One of my main themes is the nerd love story. (See, for example, my novel.) The shy, socially-awkward (yet adorable) kid suffers humiliating rejections, but ultimately wins out. For me, this is the most obvious type of underdog story to write. As my parents explicitly taught me, it doesn't matter whether you're popular in high school. If you are the smart kid, then you have the tools to be a success in life.
You may recall one of my many complaints about the Harry Potter series was that despite being unpopular/bullied as a teen, after a certain number of years of being a successful adult, someone like Snape would grow up a bit. Emotionally. Well, there's a short essay by a professor at MIT (making the rounds of the Internet) that suggests I may be wrong on this point.
Amanda Marcotte is right that Laurie Penny is way too nice to this guy (so Amanda compensated by perhaps going too far the other way -- though her piece is quite funny). A personal friend and colleague of my husband also wrote a response that is spot on. But there's one key point that I don't think any of these folks hit on, which I would like to address.
Life is not fair. If you are one of the brainiacs, then you have an unfair advantage over others. Because being one of the smarties endows you with a magical little thing called problem solving skills.
Suppose you look around and you see some guys who logically shouldn't be desirable to women ("Neanderthals" in the above professor's terms) having lots of success attracting women. You believe that what you have to offer to women is actually better, yet women somehow fail to grasp this. If your solution to this conundrum is that women are simply too stupid to act in their own self interest (all of them! Or at least all the ones you might potentially find attractive), so you decide to spend the next twenty years stewing in your own bile over the unfairness of it all, then you are an idiot.
That's the only reason people are responding to this guy's rant, by the way. Stupid, frustrated men who have concluded that the problem is the entire female half of the human race are a dime a dozen. There are whole subnetworks on the Internet devoted to their rantings. Here's a typical example. What makes the professor's essay noteworthy is that people are astonished that someone could be smart enough to be a professor at MIT and yet be dumb enough to make an ass of himself in such a public way.
The thing is that it's not that hard a problem to solve. People of all different desirability levels solve it every day. If your offer is desirable, there are plenty of ways to find the people who will want to take you up on it, and if it's not, there are ways to make your offer more desirable. If you're looking around and wondering "Why him and not me?" -- don't ask it as an angry rhetorical question, ask it as a serious question. And apply your analysis and problem-solving skills to come up with effective strategies to solve it.
The Adventures of a Friendly French-American ExMormon Atheist Mom Living in Switzerland!!!
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, January 02, 2015
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Making of "Exmormon"
Exmormon was written over the space of a year, and not in chronological order. This is an article I wrote in 2006 to explain how -- and why -- I wrote it.
One day I was on a business trip, and to pass the time in the evenings alone in my hotel room, I'd brought along a stack of old New Yorker magazines to read.
I noticed one of issues I'd brought had a story about Mormon teenagers in it. Mormonism is obscure enough that it's fairly rare to find something about Mormonism in the mass media, so -- like most people raised Mormon -- I was fascinated to find this and to see what they had to say.
My reaction: Not too bad.
But it kind of rang false in a couple of places. Particularly the fact that the Mormon girl in the story tries to talk the non-member kid out of taking his prescription drugs -- on the basis that it's a sin to take drugs. Of course recreational drugs are a big-time sin for Mormons, but medications prescribed by your doctor are not. It's not even a question of "if you're really devout" or something -- the idea that standard western medicine would be a sin doesn't exist in Mormon thought. (Maybe confusing Mormons with Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologists?)
Then there was the fact that the Mormon girl was using sex as a tactic to draw people into the church and keep them there. My reaction was, "close but no cigar."
In my experience, Mormon teens really do (deliberately or not) use flirting and unfulfilled erotic desire to attract other teenagers to join the church. And I'm not going to claim that Mormon teens never have sex. But for a Mormon girl to give a guy a complete B.J. explicitly as a missionary tactic would be extremely atypical, to say the least. The result would be exactly what happens in the story, namely that the non-Mormon guy thinks: "Thanks for getting me off, bye! (sheesh, these Mormons are weirdos)."
Basically it read as if the author had had some sort of bizarre experience with Mormons when he was younger and was trying to make sense of it.
That story inspired me to a little challenge: Let me paint you a portrait of what it's really like to be a Mormon teenager.
The result of this challenge was the four-chapter novella "Youth
Conference."
Youth Conference really is fiction and not memoir -- in that the characters aren't just re-namings of real people, and the events didn't happen in quite that way or all together like that. Yet the story is very strongly reality-based and autobiographical.
I was fond of my little story when I wrote it, but it was too long to be published as a short story and too short to be a novel, so I wasn't sure what to do with it. I vaguely had the idea that I could continue the story by writing other segments of the main character's life, but I didn't want to add a bunch of junk to it just to make it longer, so I just left it sitting around on my hard drive for more than a year.
Around that time, I was a big-time regular on the Internet forum exmo-social, and the occasional discussion of Mormonism -- plus the writing practice the experience afforded me -- finally inspired me to write two more segments to the story: one where the main character (Lynn) goes to Brigham Young University (and concludes the church isn't true), and one where she's a young adult ex-Mormon dealing with her LDS (Mormon) family.
The BYU segment is less autobiographical, although it takes elements from life. I've said many times that I was already a non-believer when I started attending BYU, but that wasn't the story I wanted to tell this time. I didn't want to show BYU through the eyes of the angry young apostate, depressed about not having the opportunity to meet other young non-believers and resentful of the enforced religion. So I took my earlier attitude of believing (but just barely hanging onto it) and transposed that mindset onto a lot of the trappings and details of my real-life BYU experience.
One of the ideas I wanted to express in the BYU segment was that the problem with Mormonism isn't that it's not cool -- it's that it's not true. So I invented the character of Paige as something of a composite of a lot of people I knew who worked on the independent student publication The Student Review, who were these hip, non-conformist, liberal Mormons -- easily cooler than the shy, nerdy main character Lynn -- yet who were true believers. (see ask a Mormon Girl -- she was one of my colleagues during my Student Review days.)
To have Lynn meet the cool Mormon girl (Paige), I decided to hold a little illicit slumber party in a cabin. The Student Review actually did organize cabin slumber parties, although they were supervised (unlike the little unofficial party in my story). I remember thinking -- way back when I was attending such a sleepover with a whole bunch of young people of both genders sleeping in one big room -- that the situation had a huge amount of suppressed erotic potential. It seemed a terrible shame at the time that there was no one there at the sleepover that I wanted to share the flirty secret erotic spark with. True to form for a first novel, I opened up this box of regrets and re-wrote the scene the way it should have happened. Thus, the character of Rex Wendell was created.
When I finished the BYU segment -- even though the plot and story structure left something to be desired -- I was well-pleased.
I was a little worried about starting on the family segment (later called Temple Wedding) because I didn't want it to end up as some junk tacked on to the other two pieces, dragging them down. so I spent a lot of time planning what should be included.
First of all, I was fond of the character Rex and of his relationship with Lynn, so I wanted to bring him back. Yet I didn't want it to be that they'd gotten together very young and consequently had grown up with little relationship experience and would eventually start wondering about all the erotic exploration they'd missed out on. I didn't want them to have that kind of relationship. So I decided to have their initial relationship be brief -- as they were attending different universities -- and have them get together again on a permanent basis years later.
Aside from that, I had an easy time thinking of all of the things the LDS (Mormon) family members could do to irritate the exmo (apostate) characters ;^) but I was unhappy with the list because I felt it came off as whiny, and it wasn't interesting, and it wasn't a story. I had to find a way to balance it out so that I wasn't one-sidedly presenting the Mormons as the only bad guys.
Then I came up with the idea of having Rex buy beer for his sixteen-year-old younger brother. That was when I finally felt like "Okay, I can do this." That was the perfect scenario for this story because it was something I could easily see a young adult apostate doing -- and seeing as funny and no big deal -- that would make the Mormon parents completely flip out. (Thus illustrating their difference in perspective.)
The whole scene -- the dreadful dinner scene -- came to me all at once like a lightning bolt. That scene was really the turning point for me that changed this whole project from "look at me -- aren't I clever? I'm writing stories!" to "I have to publish this story and make a connection with people through it."
The funny thing is that for more than a year after writing that scene, I was patting myself on the back for writing such a thing from pure imagination since our family never had an explosive fight over the kids' apostasy like that. Since all of the circumstances and superficial trappings of the argument in the story were invented, I saw the scene as being wholly fictional.
It was only by reading my journal later that I realized how closely this scene portrayed (caricatured) a series of fights (and one in particular) that I had with my own parents. Again, like a proper first novel, it's all about exploring wounds that were smoothed over and forgotten but never healed; exorcising demons by reliving the bad parts and correcting them. In the fictional version (unlike reality), when Rex went off in disgrace, he had Lynn to tell him that everything would be okay.
The rest of the Temple Wedding section was just the icing on the cake. I was deliberately trying to cover a lot of details about Mormonism, and the story structure suffered for it. the funny thing, though, is that by throwing so many random things into the story blender, this segment ended up being kind of a seminal section, creating various character dynamics that I decided I wanted to explore further.
The part of "Temple Wedding" that I had the most fun with was the interaction between the Hobbs and the Wendells -- the one Mormon family with all of the signs of piety and righteousness (garden, uber-homemaker-SAHM, lots of kids on missions), and the other Mormon family with none of that but a lot more money. As both advantages are important for status in the LDS community, each family ends up jealous of the other.
When Lynn's three-part story was done, I gave it to my husband to read.
One his comments was that instead of being intimidated by Sister Hobbs' kids' (religious) accomplishments, Sister Wendell should have stood up for her (apostate) son and should have been willing to proudly recount his (non-religious) accomplishments to Sister Hobbs. I told him he was right, but that that wouldn't fit this story. I decided to go with his suggestion and write it up as a separate short story. Here I shifted voice for the first time, and instead of telling the story from Lynn's perspective, I told it from the perspective of Rex's younger brother Jared.
My plan was then to tack this story on to the little novel as an epilogue, but my husband caught me and told me not to. He pointed out that even though it has the same characters, it really doesn't follow as an epilogue -- it's completely separate.
I agreed, and decided that instead of using it as an epilogue, I'd use it as a starting point for a new story. I'd had fun with the Sam-Joe-Jared dynamic in "Temple Wedding" (which was an extension of the Wendells vs. the Hobbs), and I felt like I wanted to continue their adventures.
One of the million aspects of Mormonism I'd portrayed in the "Temple Wedding" segment was the connection between the mainstream Mormons and the (polygamist) Mormon fundamentalists. I'd gotten an email from a former Mormon fundamentalist (whom I'd met through exmo-social) full of details on the subject that he said I could use in my story if I liked.
