Choices

by Kasey Tross

Yesterday morning before the Sunday Morning Session of the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began, I took a few moments to write down some questions I hoped to find the answers to during conference that day. 

One of my questions was this: "How can I stay motivated to continue writing and finish my novel?" 

Imagine my surprise and humble gratitude when my question was answered during the first thirty seconds of the first talk by the first speaker- who happened to be the prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, no less. 

He said, 

"It has been said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people’s lives. The choices we make determine our destiny." 

For some reason, the thought of a big, heavy door, and those small hinges, and the choices I make each day suddenly opened my eyes. I make a thousand tiny decisions each day, and how many of them impact my writing? How many times do I choose to hop on Facebook rather than work on my writing? Or watch TV at night instead of write? Or do ANYTHING to put off writing? 

Choices are small. They are simple. And as we know, "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." Entire books are written. Or, in my case, not written.

At the end of the day I got even more added encouragement from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, who told me, 

"Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever."

He told me I don't have to be perfect, I just have to keep trying. Even if I don't succeed, trying still counts.

But if I'm not trying- well, to paraphrase a movie I watched the other day, you'll always miss the shots you never even take, right?

So today I'm going to commit to oiling my hinges and making sure that door of my destiny is pushed wide open by the choices I make every day. 

Care to join me? Let's meet back up here tonight for a writing sprint. I need all the motivation I can get. 9pm EST- that's 7pm for you Utahns. ;-)

Let's go! Heaven is cheering us on!

Anne Shirley and the Personal Essay

- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay

Note: I’m currently enjoying a class wherein I get to hang out with teenagers each week and critique/talk about one another’s writing. A recent assignment was to write a personal essay. This, with some minor adaptations, is mine.

It was a beautiful spring evening. The sun was just beginning to set across the valley. David* and I sat on a picnic blanket, a romantic meal spread before us, with my favorite building on campus gracefully reaching up behind us. A mysterious book whose title I had not seen was settled on the blanket beside David. This was some seriously movie-quality ambience.

I grabbed another grape and popped it in my mouth to appear at ease, but my palms were sweating.

And then.

Then he opened the book and started reading . . . poetry.

The version of my brain that was still in fifth grade pretty much swooned. Here was this wonderful guy reading me love poems! Scenes from L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series swept through my brain, reminding me of all those hours I’d immersed myself in characters who ran around quoting obscure poets like they’d learned it from the womb. This was my very own Royal Gardner here (though, sadly, “David” was a much more prosaic name than “Royal”).

Perfect, yes?

But Anne does not end up with Roy. Thank heavens she grows up, gets a clue, and gets together with Gilbert Blythe.

Yes, I realize this is Morgan Harris, not Roy Gardner. But
since Roy doesn't actually exist in the movies at all, and
Morgan is pretty much the Roy stand-in, this will have to do.

 Sitting in the middle of this perfect scene, I felt something rise within me out of nowhere. It was . . . a giggle. I choked it down. A boy’s ego can only handle so much. So I held it together, attempting a level of composure that would have made Anne proud. But inside I knew, just as Anne had known, that Roy/David was not for me. I had tried, for his sake, but I already had my own Gilbert.

Anne was not the first character to appear in my life like this, nor was she the last. William Goldman’s narrative self in The Princess Bride made me want to stand up and clap when he realized life isn’t always fair. Bean from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow books helped me to feel a little less alone when I realized I suffered from a problem similar to his: too much intellect, not enough heart. Keturah, Richard III, Tiffany Aching, Javert, even the hopelessly dysfunctional Gene Forrester—something in their stories touched my own.

Every time the written word resonates with me, I am once again swept away into a different world. Sometimes the words explain something that I’d been trying to explain to myself. Sometimes they reveal a truth that I needed to accept. Some words have just released me from reality for an hour or two, giving me something fun and new and different. But I am always grateful that they exist. And this is why I write. Because of those authors who somehow tapped something important for me. Because I hope to do the same.

The stories we tell are more than reality. They take the details and the facts, and they strip them away, leaving behind something pure, true, universal. They can make us better. The best stories last in our hearts and our minds far beyond the specific words. The best characters step into our lives and change the way we see the world.

I didn’t want a Roy Gardner with his perfect movie setting. I wanted a Gilbert, someone to stick by my side when I was ridiculous, to understand when I was upset. And yes, he does, in fact, feed me grapes and read me the occasional poetry—but he doesn’t mind when I giggle.

* The poor man’s name has been changed to protect the innocent. He is still a friend, and he is a truly fantastic guy. He’s married now—to the right woman for him, someone who suits him way better than I would have—with some seriously adorable kids. I can safely say that we’re both happy with how things turned out.

Mid-November

-a post by Jeanna Mason Stay (who has written absolutely nothing of interest on her writing blog since the dawn of time . . . and yet, she continues to link you to it)

I tend to write blog posts that are way too long, and then I have to slash them a great deal. And then they are only sort of too long. Well, in one of my editing rounds for my last blog post, I cut out a part where I said that since my next post (this one) would be in the middle of NaNoWriMo, it would probably look something like this:

“Well, it’s the middle of November, and I have nothing brilliant to say because all of my brain power has been sucked up by trying to get through this stinking novel. So, um, have a great day!”

