Labor diligently

In our family scriptures, we are reading Moroni chapter 9, easily the most disturbing chapter in the Book of Mormon. Nevertheless, this lesson jumped out at me. This is the prophet Mormon writing a letter to his son Moroni.

"I am laboring with them continually; and when I speak...with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it." (Moroni 9:4)

Does this sound familiar, moms? Wives? Anyone else with a stewardship over other people? I suspect we all find ourselves in that 'neither option works' situation from time to time. If I tell the kids to stop doing something in a nice way, they ignore me. If I put consequences behind it, they get mad and collapse in tears and still don't do it. If I try to hustle the family somewhere, I get grumpy and we're late. If I don't, I'm not as grumpy but we're still late.

What can we do about it?
The answer is in verse six. Labor diligently. Keep trying, because the responsibility is ours whether or not it has any effect. As Mother Theresa said, "It was never about them anyway". Mormon and Moroni had a tough job, called to be the last warning between the people and utter destruction, a warning that few people were likely to accept. As we keep reading I'm going to be looking for ways that they coped with it, but for now I know that it's important to keep laboring.

And the end result? Also in verse six, to conquer the enemy of righteousness and to rest our souls in the Kingdom of God. I don't know about you, but that last part sounds really good about now.

Grief

I don't know how you feel.

I have no words that will fix everything

but I can tell you how I feel.

Grief is a hole ripped out of your heart

and if you place your eye to the hole

you see yourself

staked to the center of an empty universe.

When life becomes normal it is still a minefield

of innocent words,

innocent moments

that trigger an ambush from your emotions.

They pull off scabs and leave wounds

raw, open, bleeding like brand new.

Which emotions? Good or bad?

I can't tell. I'm too busy

trying to wipe my nose unnoticed.

I used to think of Hope as a bright flame

that warms your soul and drives away the shadows.

Sometimes that is true,

but even when not, hope is a bulldog's teeth

that cling to Truth and do not let go.

In each ambush I feel storms rage

and I know I could be crushed,

torn apart by their fury,

but my teeth are still set

and I cannot be blown away.

Unexpected Gifts

On Sunday I listened to a talk on being grateful in the midst of trials. President Uchdorf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints explained that we should have an overall spirit of gratitude even when we have little to be thankful for. I have heard sisters express this before, that they were grateful for the experience gained from a trials, but that it would be too much to be grateful for a trial itself.

Well, perhaps sometimes, but the talk brought to mind one trial that I am sincerely grateful for. One of my greatest blessings was a day of illness. Perhaps I had ordered something off at the restaurant we visited, because I spent the night exploding out both ends. The next day I had a fever and spent the day in bed. Why was that one of my greatest blessings? Because I spent the whole day cuddling with my baby boy, who would unexpectedly pass away just a few weeks later. I have plenty of regrets from the night he passed away, but one pain I have not had to face was the regret that I didn't spend enough time with him. There is nothing in his little life that I would change, and that has been a huge comfort. I treasure that day, never mind the fever, never mind the unpleasant night before. I don't know how many of our trials are like that. Probably more than we realize. For most of our trials, it takes longer than a few weeks to realize how great a blessing they were, but I'm sure that day is coming. Perhaps it's the author in me that looks forward to that day so eagerly, for the time when the stories are made whole and we can look back and realize the meaning and order and wholeness that were there all along.

Wordplay: The Two Stages of Writing (And Why They Are Fun)

A friend of mine told me that she had considered asking me to talk to her second graders about writing, but decided against it because I write for teenagers.  I actually wrote my first story in second grade. I still have a copy of it (and enough memory that I can read between the lines to know what I meant to say). Since then I have been thinking about what I would share with younger kids. I've written a post already about why I write stories, including to communicate and to practice writing skills. I think younger children would also benefit from the habit, so I decided that I would share that writing stories fun, and how to do it.

Playing on Paper

Writing is done in two stages. Most people have a favorite, but both of them can be fun. The first stage is called drafting, otherwise known as playing on paper. Watch kids play. They take a few toys or objects that catch their eye, assign them characters, and then make them react to each other in different ways. They don't stop to wonder what comes next. They're endlessly adaptable, easily throwing in some new idea or character and seeing what it does to the story. I can still remember the first time I switched from pretend play to daydreaming: just playing inside my head without the toys to illustrate (I believe it involved some kind of Robin Hood adventure). Perhaps you still daydream. The same patterns apply: you take some interesting characters, some interesting ideas of things that might happen to them, and you throw them together and see what happens.

