For the past few years, I have been making a documentary.  For the past few months, I have been doing all of the business associated with distributing that documentary, since we haven't yet found a distributor we're satisfied with.  I have actually been using a calculator, which thing I never would have supposed.  People think of me as a writer, but the only writing I've done for a few years has been in little blog posts, emails, and letters to missionaries.

The missionary I communicate with most often, a young man who was in our MTC branch when my husband and I served there, thanked me for the letters I had sent him and said, "It's like you have written me a book."   I told him that I HAD written him a book.  It was all in the mail. More...

In 1964 The Rolling Stones had a hit with the song “Time is on my Side.” You know the tune. In the lyrics, the speaker talks about a girl who’s playing the field. He says, “You’re searching for good times, but just wait and see. You’ll come running back to me.” The stance of the speaker is patience, confidence. Okay, maybe some male arrogance, too. The lyrics make me think about the relationship of the writer to the muse. The writer is a lover who can choose to desperately chase the muse … or wait for her. Patience is the best approach. Kenneth Atchity says as much in his book A Writer’s Time. Too many writers wait for the muse to begin to write. But Atchity says “she is the last person you want to depend on”: “If you write only when she beckons, your writing is not yours at all. If you write according to your own schedule, she’ll shun you at first, but eventually she won’t be able to stay away from your workshop.” More...

I want to interrupt our regular blog discussion to extend an invitation to all members, former members, and future members of the Association for Mormon Letters to attend our Annual Meeting on Saturday 27 February at UVU's library. The theme of this year’s Meeting is “One Eternal Round: Mormon Literature Past, Present, and Future.” In keeping with this theme, we will be screening the 1931 film “Corianton: A Story of Unholy Love,” one of the first feature-length Mormon films to be produced. The film is a must-see for those interested in Mormon cultural studies, bringing together a fictionalized Book of Mormon narrative; epic Cecil B. DeMillesque production; Aztec stage settings; Roman costumes; pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue; some glitzy dance numbers; and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for good measure. This is one film that must be seen! BYU’s film archivist, James D’Arc will introduce the film, setting it in its appropriate context. This may be one of the few chances audiences will have to see this historic Mormon film.

Additionally, I have been busy reviewing conference submissions and want to report that we have some extremely strong papers this year. The discussion of Mormon literature, film, drama, and art is going to be unprecedented. You simply cannot afford to miss this year’s AML Annual Meeting.

Attendance is free to all AML members and students. (AML membership is inexpensive and includes an annual subscription to Irreantum and can be purchased at the door!) Registration starts at 8:00 a.m. and seating for “Corianton” will close (not begin, close) at 9:00 a.m.

AML also will host a luncheon starting at 1:00 p.m. Seating for the luncheon is limited so tickets should be ordered ahead of time. You can order luncheon tickets through a PayPal option on the AML website at http://www.mormonletters.org/Events.aspx

Finally, you will be impressed at our awards ceremony at the quality and breadth of our Mormon literary landscape. We’ve got some spectacular winners this year!
I look forward to meeting all of you at our Annual Meeting, and, trust me, you will not soon forget “Corianton.”

Our concepts of literature and writing are directly connected to the formats that have become natural to us. It used to be that books (with few or no pictures) were a baseline kind of literacy. That is less the case now. Not only are books filled with pictures, but they tend to exist in a thickly mediated environment, much of which is electronic or at least highly influenced by things digital. Even my son's math book interrupts itself and sends him to go check out an online tutorial before resuming his paper-and-pencil problem set. Now that electronic means of both producing and consuming writing are competing with traditional paper modes, how will this affect Mormon literary habits? More...

Something’s afoot, and I’m not liking it one bit. I’m not speaking as an author, but as a mother of teenage girls. Some years ago, an author friend of mine was invited to speak at a national writers conference. She sat with horror in the audience as writers and editors of YA novels arose and said things like, "I put sex on my first page to draw them in" and "These books are still completely under the parents’ radar. We’re free to do what we want." When it was her turn, my friend stood and said that she liked to write wholesome, funny novels for girls. As you can imagine, that went over well, though one woman did come up and thank her later.

