I keep wanting to write the follow up post to my rants about crafts, but blogging is not really the best medium for what I have to say. Ah well. Let me just say this: that when I listened in the Relief Society General Meeting to President Eyring speak of the history of the Relief Society, I began to see more clearly. I thought about all the years where Relief Society bazaars were held–every year, that was how they raised money, because correlation hadn’t happened yet, and the RS budget was separate. So the women who belonged (and not everyone did belong; you had to pay dues. You could be a female adult member of the Church and not a member of the Relief Society.) would spend all year making things to sell, and then sell them at the giant bazaars, and use the proceeds to fund their budgets for the year.

And we don’t do that anymore. For which I am grateful. But on this particular occasion, listening to President Eyring, and thinking about the history of the Relief Society and the cause we were crafting for, it made sense.

This is another reason why whining about Church assignments is lame, because when you [by which I mean me] don’t whine and just do what you’re supposed to, then when you look back at the big picture and understand things, you don’t have to eat crow. But when you do whine, you either a-can’t see the big picture because you are so fixated on your original whine that you’re blinded to its truth, or b-can see the big picture, but would rather not admit it because it’s embarrassing to be wrong.

And I was.

And with that, I think that I am once again done posting on this blog for a good long while. I am planning to start a new blog/website at some point, and I will post here and on Facebook when I do and let people know about it. Thanks for checking in, everyone.

This is my last Segullah issue as Associate Editor. I was so glad when Kathy and the Segullah board decided that Gifts of the Spirit would be our theme, because every essay I’ve written could fit into that category: Finding Myself on Google, Beauty for Ashes, Daily Bread, and now Tongue of Angels, all center around spiritual gifts.* I think, based on the kind of submissions we received, that I must think of spiritual gifts in a different/weird way. For me, gifts of the Spirit are more about receiving divine wisdom to cope with my current need, than about … spiritual confirmations of truth. Confirmation of truth is part of them, I guess, but I see spiritual gifts as going above and beyond testimony confirmation. I think they help you live better, align yourself with divine currents better.

My favorite piece in this issue is one of our feature articles, my aunt Barbara’s great piece on dreams as spiritual gifts. It’s so good. I don’t always pay attention to my dreams, but when I do I learn important things about myself. I love that dreams are such a part of LDS culture. You hear dream stories in conference fairly often, and, based on Barbara’s research, this is unique among American Protestant faiths.

I am also a fan of the other essays and poems, and especially the art. Leslie Graff, our featured artist, is one of the kindest people I know, and her art reflects that deep sense of connection with each other and with God.

Go check it out online! The print edition is sold out, but you can subscribe to our next issue, which will be a double issue featuring both contest winners and writing with a dating/marriage/courtship theme. I am taking a break from editing this time around, and it’s been a good thing for me. I still blog there once a month, though.

*Google is about the gift of mothering; Beauty for Ashes about appreciating the gift of creating beauty (and creating it myself); Daily Bread about the gift of being able to eat food on my mission; and Tongue of Angels is about the gift of angelic visitations. Most of these are not listed in D&C 46 or Moroni 10, but I see them as gifts anyway.

Lately I’ve been a whiner. I think that blogging has something to do with this, because I’ve discovered a community of like-minded people who agree with me that Doing Crafts is not an essential principle of the gospel. And while I really appreciate the support, I think that if I’d gone through this thirty or forty years ago I would have just done the craft without the whining.

I made a big point to myself when I was a missionary about not whining. Not so much as a greenie, when I was so overwhelmed that all the emotion had to come out. But I tried not to whine, and by the end of my mission I was pretty good at taking what the Lord dealt me and not complaining. Not so much anymore, though.

It’s the difference between Nephi and Laman and Lemuel. Laman and Lemuel really get a bad rap, IMO. Maybe it’s all those death threats against Nephi. No really though, they all start out in the same place: they’re all leaving Jerusalem because of their father’s vision, and they’re all bugged about it. Nephi prays to have his heart softened, and L&L keep whining about having to leave.

