Because days like today happen. I can’t come up with a single diversion, except maybe to mop the kitchen floor, but I hate, hate, hate doing that. And yet when I sit at my computer, that cursor blinks mercilessly on the same line, the last line, that it has been for days now. I can’t come up with a single thought about story development. I don’t feel like I’ve hit a wall, but more like the well has gone dry and I need a good soaking rain to swell up the groundwater. Poor me. I can’t draw water.

And this makes no sense. I know exactly what I want to write. I know exactly how the plot develops. And I’m so far into the development of my story that I needn’t give much thought to character. All that is established. I feel like an architect/builder with a wonderful plan. No, with a house that is nearly completed. But today, I’m staring at my hammer and nails and can’t for the life of me understand how to use them. The analogy is silly. No one forgets how to use tools. Except a writer.

I’m an optimist. I tell myself that there must be a higher purpose behind my becoming creatively comatose. Maybe there is something I need to learn, see, understand, discover and maybe I need the time to do that before the story moves forward. Maybe if I push ahead, maybe if I force myself to write when my brain is flagging, I’ll only spin my wheels, waste my time. Some argue that a writer should write even when she doesn’t feel like it, the same way we often hear that the best time to pray is when a person doesn’t want to. But I don’t know. Some prayers are needless nags. Sometimes we discover prayers are answered if we shut up, stop nagging God, and listen. So I guess I’ll listen. Yeah, that’s it. I don’t have writer’s block. I’m listening for the muse.

What malarkey.

But not really. The muse is an endearing and antiquated myth. And I do believe in being still, in knowing who “I Am.” I understand that my talent and skills–and yours as well, of course–are gifts from God. I do believe He waits to help me, to help all of us, discover insights that will assist us in our literary work, especially if our work can be classified as “His” work. And I believe any writing that draws people together, that heals wounds and celebrates redemption, is godly. So no, I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe in reflection.

Have you ever tried to tell your spouse you were working hard when you are sprawled out on a bed in midday, trying to concoct story in your mind? I think that’s what I need. A dark room, some time alone, the peace to turn my spiritual nature to high alert and sense the direction I must take. Or maybe I need a beach and a hammock…

No wonder I make no real money at this…

The Roots of the Olive Tree is a fine piece of women’s fiction and I recommend it to readers who enjoy novels with depth. But you should know, this is not a romance, though there is a certain amount of courtship and love-making. This is not a mystery, though secrets are both concocted and exposed. It is not a book of crime fiction, though wrong-doings–including murder–are woven into the fabric. This is a slice of life. Of reality. The prose is delightful, and whether you like to read your fiction poolside with a cool one or in your den with a highlighter in hand, you will find pleasure in The Roots of the Olive Tree.

Of course, the novel isn’t going to be a perfect match for everyone. No novel is. That’s obvious. I’m a baseball fan and baseball fans know the thrill of seeing a player hit a power-alley home run, that hard, straight shot over the fence in the deepest parts of the outfield. Maybe The Roots of the Olive Tree isn’t a power-alley home run. For me, it was more like the home run that hugs the line, the one that makes you catch your breath and hope that the ball stays fair. That moment when it lands in the stands just inside of the foul post is glorious. There were places in the novel where I worried the ball, though solidly hit, might not land where Santo wanted it to.   For instance, there are oddly placed inserts from the geneticist’s storyline that seemed not only distracting, but which border on inconsequential. But those were only moments–a paragraph or page here or there–and they were few and far between. To be fair, none of these passages are long enough drag down the overall story. They are limiting like a scratch on the knee, not a broken leg.

I have read a couple reviews (out of many, many glowing reviews) that seem to indicate the respective reviewers struggled with the character development. I admit early on I found it difficult to keep track of which of the five related women were which. Without being able to do that, it can be difficult to see each character as an individual. My feeling is that a reader ought to cut a writer a little slack when she has five characters onstage in the opening pages, all of the same gender; the writer needs some time to exercise her craft and reveal each character as a separate persona.  And Santo does, indeed, craft her characters as individuals with their own needs, passions, and yes, quirks. But it is the writer’s job to craft with clarity. There is a diagram explaining which character is which before the opening pages, but I didn’t notice it until I sat to write this review. I wouldn’t have used it anyway, since I find them annoying and I don’t think I’m alone in that.  It wasn’t until I was about two-thirds of the way through the novel that I realized Santo has developed a sort of cheat system regarding names that can help her readers keep everyone straight while she develops her characters. The names of these women are alphabetical in an age-descending order: A for Anna (the eldest),  B for Bets, C for Callie, D for Deb and lastly E for Erin, the youngest.  A, B, C, D, E: oldest to youngest. Simple. Knowing this at the outset will help you keep the women straight, and keeping them “in their place” will likely clarify issues a given reader may have with character development. Maybe I’m being simplistic, but I’m trying to understand an opinion I don’t share. It might have been nice if there had been a nod to this little piece of information in the text of the early parts of the book, but, if it had been there, some might’ve thought it ridiculously obvious.

The only significant writerly choice I wonder about pertains to Anna. When secrets from her past are made plain (and I don’t want to give anything away here), she states that she needs to plan a trip, ostensibly to uncover more truths, to find more clarity regarding her identity. I, then, expected her not only to plan, but to go on that trip. It didn’t happen. In fact, that trip was never mentioned again, nor were the discoveries that seemed likely to be waiting for Anna there. It was a let-down, I admit, especially when the very next page began a chapter titled “Leaving,” but that “leaving” referred to another character. Perhaps there will be a sequel? I might have considered this a bigger faux pas than I now do had the novel, which was 90% completed by this point, landed on the wrong side of the foul post. But it didn’t. With the ending, Santo clearly got her home run.