And that was going to be it.

Well, I’m happy to say that now it’s the middle of November, and I pretty much have nothing brilliant to say because all of my brain power has been sucked up by trying to write this really atrocious novel that maybe has some seeds of awesomeness that are really deeply buried in manure. (At least that’s a good thing, I suppose—seeds in manure should theoretically grow really well, right?)

So, um, have a great day!*

*And because this is probably the dorkiest post ever, I will supplement it with someone else’s motivational awesomeness. Someone recently shared this with me, and it was a wonderful reminder of one thing it takes to be great. My favorite part: “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” So go forth! Begin again, fail again, succeed again. In writing, and in life.

P.S. In other news, I’m barely keeping up with my NaNo schedule, despite having started off with a bang. For various reasons, it turned out to be a rough time to write a novel. But still plugging along—because something is better than nothing.

And how are you all doing?

Some Motivation For You

If you are a NaNo writer this year, I hope you are deep in the trenches of NaNoWriMo, slogging through your 1,667 words per day and loving it (I have no idea if I am or not, because I am writing this way ahead of time, getting all my other obligations out of the way so I can NaNo properly... we'll see how it works out). 


If you are not a NaNo writer, I am so very sorry that we keep bombarding you with NaNo-related posts (actually - I have no idea if we are doing this or not, because I'm writing this way ahead of time, blah, blah, blah). 

But wherever you are in the writing process, whether you are NaNoing or not, I'm sure you could do with a little motivation, yes? Here goes: 

And lastly:

PS - You can pin all these images on pinterest :) 

Start Your Engines

- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay

It’s the middle of October, and for a lot of aspiring novelists, that means we’ve officially started the countdown. Not to Halloween or Thanksgiving or even Christmas. No, we’re counting down to NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in one month.* Even if you don’t finish, you may end up with far more words in that one month than you usually make. 

Do you like how my technological capacities never extended
to figuring out how to put my name and the title of my work
into this certificate? This is why I'm a writer, not a techie.

I have now participated for three years and “won” twice (winning means you hit 50,000 words). It is exhilarating (and you know you’re a geek when typing for hours gives you an adrenaline rush). There is no time for editing, for nitpicking, for worrying. There is only the writing, only the waves of words flowing onto the page. To be truthful, a lot of them will get trashed. But some will be gems. Some will get your story unstuck. Some will help you think about your characters and plots in new ways. Some will be deeper and stronger than anything you would have come up with if you weren’t so fully immersed for a month.

NaNoWriMo does require a bit of commitment, and it can be a completely crazy month, but it is manageable. Let’s do the numbers, shall we?

Let’s say you average 30–40 wpm (this is actually rather fast for writing your own prose, but also possible). That means you need about 21–28 hours to write during the month of November. Assuming you don’t work on Sundays or Thanksgiving, that really puts you around 1–1.5 hours per day.

Here’s how you manage it: You get up an hour earlier. After scripture study (because, hey, you still gotta do the most important stuff first), you go directly to the computer. You do not shower yet, you do not eat. YOU DO NOT CHECK YOUR EMAIL OR FACEBOOK OR ANYTHING ELSE. You write write write like mad. You never erase. When your kids wake up, inevitably earlier than they’re supposed to, you take a little break to take care of them (or make them fend for themselves for a few more minutes).

You send your kids to school and write. Or, if your kids are at home, you send them to their room to play on their own for half an hour. You can get at least 1,000 words done in half an hour, if you hurry. You write while they do their homework. You send them to their friends’ houses to play.

If you can, you have your husband put the kids to bed, and you DO NOT CLEAN. You write. You cash in on babysitting favors as often as necessary. You have friends who understand the need for alone time. They will watch your kids for a while. You will write. You will cash in on all accumulated good-wifey points.** You will explain to your husband why this matters to you so much—that writing is a talent, and you’re simply being a good disciple of Christ by embracing the parable about multiplying your talents. Your husband will take the kids out to a few more parks and playdates in the evenings, and you will write.*** Saturdays are great too—you can catch up and get ahead in only a few hours.

You will also take lots of extra vitamins. Because when you inevitably get sick in the middle of November, you will need to kick it quickly and get back to work. In the meantime, while you are looking miserable and pathetic, have your hubby or a good friend make you some soup while the kids play in the other room and you . . . you guessed it . . . WRITE! Then, after you’ve finished your quota for the day, you can lie pathetically on the couch and watch Pride and Prejudice and eat chocolate.

See all the good that will come from NaNoWriMo? So it’s time to start revving the writing engines. Is anyone else preparing for the madness?

* This is about 200ish pages of an average paperback novel.

** We don’t really keep track of these at our house, but I do certainly cash in. The month of October is for accumulating them: clean the house a little more, make some special dinners, do a little more . . .  whatever, so that your family knows you love them before you hide in your writing cave for a month.

*** My husband and kids discovered every park within a 20-mile radius during previous Novembers. Isn’t this great father/child bonding time? Or grandparent/child? Or neighbor/child? Aren’t you an excellent woman for giving them this wonderful opportunity?