So you see the dangers of whining, the ultimate consequences of whining left unchecked: a total blindness to truth.

But whining is funny. I’ve gotten several laughs out of that crafts line. Plus whining makes me feel better about not doing something I dislike.

It does blind me though. A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, including one’s dislike of glue guns (they always burn me), never has power sufficient to save the souls of man.

Robison Wells has posted about a couple of new rules for the Whitneys:

1-there will be no finalists for Best Novel and Best Novel by a New Author, so that the books nominated in that category will not automatically skew the voting for the genre categories, and
2-Everyone has to read all the books they vote about, and check a box saying that they’ve done so.

Makes sense to me.

And now, Whitney-eligible books I’ve read so far this year (not enough, I’m sure; I was scrambling to read them all last time), with a brief assessment:

Warbreaker. Brandon Sanderson. Brilliant, of course. I loved it. Should Brandon Sanderson be eliminated from consideration if he wins too often? Just wondering. It hardly seems fair to anyone else writing in the science fiction category.
The Princess and the Bear, Mette Ivie Harrison. Oh this is a good book. It started slow for me, but I ended up loving it. Elegant writing.
Princess of the Midnight Ball, Jessica Day George. This was cute; I found myself wanting a couple more layers, but it was a fun read.
The Hourglass Door, by Lisa Mangum. A quick Google search on reviews reveals that most people compare it to Twilight, and that’s exactly what I thought of it–it seemed to be a new take on Twilight themes, with a teenage girl falling for a handsome and unkissable stranger.
Tower of Strength, by Annette Lyon. Love the strong female protagonist! Go Tabitha! May all the other historical fiction nominees be this much fun. Or maybe not quite this much fun.
The Chosen One, Carol Lynch Williams. Oh my this is a haunting book, but the writing is stunning, and everyone should read it. With a box of kleenex.
Brandon Mull, Fablehaven 4–my son loves these. I enjoy them too, although I am not quite the fervent fan he is.

On my to-read Whitney eligible list:
Shannon Hale’s books, The Actor and the Housewife, and Forest Born.
Ann Dee Ellis, Everything is Fine.
Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz #3 (not released yet)
J. Scott Savage, Farworld: Land Keep
James Dashner, 13th Reality #2, and his other new book out from Delacourt
Dan Wells, I am not a serial killer.
Josi Kilpack, English Trifle
***
That’s what I come up with off the top of my head. I know there are plenty more eligible books out there, but these are the ones I am probably going to read (and possibly even shell out money for) before all the nominees are announced.

Edit to correct the title of The Chosen One (blush). At some point I will probably stick in a bunch of links as well.

What are you reading now? I know I’m missing out on some great titles.

Why are Mormon women supposed to do crafts? Is there something inherently divine about the doing of crafts? This is something I am struggling with right now, because I’ve been asked to make a sale-worthy craft to donate.

Here’s the thing: I have never in my life made a craft that I would ever ask anyone to pay for. Even that blanket I took a picture of, which turned out pretty cute, is not saleable. Why? If you look at it, and you don’t have to look close, the stitching is crooked, and the corners aren’t quite right. I would make it and give it to someone, because the person I gave it to would say “Aww, Emily made this, and she doesn’t even sew very well. Bless her heart. It’s soft, and my baby won’t mind that it’s not perfect.” And I really would feel my heart being blessed.

But ask someone to shell out money for it? Heck no. And the same is true of every other craft I’ve ever made in my life. I don’t mind doing crafts at Enrichment nights. I like working on a project and chatting. But if I don’t get it done that night, I never finish it on my own. I threw away an old box of Enrichment crafts from the early nineties. When I do finish a project, it’s rarely good-looking enough that I would want to display it in my own home, let alone say “hey! pay money for this!” Besides, crafts get dated easily; in ten years all the vinyl lettering that’s so popular now will go the way of Relief Society glass grapes.