The ending of The Roots of the Olive Tree was poignant and poetic and satisfying. The literary nerd in me ached to grab a pen and begin underlining images and ideas that held meaning beyond the surface. I wanted to cheer for Anna, Bets, Callie, Deb and Erin. But I also wanted to cheer Santo. She’s done a fantastic job with her debut novel. In fact, her imagery, her characters, her setting all seemed like a movie in my mind. As I read along, I kept casting actresses in a fantasy film version.  Truly, if you like women’s fiction with a slice of the literary, read The Roots of the Olive Tree.

Disclosure: I count Courtney Miller Santo, author of The Roots of the Olive Tree, as a friend, though we’ve never met in person. Our friendship began several years back when each of us participated in the now defunct online writer’s workshop known as WorLDSmith. Her short fiction then surfaced anonymously as a finalist in an Irreantum contest and, before I knew it, I was editing her first published literary short fiction. That’s  something I’ll probably brag about for years to come. I know Santo to be a writer with incredible instinct and I was tickled to watch her manuscript, The Roots of the Olive Tree, move through round after round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) competition. If ever there was proof that failing to place first does not a loser make, it is Santo. Her manuscript was passed over late in the contest, only to be picked up by a very smart agent. It is true that I was pre-disposed to like her debut novel because  of our relationship, but I’ve made every effort to be objective with this review. In fact, its more likely I’m being overly harsh about its soft spots than overstated about its strengths.  Its a solid book, worthy of a reader’s time. Of course, the version I’ve read may be slightly different from the novel in final,  published form. The Roots of the Olive Tree will be available in bookstores August 21. Until then, you may pre-order  your copy at  http://www.amazon.com/The-Roots-Olive-Tree-Novel/dp/006213051X

But that’s not true. I am, in many ways, a Mormon feminist. I think women are great. I just happen to think men are equally great. I don’t feel any more put-upon by my church than the men I know. Maybe we are put-upon in different ways from the men, but … are we? Church is demanding. Church can be stifling. And painfully intrusive. And also glorious. Its the idea of a Mormon feminist as an angry (or not angry), foot-stomping (or finger-snapping), give-me-the-priesthood-dammit (or darn it) that doesn’t fit me. I don’t want teenage girls to have to confess to old men. I do want LDS women to be respected as people with ideas and goals and ambitions that extend beyond the home. I hate when I find myself with a group of men talking, say, politics, and feel the temperature of their conversation plummet because I speak up, something they apparently aren’t comfortable with, an assumption I can make since I tend to share the same political views as the majority of Latter-day Saints.

But Mormon feminism in literature bores the Hades out of me. It feels so stuck in the 1970′s. Is that because the Mormon church is “behind the times,” as they say? Probably. After all, Mormon women are fighting for respect for their choice to have careers. And Mormon women have a certain kind of sexual battle to wage as we work toward a culture that acknowledges that women are sexual, and not simply procreative, beings, and that the clothes we don do not define our worthiness or condemn men to their impossible lusts. We have to fight, as I said earlier, for moral decency and equivalency in the confessional. No female who has committed what the gospel tags a sexual sin should have to speak face-to-face with a man–usually an “old” man from the perspective of a youth–who asks intrusive and often obscene questions of her. This is not equality. After all, no man has to endure this from the Relief Society presidency. They wouldn’t stand for it. Can you imagine if your Relief Society president demanded some teenage boy come report to her weekly about his tendency to masturbate in the shower? There are many, many things about our Mormon culture as it pertains to the treatment of women that warrant, even demand, we examine them through our literature. I’ll give you that.

But it bores me. I feel like I’ve been reading these kinds of stories for four decades. Surely I wasn’t reading Mo Lit four decades ago, but I was reading feminist lit and it sounded a lot like what comes out of our community today.  I’m going to pick on a friend of mine, a prolific feminist Mormon writer I’ve worked with through Sunstone and one I deeply respect, namely Helen Walker Jones. In December of 2010, Sunstone was fortunate to publish her story, “Angina”, a perfectly good piece of literature and, I think, the first short story I edited for Sunstone. I chose to run the story. I chose it. Because I liked it. So please understand that,  when I sit and read “Angina,” I’m not bored by the story. That isn’t what I’m saying. As with all of Helen’s many published stories, I feel as involved with these characters as I do with characters from any good piece of fiction,  be it published in or outside our community. In this particular story, an aging Mormon woman wrestles with her husband-less identity and her flagging sexual appeal. All good. All viable topics for examination. Its when I step back from this story and consider this piece, and others like it, that I seem to hear a rock dropped into a deep well ricocheting off the walls once or twice, but not striking water. The well is drained. The problem, for me–and I realize I may be the only person who thinks this way–is not that our feminist writers or feminist stories are lacking. In fact, our history of feminist literature has been, in many opinions, our strong suit; our women writers are fantastic. The problem may be that the kinds of feminist short fiction I’m reading these days aren’t necessarily adding something new to the conversation of Mormon feminism. To me, they too often seem Been There/Done That.

But how do we find a new way in to Mormon feminism? How do we find our way beyond stories that center on often weak–I’m guilty of this charge–women who struggle against the cultural demands that we fervently multiply and replenish the earth and never darken an unwomanly office desk? How do we move beyond complaint and begin showing how we want the world to be, even if by showing how the world is wrong as it now is?  How do we stop being the proverbial old whine in a new bottle?

Obviously, I can’t answer that for other people. Perhaps its enough to raise the question so that Mormon female and male writers who write about women’s issues give the question some thought. Somewhere in my personal progress as a short fiction writer, I realized I had an interest in how men are treated, not only in the Mormon culture, but in the broader society. Certainly we’ve seen a huge shift, thanks largely to feminism in general, from the Ricky Ricardo Man-as-Sensible character of the “I Love Lucy” days to the Ray Ramono Man-as-Idiot era of “Everybody Loves Raymond.”  For me, degrading half the human race isn’t the way to even the score, but it seems our era of modern story-telling hasn’t gotten that message. And for me, the burdens women often feel as members of a patriarchal church doesn’t justify degrading the struggles men feel in a patriarchal church. And they do have them.

