Mormon Lit Blitz Round-Up Discussion

Jeanna Mason Stay--author of 2012 Lit Blitz finalist "No Substitute for Chocolate"--requested that we put up a post for discussing the Lit Blitz as a whole. So after you've read the eleven finalists and thought about who to vote for, we'll hope you put in your proverbial two cents one last time.

We're not necessarily interested in hearing you campaign for a favorite piece (your facebook page is a far more effective place to do that), but would love to hear your thoughts and reactions to the Lit Blitz as a whole.

What has made the event worth your attention?

What will stick with you from this year's pieces and comments?

Which pieces have you shared and/or talked about with friends?

What would you like to see more of in Mormon Lit?

2013 Mormon Lit Blitz Voting Instructions

We have enjoyed the work of all eleven finalists. But we only have one Grand Prize. Help us decide which piece wins this year's Lit Blitz by emailing a ranking of your four favorite pieces to everydaymormonwriter@gmail.com by the end of the day on Friday, May 31.

The contestants are as follows:

"Actionable Intelligence" by Jonathon Penny

"Regimen" by Scott Hales

"Celestial Terms" by Sarah Dunster

"The Accidental Jaywalker" by Ben Crowder

"Dumb Idols" by Hillary Stirling

"Sister" by Merrijane Rice

"Kayden Abernathy's Journal Page 35-37, Partially Recovered from the House Fire 6/21/2013" by Steven Peck

"Natural Coloring" by Marianne Hales Harding

"Birthright" by Emily Harris Adams

"In Which Eve Names Everything Else" by Katherine Cowley

"When I Rise" by Kimberly Hartvigsen

Again: by the end of the day on May 31st, we would love to get an email with your ranking of your four favorite pieces. Please send to everydaymormonwriter@gmail.com

When I Rise

As I gaze in the mirror,
the stretch marks and scars
of my life before me,
a silent presentation

of my love and work remains.

How will I look when I am perfected?

"When I Rise" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:

In Which Eve Names Everything Else

Eve: What’s that?
Adam: A dove.
Eve: And that?
Adam: A squirrel.
Eve: That squirrel looks different than that one. Are you sure they’re the same thing?
Adam: That one’s a squirrel, and that one’s a chipmunk.
Eve: You really did name everything.
Adam: God told me about lots of things, like the trees and the flowers. Then He told me to name all the animals.
Eve: Did you name yourself?
Adam: No, God named me.
Eve: Adam, if we ever find something that doesn’t have a name, can I name it?
Adam: We’re not going to find anything else, Eve.
Eve:      But if we ever do find something, can I name it?
Adam:  Sure.

"In Which Eve Names Everything Else" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:

Birthright

Little reflections of all the good that came before you
flitter across your newly-minted self.
You are a pinkened version of your grandfather,
and father, and me.

"Birthright" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:

Natural Coloring

When you dress conservatively and your hair is blue, people look at you.
Timid (but cool) people tell you they envy you.
Children on the playground believe you when you tell them you ate too many blue Jolly Ranchers.
Your mother, bless her, is scandalized.

"Natural Coloring" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:

Kayden Abernathy's Journal Pages 35-37 Partially Recovered from the House Fire 6/21/2013

refuses to come over. I know what I know. The woman is a witch. She even looks like one. Seriously. She's got wild tangley hair and a hooked nose like something out of a fairytale and she is mean but it's not those things that makes me know she is a witch it is her eyes. They are full of evil. It's like the devil looking at you.

"Kayden Abernathy's Journal" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:  

Sister

You swallow sorrow
like knives slicing
down to your heart.

I want to gather you,
press the pieces together,
stanch the bleeding—

but I fear you like
a wounded animal.
Will you whimper or snarl,
snap or cower,
cringe at my touch?

I circle,
reach out,
offer my crumbs,

try to slip in
and shift the burden
sideways.



Author Bio
Merrijane earned a B.A. in English at BYU. She then served for 18 months in the Washington, D.C. North mission at the LDS Temple Visitors' Center. After returning, she married Jason Rice, and together they are raising a family of four boys in Kaysville. Currently, she works for Deseret Mutual in the Media Development department as a technical writer and editor. Her poetry has been published in the Ensign, New Era, Segullah, and Panorama (an annual publication of the Utah State Poetry Society). 

Join us for a discussion of "Sister" here.  

"Sister" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:  

Dumb Idols

Frankincense and tobacco – a sweet scent and a bitter fume – the mingled offerings of earthen gods. Baal. Dagon. Isis. Athena. They all had their images, idols to remind us mere mortals of their presence. But the Living God, we are told, made living images - male and female - as vessels of the breath of heaven on Earth. It is part of human nature, part of the mud we’re made of, to honor and love the living images, reflections of Deity. I was born to worship my archetypal idols of Mother and Father, and from infancy I revered them, too innocent to know my error.