One particularly dramatic incident the former fundamentalist had recounted (on exmo-social as well as in this email and his online autobiography) was that he had been allowed to attend a mainstream high school (despite being a fundamentalist), and there he fell in love with a mainstream Mormon girl. Naturally he explained his own beliefs to her -- what he'd been taught as true -- and when her parents got wind of it, they were horrified and forbade her from ever seeing him again. He wound up heartbroken (and maybe thinking it would have been better not to have gone out of his way to tell her about the fact that the mainstream LDS church is obviously in apostasy for giving up polygamy, among other things...).
His story was a poignant one. However, since my novel is fiction and not a retelling of some real person's life, I figured I'd take some details and piece together a different story. So I had my former-fundamentalist character Joe attending a normal high school (in my story it was because he had run away from his polygamist family), and had him fall in love with a girl from a mainstream LDS family, and had her family freak out when they discover she's frequenting a guy who was raised in polygamy, and have them forbid her from ever seeing him again.
But then instead of having her be a docile, obedient LDS girl who submits to her parents' wishes, I figured it would be more fun to have her be an ex-Mormon atheist girl who defies her parents and sees the guy anyway. I know I'm just being silly of course, but I liked that scenario much better. ;^)
Of course, to me it seems like a proper teen romance has to have a poignant, heartbreaking quality to it. It's a part of growing, learning, and gaining experience. So when I wrote Joe's romance, I kept the focus on Jared (Rex's younger brother), who loses out as he falls in love with the same girl. In the long run, however, he gains valuable experience.
And fortunately for Jared, he gets a great party scene. The party
sequence up through his chat about it with his brother Rex the next day is one of my favorite segments in the whole novel, including the parts that were written later.
At that point, I'd decided that I had two novels: Lynn's story and the sequel, Jared's story (eventually titled "Orem High"). My husband told me that novels don't really come in twos, and that I needed another to make it a trilogy. I was inclined to agree because I'd had fun so far and wanted to keep going.
(Despite this constructive advice, my husband hated Jared's story -- he apparently didn't like the idea that some dumb kid from Utah should get to have his own car and go to parties with girls, etc. -- and so he refused to read any more of my novel after that.)
I decided that next I wanted to explore a theme I'd alluded to back in the Youth Conference segment, namely the fear (as a chaste-not-entirely-by-choice Mormon teen) of things getting out of hand and getting pregnant as a result.
Looking around for a spot in my fictional universe to situate this story, I hit upon an off-hand comment I'd put in the BYU segment. In order to help illustrate the relationship between Jake and his jack-Mormon mom, I'd recounted how she'd laughed it off when Jake's uncle had made a disapproving comment about Jake going on a road trip to Las Vegas to gamble. I took that as a starting point, fleshing out that tiny anecdote as being a trip where Jake takes Rex and Jared's sister Jill to Las Vegas to get an abortion.
When I wrote this segment (eventually titled Saturday's Warrior), I had just re-read my teenage journals, so I wrote the whole thing in that voice and mindset. This prospect -- and this fear -- was clearly another big demon that had haunted my adolescence that I wanted to get out. I wrote the whole segment practically all at once, like a fever dream.
One nice thing about this part was that by this time I'd gotten over the idea that I needed to cover a list of particular details about Mormonism, so I could just write it as a free-flowing, reasonably-structured story. I ended up portraying additional aspects of Mormonism as they came up naturally in the story rather than bending and stretching the story to fit them.
Once I'd written Jill's story, I decided it was a prequel to Lynn's story and that I had a trilogy on my hands.
There were a few problems with this trilogy plan though. First of all, both Jill's story (Saturday's Warrior) and Jared's story (Orem High) were too short to be complete novels, even young adult novels. Then there was the fact that the Youth Conference segment of Lynn's story naturally came before Jill's story both chronologically and thematically. I felt like Jill's story really ought to be read between the first two parts of Lynn's story.
For a long time, I had a bunch of ideas on the back-burner for other stories to turn my "trilogy" into a "series" (called Exmormon) that could one day be published all together in a single volume. Eventually I realized that that single volume was where I really wanted to go with this work, so I selected a set of related stories I wanted to write up and include.
First of this new batch was the little interlude: Gratuitous Love Scene. I called it that as a joke because of the fact that Mormons always say things like "it was a good movie overall, but why did they have to include that one scene?" You know what scene they're always talking about. It doesn't matter if the love/sex scene is important to story, to Mormons if it's a sex scene, it's a priori superfluous and should be cut out.
In the case of the Gratuitous Love Scene, I added it because it was necessary for the overall story structure. It develops the relationship of Rex and Lynn, it's an important step for Lynn in terms of dealing with her conditioning, and I needed to include a sweet and romantic sex scene to counterbalance the more questionable sex scenes in Jill's story and Jared's story.
I know those who have read the "Gratuitous Love Scene" probably think I'm crazy to call this scene "sweet and romantic," but seriously I'm not at all a romantic person, so from my crazy perspective this is romance. ;)
After that, I decided exactly which additional stories I wanted to include. I wanted to add April's story (Young Women's) to flesh out her character a little better so that when her situation comes up in the BYU segment it doesn't seem like it's coming out of nowhere.
Additionally, I wanted to open with her story in order to illustrate what it's like for a young teenager dealing with church and trying to believe.
April's story was pretty easy to write since I wrote it mostly from my own journals and memories. The only tricky part was guessing what it would be like for a young lesbian to deal with all of the romance-and-temple-marriage indoctrination that the young women get. Basically I did my research by reading Queer 13 and The Indelible Allison Bechdel and did my best to extrapolate.
I wrote the wrap-up chapter next (Exmo Conference) which is just a fun little "what happened to everyone" conclusion.
Next I wrote Bordeaux Mission. I wanted to write that one because I've always been fascinated by LDS missionary stories, and all through my novel people talk about missions (with young Mormons, somebody's always setting off on one, or on one, or just back), so I wanted to include the actual experience. Additionally, in Jared's story I'd introduced the character Tanya -- who wasn't originally intended as a sympathetic character, but who ended up stealing the show in a lot of ways. So I wanted to explore her character further by giving her a new boyfriend -- someone with a little more self-confidence than Jared -- who wouldn't be intimidated by a woman who takes the lead. Thus the character of Spencer Hobbs was created.
I had a great time writing Spencer's story, largely because I got lots of fantastic mission details and inspiration from another person I met on exmo-social. With his help, I had an easier time writing Spencer as a clever jock, to balance out my character spectrum which had been hopelessly weighted a little too heavily towards scrawny math/science nerds (i.e. my own familiar social circle).
I was so pleased with the Spencer character that I had him play a leading role in the last segment I wrote (Polygamist, part 5 of the novel), which I added in order to introduce Joe's character and explain how it came to be that he was living with his uncle's family.
Writing a story in such a haphazard manner makes for kind of a random and confusing narrative structure. Yet the story is actually fairly well organized if you look at it thematically as a portrait of growing up Mormon and leaving the church as a young person:
1. Young Women's: Trying to be a good Mormon and live up to the church's expectations for you as a young teen.
2. Youth Conference: More serious indoctrination and the beginnings of cognitive dissonance.
3. Saturday's Warrior: The dark side of the resulting mindset.
4. BYU: The epiphany; realizing that it's not real or true.
5. Polygamist: Breaking free of the mindset.
6. Temple Wedding: Dealing with the family fallout.
7. Orem High: A second adolescence while exploring your new-found freedom.
8. Bordeaux Mission: Reflecting on your life, your choices, your feelings about the church.
9. Exmo Conference: wrap-up.
It's very clear that this is a first novel -- between the autobiography, the coming-of-age aspect, and the purging of those fantasies and demons that are closest to the surface. That's why I don't want to try to re-write some subset of this material into a more-reasonably-structured different novel. For the future, I'd rather start over with all new material and a plan. ;-)
Still, I think this one has a lot of potential interest and value as it is, which is why I'm posting it online, in hopes of making a connection with people who might relate to some of the characters and situations I've portrayed.
Don't forget -- the conclusion will be posted online this Tuesday!!
One day I was on a business trip, and to pass the time in the evenings alone in my hotel room, I'd brought along a stack of old New Yorker magazines to read.
I noticed one of issues I'd brought had a story about Mormon teenagers in it. Mormonism is obscure enough that it's fairly rare to find something about Mormonism in the mass media, so -- like most people raised Mormon -- I was fascinated to find this and to see what they had to say.
My reaction: Not too bad.
But it kind of rang false in a couple of places. Particularly the fact that the Mormon girl in the story tries to talk the non-member kid out of taking his prescription drugs -- on the basis that it's a sin to take drugs. Of course recreational drugs are a big-time sin for Mormons, but medications prescribed by your doctor are not. It's not even a question of "if you're really devout" or something -- the idea that standard western medicine would be a sin doesn't exist in Mormon thought. (Maybe confusing Mormons with Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologists?)
Then there was the fact that the Mormon girl was using sex as a tactic to draw people into the church and keep them there. My reaction was, "close but no cigar."
In my experience, Mormon teens really do (deliberately or not) use flirting and unfulfilled erotic desire to attract other teenagers to join the church. And I'm not going to claim that Mormon teens never have sex. But for a Mormon girl to give a guy a complete B.J. explicitly as a missionary tactic would be extremely atypical, to say the least. The result would be exactly what happens in the story, namely that the non-Mormon guy thinks: "Thanks for getting me off, bye! (sheesh, these Mormons are weirdos)."
Basically it read as if the author had had some sort of bizarre experience with Mormons when he was younger and was trying to make sense of it.
That story inspired me to a little challenge: Let me paint you a portrait of what it's really like to be a Mormon teenager.
The result of this challenge was the four-chapter novella "Youth
Conference."
Youth Conference really is fiction and not memoir -- in that the characters aren't just re-namings of real people, and the events didn't happen in quite that way or all together like that. Yet the story is very strongly reality-based and autobiographical.
I was fond of my little story when I wrote it, but it was too long to be published as a short story and too short to be a novel, so I wasn't sure what to do with it. I vaguely had the idea that I could continue the story by writing other segments of the main character's life, but I didn't want to add a bunch of junk to it just to make it longer, so I just left it sitting around on my hard drive for more than a year.
Around that time, I was a big-time regular on the Internet forum exmo-social, and the occasional discussion of Mormonism -- plus the writing practice the experience afforded me -- finally inspired me to write two more segments to the story: one where the main character (Lynn) goes to Brigham Young University (and concludes the church isn't true), and one where she's a young adult ex-Mormon dealing with her LDS (Mormon) family.
The BYU segment is less autobiographical, although it takes elements from life. I've said many times that I was already a non-believer when I started attending BYU, but that wasn't the story I wanted to tell this time. I didn't want to show BYU through the eyes of the angry young apostate, depressed about not having the opportunity to meet other young non-believers and resentful of the enforced religion. So I took my earlier attitude of believing (but just barely hanging onto it) and transposed that mindset onto a lot of the trappings and details of my real-life BYU experience.