The truth is, all humans struggle. And all that struggle is worthy of literary examination. Basically, I object to defining myself as a champion of my gender, perhaps partly because of the societal implication that, if I champion my own gender, I “must” do it at the expense of the other gender. Not interested in that. My life has filled with wonderful men. And awful men. And wonderful women. And awful women. And with both men and women who have struggled and suffered and been knocked down. Some make it back to their feet. Others do not. But each has lived a life of passion and angst. My fascination with life’s struggle is likely what made me a writer. And my interest in the tick-tockings of people prohibit me from assigning myself the title “feminist.”

I remember telling my graduate adviser that I didn’t think I’d ever write a story from a male POV because I don’t know what it is to be a man. She cocked her head and looked at me like I was crazy, and in that moment, I realized I was.That moment haunted me for years. A while back, I opened a dusty file (a real file folder, not an electronic one) and found some stories I wrote before I came to know how to write. In them, I found a story about a woman who was molested as a child, a story I loosely based on some women I’d known. Even if the story wasn’t particularly well-crafted, it was especially feminist. In this story, I, for some dumb reason, decided to throw in a very brief journey into the point of view of the protagonist’s husband. As I reread the story (cringing, I promise) and came to this strange and ineffective POV insertion, I realized that I’d missed the real story entirely. My words to my graduate adviser came storming back. I had to write this story from the husband’s point of view. Then it had the chance to become something.

It became “Straight Home,” published in Dialogue‘s Spring 2010 edition. (Read the story at http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V43N01_180.pdf)  The story is definitely what I’d call masculinist (as opposed to masculist, which, if I recall correctly, is a term sometimes used in queer theory) because it kindly shines a light on men and their sex drive. The woman is seriously flawed, having been horrifically abused as a child, a fact she never shared with her husband. In the story, the woman, though a victim, is in the power position and the husband is cast as  the dog looking for crumbs. I hope the story is open to various reader interpretations and won’t muddle up the experience of reading it with excessive  writerly intrusion, but I will say that, as I wrote it, I discovered something that was, to me, dramatic. Even though I focused on the man’s struggles, the story, in a very real way, opened a view of the struggle so many women face. . . with sex, sex in marriage, control, abusive pasts, etc. I like the story because of that balance, because, while we discover each character as flawed, needy and damaged, we are (I really hope, fingers crossed) unsettled by the fair distribution of life’s problems. One problem impacts another; one damaged character damages another, not out of vindictiveness, but out of need, of lack.

There: I picked on one very good and very capable writer, of whom I am a fan, and then exalted my own work. Shameless. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that my story is better crafted than Helen’s. That would be the stupidest thing I ever said. Rather, I bow to her lengthy and wonderful publication history as a Mormon writer and know I’ll probably never come close to the volume of her very successful stories. I do wish she would gather her stories and approach publishers about a collection. (You listening Z?) Nevertheless, she’s been writing a long time and of course, will represent old timey feminism to one degree or another. But what about the rest of us? Like I said, I’ve written weak women. Many times. And dealt with marriage and identity and who is gonna deal with the “burden” of children. To prove it, here is a link to “At Bay,” also published in Dialogue, though so many moons ago, I can’t remember:  http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V37N04_187.pdf. It definitely has that old feminist flavor, partly because I wrote its initial draft while in college in the mid 1980′s and simply converted the protagonist to Mormonism for submission in the Mo Lit realm. All this to reiterate that I mean Helen nor any other feminist Mormon writer disrespect. But this is self-titled blog so I will wallow now and then in my own thinking and in my own work, especially if it illustrates a point. And “Straight Home” does demonstrate one way one Mormon writer (me) explored female sexuality without writing a “typical” abused woman story.

Of course, it can be argued that “Straight Home” isn’t feminist at all, but I’m not going to beat myself up. That’s the job of other people, of critics.

Mark on his 40th, just a few months before diagnosis

I’ve finished my work on the coming edition of Irreantum and, with a sad feeling in the pit of my stomach, have left the staff, but I will remain working with fiction at Sunstone. Editor Stephen Carter tells me he received funding to add a special fiction edition sometime this year, which will include stories by Courtney Miller Santo (author of newly released The Roots of the Olive Tree), Larry Menlove, Brett Wilcox, Heidi Naylor,  and Josh Allen, whose story (“How They Get You”) is a hoot. Stephen’s got a short-short by PD Mallamo slated for the next edition. Its so much fun to “meet” and work with all the talented writers I’ve been able to, thanks to my positions as fiction editor. Its just astounding what I learn from each one of them.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about returning to the blogosphere for several weeks, even opened this blog and tried to remember what it was I was writing that I thought so darn important. Well, if not important, than relevant. I seem to be stuck in that strange space between melancholy and moving on. So today I write here to push myself forward. Oh, I’ve been editing, I’ve even done some writing, but I’ve not been thinking. I need to keep thinking.  This is a short post, just something to wet my feet again, but I’ll dive in soon. Probably tomorrow. When my brain decides to revisit some of the topics I had wanted to finish discussing, I’ll get back to them. But right now, I’m going to stop rambling and start writing my next post. Gotta see if I can turn the brain on…

[Right there. I heard it. Somebody gasped when they read "signs and tokens." Don't worry. That's as specific as I get.]

When he finished, I remember looking at him askance. Granted, I was a convert of just a few years, but I’d been given the impression ever since my conversion that I’d go to the temple for the first time and learn any number of new and fascinating things. I said to Bret, “Everything you just told me is in the scriptures.”

