Creating

Does the God of all the universe and all within the expanse of eternity care about my measly writing goals? Does it matter one bit if I craft a perfect paragraph, finally locate the key to my research, design a stunning book cover, type The End on a manuscript?

In the same way I cheer on my young grandchildren when they learn a new skill or stretch in anyway, I think He does. I think the act of writing, of linking words together  like beads on a string is a significant part of eternity. There’s a lot of dark influences in the world; anything we can do to push back the darkness even a little bit is worth doing.

Dieter F Uchdorf said in October 2008:

“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty—and I am not talking about the process of cleaning the rooms of your teenage children.

You might say, “I’m not the creative type. When I sing, I’m always half a tone above or below the note. I cannot draw a line without a ruler. And the only practical use for my homemade bread is as a paperweight or as a doorstop.”

If that is how you feel, think again, and remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe. Isn’t it remarkable to think that your very spirits are fashioned by an endlessly creative and eternally compassionate God? Think about it—your spirit body is a masterpiece, created with a beauty, function, and capacity beyond imagination.

But to what end were we created? We were created with the express purpose and potential of experiencing a fulness of joy. Our birthright—and the purpose of our great voyage on this earth—is to seek and experience eternal happiness. One of the ways we find this is by creating things.”

How does this apply to writing? Have you ever found yourself caught up in a plot line, enthused about  how well that part turned out, felt a swelling sense of accomplishment reading over words you personally strung together? In a very small (but valuable!) way, that’s a shadow of God’s creations. After the earth was created, Genesis records the Creator stepping back and saying, “It is good.” Not spectacularly overwhelmingly awesomely wonderful, but good. Our writing is like that. Perfection is a process. Anything we learn in this world becomes part of us, our very being. Learning to expand our skills in communication and expression is not sneeze-worthy.

In Alma 34 we read:

 Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks.

Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening.

Yea, cry unto him against the power of your enemies.

 Yea, cry unto him against the devil, who is an enemy to all righteousness.

 Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them.

Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.

 But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.

 Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.

I don’t have flocks or fields or crops. I’m not really an animal lover, and this is the first year in twenty-seven I didn’t plant a garden. What I do have is a desire to write. For a while, I felt funny praying for help in my writing, but old Alma had a point; if it matters to me, it’s worth praying over. 

Sometimes, usually in that place between awake and asleep, inspiration will strike me and I’ll pick up paper and pen. Ideas for a new book, a plot twist, a way to untangle written dialogue, a nudge to write that article I’ve been putting off; often, ideas flow faster than I can write them down, like a waterfall of inspiration. Irrelevant things, perhaps, in the scheme of things, but it’s a reminder that my attempts at creating are noticed outside of my own mind. Sometimes I can sense a heavenly cheering section, encouraging me on, imperfect though my attempts may be. 

Waffling about writing? Feeling like you’re not good enough? Get back to it anyway! And don’t forget to pray. Help stands waiting, I’m certain of it. 

Whose Story Is It Anyway?

by Deb Graham

Whose story is it?

“Using the pointillism technique we’ve explored this week, draw a human foot. Due Monday.”

Confidently, I jotted down the assignment and headed home for the weekend. I got this! My grandmother was visiting, and she had the oddest feet I’d ever seen. Her baby toes curled under, and the corns near her big toes bulged.  I knew she’d welcome the chance to sit and pose for me while she crocheted. And I knew my art teacher would love it.

Pointillism; a series of dots gathered together in a foot shape; I knew I could excel at this art class’ first homework. I spent two hours carefully detailing every inch of Grandma’s left foot. My family agreed I’d caught the realism.

 On Monday, I slipped my sketch paper out of my hinged portfolio and clamped it on my easel to show the teacher when he circled the room. Ten minutes later, I was in tears, humiliated from the public mockery and scolding dished out.

 Inaccurate lines.

Bulge by big toe.

Baby toes grotesquely rolled under

 Visible boney structure and exaggerated veins.

And he announced my grade to the class; my very first D-. He said he only gave Fs when assignments were not turned in; this was a half point above not drawing at all. I held on another three weeks, then dropped the high school class, and with it, whatever latent drawing talent I may have had.

Today I secured a floor-length artist’s smock around my grandson; at only two years of age, adult clothing is always floor-length. I set him in front of an easel, and offered him his very first paintbrush.

“What color do you want?”

“Yite bwoo!”  No surprise there; light blue is his favorite color.

I sat back. The little guy dipped his brush in the paint. Sure of himself, he arched wide blue swaths with gleeful abandon. I envied his confidence and obvious joy. And I didn’t tell him how to hold the brush, what strokes to make or criticize his choice of color. This was his art, not mine.

I’m a writer and an author. I've published 17 books, three this year. I’m most comfortable in nonfiction because it’s predictable; I control the outcome. I’ve written two novels and I’m working on three more. Fiction tends to go off on its own, and I find that unnerving. Characters speak to me, scenes veer off where I hadn’t intended, plot lines refuse to stay on track. Nonfiction doesn’t behave like that.

When I first attempted fiction, I figured I’d need all the help I could get. I researched, starting with internet searches on How To Write A Novel, How To Set A Scene, How To Write Dialogue; the basics. I also sought human help, including a critique group, beta readers, and editors.

When I wanted to learn to draw, I sought a teacher. At this stage, I find both about equally helpful.