One of the ideas I wanted to express in the BYU segment was that the problem with Mormonism isn't that it's not cool -- it's that it's not true. So I invented the character of Paige as something of a composite of a lot of people I knew who worked on the independent student publication The Student Review, who were these hip, non-conformist, liberal Mormons -- easily cooler than the shy, nerdy main character Lynn -- yet who were true believers. (see ask a Mormon Girl -- she was one of my colleagues during my Student Review days.)
To have Lynn meet the cool Mormon girl (Paige), I decided to hold a little illicit slumber party in a cabin. The Student Review actually did organize cabin slumber parties, although they were supervised (unlike the little unofficial party in my story). I remember thinking -- way back when I was attending such a sleepover with a whole bunch of young people of both genders sleeping in one big room -- that the situation had a huge amount of suppressed erotic potential. It seemed a terrible shame at the time that there was no one there at the sleepover that I wanted to share the flirty secret erotic spark with. True to form for a first novel, I opened up this box of regrets and re-wrote the scene the way it should have happened. Thus, the character of Rex Wendell was created.
When I finished the BYU segment -- even though the plot and story structure left something to be desired -- I was well-pleased.
I was a little worried about starting on the family segment (later called Temple Wedding) because I didn't want it to end up as some junk tacked on to the other two pieces, dragging them down. so I spent a lot of time planning what should be included.
First of all, I was fond of the character Rex and of his relationship with Lynn, so I wanted to bring him back. Yet I didn't want it to be that they'd gotten together very young and consequently had grown up with little relationship experience and would eventually start wondering about all the erotic exploration they'd missed out on. I didn't want them to have that kind of relationship. So I decided to have their initial relationship be brief -- as they were attending different universities -- and have them get together again on a permanent basis years later.
Aside from that, I had an easy time thinking of all of the things the LDS (Mormon) family members could do to irritate the exmo (apostate) characters ;^) but I was unhappy with the list because I felt it came off as whiny, and it wasn't interesting, and it wasn't a story. I had to find a way to balance it out so that I wasn't one-sidedly presenting the Mormons as the only bad guys.
Then I came up with the idea of having Rex buy beer for his sixteen-year-old younger brother. That was when I finally felt like "Okay, I can do this." That was the perfect scenario for this story because it was something I could easily see a young adult apostate doing -- and seeing as funny and no big deal -- that would make the Mormon parents completely flip out. (Thus illustrating their difference in perspective.)
The whole scene -- the dreadful dinner scene -- came to me all at once like a lightning bolt. That scene was really the turning point for me that changed this whole project from "look at me -- aren't I clever? I'm writing stories!" to "I have to publish this story and make a connection with people through it."
The funny thing is that for more than a year after writing that scene, I was patting myself on the back for writing such a thing from pure imagination since our family never had an explosive fight over the kids' apostasy like that. Since all of the circumstances and superficial trappings of the argument in the story were invented, I saw the scene as being wholly fictional.
It was only by reading my journal later that I realized how closely this scene portrayed (caricatured) a series of fights (and one in particular) that I had with my own parents. Again, like a proper first novel, it's all about exploring wounds that were smoothed over and forgotten but never healed; exorcising demons by reliving the bad parts and correcting them. In the fictional version (unlike reality), when Rex went off in disgrace, he had Lynn to tell him that everything would be okay.
The rest of the Temple Wedding section was just the icing on the cake. I was deliberately trying to cover a lot of details about Mormonism, and the story structure suffered for it. the funny thing, though, is that by throwing so many random things into the story blender, this segment ended up being kind of a seminal section, creating various character dynamics that I decided I wanted to explore further.
The part of "Temple Wedding" that I had the most fun with was the interaction between the Hobbs and the Wendells -- the one Mormon family with all of the signs of piety and righteousness (garden, uber-homemaker-SAHM, lots of kids on missions), and the other Mormon family with none of that but a lot more money. As both advantages are important for status in the LDS community, each family ends up jealous of the other.
When Lynn's three-part story was done, I gave it to my husband to read.
One his comments was that instead of being intimidated by Sister Hobbs' kids' (religious) accomplishments, Sister Wendell should have stood up for her (apostate) son and should have been willing to proudly recount his (non-religious) accomplishments to Sister Hobbs. I told him he was right, but that that wouldn't fit this story. I decided to go with his suggestion and write it up as a separate short story. Here I shifted voice for the first time, and instead of telling the story from Lynn's perspective, I told it from the perspective of Rex's younger brother Jared.
My plan was then to tack this story on to the little novel as an epilogue, but my husband caught me and told me not to. He pointed out that even though it has the same characters, it really doesn't follow as an epilogue -- it's completely separate.
I agreed, and decided that instead of using it as an epilogue, I'd use it as a starting point for a new story. I'd had fun with the Sam-Joe-Jared dynamic in "Temple Wedding" (which was an extension of the Wendells vs. the Hobbs), and I felt like I wanted to continue their adventures.
One of the million aspects of Mormonism I'd portrayed in the "Temple Wedding" segment was the connection between the mainstream Mormons and the (polygamist) Mormon fundamentalists. I'd gotten an email from a former Mormon fundamentalist (whom I'd met through exmo-social) full of details on the subject that he said I could use in my story if I liked.
One particularly dramatic incident the former fundamentalist had recounted (on exmo-social as well as in this email and his online autobiography) was that he had been allowed to attend a mainstream high school (despite being a fundamentalist), and there he fell in love with a mainstream Mormon girl. Naturally he explained his own beliefs to her -- what he'd been taught as true -- and when her parents got wind of it, they were horrified and forbade her from ever seeing him again. He wound up heartbroken (and maybe thinking it would have been better not to have gone out of his way to tell her about the fact that the mainstream LDS church is obviously in apostasy for giving up polygamy, among other things...).
His story was a poignant one. However, since my novel is fiction and not a retelling of some real person's life, I figured I'd take some details and piece together a different story. So I had my former-fundamentalist character Joe attending a normal high school (in my story it was because he had run away from his polygamist family), and had him fall in love with a girl from a mainstream LDS family, and had her family freak out when they discover she's frequenting a guy who was raised in polygamy, and have them forbid her from ever seeing him again.
But then instead of having her be a docile, obedient LDS girl who submits to her parents' wishes, I figured it would be more fun to have her be an ex-Mormon atheist girl who defies her parents and sees the guy anyway. I know I'm just being silly of course, but I liked that scenario much better. ;^)
Of course, to me it seems like a proper teen romance has to have a poignant, heartbreaking quality to it. It's a part of growing, learning, and gaining experience. So when I wrote Joe's romance, I kept the focus on Jared (Rex's younger brother), who loses out as he falls in love with the same girl. In the long run, however, he gains valuable experience.
And fortunately for Jared, he gets a great party scene. The party
sequence up through his chat about it with his brother Rex the next day is one of my favorite segments in the whole novel, including the parts that were written later.
At that point, I'd decided that I had two novels: Lynn's story and the sequel, Jared's story (eventually titled "Orem High"). My husband told me that novels don't really come in twos, and that I needed another to make it a trilogy. I was inclined to agree because I'd had fun so far and wanted to keep going.
(Despite this constructive advice, my husband hated Jared's story -- he apparently didn't like the idea that some dumb kid from Utah should get to have his own car and go to parties with girls, etc. -- and so he refused to read any more of my novel after that.)
I decided that next I wanted to explore a theme I'd alluded to back in the Youth Conference segment, namely the fear (as a chaste-not-entirely-by-choice Mormon teen) of things getting out of hand and getting pregnant as a result.
Looking around for a spot in my fictional universe to situate this story, I hit upon an off-hand comment I'd put in the BYU segment. In order to help illustrate the relationship between Jake and his jack-Mormon mom, I'd recounted how she'd laughed it off when Jake's uncle had made a disapproving comment about Jake going on a road trip to Las Vegas to gamble. I took that as a starting point, fleshing out that tiny anecdote as being a trip where Jake takes Rex and Jared's sister Jill to Las Vegas to get an abortion.
When I wrote this segment (eventually titled Saturday's Warrior), I had just re-read my teenage journals, so I wrote the whole thing in that voice and mindset. This prospect -- and this fear -- was clearly another big demon that had haunted my adolescence that I wanted to get out. I wrote the whole segment practically all at once, like a fever dream.
One nice thing about this part was that by this time I'd gotten over the idea that I needed to cover a list of particular details about Mormonism, so I could just write it as a free-flowing, reasonably-structured story. I ended up portraying additional aspects of Mormonism as they came up naturally in the story rather than bending and stretching the story to fit them.
Once I'd written Jill's story, I decided it was a prequel to Lynn's story and that I had a trilogy on my hands.
There were a few problems with this trilogy plan though. First of all, both Jill's story (Saturday's Warrior) and Jared's story (Orem High) were too short to be complete novels, even young adult novels. Then there was the fact that the Youth Conference segment of Lynn's story naturally came before Jill's story both chronologically and thematically. I felt like Jill's story really ought to be read between the first two parts of Lynn's story.
For a long time, I had a bunch of ideas on the back-burner for other stories to turn my "trilogy" into a "series" (called Exmormon) that could one day be published all together in a single volume. Eventually I realized that that single volume was where I really wanted to go with this work, so I selected a set of related stories I wanted to write up and include.
First of this new batch was the little interlude: Gratuitous Love Scene. I called it that as a joke because of the fact that Mormons always say things like "it was a good movie overall, but why did they have to include that one scene?" You know what scene they're always talking about. It doesn't matter if the love/sex scene is important to story, to Mormons if it's a sex scene, it's a priori superfluous and should be cut out.
In the case of the Gratuitous Love Scene, I added it because it was necessary for the overall story structure. It develops the relationship of Rex and Lynn, it's an important step for Lynn in terms of dealing with her conditioning, and I needed to include a sweet and romantic sex scene to counterbalance the more questionable sex scenes in Jill's story and Jared's story.
I know those who have read the "Gratuitous Love Scene" probably think I'm crazy to call this scene "sweet and romantic," but seriously I'm not at all a romantic person, so from my crazy perspective this is romance. ;)
After that, I decided exactly which additional stories I wanted to include. I wanted to add April's story (Young Women's) to flesh out her character a little better so that when her situation comes up in the BYU segment it doesn't seem like it's coming out of nowhere.
Additionally, I wanted to open with her story in order to illustrate what it's like for a young teenager dealing with church and trying to believe.
April's story was pretty easy to write since I wrote it mostly from my own journals and memories. The only tricky part was guessing what it would be like for a young lesbian to deal with all of the romance-and-temple-marriage indoctrination that the young women get. Basically I did my research by reading Queer 13 and The Indelible Allison Bechdel and did my best to extrapolate.