I admire and respect the women who made this request, which is why I will humiliate/humble myself in attempting to make a pathetic little contribution. But I guess I chafe at being forced into a craft-mold. I’m okay when other women do crafts. I am even okay doing them myself, as long as someone else figures out the project and shows me how and doesn’t evaluate the final result. I just struggle with mandatory sale-worthy crafts.

I spent two minutes searching for a blog mocking bad crafts, but I couldn’t find the one I was looking for, so I gave it up (the internet has shortened my attention span). But here is my kind of maudlin blog from Segullah about mean girls and charity.

I fell down in yoga today, several times, when I was trying to do crow. I cannot fall quietly. I scream and then it messes up the breathing of everyone around me. I am new to yoga. I am, predictably, pretty bad at it. But I’m enjoying it. It fills my tae kwon do void, and my leg is just not up to the pivots and kicks of tae kwon do yet.

So my instructor says I am supposed to breathe through falling, and not scream, but I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve never been able to breathe through falling. I hate falling. I have always hated falling. I can’t breathe through it. I anticipate falling with tension, and when it happens I scream, and it takes me a while to get back up again.

There are larger life lessons in this, I know–this inability to fall with grace, to breathe through the fall, shows up in just about every other area of my life. I dread falling and then react badly when it happens, as it inevitably does.

I hate it when a good book swears swears a lot. It hurts my brain and my spirit to swim through a lot of language muck. I don’t know how much of this is a Mormon cultural thing. But my bias in reading favors books that are story honest without necessarily being true-to-life in their language.

Is that a contradiction in terms? I don’t think so. In fact, according to Robert McKee (Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting), writers place too much importance on words as story building-blocks, rather than events:

[W]riting also demands two singular and essential talents. These talents, however, have no necessary connection. A mountain of one does not mean a grain of the other. The first is literary talent–the creative conversion of ordinary language into a higher, more expressive form, vividly describing the world and capturing its human voice. Literary talent is, however, common. … The second is story talent–the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. Pure story talent is rare. (Story page 27)

In another place, he says (I paraphrase; I can’t find the quote right now, but when I find it I will come back and replace this) that too many writers believe that their stories are made up of words. No; stories are made up of events.

And the final McKee quote:

The “personal story” is understructured, slice-of-life portraiture that mistakes verisimilitude for truth. This writer believes that the more precise his observation of day-to-day facts, the more accurate his reportage of what actually happens, the more truth he tells. But fact, no matter how minutely observed, is truth with a small “t.” But “T” truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed. Because this writer sees only what is visible and factual, he is blind to the truth of life. (Story 24)

I have heard an argument in favor of including swearing that goes something like this: Real people talk this way, characters need to be real people, therefore they need to talk this way, or else they will not ring true, and no one will believe they are real.

The problem with this argument, I realize after reading McKee, is that the truth of a character is much more about what the character does than the words the character chooses to express himself. Based on the idea that verisimilitude can actually blind us to the truth of life, you could make a case for cutting most (if not all) bad language from many stories. I will concede that a choice word may be necessary on occasion (Rhett Butler and Lady MacBeth agree there). But I really can’t think of too many stories I’ve ever read that have had their story truth enhanced by abundant bad language. I suspect that it’s actually a crutch: it’s much easier to fill a character’s mouth with swear words and call it real than than to create a real, believable character whose actions are True, whether or not the words are true to life.

Disclaimers: 1-The McKee book is fabulous. And, ironically, contains some bad language here and there. Sharlee Glenn introduced me to the joy of inking out swearing; it’s very satisfying.
2-McKee never advocates limiting swearing; this analysis is mine.