The first stage of writing, drafting, is to put those kind of stories down on paper. Play with it! You can start with characters (you and your friends, your cats, your favorite toys, even your favorite tv characters if you want), or you can start with the plot (that just means the things that happen to the characters, like 'they go to the zoo' or 'somebody is going to be captured and need rescued'). You may not know where you're going, or you may have an ending in mind, or you might have a list of things you want to cover. All of those are fine. Don't worry about spelling right now. Don't worry about grammar or word choice or all those rules you learn at school. At this stage, the only rule is to have fun with it!

In Control

If you are writing just for yourself, you might stop after drafting, and that's okay. In fact, if you love your story enough you may never end and just keep going as long as you can. Some people don't like the second stage, which is called editing, but I do. If you want other people to read what you've written and understand what you mean, if you want to make your story the best it can be, if you want to turn it in to a teacher or publish it into a book, you're going to have to edit.

Editing might be my favorite. When you're drafting, you write down everything as it comes to you. The story itself is in charge. When you edit, however, you are in complete control. This is a great feeling, because no one truly feels in control in life. You''re working by your parents' rules, or the school's rules, or society's rules, or the bank or the country's rules (yes, even grown-ups feel this way). Editing is when you work by your own rules.

Of course, if you are writing this story for a certain reader, you will have to pay attention to their rules too, but I don't like to think of it as following their rules. I've studied grammar and read lots of books about writing, and when something makes sense I adopt it as my own. Now it's not the book's rule, or grammar's rule. It's my rule, and I get to enforce it.

Different people do editing in different ways. If you are writing a story by hand, your first edit will be either copying it into a computer or copying it into a new notebook. You'll probably make changes as you go, deciding that some things could be phrased better to make more sense. That's great! The more times you go over it, the better it will be!

So, writing is fun! You get to play and imagine, be in control, make new friends, express yourself, and unlike play and daydreaming, you'll be able to go back to it whenever you want and enjoy the story all over again! Keep practicing, keep learning, keep reading others' stories. If you keep working at it you may become an author. Or you may decide not to, but those writing skills will be helpful in your life. At the very least, you can look back at the things you wrote when you were younger and be able to understand and remember how things were. And I think that's well worth the effort.

Just Around the Corner

Most people would look at my family and laugh if I told them I struggled with infertility. It lasted only a year, and had a quick and easy fix. Even at the time I felt guilty for feeling so bad about it because I had a child already and most people with this problem had none. But it was real all the same.

We had our daughter so quickly that we assumed that this would always be the case. I so wanted her to have a sibling. I had the name of my next child picked out (I was sure it’d be a boy), and I could picture exactly what he’d look like. Months went by and nothing happened. Was it my fault? Was I not a good enough mother for our daughter that I didn’t deserve another child? Somewhere in my heart I knew we’d have more children—my husband wasn’t worried for the same reason. I knew that other people had it worse than I did, but thinking that way only made me feel like I had no right to be unhappy about it, which of course made everything much worse. I didn’t get any hurtful comments, but I had one hard moment when another woman was talking about being able to visit Girl’s Camp despite having a baby, and saying she’d “better go now because [she] would probably be pregnant again next year.”

The lowest point was at a family reunion. I was trying to accept the Lord’s timing in my life and pondering how I could stop feeling so miserable. Then, at a church meeting, two cousins stood up one after the other and announced that they were both expecting. They laughed at the shock on their mother’s face, and I so much wanted to be one of them that I physically hurt. I couldn’t even allow myself to be jealous, as this would be a “rainbow baby” for one of my cousins. I had to walk away from the celebrations with my husband so I could calm down before facing people.

My two-year-old daughter loved going to her nursery class on Sunday. One morning, she hurried off through the wrong door to get there. I knew that the church hallway was a circle and that she would eventually make it to the right class, so I allowed her to go through the wrong door and followed after her. After a little while, she started getting upset. Soon, every time we passed a foyer or turned a corner, she would collapse in tears. “Nursery! Nursery!” she cried. I tried to explain. “We are going to nursery, I promise. Please trust me. We’ll get there if you just keep going. Come on, get up.” And she would get up and walk to the next corner, where we’d have to go through the whole thing over again. At last we arrived and she ran joyfully into her class.