I wrote the wrap-up chapter next (Exmo Conference) which is just a fun little "what happened to everyone" conclusion.
Next I wrote Bordeaux Mission. I wanted to write that one because I've always been fascinated by LDS missionary stories, and all through my novel people talk about missions (with young Mormons, somebody's always setting off on one, or on one, or just back), so I wanted to include the actual experience. Additionally, in Jared's story I'd introduced the character Tanya -- who wasn't originally intended as a sympathetic character, but who ended up stealing the show in a lot of ways. So I wanted to explore her character further by giving her a new boyfriend -- someone with a little more self-confidence than Jared -- who wouldn't be intimidated by a woman who takes the lead. Thus the character of Spencer Hobbs was created.
I had a great time writing Spencer's story, largely because I got lots of fantastic mission details and inspiration from another person I met on exmo-social. With his help, I had an easier time writing Spencer as a clever jock, to balance out my character spectrum which had been hopelessly weighted a little too heavily towards scrawny math/science nerds (i.e. my own familiar social circle).
I was so pleased with the Spencer character that I had him play a leading role in the last segment I wrote (Polygamist, part 5 of the novel), which I added in order to introduce Joe's character and explain how it came to be that he was living with his uncle's family.
Writing a story in such a haphazard manner makes for kind of a random and confusing narrative structure. Yet the story is actually fairly well organized if you look at it thematically as a portrait of growing up Mormon and leaving the church as a young person:
1. Young Women's: Trying to be a good Mormon and live up to the church's expectations for you as a young teen.
2. Youth Conference: More serious indoctrination and the beginnings of cognitive dissonance.
3. Saturday's Warrior: The dark side of the resulting mindset.
4. BYU: The epiphany; realizing that it's not real or true.
5. Polygamist: Breaking free of the mindset.
6. Temple Wedding: Dealing with the family fallout.
7. Orem High: A second adolescence while exploring your new-found freedom.
8. Bordeaux Mission: Reflecting on your life, your choices, your feelings about the church.
9. Exmo Conference: wrap-up.
It's very clear that this is a first novel -- between the autobiography, the coming-of-age aspect, and the purging of those fantasies and demons that are closest to the surface. That's why I don't want to try to re-write some subset of this material into a more-reasonably-structured different novel. For the future, I'd rather start over with all new material and a plan. ;-)
Still, I think this one has a lot of potential interest and value as it is, which is why I'm posting it online, in hopes of making a connection with people who might relate to some of the characters and situations I've portrayed.
Don't forget -- the conclusion will be posted online this Tuesday!!
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
I'm neither a poet nor a photographer
So how can I share with you this amazing sunny/windy fall day we're having?
I've somehow internalized the idea that it's not enough to just have experiences -- I have to record them and impart them. But when I try to press the little violet between the pages of a book, it's never quite the same as in life...
Why? Why not just be and do?
I'm tempted to trace it to my Mormon upbringing (given that that's my blogging theme), but I think it comes more from my non-religious outlook: any experience that I can't preserve will one day be lost (see why I don't like death). Either that or it's my ingrained Protestant work ethic. Must... make... myself... useful... at... all... times...
All of this real-life that's been going on since I've been here in New Jersey -- it's really cutting into my blogging. I have a backlog of about ten things I'm planning to post about! I can't believe I still haven't gotten around to recounting the Mormon Fundamentalist (polygamist) church service I attended when I was in Utah! Not to mention a bunch of other more mundane things that have been happening lately (my trip to Boston this past weekend, the dinner I went to last night where the hostess showed us Albert Einstein's desk that he had brought with him to Princeton from Berlin). But the problem is that it takes me a few hours to write a careful post, and those are hours I could be spending on more real-life experiences!
Meanwhile I keep obsessing over my elaborate plans about how to get an amazing new job when I get back to Zürich, plus I'm at a fun part on my professional research project that I'm doing during this sabbatical. But this weather is making me want to blow off work and go on a walk through the woods, crackle some crispy fall leaves under my feet.
I want to work,
I want to play,
I need three times as many hours in every day!!!
I've somehow internalized the idea that it's not enough to just have experiences -- I have to record them and impart them. But when I try to press the little violet between the pages of a book, it's never quite the same as in life...
Why? Why not just be and do?
I'm tempted to trace it to my Mormon upbringing (given that that's my blogging theme), but I think it comes more from my non-religious outlook: any experience that I can't preserve will one day be lost (see why I don't like death). Either that or it's my ingrained Protestant work ethic. Must... make... myself... useful... at... all... times...
All of this real-life that's been going on since I've been here in New Jersey -- it's really cutting into my blogging. I have a backlog of about ten things I'm planning to post about! I can't believe I still haven't gotten around to recounting the Mormon Fundamentalist (polygamist) church service I attended when I was in Utah! Not to mention a bunch of other more mundane things that have been happening lately (my trip to Boston this past weekend, the dinner I went to last night where the hostess showed us Albert Einstein's desk that he had brought with him to Princeton from Berlin). But the problem is that it takes me a few hours to write a careful post, and those are hours I could be spending on more real-life experiences!
Meanwhile I keep obsessing over my elaborate plans about how to get an amazing new job when I get back to Zürich, plus I'm at a fun part on my professional research project that I'm doing during this sabbatical. But this weather is making me want to blow off work and go on a walk through the woods, crackle some crispy fall leaves under my feet.
I want to work,
I want to play,
I need three times as many hours in every day!!!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Speaking for the other gender...
How well do male authors do at writing female characters? And vice-versa? And if you know the author's gender, how does that affect your perception of the characters in the story?
I was wondering about this because of some of the comments I got on my recently-posted novella Orem High. Particularly interesting were the comments of the form "A guy wouldn't say/do that." I'm not complaining, BTW, the comments were very helpful. The thing that struck me, though, was the fact that I didn't get equivalent comments for the earlier segments that were narrated by female characters.
The response is obvious (you may be thinking): as a female, I naturally can write from a female perspective better than I can write from a male perspective. That's undoubtedly part of it. But I think that April, Lynn, and Jill all did/said/thought things that aren't necessarily typical for a girl, and I wonder if people would have reacted to those stories differently if I'd pretended the author was male...
I've done my share of criticizing male authors for their portrayals of women (see here and the comments here). I feel like those particular criticisms were justified, but maybe I'm biased.
Trying to see your (fictional) universe from the perspective of someone who is unlike yourself is a fun challenge. I'm not interested in writing Autobiography of My Years as a Hermit or Me and My Clones -- I want my universe to be inhabited by a variety of interesting people!
Any thoughts on squeezing into unfamiliar perspectives?
I was wondering about this because of some of the comments I got on my recently-posted novella Orem High. Particularly interesting were the comments of the form "A guy wouldn't say/do that." I'm not complaining, BTW, the comments were very helpful. The thing that struck me, though, was the fact that I didn't get equivalent comments for the earlier segments that were narrated by female characters.
The response is obvious (you may be thinking): as a female, I naturally can write from a female perspective better than I can write from a male perspective. That's undoubtedly part of it. But I think that April, Lynn, and Jill all did/said/thought things that aren't necessarily typical for a girl, and I wonder if people would have reacted to those stories differently if I'd pretended the author was male...
I've done my share of criticizing male authors for their portrayals of women (see here and the comments here). I feel like those particular criticisms were justified, but maybe I'm biased.
Trying to see your (fictional) universe from the perspective of someone who is unlike yourself is a fun challenge. I'm not interested in writing Autobiography of My Years as a Hermit or Me and My Clones -- I want my universe to be inhabited by a variety of interesting people!
Any thoughts on squeezing into unfamiliar perspectives?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
A reader with a story
I got another email from a reader the other day:
I'm always happy to get these sorts of letters because that's basically why I wrote Exmormon: to make a connection with other people by exchanging stories and comparing experiences. And it turns out that this reader has an interesting exmo story of her own to share, and she allowed me to post what she's written so far for all of you on Main Street Plaza here: Mormonism is for the “Saints” who can afford it.
p.s. I know I've let the ol' blog here grow a little slow lately -- it's mostly because the discussion has livened up on Main Street Plaza (not to mention Rational Moms), and there's only so much of me to spread around. ;^) But you know these things go in cycles, and I have plenty more fun stuff planned for this space! :D
I just wanted to thank you for the very accurate and beautiful piece you've put together called Ex-mormon. It is so well put together that I felt like I had been shot into the past.
I was "mormon" too at one point. Recently I've been putting my own historical story together, not just for me, but for others like me who have had that epiphany and need an outlet and to not feel alone. I was looking through Google in hopes to see an example or something for guidance and found it in your stories.
I'm always happy to get these sorts of letters because that's basically why I wrote Exmormon: to make a connection with other people by exchanging stories and comparing experiences. And it turns out that this reader has an interesting exmo story of her own to share, and she allowed me to post what she's written so far for all of you on Main Street Plaza here: Mormonism is for the “Saints” who can afford it.
p.s. I know I've let the ol' blog here grow a little slow lately -- it's mostly because the discussion has livened up on Main Street Plaza (not to mention Rational Moms), and there's only so much of me to spread around. ;^) But you know these things go in cycles, and I have plenty more fun stuff planned for this space! :D
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The gift of (sexual) fantasy
Writing erotica is hard.
For starters, writing a good story period is hard -- but erotica presents special challenges on top of that. An erotic story should be arousing to at least a good portion of the audience, yet different people are turned on by vastly different cues and story lines. To make matters worse, what's hot to one person is icky to another (and vice-versa). (I gather some people found my bad public sex stories arousing, even if that wasn't exactly the intention.) On top of all that, one's sexual fantasies are an incredibly personal thing to share. For myself, I usually invent my own situation and characters (with an elaborate and detailed back-story, etc.), but I'd hesitate to write them down -- because of what people would think. Hell, I even hesitate to tell you which storie(s) from The Best of Best American Erotica 2008
made me read them one-handed (so to speak), and I like writing about sex!!
Naturally, I was impressed with Susie Bright's "Best of the Best" anthology. As I explained in my top 10 erotic books post, after reading some of the more famous/popular erotic works (that didn't happen to match my particular kink), I kind of put the whole genre on the shelf. But this anthology is a better starting point than complete erotic novels if you'd like to give erotica a try -- it contains so many different types of scenarios that there's a high probability that at least one will tickle you in just the right way. And even the ones that don't have you reaching for your toys or partner are interesting enough to read just as stories.
Highlights?