This is the adventure of my baby blanket sewing. Before I begin, let me state that I can sew straightish lines. That is all. Every so often I get the urge to use my amazing ability to sew straightish lines and actually make something. The last few times, it’s been one of those minkie baby blankets that have mitered corners (ooh! ahhh!) and are pretty easy to sew together, after just one crucial step is complete: both pieces of fabric, the flannel and the minkie, must be perfectly square. If they are not perfectly square, the blanket turns out like the reject blanket in my son’s dresser. That one I made last time I got the sewing urge, and it was so misshapen upon completion that I ended up keeping it and making a whole nother one. I should donate it to a shelter or something. They could use it. But then, I would feel bad about donating something that looks like that, even if it is soft.

The last few times I’ve made these, I have spent hours and hours trying to square fabric. I get it almost there, and then I measure and it’s not right, so I cut it smaller. The fabric gets smaller and smaller as I attempt to make it more and more square, till finally I give up and realize that no blanket is going to happen at all this way, so I take whatever squareness I’ve got and try to turn it into a blanket.

But this time was going to be different. Because I have an amazing super sewing genius in my ward, and when I was whining about this to her she kindly offered to help me square fabric anytime. So I called her, and went over that very morning, and left triumphant, with my fabric all squared, and the comforting knowledge that even a sewing expert can get just a bit frustrated when squaring fabric. Just a bit, though; she was on top of it. (It did occur to me, though, that “square” and “swear” rhyme. For a reason, I say.)

I got home, I sewed almost an entire blanket, and then on the last overstitch I realized that it had huge buckling problems and so I unpicked the whole thing. And then, worse still, I realized that I had neglected to prewash my lovingly squared fabric. Having committed this sin before, I know that unprewashed fabric becomes distorted the first time it gets washed. So I washed all my nicely squared fabric, for the blanket I had sewn and the others I planned to make. And then I had to square it again, myself (I was too embarrassed to call her).

But it turned out! In spite of my imperfect squaring, it turned out!

And now the sewing urge has passed. Whew.

(note: I should mention that the blanket pictured is not the one I had already sewn almost all of. That fabric… still needs help. But at least this one turned out.)

In an earlier post, found both here and here, I talked about how good writing is honest, and allows the reader agency. I would like to add another point to that: good writing also allows its characters agency, meaning that it allows them the freedom to make bad choices (sometimes really bad choices) and experience fully their consequences.

That is also a supremely Mormon doctrine: our agency existed in the pre-earth life, and part of the reason we followed Heavenly Father’s plan was so that we would be allowed to keep our agency, and not be forced to be good.

You see the parallel I’m going for, I’m sure, but I’m going to talk about it a little more anyway. I think it’s kind of ironic that, even though allowing full expression of agency is a core part of our theology, inherent in the most basic outline of the Plan of Happiness, there can be a tendency among some LDS writing to either 1-not allow their characters to make bad choices when faced with a moral dilemma, or 2-not allow their characters to really feel the weight of the consequences of those choices.

Now, sometimes writers get around this dilemma by having their LDS characters face problems created by others. The Mormons do not make bad choices themselves, and all the problems in their lives are the result of others’ bad decisions. While this preserves the illusion that these characters are perfect people, the problem here is that no one has a life free from self-created problems. No one. It is not an honest portrayal of characters, and the conflict is all external. And the characters here are living out one of the great lies: if you are a good person, you will never make choices that contribute to your own unhappiness. The only unhappiness you experience will come from the way other people hurt you. But this is false; we all experience unhappiness as a result of bad decisions we’ve made. And we do ourselves, our literature, and our doctrine a disservice when the primary opposition Mormons in novels face is created by people who don’t like Mormons.

So, if a novel does not allow its characters to make tough choices themselves, and then experience their consequences (not just the consequences of others’ bad decisions), then … that’s Satan’s plan: compelling all to be good.