He nodded, said most first-timers don’t realize that, but that there really isn’t anything new except the “signs and tokens”  and they basically represent the covenants I’d be asked to make in the temple, covenants pertaining to obedience, chastity, sacrifice and sharing. None of these covenants were a suprise to me either. They seemed to be truly essential, even basic, stuff for a follower of Jesus Christ.

Well, ok. So off I went to the temple. I’ve heard many first-timers come away stunned. Sometimes its the fact the temple is more ritualized than the average LDS sacrament meeting that gets the blame. But sometimes first timers purport that the temple ceremoney gave too much overwhelming information. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but my first experience in the temple was, from start to finish, magnificent. Why? I tend to think it was because I may have been better prepared than most people. Certainly not better spiritually prepared than anyone else, but better temporally prepared; my future husband’s verbatim pre-view allowed me to leave surprise behind and simply experience each moment. I knew exactly what to expect. Before I attended my first time, he and I talked about the symbolism of the temple, straight down to the curtains and color of the upholstery. When I received my Endowment, I received it with a sense of familiarity, not fear of the unknown, because I had been prepared so thoroughly.

My then-future husband’s frank approach is one I’ve adopted. I expect, when my children go through the temple, either he or I will prepare them as he prepared me. Of course, these discussions will be safe and intimate, will be between not only believers, but people we know, love, and trust. This situation is very different from writing about the temple for strangers.

Picture this: A believing Latter-day Saint is stopped by a complete stranger in a bookstore. That stranger asks about the LDS temple ceremonies and the believing Latter-day Saint carefully unfolds the endowment ceremony, minus signs and tokens. Personally, I have a hard time thinking the stranger will remain interested, but I have an even harder time imagining the believing Saint will successfully paint a picture that captures the reverence he or she actually feels for the temple.

Of course, this scenario isn’t likely to occur. But if we write about the temple, we are essentially reliving the temple ceremony with a total stranger. But unlike in the bookstore setting, the writer who writes about the temple is at a greater communication disadvantage because he/she is unable to analyze the audience’s expressions and adapt his/her rhetorical approach to the audience. Or, for that matter, choose to cease talking altogether. After all, many argue, the writer has little control over what the reader actually recieves.

If we can’t control what the reader receives, or how they understand us, should we refrain from ever writing about the temple? Some writers think so.

But I don’t see how it is possible to completely cover the Mormon experience without forging, to some degree, into the Mormon Sacred, including the temple. Of course, not every story would require a direct entrance to the temple, but if we are writing, say, a novel about a devout LDS family, its unlikely the temple could realistically be left out. Most of the time such stories are written by Mormons for Mormons, so code words or tag sentiments carry sufficient weight to communicate with the audience. In short fiction, of course, the focus is narrowed and a story about a devout LDS person might not include reference to the temple experience and the impact it has on the character’s worldview.

I suspect some LDS writers gravitate to one type of story, genre, or audience based upon their willingness to approach the temple in the written word. I’m comfortable with doing so–though I don’t find it easy–and find my preferred genre (lit fic) suitable for my outlook. Those LDS writers who are less comfortable in writing about the temple may be more willing to either write for the mainstream LDS audience or write in a genre, like sf/f, that dodges the Mormon faith completely. All approaches, I think, add to the Mormon canon. I’m not here to argue that writers should or must be more open to writing about the temple. To borrow some Mormon-speak, LDS writers should do as they feel “called” to do.

But for those of us who feel okay in carrying our tales inside the LDS temple–to  whatever degree–there ought to be some discussion about HOW we can make that work. And so here we are. However, before launching into the HOW, lets talk about how NOT to do it.

Mormon writers who want to enlist the temple or temple imagery in their stories to whatever degree should be careful to limit their focus to that which is necessary. The temptation, I think, is to over-tell, or over-explain. When I wrote “Clothing Esther,” I set out to write a story that was both sacred and spoke of sacred things. For those who haven’t read “Clothing Esther,” which is available under Read Free, the story is about a faithful LDS mother who takes upon herself the difficult task of dressing for burial her beloved mother-in-law, a woman who has been her companion for many years. When a Latter-day Saint who has been through the endowment ceremony is dressed for the grave, the temple undergarments, as well as the ceremonial temple clothes, are donned. So I had a lot of sacred to deal with.

• The love for the deceased woman is sacred
• The temple garment is sacred
• The ceremonial clothes are sacred
• The act of dressing the dead is sacred

I understood when I began to write that I couldn’t very well speak of all these sacred things without speaking specifically of the temple, though I wasn’t sure from the outset exactly where in the temple I would end up going. It surprised me to discover that that moment would revolve around the rite of Initiatory, but it did. I chose this ceremony because of its specificity to gender, to the roles gender plays, and the roles gender played in the lives of these two mothers. I did not, however, bother to write out the entire ceremony, circa 1975. Why? Because writing the whole thing out would emphasize the rote, the action, not the tenderness beneath, not the meaning and not the sacred element. I wrote only:

Inside each Mormon temple is a place which is like no other—a quiet, veiled-in space where initiate blessings are granted, woman to woman; a place where two sisters in faith, two strangers, stand before one another, look one another in the eye and touch one soul against the other, fingertip to flesh, and repeat the words of a blessing and an anointing, the undefiled intimacy of which reflects the very depths of God’s eternal love for woman, and through her, for all his children. And Mary has been there.

I struggled with myself the day I brought this story in to my writing group. Quite frankly, my writing group (The Rowlett Writers’ Workshop in Rowlett, TX) is predominately (if not entirely) evangelical Christian. On my first visit, I was asked what I write. I took a deep breath and said I write about the Mormon culture. Their suspicion of me was palpable. But I forged ahead, bringing in my work and receiving their advice. I wanted to learn how a non-LDS audience–even a nearly-hostile-to-Mormons audience–received what I had to say in the way I had to say it. Bringing in “Clothing Esther” made me tremble. Truth spoken.