Well, since this book is already the product of winnowing down fifteen years of erotic literature to just "the best of the best," I hate to winnow it down further. But I'll mention a few of my favorites:
Blue Light is one of the most fascinating as a story. I didn't find it arousing since (contrary to recent findings that straight women are aroused by all gender/orientation combinations), gay sex stories (of either gender) kind of leave me going "Meh, whatever." The Desires of Houses is at once beautiful and entertaining, while Tennessee is poignant and moving. Fleshlight is fun; Horny is intriguing. The well-known essay Are We Having Sex Now or What? is thought provoking as always -- so much so that it's inspired me to put up a related discussion (about Mormon sexuality) over on The Visitors' Center.
I think my favorite was probably The Casting Couch. Here's what the author says about it:
In my opinion, she succeeded at that goal. So, not only is it a fun fantasy, but the author really did capture the flow of a fantasy and make it work as a story rather than trying to squeeze a fantasy into a standard story format. I'll admit that when I mentally replayed it I recast the evil boss as a guy (which totally destroys any rainbow-friendly aspect and makes the story not-at-all P.C., but c'est la vie).
And now, the obligatory seasonal question: Should you get this book as a Christmas (or other holiday) present for all your closest friends?
It depends on how intimate you are (or want to be) with them. ;^)
For starters, writing a good story period is hard -- but erotica presents special challenges on top of that. An erotic story should be arousing to at least a good portion of the audience, yet different people are turned on by vastly different cues and story lines. To make matters worse, what's hot to one person is icky to another (and vice-versa). (I gather some people found my bad public sex stories arousing, even if that wasn't exactly the intention.) On top of all that, one's sexual fantasies are an incredibly personal thing to share. For myself, I usually invent my own situation and characters (with an elaborate and detailed back-story, etc.), but I'd hesitate to write them down -- because of what people would think. Hell, I even hesitate to tell you which storie(s) from The Best of Best American Erotica 2008
made me read them one-handed (so to speak), and I like writing about sex!! Naturally, I was impressed with Susie Bright's "Best of the Best" anthology. As I explained in my top 10 erotic books post, after reading some of the more famous/popular erotic works (that didn't happen to match my particular kink), I kind of put the whole genre on the shelf. But this anthology is a better starting point than complete erotic novels if you'd like to give erotica a try -- it contains so many different types of scenarios that there's a high probability that at least one will tickle you in just the right way. And even the ones that don't have you reaching for your toys or partner are interesting enough to read just as stories.Highlights?
Well, since this book is already the product of winnowing down fifteen years of erotic literature to just "the best of the best," I hate to winnow it down further. But I'll mention a few of my favorites:
Blue Light is one of the most fascinating as a story. I didn't find it arousing since (contrary to recent findings that straight women are aroused by all gender/orientation combinations), gay sex stories (of either gender) kind of leave me going "Meh, whatever." The Desires of Houses is at once beautiful and entertaining, while Tennessee is poignant and moving. Fleshlight is fun; Horny is intriguing. The well-known essay Are We Having Sex Now or What? is thought provoking as always -- so much so that it's inspired me to put up a related discussion (about Mormon sexuality) over on The Visitors' Center.
I think my favorite was probably The Casting Couch. Here's what the author says about it:
I liked writing a story that worked the way fantasy does -- switching points of view, starting and dropping story lines and scenes.
In my opinion, she succeeded at that goal. So, not only is it a fun fantasy, but the author really did capture the flow of a fantasy and make it work as a story rather than trying to squeeze a fantasy into a standard story format. I'll admit that when I mentally replayed it I recast the evil boss as a guy (which totally destroys any rainbow-friendly aspect and makes the story not-at-all P.C., but c'est la vie).
And now, the obligatory seasonal question: Should you get this book as a Christmas (or other holiday) present for all your closest friends?
It depends on how intimate you are (or want to be) with them. ;^)
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Is it really better to have loved and lost?
This is a question I've tried to answer since I was a teenager.
On the one hand, feeling your heart on fire with passion is being alive; wishing for calm tranquility is like wishing for death. As an atheist, I suppose I should know that emotions are in your head, but I believe in the metaphor, at least, of feeling it in your heart.
On the other hand, is there anything more crushing, more utterly humiliating, than unrequited love?
To look forward to that one moment per day (or so) when you know you'll see him; to replay your brief exchange over and over in your mind, not wanting to do anything else but remember it; planning, rehearsing the clever things you'll say next time; knowing all the while that he doesn't care in the slightest and hasn't given you conversation a second thought.
I remember studying Dante in High School, and learning how noble his unrequited love for Beatrice was. I didn't buy it. Sure, I thought, maybe it seems cool if you're that one-in-a-billion who can turn it into a fantastic epic poem, but for the other nine-hundred ninety-nine million, etc., it just means you're the loser that someone else didn't want.
So I spent many years trying to rid myself of this emotion at all costs, trying to convince myself not live and not pine. The memory came back to me recently when by chance I heard a familiar chorus:
It's too late baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it...
And suddenly I was transported back to a moment many years ago:
Myself, sitting in an airplane on the tarmac, waiting to take off, with this song blaring from the plane's interior speakers as the passengers took their seats. The words seem trite, yet the deepest emotions are somehow the simplest.
There I was, setting off on my fantastic adventure that I'd built for myself, willing myself to believe the words. It's too late, yes, yes, it's too late. Yes, that painful ember in my heart is dead, though I knew that it wasn't.
Unrequited love, the humiliation of it, has become my favorite topic for a sort of cynical humor (see Youth Conference). It's so horrifyingly absurd not to be able to let go of that razor-sharp shard of hope -- sometimes for years -- that there's nothing to do but try to make light of yourself. Add a little distance in hopes of turning tragedy into comedy.
That and pour a glass of wine and listen to sad songs, and feel it; get it out.
Ah, it's hard to love.
Ah, it's hard not to love...
On the one hand, feeling your heart on fire with passion is being alive; wishing for calm tranquility is like wishing for death. As an atheist, I suppose I should know that emotions are in your head, but I believe in the metaphor, at least, of feeling it in your heart.
On the other hand, is there anything more crushing, more utterly humiliating, than unrequited love?
To look forward to that one moment per day (or so) when you know you'll see him; to replay your brief exchange over and over in your mind, not wanting to do anything else but remember it; planning, rehearsing the clever things you'll say next time; knowing all the while that he doesn't care in the slightest and hasn't given you conversation a second thought.
I remember studying Dante in High School, and learning how noble his unrequited love for Beatrice was. I didn't buy it. Sure, I thought, maybe it seems cool if you're that one-in-a-billion who can turn it into a fantastic epic poem, but for the other nine-hundred ninety-nine million, etc., it just means you're the loser that someone else didn't want.
So I spent many years trying to rid myself of this emotion at all costs, trying to convince myself not live and not pine. The memory came back to me recently when by chance I heard a familiar chorus:
It's too late baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it...
And suddenly I was transported back to a moment many years ago:
Myself, sitting in an airplane on the tarmac, waiting to take off, with this song blaring from the plane's interior speakers as the passengers took their seats. The words seem trite, yet the deepest emotions are somehow the simplest.
There I was, setting off on my fantastic adventure that I'd built for myself, willing myself to believe the words. It's too late, yes, yes, it's too late. Yes, that painful ember in my heart is dead, though I knew that it wasn't.
Unrequited love, the humiliation of it, has become my favorite topic for a sort of cynical humor (see Youth Conference). It's so horrifyingly absurd not to be able to let go of that razor-sharp shard of hope -- sometimes for years -- that there's nothing to do but try to make light of yourself. Add a little distance in hopes of turning tragedy into comedy.
That and pour a glass of wine and listen to sad songs, and feel it; get it out.
Ah, it's hard to love.
Ah, it's hard not to love...
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Novella wrap-up!
If you've been following this blog, you probably already know that I just finished serializing the five-chapter novella Temple Wedding last week. And if you're not among the four hundred people who've now read it, it's never too late!! :D
As I've said, this piece is a short comic drama about what it's like for young adult non-believers to go back and visit the whole extended clan on the occasion of a (religious) wedding in the family. This segment (and my whole novel Exmormon) are part of what I hope will be a growing genre: atheist/humanist literature. Non-believers are people too, and we have stories to tell!! Some of our stories deal with religion, some don't, but why not see some more atheist protagonists?
As a note to other writers out there: I like to work with other writers. I don't see them as the competition, I see them as part of the team. Anyone else out there who has written a novel (or novella or short story) and is interested in getting feedback on a manuscript or swapping tips and ideas, feel free to email me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com. My areas of specialization are atheist/humanist lit and Mormon Lit (including stuff written by believers -- faithful Mormons, I'd be happy to give you a friendly and constructive "non-believer's perspective" on your story).
Also, remember that my publicity budget for Exmormon is exactly $0, and I don't have any kind of publicist helping me -- I've built up a non-trivial audience merely through my own antics on the Internet and through the book speaking for itself. And when I say "the book speaking for itself," I mean word-of-mouth. If you're reading this book and like it, any mention of it will be heartily appreciated. :D
Next up Orem High! This is one of the longest and most potentially controversial segments. I've got a lot of work left to do on the illustrations -- the one you see on the first page is the only one I've done so far, which means I have about fourteen more to draw. And since I'm no Quick Draw McGraw, that should take me until February 10, 2009.
I hope you'll all be joining me then!!! :D
As I've said, this piece is a short comic drama about what it's like for young adult non-believers to go back and visit the whole extended clan on the occasion of a (religious) wedding in the family. This segment (and my whole novel Exmormon) are part of what I hope will be a growing genre: atheist/humanist literature. Non-believers are people too, and we have stories to tell!! Some of our stories deal with religion, some don't, but why not see some more atheist protagonists?
As a note to other writers out there: I like to work with other writers. I don't see them as the competition, I see them as part of the team. Anyone else out there who has written a novel (or novella or short story) and is interested in getting feedback on a manuscript or swapping tips and ideas, feel free to email me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com. My areas of specialization are atheist/humanist lit and Mormon Lit (including stuff written by believers -- faithful Mormons, I'd be happy to give you a friendly and constructive "non-believer's perspective" on your story).
Also, remember that my publicity budget for Exmormon is exactly $0, and I don't have any kind of publicist helping me -- I've built up a non-trivial audience merely through my own antics on the Internet and through the book speaking for itself. And when I say "the book speaking for itself," I mean word-of-mouth. If you're reading this book and like it, any mention of it will be heartily appreciated. :D
Next up Orem High! This is one of the longest and most potentially controversial segments. I've got a lot of work left to do on the illustrations -- the one you see on the first page is the only one I've done so far, which means I have about fourteen more to draw. And since I'm no Quick Draw McGraw, that should take me until February 10, 2009.
I hope you'll all be joining me then!!! :D
Monday, September 01, 2008
"Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental."
This I don't get.
Why do fictional works so often have a disclaimer to the effect that "Any resemblance to actual persons -- living or dead -- is purely coincidental."? Especially in cases where it's clear it isn't true?
