to anticipate our target audience and how they react to the concept of junk food.

Make a list of ten words and then try to imagine how a variety of people might view those words. If you’re writing a novel, hand the words to each of your characters and ask them to explain the words to you. As you become more aware of how words, concepts, and ideas affect various people, you can increase your ability to communicate completely with your readers. We’ll never become perfect, but we can improve.

With These Words

By Terrie Lynn Bittner

Yesterday, for no apparent reason, I found myself reading about the Tower of Babel. I think this event is the stuff of nightmares for writers. What is worse than the confounding of the language that is our life's work?

I wonder, though, if it made people appreciate the language they had. The Jaredites were spared, and I can imagine words became far more meaningful to them when they saw what happened to those who weren’t spared. Did they speak more carefully, making a special effort to use the most wonderful words they knew to communicate their thoughts? Did they use words sparingly, so as not to waste them, or did they use as many as they possibly could, anxiously afraid the words would disappear from memory if they didn’t?

And what of those who did lose their language? Did they ever look back longingly and regret all the times they took words for granted, never giving a thought to the wonderful gift they’d been given? When they gathered with their friends and family and tried to build a new language, they naturally started with the practical, but once the practical words were taken care of, what did they create next? What words were so important that they took the trouble to create them even though they weren’t essential for survival?

I love you.

I’m sorry.

I’m happy today.

Come watch the sunset with me.

I testify.

Dear Heavenly Father...


What words did they find they had to have to be human? When they figured out how to put those new words on paper, those few who knew how to write, did they choose the words they put down with reverence, knowing now how important it was to save the words and to make them matter?

Today, I’m sometimes shocked by the lack of concern for words in the world of writing. A teacher once told the class that using swear words was too easy. Any lazy writer could fill her book with swear words and pretend it was real writing, but the true challenge was to come up with words so interesting no one would even notice the characters weren’t swearing. I’m sure that wasn’t original advice, but where are the teachers who know that lesson today?

In the Phantom Tollbooth, by Justin Juster (certainly required reading for any writer), Milo is told, "In this box are all the words I know," he said. "Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is to use them well and in the right places."

What words would you invent first after the necessities were done?