"Dumb Idols" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:  

The Accidental Jaywalker

I accidentally jaywalked today
I didn’t mean to
I was thinking about tithing
Okay, I wasn’t thinking about tithing
There was a girl
A nice-looking girl
Down the way
She crossed the street

"The Accidental Jaywalker" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:

Celestial Terms

You love me in algebra—
D + d = L to the Nth degree,
and I love you in quarter notes—
a fierce appoggiatura and a soft, high C.
We loved each other then in
a jumble of chords using mostly black keys,
in square roots, and Pi with ice cream,
and the straining of infinity.

"Celestial Terms" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:  

Regimen

Two weeks before the pool party, Wyler began a strength training regimen. For fifteen minutes every other day, he did twenty-five stomach crunches and two reps of ten push-ups with the intent of adding more crunches and reps once he built up his muscle. After the first week, his shoulders burned incessantly, but he thought he could feel real muscle beginning to form. Every night before climbing into bed, Wyler would take off his shirt and look at himself in the mirror.  

"Regimen" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:  

Actionable Intelligence

You revolve around the sun, and not the other way around.
Stoves are often hot. Knives are often sharp.
Animals have teeth and claws, even the ones we keep as pets.
Cars are not toys, unless they are toys.
Spouses are to be loved and cherished, as are children, though differently.
Children have to be raised. Spouses need to be uplifted.

"Actionable Intelligence" Discussion

It's fine to talk about what you think of the piece, but we'd like to focus on what the piece makes you think about. Some questions to start:  

Creative Writing and Hearing the Word of the Lord

"Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?" (Mark 8:18)

There have been moments in my life when I swear I've felt the gospel resonating in my soul. There have been times when I know who I am and what I owe to God and what God wants for me. There have been nights when I've cried out and been filled with the stillness of His peace and mornings when His wisdom has distilled on me like dew.

And then there's the rest of my life. When I'm just trying to get by--and the very problems the gospel could help me solve keep me too busy to really listen to the Lord.

I know Jesus loves me, but sometimes I'm sure I exasperate him. Because my ears, as Isaiah says, grow heavy and my eyes slide shut.

When God's truth is all around us, why is it so hard to take it in?

Of all the reasons for being slow to listen, I think two are most common among Latter-day Saints.

Sometimes it's difficult for us to listen to the Lord because we've already heard so much. Repetition can help us internalize gospels principles, but it can also make it easy for us to tune out. My mind wanders when I drive along a familiar route; sometimes it also wanders during sacrament meeting.
Habit can undermine hearing, and if we do OK cruising through life on moral momentum it's easy to forget that we're supposed to be active navigators.

That said, few people can cruise all the way through life on the momentum of righteous past choices. Most of us, at one time or another, discover the insufficiency of what we thought we knew. Trouble comes, and our go-to answers and actions aren't enough. Prophecies fail. Our gospel language rings hollow. Because of the distance between what-we-expected and what-we-experienced, it's easy to feel like listening is pointless. Disappointment and the accompanying dissonance make it hard to let the Lord help us rebuild.

I care so much about creative writing because at its best, it can help us cut through habit and dissonance alike. Good writing can make old truths surprising. It can show us the space between the ideal and the real and help us find fresh ways to live with both. Stories and essays and poems and plays that demand our attention and imagination often grant us greater thoughtfulness and openness to inspiration in return.

From today through May 25th , this blog will be taken over by the eleven finalists in the 2013 Mormon Lit Blitz. Some are serious and some are silly: all reach in some small way toward the sacred. I hope you join us in reading, discussing, and sharing these works and I hope that in their many perspectives, you find new ways to look at or for the word of the Lord.

Orem Library Reading

This Wednesday at 7 pm, Steven Peck and I will be reading at the Orem Public Library.

Peck will be reading from The Scholar of Moab, which won the 2011 Association for Mormon Letters Novel Award (and possibly from A Short Stay in Hell, if we ask him nicely).

 I will be reading from The Five Books of Jesus, which won the 2012 Association for Mormon Letters Novel Award.

They even made a nifty poster for us, including a picture of me which they found online. In that picture, I am twenty-two years old and wearing my cousin's glasses. It's a good look, although I must say I've gotten significantly better looking in the meantime, thanks to eight additional years of practice looking at myself in the mirror.

Hope to see some of you, dear readers, there.

Quote about abuse

I just finished reading Slumming by Kristen D. Randle--it's a really great novel. At some point, I will try to explain in detail what I like so much about it and why it gives me so much hope for Mormon writers. 