Are there libel issues?
It seems inherently disingenuous (since fiction is always based to some degree on the author's experiences, see edit your life), and also unnecessary -- since calling something "fiction" means it isn't meant to be an accurate retelling of real people or events.
Am I missing something?
Why do fictional works so often have a disclaimer to the effect that "Any resemblance to actual persons -- living or dead -- is purely coincidental."? Especially in cases where it's clear it isn't true?
Are there libel issues?
It seems inherently disingenuous (since fiction is always based to some degree on the author's experiences, see edit your life), and also unnecessary -- since calling something "fiction" means it isn't meant to be an accurate retelling of real people or events.
Am I missing something?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Change the name, change the looks,
That's how friends get into books...
Here's an amusing little snippet which made me laugh when I read it in The Grasshopper King:
Is the author speaking for himself (transparently disguised as a fictional character)? Or is he just joking about authors and would-be authors in general? Do authors sometimes mock real people by sneaking a few of them into fictional works?
I'm guessing that they do. Another author admitted to the same thing here:
The natural follow-up question is covered in the same post: "Don’t you really wish we could edit our own lives sometimes?"
I love workshopping with other authors, and one of the most interesting aspects is how often a first novel tends to be an edited and corrected version of the author's own life. That's not a bad thing -- if you've led an interesting life or at least can recount it well. "Oneself" is an obvious first choice for a character to portray. And reading a story often means discovering what the character/author imagines could or should have happened differently. This adds a new dimension to the picture.
Here's another Mormon author (Christopher Bigelow) on analyzing one's own life through fiction. In his case he decided to revisit his past without correcting it (in the novel Kindred Spirits):
Now it's time for me to come clean myself.
As I've explained before, Youth Conference is the most autobiographical segment of Exmormon. (It's also the first part I wrote.) I simplified the story a bit -- limited the time-span, cut down on the number of characters and mixed them up a little -- but it could practically be a memoir (see Storytelling: fiction vs. memoirs).
BYU (the second segment I wrote) was the part where I started from reality and then did some major edits and corrections. First of all, Lynn was already attending BYU when she had her deconversion epiphany. She didn't stop believing as a high school senior and then say "Well, I'll just go to BYU anyway since that's what my parents want -- how bad can it be?" Secondly, once Lynn stopped believing, she transferred to another school (instead of saying "Since my parents won't help if I go somewhere else, looks like I can't transfer without going into debt -- guess I'll just stick it out"). And the third change was to replace my real-life boyfriend Steve with Rex. This change is really more of a simplification than an improvement (since Steve was arguably more of a character), but not to worry! Bits of Steve will find their way into future characters in future novels.
So where did Rex Wendell come from? Can a fictional character ever be wholly made up? I think in this case he's mostly an expression of what I imagine I'd be like if I were a guy. I probably shouldn't admit to that since it makes writing a sex scene for Rex and Lynn look that much more like an exercise in masturbation. Anyway...
Now what about self-indulgently using fiction to ridicule my enemies? I like to think I'm mostly not guilty of this offense. Okay, some have suggested that Lynn's roommate looks suspiciously like my real-life freshman roommate, but that's as bad as it gets.
The thing is that I'll write people acting in selfish self-interest, but I don't like writing villains who are simply pure bad guys. As an example, in my new novel (Foreign Stars), I thought it would be fun to explore the dispute within feminism over sexual expression. If you follow my blog, you probably know that I don't think highly of the anti-porn faction of feminism (see feminism and sexuality), so you might expect to see a Dworkinite character as a villain. I kind of started in that direction, but that's really not my style. So as the story progressed, the Dworkinite feminist character was fleshed-out, started getting the better of the other characters much of the time, and by the end was one of the main hero/protagonists, without changing her politics.
So what about you other writers out there? Is your first protagonist a (thinly disguised) version of yourself? And have you kept your friends close and your enemies closer?
What about friends of authors? Have you ever been reading along and found a fictionalized version of yourself in a story?
Here's an amusing little snippet which made me laugh when I read it in The Grasshopper King:
I had some idea of writing, which was partly a vestige of my youthful idealization of New York and the poets, partly a long-nursed desire to correct the follies of my former acquaintances by satirizing them, transparently disguised, in print.
Is the author speaking for himself (transparently disguised as a fictional character)? Or is he just joking about authors and would-be authors in general? Do authors sometimes mock real people by sneaking a few of them into fictional works?
I'm guessing that they do. Another author admitted to the same thing here:
At our StoryMaker Conference this past weekend, I bought a little plaque that said, "All my enemies become victims or incompetent villains in my novels." I loved that plaque because it’s true. I have written people into my novels that weren’t nice to me. It felt cathartic, too, in a way. I have a tender heart and I have worked long and hard on getting a tougher skin, but it’s a trial for me. If I were writing my own life, I would definitely try to make myself less sensitive and explore that story idea of something really exciting and daring happening to me and rooting out that part of my personality. Then I wouldn’t be reduced to writing novels with mean people’s names in them and laughing every time I read it to myself.
The natural follow-up question is covered in the same post: "Don’t you really wish we could edit our own lives sometimes?"
I love workshopping with other authors, and one of the most interesting aspects is how often a first novel tends to be an edited and corrected version of the author's own life. That's not a bad thing -- if you've led an interesting life or at least can recount it well. "Oneself" is an obvious first choice for a character to portray. And reading a story often means discovering what the character/author imagines could or should have happened differently. This adds a new dimension to the picture.
Here's another Mormon author (Christopher Bigelow) on analyzing one's own life through fiction. In his case he decided to revisit his past without correcting it (in the novel Kindred Spirits):
I didn't really blame myself for the sins. Deep down inside, I felt--and perhaps still feel--that the sins were somewhat inevitable, not really anything I could have realistically avoided, just a natural part of my mortal experience. I acknowledged the sins as wrong but didn't feel all that personally responsible or sorry. In the novel, I give Eliza similar feelings.
So if I could have somehow revisited my own imperfect repentance through the novel and actually achieve a new level of grief and regret for sins, that would have been spiritually productive for me. Frankly, I can't imagine how that could have happened, but it's a nice idea. Instead, the novel is more a mirror of my own spiritual journey, which apparently isn't completed yet, thus leaving the novel with a particularly unfinished feeling for those further along in their spiritual journey.
Now it's time for me to come clean myself.
As I've explained before, Youth Conference is the most autobiographical segment of Exmormon. (It's also the first part I wrote.) I simplified the story a bit -- limited the time-span, cut down on the number of characters and mixed them up a little -- but it could practically be a memoir (see Storytelling: fiction vs. memoirs).
BYU (the second segment I wrote) was the part where I started from reality and then did some major edits and corrections. First of all, Lynn was already attending BYU when she had her deconversion epiphany. She didn't stop believing as a high school senior and then say "Well, I'll just go to BYU anyway since that's what my parents want -- how bad can it be?" Secondly, once Lynn stopped believing, she transferred to another school (instead of saying "Since my parents won't help if I go somewhere else, looks like I can't transfer without going into debt -- guess I'll just stick it out"). And the third change was to replace my real-life boyfriend Steve with Rex. This change is really more of a simplification than an improvement (since Steve was arguably more of a character), but not to worry! Bits of Steve will find their way into future characters in future novels.
So where did Rex Wendell come from? Can a fictional character ever be wholly made up? I think in this case he's mostly an expression of what I imagine I'd be like if I were a guy. I probably shouldn't admit to that since it makes writing a sex scene for Rex and Lynn look that much more like an exercise in masturbation. Anyway...
Now what about self-indulgently using fiction to ridicule my enemies? I like to think I'm mostly not guilty of this offense. Okay, some have suggested that Lynn's roommate looks suspiciously like my real-life freshman roommate, but that's as bad as it gets.
The thing is that I'll write people acting in selfish self-interest, but I don't like writing villains who are simply pure bad guys. As an example, in my new novel (Foreign Stars), I thought it would be fun to explore the dispute within feminism over sexual expression. If you follow my blog, you probably know that I don't think highly of the anti-porn faction of feminism (see feminism and sexuality), so you might expect to see a Dworkinite character as a villain. I kind of started in that direction, but that's really not my style. So as the story progressed, the Dworkinite feminist character was fleshed-out, started getting the better of the other characters much of the time, and by the end was one of the main hero/protagonists, without changing her politics.
So what about you other writers out there? Is your first protagonist a (thinly disguised) version of yourself? And have you kept your friends close and your enemies closer?
What about friends of authors? Have you ever been reading along and found a fictionalized version of yourself in a story?
Thursday, February 07, 2008
booze, the bottle, the sauce: alcohol
Mmm, delicious red wine!
During my exmo-social days I learned the art of "PUI." That's "posting under the influence." It turns out it's not so hard. With a little practice you can learn to write comments that are coherent, relevant to the conversation, and free of spelling errors -- even when you're so drunk you can't sit up straight in your computer chair. The problem is (as you'll quickly learn) a comment can be coherent, relevant, and free of typos, and yet still be really, really, really stupid.
So, as useful as it is to learn to post while plastered, it's an even more useful skill to learn not to do it.
I made myself a very strict rule about this once I switched to blogging (where you can't just go back and delete your posts the next day). It's particularly important if you like to post comments on the Bloggernacle blogs. I somehow imagine the faithful would be less understanding than the heathens if you go back the next day and post "please ignore all my comments from last night -- I was really drunk when I wrote that..." I even thought of inventing a breathalyzer computer peripheral for exmos which allows you to read all the web pages you want, but past a certain blood alcohol level it disables your browser's "post" function. Now that would be a useful gadget! If I knew how to build that, I'd make a fortune!!! ;^)
It was writing that furnished me with definitive proof that drinking does not make you any cleverer. If I'm typing in a draft that I've written out longhand, when the writing is neat and clear, I've found I usually have little editing to do. But whenever I get to a page where the writing looks a little slurred, I pretty much have to scrap the whole scene and start over.
Now you're probably thinking "Chanson, you can't seriously expect us to believe that a novel called Exmormon was written without the aid of large amounts of alcohol..."
Well, yes and no. The trick is not to drink and write at the same time. Here's how to do it: All day long -- during every free moment -- brainstorm the story, outline it, map out scenes, and compose the individual lines. Then, as soon as it's quitting time, have a nice apéritif. This temporarily breaks the obsession so you can relax and go to sleep early. And with the aid of a few drinks, you sleep hard, but for just a few hours. After a nice concentrated sleep, the dehydration wakes you up at two or three in the morning, ready to start writing. Then you go to the computer and brain-dump everything you composed in your head the day before until around seven in the morning when it's time to take a shower and go to work. (Why am I saying "you" here? Obviously I mean "me"...)