Then I realized how much my daughter had been teaching me. My goal was taking longer than expected, and I too would stop and cry at every corner. I too had Someone with me, telling me the same things I told my little girl, but with even more patience and love. “You are going to get there, I promise. Please trust me. We’ll get there if you just keep going. Come on, get up.”

I too arrived at last. I visited a doctor, who discovered that my thyroid levels were off. I started medication and within a couple of months became pregnant with my son (who looks almost exactly like I imagined him). I learned some important lessons. I still have trials, and I still stop and cry at every corner when my goals don’t happen on my time table. But I’m starting to learn to listen to that voice of the Spirit which is always there, that tells me that everything will be all right if I just keep going. 

No Unnecessary Words

Sometimes I read books that I feel could be written better, and I want to run to the nearest computer and fix it, or at least write the author a very long, detailed letter. I had been thinking about this, and even started writing up an article of writing tips I’d gleaned from people smarter than me. Then I got a review that mentioned one of my faults, and I realized I needed my own advice as much as anyone. So, for me, and for anyone who might be reading, here are some compiled tips and quotes from some of my favorite sources to explain how to make good books better.

As I was collecting, I soon noticed a theme. Most of the things I wish other authors knew could be framed around a single quote, published in that Bible of writing books, “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. It is this:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary lines, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Here are some of the things I have learned…or at least heard… about making every word tell.

What’s the story about?

How many of you want to read this story?

Jenny was getting married. She loved her fiancé, and he loved her. She picked the flowers that she wanted. Grandma gave her the necklace she had worn as a bride. Mother chose the veil, and she herself found the most amazing dress. Everyone agreed that it was perfect.

If anyone keeps reading, it’s because they’re hoping the next line is:

She should have known something would go wrong.

The character defines the story. The plot defines the characters, and the stakes define the plot. What does the character stand to lose? If nothing is at stake, you have no story, and your character cannot grow. In Writing Magic, Gail Carsen Levine puts it this way: “Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up on a book and stop reading? Often, you don’t care what happens. What makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author’s cruelty. And the reader’s sympathy.”

On the other hand, having the stakes too high, for too long, is a problem I often find in the last book(s) of a series. From page one, the world is in jeopardy, the heroes are about to die, evil seems to be winning… If it starts out this way and never stops, the reader stops caring. Christopher Booker, in The Seven Basic Plots, explains, “As [the hero or heroine] face ordeals, or come under threat, so we feel tense and apprehensive. As the threat is lifted, we can relax. Our own spirits are enlarged… We feel a sense either of constriction, or of liberation. And in a story which is well-constructed, these phases of constriction and release alternate, in a kind of rhythm which provides one of the greatest pleasures we get from stories.”

Do you remember the graph that almost every Language Arts teacher draws in middle school? The one that shows the action of a story starting slowly, then gradually increase in intensity, spiking with a climax, and come crashing down for the resolution? It’s funny how many writers forget.

Dialogue

“Dialogue should reveal character or further the plot,” says author Tim Wynne-Jones. Dialogue should not do the grunt work of a narrative, fill in backstory, or tell the reader something that the characters already know. It also should not include ordinary conversations for the sake of “reality”. He explains, “Write dialogue that allows for a character to say what they might say if they had an extra twenty seconds before replying.”

Anne Lamott adds, “You’re not reproducing actual speech—you’re translating the sound and rhythm of what a character says into words. You’re putting down on paper your sense of how the characters speak… [What you record] should be more interesting and concise and even more true than what was actually said.”

All through elementary school, I was taught to never use the word ‘said’. It took until college before I learned that this isn’t true. Said is a perfectly good word. All of the other tag words are like spices—they add flavor, but use them sparingly.

The quote is not the only important thing in dialogue. Gail Carsen Levine says, “There’s more to dialogue than just speech. Body language can communicate as eloquently as words, and sometimes more truthfully.”

Non-example:

“Hi,” he greeted.

“Oh, hello,” she answered.

“I saw you at the supermarket yesterday. I saw that you were buying a lot of food,” he noticed.