While I was nervous about how they’d react to the garments and ceremonial clothes, I was particularly worried about their reaction to the paragraph I quote above. Would they push me for more? Would they “get it” at all? Would they reject the story altogether for its sacred intimacy? Would they mock?

Of course, these people were looking me in the face. They are kind people who had accepted me as part of their group, so I didn’t expect to be skewered alive. But they are serious writers and would’ve let me have it if  they felt confused or lost or alienated or whatever negative thing it was they felt. Interestingly, not a single person isolated that passage as a problem, even though we Latter-day Saints understand it to be very vague. In fact, it was highlighted as particularly poignant by many. I felt no suspicion in their attitudes, no offense. Instead, I picked up reverence.

And so I learned that, even in writing for non-LDS people, sacred temple moments can be constructed in a way to carry respect and that sense of holiness they deserve. More importantly, though, I learned that it isn’t necessary–and is likely unwise–to provide more information than is needed. There’s no need to write out the ceremony. What the writer needs to do, however, is capture the emotional essence of the sacred, to write divine emotion, while writing openly about the most sacred of Mormon rites. The remainder of my posts on this topic will focus on enriching our craft for just this purpose.

Rather, what seems appropriate is discussion. There is a parable I tell every time I begin teaching a new class, be it a secular class or a religious one, the Parable of Convict Lake. For our honeymoon, my husband and I went fishing. Not extremely romantic, but affordable, especially considering we stayed at a condo my parents owned at Mammoth Lakes, California. One day, we decided to hit Convict Lake. Our drive took us down the mountain a bit, to a location less populated with pine and more infested with brown, scratchy brush. We parked in a small dirt lot, grabbed our gear, and hiked along a barely-worn path through the thigh-high brush, becoming thoroughly scratched along the way. All I could think was, “As far as honeymoon destinations go, this one sucks.” The landscape on this late summer day was brittle, dry, brown, and desolate. I was miserable.

Then we reached the lake. Convict Lake is an appropriate name. The thin row of trees that lined the shore did have a prison bar sort of feel to them, and the men huddled in the many alcoves between them seemed forlorn, abandoned, and not friendly at all. The open stretches of shore were likewise staked out. Across the lake, a mountain loomed straight up it seemed, an insurmountable wall. Fishermen in small boats drifted in the shadow, their lines also cast. Bret and I trudged from alcove to alcove to open area until we finally found a place without an “inmate” already fishing there. And we cast and we sat and we waited and we cast, sat, waited, and caught nothing and then more of nothing.

But as I sat, fighting mosquitoes, I contemplated the mountain across from me. In short order, it transformed from being something formidable to being something lyrical, even that very majestic ”purple mountain” in America’s favorite patriotic hymn. As I was waxing intellectually poetic, I noticed the fishermen in boats, floating at the foot of the mountain. While I sat in shorts and a t-shirt, the men in the mountain’s shadow huddled in down parkas and wore caps with flaps covering their ears. Epiphany! Those men were having a different experience than I was having. While I sat and thought how beautiful their side of the lake looked compared to mine, they were freezing. Slowly, I turned around, stood up, and looked over the weed-infested acres that stretched far down into the valley. Amber waves. . . well, okay, not of grain, but of prairie grass seed. Blue skies. Bright sunshine. What had left me hot, scratched, and uncomfortable probably looked quite inviting to the fishermen shivering in their boats.

I let my gaze circle the shoreline, taking in all the hidden alcoves filled with quiet fishermen, and I wondered, if I asked them to describe the lake we shared at that moment, what would they say. I realized every person there, by virtue of his/her position, would give a different description because they saw from a different perspective.

The gospel is, of course, like this lake. Although we all share the lake in common, we have taken different paths to get to it and are positioned to see some things and not see others. We need one another’s view point in order to gain the full picture. What’s more, my vantage is no more an advantage than any other person’s. We must share our experiences and insights in order to gain a fuller understanding.

This is the attitude I bring toward writing the Mormon sacred. I have no special craft trick that will, if applied by all, make the difficulty disappear. But I have learned a few things that worked for me and I’d like to share those. I have observed somethings that have worked for others and I’d like to share those. I’ve even chewed on some theoretical lunguistic reasons why these things work and look forward to discussion about that. I have no lectures in me and don’t want to hear lectures. I want to stand on my side of the lake and tell you what I see, and then I want you to stand on your side and tell me what you see.

Here’s my plan, for all the good planning seems to do me.  I’d like to keep any posts about writing the Mormon Sacred below 1,500 words (preferably about 1,000) in hopes of avoiding the horribly mental click that causes people to tune out. So, yes, if you feel as if you have more to say than a comment box can hold, I invite you to email me and we’ll see about guest-posting. Give me theoretical, craft, or critical takes on writing the Mormon Sacred and I’m a happy camper. I hope, off an on, to use this platform to demonstrate how to approach sacred things in each of these three modes.

For today, I think it best if I define the Mormon Sacred for the purposes of these discussions. Most obvious, of course, are the rites and rituals Latter-day Saints engage in within the walls of our temples. These include baptism and confirmation for those who’ve passed from this life without these benefits, washing and annointing, the new name, the holy endowment and familial sealings. For most mainstream Latter-day Saints, however, even the experiences had in the temple locker rooms, wash rooms, and cafeteria have a degree of sanctity associated with them by virture of their location within temple walls.

But the Mormon Sacred is much, much more than the “secretive” practices in the temple. Blessings, prayers, and even the extension of a calling may be considered sacred. Certainly, those moments when the tender mercies of heaven are extened via personal revelation, inspiration, or the comforting bestowal of a perfectly-timed blessing or insight is sacred. I think most Mormons would agree that the most sacred moments in their lives are also deeply personal; they are as likely to occur in the temple as in the car, driving to work. The Mormon sacred is communion with God, a genuine give and take between human and divine, a communication, a miracle. Capturing the import of this moment is a very difficult thing, precisely because of its intimacy.