The drawback to this? Health, mostly, which is why it's better not to get struck by inspiration too often. It's not possible to do this for more than a few weeks at a stretch, and at the end of that you're basically a zombie. So hopefully by the end of a couple weeks the obsession has run its course, the first draft is done, and -- after a long nap -- you're ready to get back to real life.
Alcohol is the reason it's important to avoid the temptation to self-identify as a writer -- or as any kind of an artist, really. If you're, say, a software engineer or a mom, then hard drinking just makes you come off as irresponsible, and maybe even something of a loser. So you have a social incentive to avoid it. But when you're an artist, it doesn't have quite the same stigma. You can pass for "troubled" and "deep." It becomes an asset if you think about it. After all, it's just that much harder to get taken seriously as an artist if you're not a total basket case.
But suppose you've decided that you'd rather not sacrifice your health and other responsibilities for your art. You might imagine that the best strategy would be never to touch the stuff at all, in order to stay as far away from problem drinking as possible. But it's not clear that's the safest course. It seems like one extreme begets another, and a tee-totaling society produces a lot of people who have no idea of how to drink responsibly. This can lead to drinking problems which -- in the grand circle of life -- lead to "12-step programs" to lead people back to the other extreme.
Might there be a middle way?
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
It's not technically a run-on sentence, but...
Maybe it's too long....?
What do you think? Should I split it up somehow? Or otherwise improve it?
*** update ***
I think I'll go with the Exterminator's improved version:
Thanks Exterminator!!! That's much better than what I had come up with!!! :D
Actually, it would be cool to have a whole paragraph, but I probably shouldn't push my luck... ;^)
What I'd like is a description like the first paragraph I wrote about Kindred Spirits or like the first half of my review of Brother Brigham, but it's tricky to write such a thing about one's own work. Author's myopia, perhaps?
During a semester abroad learning the traditional music of a little country tucked away in the stans of central Asia, the students' own ambitions and desires get mixed up with the local political intrigues for a fabulous exotic adventure!
What do you think? Should I split it up somehow? Or otherwise improve it?
*** update ***
I think I'll go with the Exterminator's improved version:
While abroad in Asia studying the folk music of a little country tucked among the -stans, the students become embroiled in political intrigues and exotic adventures.
Thanks Exterminator!!! That's much better than what I had come up with!!! :D
Actually, it would be cool to have a whole paragraph, but I probably shouldn't push my luck... ;^)
What I'd like is a description like the first paragraph I wrote about Kindred Spirits or like the first half of my review of Brother Brigham, but it's tricky to write such a thing about one's own work. Author's myopia, perhaps?
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Bear with me...
Sorry I've been uncharacteristically missing from blog space for a few days (even from commenting). It's not entirely because of the move (and haven't left for Switzerland yet). The problem is that I have this weirdly obsessive-focus personality, and sometimes get immersed in a project to the point where I can't think of anything else day and night. As I said, I thought of some ideas of how to continue the story threads of the novella I wrote at the end of November. I have the entire thing mapped out scene by scene, and have most of the remaining scenes essentially written in my head. It's currently a little over 33,000 words, and I have three-and-a-half chapters to go. It'll probably be around 40,000 words when its done. I can't write anything else until I get this out so I can clear the mental registers. ;^)
I'll probably be done by Monday, then I'll be back among the living. After that hopefully I'll go another three or four years or so before this happens again. ;^)
I'll probably be done by Monday, then I'll be back among the living. After that hopefully I'll go another three or four years or so before this happens again. ;^)
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Saturday's Warrior wrap-up
I couldn't be more thrilled with the response I've gotten to the novella I posted about Saturday's Warrior (part III of my novel Exmormon). According to my stats, hundreds of people read along in real time as I serialized it. And from the comments, I can see that number included Mormons as well as exmos and "never-mos" (that's people who have never been Mormon, if you're not in the Mo-know ;^) ).
I'd be interested in getting more feedback on this, and of course I'd love it if you bloggers could get the ball rolling by posting a reaction on your own blog. I'll post links to any blog reactions whether they're positive, negative, or indifferent. And to those of you who didn't read along in real time because you missed the beginning and didn't think you'd be able to catch up, it's not too late. The novella is only nine chapters long, so you can read the whole thing in one sitting (here) then give your opinion as well.
Also note that I've scheduled the next segment, BYU, to begin February 19. I'd post it sooner, but between work, kids, and (especially) preparing to move, I'm having a little trouble getting the illustrations done in a timely manner. If you've already finished Young Womens' and Youth Conference and still want more, you can email me (chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com) and I'll let you read my new novel(la) which is not yet available from any source other than emailing me. ;^)
I'd be interested in getting more feedback on this, and of course I'd love it if you bloggers could get the ball rolling by posting a reaction on your own blog. I'll post links to any blog reactions whether they're positive, negative, or indifferent. And to those of you who didn't read along in real time because you missed the beginning and didn't think you'd be able to catch up, it's not too late. The novella is only nine chapters long, so you can read the whole thing in one sitting (here) then give your opinion as well.
Also note that I've scheduled the next segment, BYU, to begin February 19. I'd post it sooner, but between work, kids, and (especially) preparing to move, I'm having a little trouble getting the illustrations done in a timely manner. If you've already finished Young Womens' and Youth Conference and still want more, you can email me (chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com) and I'll let you read my new novel(la) which is not yet available from any source other than emailing me. ;^)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Finally: New Fiction!!!
I've said here before that after I finished my novel Exmormon, I switched to blogging and haven't written any new fiction since. Well that was true right up until the past few weeks: This past weekend I finished writing my second novel!!!
(Actually third, if you count The Land Far-and-a-Half Away, which I don't...)
This new one is actually shorter than the novella about Saturday's Warrior that I'm currently serializing, but I'm calling it a novel instead of novella because it's a stand-alone work instead of being part of a series. It's just a really short novel (nine chapters, a little over 15,000 words).
To give credit where credit is due, this new piece was partially inspired by a clever article on writing a novel by Robinson Wells. (He probably wasn't hoping to support the exmo arts, but these things happen when you post stuff to the Internet... ;^) )
The whole article is kind of funny-because-it's-so-true, but the specific part that helped me is the following:
I read that and thought: "He's right, you know. I need to stop writing stories set in Utah. I should write a story set in an exotic foreign country..."
But you writers out there probably already know the problem with setting a story in an exotic foreign country: Lots of boring research. Then you still get the details wrong.
So I decided to go with inventing an exotic foreign country. That way if it's convenient for the story that my new country have some peculiar custom like wearing pancakes on their heads or somthing, it's not "wrong" it's just "making your invented country a little more colorful." (p.s. I didn't use the pancake idea myself, so feel free to steal it for your own novel.)
So in a nutshell, my new novel has all of the character-driven relationship intrigues of any segment of Exmormon, but minus the angst-filled contemplation of religion, and for the underlying situation I've dumped the boring reality and replaced it with amusing fantasy. Oh and I did throw in a few Mormons because -- let's face it -- Mormons are funny.
I'm thinking of trying to find an agent for this one, but since that is an annoying, painful, and time-consuming task, I'm putting it off for now. I might start by looking for test-readers, we'll see...
(Actually third, if you count The Land Far-and-a-Half Away, which I don't...)
This new one is actually shorter than the novella about Saturday's Warrior that I'm currently serializing, but I'm calling it a novel instead of novella because it's a stand-alone work instead of being part of a series. It's just a really short novel (nine chapters, a little over 15,000 words).
To give credit where credit is due, this new piece was partially inspired by a clever article on writing a novel by Robinson Wells. (He probably wasn't hoping to support the exmo arts, but these things happen when you post stuff to the Internet... ;^) )
The whole article is kind of funny-because-it's-so-true, but the specific part that helped me is the following:
A boring setting is perfectly acceptable in novel writing. While the word “boring” might be considered pejorative, there are certain books that actually require boring settings. I’m speaking specifically of literary novels. These are books wherein kids die of wasting diseases, and they’re books that win national awards.
The absence of anything interesting in the setting is done purposefully; the general atmosphere of these books screams of despondence and depression, and such things simply can’t exist in an interesting setting. Imagine Summer of the Swans taking place in Narnia, or Angela’s Ashes including a chase scene on top of Mt. Rushmore. If something like that happened, readers might actually want to read these books, and then where would we be?
I read that and thought: "He's right, you know. I need to stop writing stories set in Utah. I should write a story set in an exotic foreign country..."
But you writers out there probably already know the problem with setting a story in an exotic foreign country: Lots of boring research. Then you still get the details wrong.
So I decided to go with inventing an exotic foreign country. That way if it's convenient for the story that my new country have some peculiar custom like wearing pancakes on their heads or somthing, it's not "wrong" it's just "making your invented country a little more colorful." (p.s. I didn't use the pancake idea myself, so feel free to steal it for your own novel.)
So in a nutshell, my new novel has all of the character-driven relationship intrigues of any segment of Exmormon, but minus the angst-filled contemplation of religion, and for the underlying situation I've dumped the boring reality and replaced it with amusing fantasy. Oh and I did throw in a few Mormons because -- let's face it -- Mormons are funny.
I'm thinking of trying to find an agent for this one, but since that is an annoying, painful, and time-consuming task, I'm putting it off for now. I might start by looking for test-readers, we'll see...
Saturday, August 25, 2007
My new Java book!!!
I probably shouldn't be posting about this since it gives away my super-secret identity, but... Anyway, you've probably already figured it out if you read how I got my name and/or if you're familiar with my brother's post-Mo antics (most recently reviewed by equality here)....
Anyway, without further ado, here's my new Java book
!!!
I've already received my big box o' copies, and they look great!!! (If I do say so myself...)
I really had no choice but to write a new one. It's not just because my earlier book become kind of dated (after three years -- darn you, fast-moving world of information technology!!!), and not just because I thought of a whole bunch of additional topics I wanted to write about. The clincher was the horrible photo of me on my earlier book. The lesson is that if you do a quick snapshot that doesn't look too bad on a poor-resolution monitor, that doesn't mean it will necesssarily look nice printed in beautifully half-toned high-resolution black-and-white on a book cover. I couldn't even give out copies of my old book to friends because they kept making fun of the photo (it's unbelievable -- I look like a friggin' chimpanzee...). It's one of those cases where I wished the publisher had been impolite enough to write me back asking "Ummm... you're not really that ugly, are you?"
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little tiny bit, but I'm really proud of this new book. It represents some of my best engineering advice, and no author photo on the cover this time. Hehe!! :D
Anyway, without further ado, here's my new Java book
!!!I've already received my big box o' copies, and they look great!!! (If I do say so myself...)