“Yes. I am having a dinner party tomorrow. We are having pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans,” she explained.

“I know that you have dinner parties every month. That sounds like a lot of work,” he commented.

“It is a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it,” she replied.

Example:

“I saw you at the supermarket yesterday,” he said. “What’s with all the food?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I decided to cook extra,” she answered. “It’s always good to have leftovers…”

He slammed down the cell phone he was holding. “Are you holding another dinner party without me?”

“I wouldn’t call it a party.” She tried a laugh, but it came out shaky. “I just invited a few close friends.”

“A few close friends,” he repeated. “And none of them are me.”

 

Fight scenes, which are basically violent dialogue, follow the same rules.

Non-example:

Mack punched the man in the face, and then ducked. Jack’s fist swung over his head, missing his nose by inches. Mack kicked Jack’s ankle and felt a satisfying thud. Then he grabbed Jack’s arm and twisted it behind his back. Jack yelped, struggling to break free. He got a hand loose and flailed. His hand bumped Mack’s arm with no effect at all.

Example (abridged from “The Storm Testament III” by Lee Nelson):

Again Storm instinctively reached for the whip end. Again the wiley snake was withdrawn before the young man could grab it. Beneath the bandana it was difficult for anyone to notice that the grin had finally vanished from Storm’s face….

As the dust settled, each man trying to tighten his grip on the other, Blackjack began to laugh again.

“What’s so funny?” hissed Storm through his clenched teeth.

“Just seems kind of crazy,” replied Blackjack after a brief pause to tighten his grip on Storm’s arm, “You and me killing each other just to put on a free show. Seems funny. Makes me laugh. Makes me feel stupid too.”

Beneath the bandana, Storm’s grin returned.

Description:

Who’s willing to admit that they skip over the big long descriptions of the setting? Or shuts a book that begins with the description of a sunrise? Or ignores the paragraph describing how a character looks and imagining them however they want?

In Word Painting, Rebecca McClanahan explains, “Description isn’t something we simply insert, block style, into passages of narration or exposition. Yes, sometimes we write passages of description. But the term passage suggests a channel, a movement from one place to another; it implies that we’re going somewhere. That somewhere is the story.”

Her book contains many excellent examples on the use of description. I’ll mention one: the power of description to set the mood and the emotion of the scene. This is a paragraph from my short story, The Stone Hand:

 Later, Reece said that both of them had done it. She didn’t believe him. In any case, her memory of the next few minutes was clouded with heat and noise, bright lights and acrid smoke. Then she and Reece were standing side by side in the yard while the house burned. Heat seared her face, and popping sparks screamed nine years of fury.

Tiny details make the difference, and the word choice can reflect the mood. A cloudy sky could be gloomy, pretty in swaths of purple, confining, swirling in frenzied anger, hovering near like a suspicious neighbor.

Non-example:

Sunny was short and willowy, with short blond hair and bright blue eyes. She was self-confident and usually happy but she had a mean streak, and a bad habit of spying on people.

Example:

A pair of bright blue eyes disappeared from the window. “All right, Sunny,” Keita called. “I see you.  You may as well stop sneaking around.”

The girl popped into sight without a trace of embarrassment. “Hullo, everyone,” she said, running a hand through her short blonde hair. A smirk was hiding in the edges of her smile.

 

Every Word Tells

I could go on. Backstory, flashbacks, themes, explaining the world and its rules… the same principle applies to all of them. If it moves the story forward, use it. If it does not advance the plot or reveal character, change it or take it out. This is something I’m still working on; I suspect I always will be.

References:

These are some of my favorite writing books, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to make their stories better:

The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker

Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (some mature content)

Writing Magic by Gail Carsen Levine

Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White

I Was Blind

This is a poem I wrote after attending a Sunday School lesson about Jesus healing the man who was blind.

Light.

So many types.
Light and dark, bright and dull.
I have no words for these things.
Which color is blue?
So this is a sky.

Motion.

So many movements.
People hurdling, hurdling, hurdling by.
Voices question, threaten, accuse.
I hear the anger, the fear, in the voices.
Now the feelings have faces.

A face stops.

A face I could not have seen,

A face I know.
I know His voice, the man called Jesus.
The man they say feeds, heals, makes whole.
The man who mended me.
He calls himself the Christ.

I was blind.
Now I see.