We speak of the gift of the Holy Ghost as the conduit for this communion, and many of our faithful LDS writers prayerfully and sincerely approach their Father in Heaven for that gift as they write, hoping that, if they have the gift, somehow that gift will flow through their work and adequately represent the Mormon sacred. Perhaps this works.

But it seems that, for many readers, it may not, particularly if the reader is not of our faith, or does not have an expectation that such a thing can or will occur, or a desire for it to occur. To invoke Mormon Speak, a writer has no control over whether or not a reader will be “in tune to the promptings of the Holy Ghost.” We can’t expect or depend upon our readers to walk the same path the writer walked. This is why craft is vitally important. Writers have no control over the path any given reader has trod over his/her life, but we can control, using the immense lingquistic tool chest provided through socialization and culturalization, to craft a path for a reader to journey that is most likely to bring that individual to an understanding of the import and relevance of the Mormon Sacred.

I do not consider this the equivalent of bringing someone to the point of testimony. That job belongs to the Holy Spirit. My job, as a writer, is to bring readers–including non-believers–to an understanding of what sacred feels like, how it can change or influence a life, even the lives of rational people. Writers in the Age of Realism believed words had the potential to actually recreate a moment, to make a reality. I do not ascribe to that way of thinking. To me, words, sentences, paragraphs, stories are, at best, mirrors constructed to reflect something else. This philosophy does not require readers to accept that what is shown in the word-mirror is reality, but allows  them to examine, assess, and understand something without needing to pass a judgment on its reality or lack thereof. A non-believing reader should not have to pass judgement on Mormonisms truth claim in order to respect the Mormon Sacred.

I’m afraid I’ve hit my 1,500 word cap and must wind this up . . . with a tease. In future posts about writing the Mormon Sacred, I will consider the difference between writing stereotype and writing prototype, the power of syntactical choices, and even discuss how much religious writers can learn from those who craft horror stories.

Lastly, let me once again reiterate how much I want to hear of your experiences, or of things you have read that influenced your thinking. My desire remains to help move, in any way possible, Mormon literature into the national consciousness. We are a great team of thinkers and writers. We have a unique experience to share and, it seems to me, writing of our sacred moments has been a stumbling block we should strive together to overcome.

Most people who read fiction do so for emotional reasons. We seek emotion in the pages of our literature as a simplistic way of reaching out, even in the privacy of our homes; or maybe we pursue emotion in literature because of our own need to feel stroked, understood, valued. The intimacies of human life that, when shared, provoke our emotion are, indeed, sacred.

But for Mormon writers there is an added level to the intimacy of the sacred. When we speak of the sacred, we speak not only of the poignant connections between human beings, but between mankind and the divine. We have prayers, blessings, revelation, rites and ordinances–all of which are labeled sacred by our doctrine and are constrained in our discourse by tradition. But writing about the Mormon life without writing about these sacred things would be like writing about our earth without mentioning water.

We know this innately. The result is that many of our most gifted writers choose to either write for our own people, where the implied sacred is considered sufficient, or to encapsulate the Mormon sacred in mostly unrecognizable analogy, usually associated with some fantastical social construct no one will hold against the religion—or the writer. This may leave us with a Mormon literature that fails to be truly Mormon. Instead, we get rehashed national-type stories with Mormon elements. I’d point at my own story, “At Bay,” which was published in 2004 in Dialogue, as an example of this. The story is undeniably feminist—very much of the sort that might have come from any American woman writer in the 1970’s—with a few Mormon elements thrown in for good measure. At its core, however, the story, which revolves around the dissolution of a marriage, is not very Mormon. Where is the temple? The concept of eternal vows? Absent. The story, I suppose, works as a piece of American literature or Women’s literature. But Mormon? No.

“At Bay” was my first piece of “serious” LDS fiction and it is also the most dishonest of my writings. A few weeks back, Jack Harrell, the current co-editor of Irreantum, called on Mormon writers to write “weird.” By this he meant Mormon writers must be willing to examine the complexities of our life, religion, and culture, to find the things that make us stand out from the rest of the world. We aren’t like other people and, if our literature is to be honest, it must embrace this fact. Of course I don’t mean that the Mormon  experience lacks universality. Of course our experience as human beings is much the same as others. We live, we love, we suffer, we fear and hope, we die. But there are undercurrents to our experience that are uniquely Mormon, that make us different, and that may very well someday swirl Mormon literature to the surface of the world’s consciousness. For this to happen, though, Mormon writers must write our complexities, as Jack calls us to do, but we must do this with the courage of complete honesty. This honesty includes the way we approach the sacred.

I do not mean the type of bare-backed disclosure that poses as honesty in the typical journalist’s expose. I’m certainly not speaking of writing out the temple ceremony for the sake of writing out the temple ceremony. It is as dishonest to approach the Mormon sacred with a gratuitous heart as it is to avoid the  sacred altogether. Rather, when a writer senses the emotional need exists for the sacred to be broached, that writer should go forth with all the tenderness he or she feels. As a community of writers, we have spent too much time worrying about whether or not we will “get in trouble” for writing about sacred things. Yet every day we are expected to speak of sacred things, to bear our sacred testimony, to witness that God exists and that He loves us. Somehow, though, when we bring that testimony to life in the pages of a book or magazine, we fear. We fear because the dramatization of the sacred is often messy and imperfect. We fear some authority somewhere will take issue with the necessary coupling of sin and sacred. But if a writer truly writes the sacred, it isn’t retribution that will result, but a glory that belongs to God.