I really had no choice but to write a new one. It's not just because my earlier book become kind of dated (after three years -- darn you, fast-moving world of information technology!!!), and not just because I thought of a whole bunch of additional topics I wanted to write about. The clincher was the horrible photo of me on my earlier book. The lesson is that if you do a quick snapshot that doesn't look too bad on a poor-resolution monitor, that doesn't mean it will necesssarily look nice printed in beautifully half-toned high-resolution black-and-white on a book cover. I couldn't even give out copies of my old book to friends because they kept making fun of the photo (it's unbelievable -- I look like a friggin' chimpanzee...). It's one of those cases where I wished the publisher had been impolite enough to write me back asking "Ummm... you're not really that ugly, are you?"
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little tiny bit, but I'm really proud of this new book. It represents some of my best engineering advice, and no author photo on the cover this time. Hehe!! :D
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Death II: deal with it!
I've made some progress since my post about why I don't like death.
Every now and then I feel this glimmer of "It's not such a horrifying thing that I'll never see what becomes of the human race and that one day (and forever after that) my consciousness will cease to exist. That's life, and when I'm dead I won't know the difference."
I'm always really proud of myself when I think that way, but unfortunately those moments are few and far between. Most of the time it's more like a constant stream of (whenever I get a free moment) thinking "Now what was it that I'm not supposed to think about since it leaves me paralyzed with dread, yet there is absolutely nothing I can do about it? Oh yeah, death. D'oh!!!"
Maybe that's why I keep so busy?
I think I've pinpointed part of the problem, though. It upsets me to contemplate my "legacy" i.e. how I will be remembered after I'm dead. The Indigo Girls' song about Virginia Woolf illustrates what I'm talking about:
One of the main reasons I write is to make a connection with people. So in some ways this stanza represents a beautiful dream -- to continue to make new friends through my writings even after I'm no longer there to do it in person. The problem with this dream comes a little later in the song:
See the problem?
As sweet as that sentiment is, Virginia Woolf did not "weather the storm of cruel mortality." She's dead. Completely dead. As dead as Charlemagne, as dead as Ozymandias, as dead as some random Mesopotamian peasant whose name has been forgotten for seven thousand years. (Actually maybe even more dead than Ozymandius since he's a fictional character.)
So the "telephone line through time" is a sad image because in reality it's a one-way communication. Virgina Woolf cannot meet her new friend or swap confidences with her or go out for tea with her or even know of her existence. It's almost a pretty picture except that a main protagonist is absent. So the ultimate fantasy happy ending -- being loved by future generations -- isn't a happy ending at all.
Again my Mormon formation shows up as a part of who I am today. All of the focus and value placed on family history has made it so that when I write, I think of my audience as "future generations." That's the wrong fantasy for an atheist to have. There's no reason to shoot for the "most influential people of all time" list because even if I were to make it, it's not as though I'll be there in heaven signing autographs for people. If I want to make a connection with people through writing, the time is now! (Through a blog, for example...)
I'm not saying one should forget about future generations -- far from it. You shouldn't forget about the needs of future generations any more than you should forget about people in need who are alive right now. But if you're a humanist, you work to leave the world a better place for their sake, not your own.
That said, if someone is reading my stuff after I'm dead, I'm not going to say "No! Put it down! Right now!!!" (How could I? ;^) )
I don't have a problem accepting a lot of the limitations of being human (see QZed's post on that), but I guess I'm still working on accepting the fact that my total experience is limited in time as well as space. Baby steps!!! :D
Every now and then I feel this glimmer of "It's not such a horrifying thing that I'll never see what becomes of the human race and that one day (and forever after that) my consciousness will cease to exist. That's life, and when I'm dead I won't know the difference."
I'm always really proud of myself when I think that way, but unfortunately those moments are few and far between. Most of the time it's more like a constant stream of (whenever I get a free moment) thinking "Now what was it that I'm not supposed to think about since it leaves me paralyzed with dread, yet there is absolutely nothing I can do about it? Oh yeah, death. D'oh!!!"
Maybe that's why I keep so busy?
I think I've pinpointed part of the problem, though. It upsets me to contemplate my "legacy" i.e. how I will be remembered after I'm dead. The Indigo Girls' song about Virginia Woolf illustrates what I'm talking about:
They published your diary and that's how I got to know you
key to the room of your own and a mind without end
here's a young girl on a kind of a telephone line through time
the voice at the other end comes like a long lost friend.
One of the main reasons I write is to make a connection with people. So in some ways this stanza represents a beautiful dream -- to continue to make new friends through my writings even after I'm no longer there to do it in person. The problem with this dream comes a little later in the song:
if you need to know that you weathered the storm of cruel mortality
a hundred years later I'm sitting here living proof.
See the problem?
As sweet as that sentiment is, Virginia Woolf did not "weather the storm of cruel mortality." She's dead. Completely dead. As dead as Charlemagne, as dead as Ozymandias, as dead as some random Mesopotamian peasant whose name has been forgotten for seven thousand years. (Actually maybe even more dead than Ozymandius since he's a fictional character.)
So the "telephone line through time" is a sad image because in reality it's a one-way communication. Virgina Woolf cannot meet her new friend or swap confidences with her or go out for tea with her or even know of her existence. It's almost a pretty picture except that a main protagonist is absent. So the ultimate fantasy happy ending -- being loved by future generations -- isn't a happy ending at all.
Again my Mormon formation shows up as a part of who I am today. All of the focus and value placed on family history has made it so that when I write, I think of my audience as "future generations." That's the wrong fantasy for an atheist to have. There's no reason to shoot for the "most influential people of all time" list because even if I were to make it, it's not as though I'll be there in heaven signing autographs for people. If I want to make a connection with people through writing, the time is now! (Through a blog, for example...)
I'm not saying one should forget about future generations -- far from it. You shouldn't forget about the needs of future generations any more than you should forget about people in need who are alive right now. But if you're a humanist, you work to leave the world a better place for their sake, not your own.
That said, if someone is reading my stuff after I'm dead, I'm not going to say "No! Put it down! Right now!!!" (How could I? ;^) )
I don't have a problem accepting a lot of the limitations of being human (see QZed's post on that), but I guess I'm still working on accepting the fact that my total experience is limited in time as well as space. Baby steps!!! :D
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Storytelling: fiction vs. memoirs
Which do you prefer to write? Fiction or memoirs?
Fiction writing has some great advantages over memoirs. When you're recounting something that actually happened, a lot of times the story would be more interesting if it had happened just a little differently. With a memoir? Tough luck! With fiction? No problem!!! :D
Since you don't have to be true to the facts, fiction gives you more liberty to be true to the story.
Still, I love writing memoirs. I've written far more memoirs than I've written fiction. I think memoir-writing is good exercise for writing fiction since it requires the same storytelling skills.
When you're writing a story that actually happened, it's not as though it has been recorded in your brain in some canonical form and you just need to download a copy from your brain onto the paper. You need to craft the story: decide what to include, what to skip, and how to say it. Even something as basic as deciding where an episode begins and where it ends is part of the difference between a memory and a narrative.
(Ninja writer C.V. Rick is an example I've stumbled upon recently of an excellent memoirist who has been turning memories into engaging stories and posting them.)
Personally I haven't written much fiction at all in the past year. It's not that I don't want to write fiction -- it's just that I don't want to sit down with the intention of writing fiction. I'd rather wait until I feel like I have a particular story to tell. That's how I've come up with all of my best work.
At the same time, I want to stay in practice so that when inspiration strikes, I'm ready. That's where memoirs come in: they're storytelling without the story-inventing part.
Fiction writing has some great advantages over memoirs. When you're recounting something that actually happened, a lot of times the story would be more interesting if it had happened just a little differently. With a memoir? Tough luck! With fiction? No problem!!! :D
Since you don't have to be true to the facts, fiction gives you more liberty to be true to the story.
Still, I love writing memoirs. I've written far more memoirs than I've written fiction. I think memoir-writing is good exercise for writing fiction since it requires the same storytelling skills.
When you're writing a story that actually happened, it's not as though it has been recorded in your brain in some canonical form and you just need to download a copy from your brain onto the paper. You need to craft the story: decide what to include, what to skip, and how to say it. Even something as basic as deciding where an episode begins and where it ends is part of the difference between a memory and a narrative.
(Ninja writer C.V. Rick is an example I've stumbled upon recently of an excellent memoirist who has been turning memories into engaging stories and posting them.)
Personally I haven't written much fiction at all in the past year. It's not that I don't want to write fiction -- it's just that I don't want to sit down with the intention of writing fiction. I'd rather wait until I feel like I have a particular story to tell. That's how I've come up with all of my best work.
At the same time, I want to stay in practice so that when inspiration strikes, I'm ready. That's where memoirs come in: they're storytelling without the story-inventing part.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Young Women's
Last week, I finished posting Young Women's, which is part I of my novel Exmormon. Here are the four chapters:
1. Barbie Dolls and the Book of Mormon
2. A goal to gain a testimony
3. Truth or Dare!
4. Divine intervention
I'm taking a short pause before I begin posting Youth Conference. I've scheduled myself to begin it on April 17.
The reason for the pause is so that I can have plenty of time to do the illustrations. They're fun to do, but time consuming. And if possible I'd like to have them all done before I begin so that I can prepare a character chart for Youth Conference like the one I did for Young Women's: characters.
In other good news, I was reading along on a post by Wry Catcher the other day about a potpourri of interesting topics, and I happened upon a recommendation for my book!!!
Thanks Wry!!! :D
1. Barbie Dolls and the Book of Mormon
2. A goal to gain a testimony
3. Truth or Dare!
4. Divine intervention
I'm taking a short pause before I begin posting Youth Conference. I've scheduled myself to begin it on April 17.
The reason for the pause is so that I can have plenty of time to do the illustrations. They're fun to do, but time consuming. And if possible I'd like to have them all done before I begin so that I can prepare a character chart for Youth Conference like the one I did for Young Women's: characters.
In other good news, I was reading along on a post by Wry Catcher the other day about a potpourri of interesting topics, and I happened upon a recommendation for my book!!!
Related to this, I bought and read C. L. Hanson’s novel Ex-Mormon, which was a very good read, and I gobbled it all up in two days time. Fascinating look at mormon and ex-mormon characters. I’m not writing an in-depth review because I’m not that kind of English major, but I very much enjoyed it, and I recommend reading this one!
Thanks Wry!!! :D
Friday, January 26, 2007
Random stuff I found on the Internet...
I almost never click on that "next blog" thing. But maybe I should do it more -- you can find the randomest stuff that way!!!
Here I found an entertaining redone Matt Groening cartoon about questions poets don't like to get asked:
Hehe!!!
So the next time I start thinking it's hard to promote a novel, I'll just look at this cartoon and say: "Could be worse..."
Here I found an entertaining redone Matt Groening cartoon about questions poets don't like to get asked:
Hehe!!!
So the next time I start thinking it's hard to promote a novel, I'll just look at this cartoon and say: "Could be worse..."
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