Readers change the voice, insisting Will has to use complete sentences, and Cinci can’t use run-on sentences, although that’s the way I hear

 them in my mind. Others call my style “Yoda-like” and insist on most sentences starting with He Was or She Went; passive to the point of yawning. One said a child couldn’t jump on a trampoline for ten straight minutes, but clearly, she hadn’t seen a joyful child on a summer’s afternoon. “You can’t kill off that character, or I’ll be mad at you!” wailed another. “Put him back!” 

If I listened to them, my stories would be unrecognizable mush.

An artist paints, then steps back, admiring. Never do they create a masterpiece, then hand over the paintbrush to a person to let them add a few strokes to the bridge or erase that tree on the left.

As writers, why do we open ourselves to peer-critique? No one can hear the story in our words, so why do we allow Them to change our voice, to dull its sharp tones, to conform the structure into mind-numbing dullness?  It’s time to stop running our writing through committees.

How? Trust yourself. You’re the one who can hear the character; let them speak, unflattened. 

Believe in your own writing. Trust the process, because what’s the worst that can happen?

Be brave! Get a copyeditor who will only find typos. Ignore any attempts to change your style or writing in any way; they’re only suggestions. 

Sure, rules of grammar apply, and punctuation is critical; I get seriously annoyed by authors who lazily neglect to close quotes or who think every sentence must be paragraph-length, and you just can’t spell “unique” as “yewneak” and expect me to bother reading the rest. I have my limits, and anything that requires me to use a magic decoder ring to read isn’t worth my time. But editors who seek to change your plot, characters, theme, etc should...go write their own book.

Writers are artists, and we need to trust our art. The world needs to hear our voice, our story, and sometimes, just telling it and putting it out there is best, rather than letting it be edited to death.

I can’t draw anything fancier than a straight line, but I can write. 

One Foot in Front of the Other

My cute baby granddaughter thought about Up. She watched her brothers running through the house, her little brow furrowed in concentration. How do they do that?  One day, at the ripe old age of eight months, Babykins pulled herself to standing, using the sofa for support.

 The first couple of weeks didn’t go well for her. She hadn’t learned how to un stand; when her little legs fatigued, she fell backwards. She quickly learned how to roll her spine so as not to whack her fuzzy head every time. Feet were another issue. Sometimes her little feet slid out from under her, and she ended up doing splits. They sometimes slid away from the sofa, leaving her at an untenable 45 degree angle, clutching the sofa, squawking for help. Her mother rescued her, picked her up for a hug, chuckling at the baby’s determination to get back and down and try again.

This all reminds me of the baby’s mother at that age. Once my daughter learned to stand and take two steps, she refused to crawl ever again. It was simply beneath her. That was fine once she could walk capably, but the first couple of weeks were rough. She’d stand up against a chair, take a few wobbly steps, invariably tip over, and scream as if she’d been attacked by lions. One of us would have to go stand her back on her little feet; she simply couldn’t bear to crawl the two feet to the chair. A pride issue, I think, along with early evidence of a stubborn streak wider than her head. She kept on practicing, and as other adults, she now walks without a thought.

No one criticized her when she was learning, and no one scolds Babykins for not doing it right, for falling over yet again. We praise her for trying again, clapping, smiling, telling her, “Good! Now try again,” knowing that, with practice, she’ll learn to walk like everyone else.

I’m an author of sixteen books. I suppose I know what I’m doing, to some degree, and I keep on learning daily, constantly improving my craft. Some of the phrases I string together are flat, hokey, even syrupy. Other times, I read over a paragraph in delight. Sometimes I kick paper wads in frustration, knowing what I want to convey, but unable to get my point across. 

I suppose what babies and toddlers deal with effects writers, too—the terrible twos are partly about being frustrated because you’re smarter than your motor skills or your mouth, you want to color the picture, ask for the toy, and you’re bumbling, incoherent and no one gets it.

My advice to writers is WRITE. Write a lot, good stuff, worthless stuff, keep on writing.  My baby granddaughter will be chasing after her brothers in no time, but it’s not only time that propels a child onward to more sophistication and skill. It takes effort and practice, and occasionally falling on one’s head. Write, write, write because the road to good writing is made of words strung together and not all of them are well-arranged words. With practice, it gets better.

We don’t scold a child for stumbling when learning to walk. We value their adorable attempts, and pick them up when they tip over. Do that for the writer inside you. Praise the good parts, encourage the weak parts, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

Learning to Love the Journey

I've been working on Unleashed! for nearly 5 years.

That's a long time to be working on a single story. In my defense, I had no real writing experience. I needed to learn how to tell a story. Everything, up until now, has been through hands-on learning.  Critique groups, ANWA meetings, articles, pod casts, videos, more articles, reading other's work, then reading more books about writing.  I've fluctuated from 50,000 - 125,000 words, and everywhere in between, so many times, I have whiplash.

But, you know what? I wouldn't trade it for the world.  This journey has had enough highs and lows to qualify as a world-class roller coaster ride. But that's the beauty of it.

As a child, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wasn't really sure, but I knew I didn't want to be bored. I figured I'd be a firefighter, or go into the military, or maybe even SWAT.  I never imagined I'd find my excitement sitting at a desk for hours at a time.

In my imagination, I can flit from a romance novel, to a comedy, to an action flick, then into a world of fantasy, all without skipping a beat.  What am I in the mood for? Let's create it!

I may have authored 19 different drafts of the very same story, but each one is unique in it's own way, building my characters from a one-dimensional concept, to a three-dimensional person a reader can connect to, root for, and laugh with.

Have I mastered this writing thing yet?  Not by a long shot. But by golly, I'm having fun figuring it out.