When I sat down to write “Clothing Esther,” a story found both in Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction and Best of Mormonism 2008, I knew I’d be writing about one of the most sacred experiences in Mormondom, namely the clothing of the dead for burial. I knew I’d have to deal with the temple to some degree, and certainly with the temple garment and clothing. I knew I have to speak of the kinds of things most mainstream Mormons hold close to their heart. I admit I was afraid that I’d go too far, but I was equally afraid I’d not go far enough. Week after week, I carried that story in to my writing group for critique and week-after-week, I fretted that the group members, all non-Mormons and mostly evangelical Christians, would show it disrespect. What I found instead was a deepening of the spirit at these meetings. What I learned was that if I give non-believing readers a raw, honest story about things that are very sacred to Mormons, those readers will respond in kind. They’ll “get it.” They’ll feel it as we feel it.

This is not about conversion, but connection. Writing the sacred is perhaps one of the most difficult things a Mormon writer can set out to do, but it is also one of the most fulfilling. It engenders an intimacy between strangers that reveals our true natures as divinely connected sons and daughters of God, all. We need not be afraid.

But how does one write the sacred? The answers to that could fill a How To book. I welcome you to share any thoughts on the matter in the Comment section. I will be expressing some of my thoughts on my limping-along blog, lisatorcassodowning.com,, after the holidays are clearly in my rear view mirror. So if you are a writer with an interest in the topic, please come visit. I will not be writing a follow-up on this blog because this is my final post. Like many of you, I struggle to carve enough time from my daily schedule to accomplish the writing I’d like to, so I’m cutting back on non-essentials. I’ve appreciated all those who have read and chimed in on my posts and will to continue participating as a commenter.

[Promise: Tues, Jan 10, I will give some of my thoughts on How-To write the Mormon Sacred.]
Read more about On Writing the Mormon Sacred | Dawning of a Brighter Day on: http://blog.mormonletters.org/?p=3631#comment-25450&utm_source=INK&utm_medium=copy&utm_campaign=share&

I’ve been wearing the fiction editor’s hat the last little bit. I’m busy working on Josh Allen’s edition of Irreantum with authors Mark Brown  (“The Iron Door”), Laura McCune-Poplin (“Anonymity”), and Darin Cozzens (“The Last Blessing of J. Guyman LeGrand”). In addition, it appears that one of the other finalists from this year’s Irreantum contest will be hearing from me soon as some space has opened for a fourth story. I’ll announce that once its finalized. I’m very excited to be able to include a 4th story.

Over on the Sunstone side of my fiction editing life, I’ve been working with Brett Wilcox on his story, “One Glass Ball.” I first “met” OGB in the now defunct online workshop, WorLDSmiths, created by D. Mike. That was several years ago and I’ve been watching the story evolve. Its fun that Brett finally found a publication venue by entering the Sunstone fiction contest, known as the Brookie and D.K. Brown Fiction Contest. This will be Brett’s first print publication. Brett’s stick-to-ive-ness has served him well. So keep working all you unpublished writers. Don’t give up. Rewrite. Get feedback and don’t be afraid of the contests.

Within the next few days  I’ll be writing a review on a delightful little memoir, Don’t Shoot the Gentile!, by James C. Work. It will appear on the AML-list, then I’ll repost it here. If there is someone on your Christmas list who likes short, funny reads, come back and check out the review.

I’ve been re-reading Dancing Naked too and want very much to talk about it and the unlikeable protagonist. Very interesting stuff.

Here in the month of NaNoWriMo I’ve done nowhere near enough writing. I spent some time on a short horror story I’m hoping to find a home for, but there’s been limited progress on the novel over the past two weeks. And with family storming in next week, I’m not especially hopeful. Whoever chose a holiday month to hold NaNoWriMo is crazy. I get less done this time of year, not more. Still I have several friends who have been rock stars this month with the volume they’ve produced. Its inspiring. Me? Well, I am holding firm to the committment to have the initial completed draft of the Holding Back the Moon “done” by the end of January. I may be fantasizing, but it still feels do-able. Thank God for after mid-night internet shopping this Christmas season!

And then he died. And the history lost some of that folksy charm. Some. Of course in Holding Back the Moon, the novel I’m working on, I skip all that bizarre, early 19th century “reality,” but I still have to deal with Nauvoo. I have to deal with the leaking knowledge of polygamy, the secrecy surrounding it. I’m finding it frustrating to write a historical Mormon world that is fact-based when so much is hidden. Oh, I can see what dates Joseph Smith proposes to Sidney Rigdon‘s daughter and what date his revelation on plural marriage is read aloud to the high council. I know when Bennet wrote exposes for non-LDS papers and what he said. I know all about the Nauvoo Expositor, why it was illegal, and how that lead to the martyrdom. I know all the peripheral happenings, but nothing I’ve read has really given me a sense of what the climate was like for the average Joe.

In other words, I don’t have a real “fall-back-on” sense of how the average citizen of Nauvoo took all this in.  Of how many people came to understand that the church leadership had been flat-out lying (or re-defining terms if you want to be especially kind) about polygamy. I love Orson Pratt‘s story–or at least what I have of it. Here was a guy with a pretty, young wife who’d been sent out out as a missionary. While he was gone, his wife is propositioned by Joseph Smith. Bennet is in there again, but I’m not sure how. As scapegoat? As intercessory? She freaks, refuses, tells her husband, who then learns of polygamy as an unofficial official doctrine. He wanders off, the myth says, with the intent of committing suicide because he is so distraught to learn the truth. The town turns out to find him, even though the majority of searchers have no idea why this apostle would be so upset. Of course, he wasn’t found tying a rope from a tree branch, but sitting on a rock. Not a cliff. A rock.