I would add to this the idea I expressed here, which is that choices and consequences can also follow the conventions for the genre. Meaning that the moral dilemmas a teenager resolves in a light teen romance are going to be different than those an adult makes in a mystery/thriller, which will in turn be different from those resolved in a work of historical fiction. But in each of these genres, there is plenty of room for characters to be faced with moral dilemmas, choose badly (but still stay true to character), and then deal with the consequences.

What concerns me, though, is the idea that LDS fiction should portray its LDS characters as above the fray, as though being Mormon made it so that they always made good choices, always perfectly implemented the things they have been taught. If our own scriptures allow our heroes to write irate letters to innocent people (Moroni to Pahoran), wrestle with deep anger and resentment against murderous brothers (2 Nephi 4, Nephi to Laman and Lemuel), and choose to deliberately disobey God’s counsel in the face of peer pressure (Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, 116 pages), why should our literature save its Mormon protagonists from making these and other errors, and fully experiencing the results of their decisions? Not only does forcing Mormon protagonists to be perfectly good make less effective writing, it also denies them agency.

In LDS fiction, more than any other place, we ought to portray a moral universe that reflects our deepest core doctrine: we are moral agents unto ourselves.

I just finished this book, about a high school girl who is alienated from her evangelical peers because (spoilers, I’m all about them) she writes a letter apologizing to a gay boy who commits suicide after they try to convert him. Post-alienation, she makes friends with a fan of their amazing wonder science teacher, and clashes with her previous pals as that science teacher teaches evolution instead of intelligent design.

I liked it; it made me think. About Mormons, and all our varying views on evolution. And about the way it’s so easy to treat people badly because that somehow proves that you are righteous and they are not. The romance was very well done; nice zing, and it was my very favorite kind of romance in all the world, even better than the Darcy Pride and Prejudice plot done well: it’s the kind where the guy and girl are friends first, real friends, and they are kind, and they don’t lie to each other or play stupid tricks, and then finally they get the courage to tell each other how they feel and they fall in love. What does that romance sound like? Hmmm? Oh, that’s right. Real life! I love it when art imitates life.

Here are my questions about it: 1-Why are parents of teens so often distant from them in YA books? Is it genre convention? Is it the need for an antagonist and parents are just the most likely villain? Is it that teens and parents are notorious for not getting along? Or a combination of all three?

Every time I read about bad teen/parent relationships, it makes me sad. I had some tiffs with my parents as a teenager, but overall they were good to me and I knew it. I guess that makes for no story, though. In the writing I am contemplating right now, the protagonist is estranged from her father. And I realize it’s been done to death, but ah well.

2-I really wish the author, Robin Brande, had done a bit more to make her evangelical villains more well-rounded, more likeable. She did allow one of them, Bethany, to be sincere, with a good heart. But I think more of them had a good heart, or at least good intentions, than she allowed us to see. By portraying all the evangelicals as nutty publicity-hound closed-minded posturing idiots, except for one sincere one, she undermines Mena’s struggle. Wouldn’t it be even harder for Mena to leave her group of friends if we’d been shown a little more kindness between them? Wouldn’t it be harder for Mena to accept their fundamental closed-mindedness if she had seen some true goodness? And why would Mena’s parents have been duped for so long into believing in this pastor who was such a jerk if he had not had some goodness in him as well, or at least attempts at goodness?

I feel that a more nuanced portrayal of the evangelicals would have strengthened the book a great deal. Yes, they can still be closed-minded, they can still be the villains in the end, but grant them a bit more redeeming value, is what I say. I speak as a devout Mormon, and as someone who hopes that when writers depict my faith and culture, they take the time to paint a layered picture of us, not just a one-note song. I think Robin Brande is talented enough that she could have brought more depth to her villains, had she so chosen.

It’s worth reading, though. Reminded me also of the talk my brother just gave on balancing religion and science at BYU’s Life Sciences commencement. He quoted President Eyring’s father, the scientist Henry Eyring, something to this effect (I paraphrase): “God, who created the heavens and the earth, knows about evolution, and is apparently not disturbed.” I love that.