For now, though, I just want to share a quote which comes as a character is trying to come to grips with something terrible which is happening to someone else: 

I am not asking myself why God lets there things happen. I think I understand the answer to that. The way I see it, God puts us here so we can make our own choices. He can't keep things like this from happening unless he takes the right to choose away.
No, the question in my mind right now is how does God, who loves us, watch all of these terrible things and not die? Not just die of sorrow?

I believe we have parents in heaven. I believe they love us. And I believe that when they say we need a broken heart and a contrite spirit, they know what they're asking for. They know.

 

My Hobby

It started with a conversation with my friend Jen. We told her about a review that had criticized my novel The Five Books of Jesus over its portrayal of women: the reviewer was upset that they always seemed to be doing some kind of domestic work. Jen laughed, and told us that on her mission in Ecuador she used to ask women what their hobbies were. They'd think about it, she said, and then say things like "I really like sweeping" or "Washing dishes is my favorite."

A few days later, while rocking our baby to sleep, I was flipping through Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who's spent most of his life as an exile from Vietnam. By chance, I ended up in a passage that talked about washing dishes. On the level of physical sensation, says Nhat Hanh, doing the dishes is actually fairly pleasant. The warm water can feel good on your hands. The rhythmic motions of cleaning can be soothing and relaxing. We don't hate dishwashing, he says, because it's inherently unpleasant. We hate it because we're always in a hurry to get to something else. It's our sense of what's important that makes dishwashing an interruption, and therefore a frustration. We rob ourselves of joy by unnecessary rush.

I had always hated doing the dishes, but the conversation with Jen and the reading from Thich Nhat Hanh convinced me to give them another chance. And it worked. I still don't like dry skin, but doing dishes got a lot more fun when I a) reminded myself it can be nice and b) gave myself permission to treat dishes as a worthwhile experience, and not just a chore standing in the way of something else.

Since phase one of the experiment had worked, I decided to launch phase two: I told Nicole that my new hobby was changing stinky diapers.

Unlike dishes, there is nothing to enjoy about changing dirty diapers on a sensory level. But I suspected that my main objection to changing diapers was not the smell, but the interruption. I didn't like to be dragged away from important activities (like keeping my computer company?) to unimportant activities (like taking care of my kids?). In any case, I wondered whether calling diaper-changing my hobby would help change my attitude about what was interrupting what.

That was at least six weeks ago. I am writing this blog post because I just got back from changing a very dirty diaper and I felt wonderful about it.

Why did phase two work? Partly because I am a total ham with a strong sense for the absurd: I think it's hilarious to have diaper-changing as a hobby, and so I now associate changing diapers with feeling funny and clever. Partly because instead of treating diaper changes as a necessary drudgery, my whole family now gets excited: having an ecstatic two-year-old run up to say "Daddy, it's time for your hobby!" when the sixth-month old is stinky is a lot more fun than taking a hit for the team in the old "Whose turn is it?" game. And partly the "hobby" thing has worked because it's helped me to appreciate that even though poo will never be pleasant, seeing my son smile with relief as a dirty diaper comes off is quite nice.

A reasonably happy, reasonably clean baby.

I don't change all the stinky diapers. Nicole will still sometimes say, "I don't want to cut into your hobby time, but I can change this if you're busy" and sometimes I will say, "Thank you--that would be lovely." Other times, though, I say: "Are you kidding? I live for this!" And I fulfill an important part of the measure of my creation.

Cleaning the Temple

Last Monday I spent my morning at the Temple, helping clean.

When all the volunteers arrived, they said: you can't get by whispering today because the machines make too much noise. But don't worry--you can be reverent without being quiet.

They also said: in the four hours you spend cleaning, you may not find a single thing that looks dirty to you. But we don't just clean here to get rid of messes. We clean to keep the Temple from getting dirty.

After the general group training, they assigned me to a carpet-cleaning group. We used various machines to go over the areas where people walk the most to get rid of the little bits of accumulated dirt. And if you looked carefully, you actually could see how the carpet looked ever so slightly different around corners at the base of staircases and at the entrances to rooms. You could follow the men's trail and the women's trail if you focused enough on the floor. 

And even without having to look carefully, you could see the water in the cleaning machines darken as they work got done. We were really cleaning.

When we got to the locker rooms, our supervisor told us which areas to focus on. "Be sure to get the path to the initiatory desk," she said, "plenty of people walk through there." Then she moved to a place in the front of the room. "Be sure to clean carefully here near the prayer roll," she said. "A lot of people spend extra time on this carpet."

So I went. And as machines hummed and people asked each other which circuit to plug into, I cleaned the well-used carpet next to the prayer roll box. Carpet hundreds of people had stopped to stand on while they wrote their loved ones' names.

And I understood what they'd meant about being reverent without quiet.