His story, though incomplete, seems to me to be a pretty darn good reflection of how most people might fee in his situation. But Mormon historical novels somehow gloss over the difficulty your average, run-of-the-mill Mormon would have had in accepting the truth of it all. Certainly, the accusations made by detractors could’ve been overlooked. At first. But after the prophet is slain? After more and more people–couples–are ambushed with marriage proposals? That to me is the intriguing part of this story.

And its the part I’m currently addressing as I write forward on HBM. I do wish I had a little more concrete evidence about what average Joes were thinking, suspecting in the post-martyrdom years. If anyone knows a source that will be helpful–something that isn’t focused solely on the leadership–I’d love to hear about it. As of this moment, my imagination (and I suppose intuition) is my key source.

***

I would like to give a shout out to Dialogue for its array of great Mormon history articles. Today I read Richard Van Wagoner’s  1995 article, “The Making of a Mormon Myth–the 1844 Transfiguration of Brigham Young.”  Of course I have to address the mantle-pass that occured after Joseph Smith’s death. This article gave me a great summation of the arguments made by Rigdon and Young, as well as the kind of concrete details a fiction writer needs. I’d found much conflicting information about this event and it was a pleasure to discover this article. Of course, discovering it means I have to throw out the last 1200 or 1400 words I’ve written. Shrug. It also means the next 1200 I write will be better, more believable and better suited to my writing strategy for this novel.

If its something I can do when the kids are home, I won’t do it during the day. During the day, I’m going to write. I added that just because I can do something in the evenings when they are home doesn’t automatically mean I will be doing that. The dishes may sit for days, in other words, if there are ball games or such to attend. Or if I’m just worn out. He nodded. He’s a good sport, if nothing else. He’s also very orderly. So far, after one week, our marriage remains in tact.

But the wonder of wonders is that this week I succeeded in generating approximately 7,000 new words when, on a good week previous, I might’ve gotten 2-4 pages of new material. Those 7,000 words don’t include the tweaks and rewrites I had to make because I discovered errors in my historical accounting. (Curse the blending of fact into fiction!) And still, I feel I wasted too much time. I cheated one morning when the cupboards ran bare by going to the grocery store. Another day, when my brain was starting to sting, I ran a few worthless errands. But generally speaking, I stuck to my goal and had the time of my life.

I have to say, I find it so much easier to write as a woman nearing 5o than I did as a younger woman. And I don’t mean its easier because there are less distractions. There aren’t. Or at least there haven’t been for me. What I mean is that writing is literally so much easier. The experience of writing and rewriting over a few decades pays offs. Now when I sit down, I know exactly what I want to achieve and I have learned the way to achieve it. There were days-way-back-when when I had to write a full story out in order to begin to understand what I wanted to say. Then I had to rewrite it. And then rewrite that rewrite. And on and on.

Sure, I still rewrite. As I said, this week I had some tweaks to make because some historical misinformation had sneaked into my historical subplot. But most of the rewriting I do occurs immediately, even sentence by sentence, because I have that much more control over the craft. I can’t wait to actually have this darn thing finished.

But I’ve also noticed that, in addition to simply having a better mastery of craft, my intuitive skills seem sharper. Whoever thought of intuition as a skill? But it is. I think. In my religious life, I speak of learning to recognize the promptings of the Spirit, to follow them as my guide. Of course, artists like to speak of their Muse, and many faithful artists are convinced the traditional Muse and the Holy Ghost are one and the same. Perhaps. My husband nurtures the idea that we have hidden in our subconscious, because of our pre-earth life, answers to many of the problems that will occur in our lives; it is up to us to tap into that subconscious and wisely (and bravely) follow it. I side with his thinking these days because the intuitive side of my writing often feels as if I am tapping into resolutions I already sensed.

Just yesterday, I wrote a scene that left me feeling this way. I had a clear and strong sense of how I wanted the scene to progress; I thought I knew where it would progress. And I wrote the scene very much by gut but implementing all the craftiness in my possession. It worked exactly as I wanted. I’m at a point in the manuscript where my protagonist, Joe Egbert, begins to sense that polygamy isn’t just a salacious rumor. I need him to discover this in a way that will ultimately allow the reader to accept his eventual acceptance. But the character’s initial reaction, I sense, should mirror the general public’s reactions–that of ill-ease and, perhaps, horror. It is undoubtedly the single most difficult part of the novel to craft. But I followed my intuition (after much thought, mind you) and wrote the scene. I won’t bore you with detail, but I wrote the scene expecting the character to leave his house and go visit Orson Pratt.

When I learned Orson Pratt wasn’t in Nauvoo at the time, I was thrown for a loop. While I had made conscious choices about how to craft the scene, the direction of the scene had been gut-directed. And now this total collapse? I considered how I could rewrite the scene so it ended differently, but my re-read convinced my this was precisely the passage that should happen next. This is what the character would do. This is what the reader needs next. In other words, my gut told me not to change the scene.

So I quieted my mind and soon realized the wealth that would open up to me by having the character visit Pratt’s wife instead of Pratt himself. Suddenly, the scene I’d just written, though a combination of craft and gut, had more bang for its buck than I’d imagined. The next scene and the next scene appeared to me, I’d say intuitively. A few years back I might’ve thought this accidental, but now I don’t. But quicker, also, than I remember having had such experiences in the past. I suppose  the improvement in my skills has given the Muse/Spirit/Intuition has a surer footing and so I hear from “it” more often. Turns out, the years of work have been worth it.

Years of work. <heavy sigh>

***

I haven’t forgotten my intention to write a few words on ambiguity and endings. Just haven’t completely formed those thoughts…since I’m working hard on my own writing. I’m in the process of rereading Dancing Naked, after having received a FB msg from the author. I hope to discuss this novel soon. But its baseball season. My son is playing in a city league, and as long as the Ranger’s keep winning, I won’t be doing much reading.