I thought this experience was an exaggeration. And then I picked up Wickedly Lovely by Melissa Marr. This novel came highly recommended by a friend, and I bought it for my sixteen-year-old for Christmas. At the same time, I came up for it on the library waiting list, so I started reading. The book is full of the regular (tedious to me) high school/teenage angst about romance, which I expected, but this seventeen-year-old character also had the physical freedom of a college student. Within the covers of the book, she drinks fairy mead and dances all night and has no memory of what she did. Later, she rejoices when she realizes she’s still a virgin. Good, right? Well, yeah, except that she’s not a virgin—not really. Because she sleeps over at her boyfriend’s, and they basically do everything except The Deed. In my book, sex is sex, regardless of how it occurs. Not, though, according to this character, who feels nothing but joy and excitement at her physical relationship with her boyfriend. There were no negative consequences to her actions, or any worry at all. More...

I've always assumed that given equivalent access to the same facts, reasonable people will tend to come to similar conclusions--perhaps differing in approach, but not in core concept. All that's required is a desire to learn, a willingness to listen, and a modicum of goodwill.

As such, I've watched with dismay as public debate over topics like health care, political appointments, California's Proposition 8, and the propriety of HBO airing dramatized excerpts from the LDS temple ceremony in its popular Big Love series have rapidly devolved into exasperated exchanges of established and well-rehearsed positions lobbed across a vast conceptual chasm with little apparent effort to trace the steps in between.

While writing my own exasperated response last year to a friend regarding Big Love--someone who just refused to see what I was saying--I began to wonder whether we were actually participating in the same discussion. We seemed to perceive the basic idea of what constitutes the sacred so differently as to beg any hope of shared understanding.

As I explored that idea, a series of my own experiences came together in my mind to recast the question--and my ideas about ways to approach an answer.

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In the recent archaeological dig that was my attempt to reconstruct life in the 70s I found a sealed tomb, a treasure trove that had yet to be excavated: old issues of The New Era. I ordered several copies of the first issues and spent many hours reading through all of the 1970s issues at www.lds.org.  The earliest volumes brought one word to mind: trippy. I'm serious. Some of this feeling was attributable to mere nostalgia, of course, but most of it was a result of the amazing production values. Compared to previous LDS church magazines, The New Era was downright colorful, some of the covers and illustrations at times suggesting psychedelic album artwork for Cream or Jimi Hendrix, like something you might imagine Austin Powers would like to read … if he were Amish.  And, they published letters to the editor.  Even more surprising than the burst of color in the pages was how outspoken these early New Era correspondents were: they were as bold as the magazine they often criticized. I'd like to share some of these letters with you. With the exception of one public figure, I've withheld the names of these early faithful dissidents quoted below in order to protect their latter-day descendants from unwarranted shame and persecution.

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I’m admitting upfront that I’m stealing this topic from J. Scott Bronson. His last post was titled, “There’s Always a Message,” and it struck a chord with me.

Back in my early teenage years, my older sister, then an English major, and I got into a friendly discussion/argument about whether a story could exist on its own without an underlying message.

I was firmly in the camp that yes, of course it could. Not everything is a fable or must end with a moral. Not every writer pens a story just to teach a lesson. Puh-leese. My sister disagreed, saying that every story has something to say and teach. At the time, I was too immature to get what she was saying.

Many, many years later, after my first novel came out, this same sister came to me after reading it. She had a bit of an, “I told you so” grin on her face. I had no idea what she was about to say. What came out stunned me.

“Your book has messages and themes and symbols.”

It . . . what?

She complimented me on how well I’d incorporated a particular theme into the narrative, teaching the reader a certain lesson. “Told ya,” she said.

I never did admit that I hadn’t meant to weave any theme or symbol into the book. After she pointed it out, I looked back and thought, “Cool. That’s actually kinda neat.” But I didn’t put it there on purpose. (That was 2002. I have yet to tell her.)

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I've been wondering lately if we actually have the great Mormon writing we're waiting for, but have missed it. I'd imagine that serious writers in Shakespeare's day were waiting for the Great English Poet, not a playwright, and might not have appreciated the dramatic genius of the man they knew as a sonnet-writer with a time-consuming day job. What if our Mormon Shakespeares come in a field we don't expect? Say, for example, the Primary Song. 

Seriously. Think, for a moment, of a favorite primary song. Is it memorable? Does it connect with its audience intellectually and emotionally? Does it include powerful images? Does it teach you a different way to see the world?Is it aware of the complicated real life dynamics in which its audience exists? I've been reading the stories about the composition of various primary songs in a book called "Favorite Songs for LDS Children" my wife and I were given as a wedding present, and I'm increasingly convinced that the larger LDS writing community could learn from what these masters do.

This idea is still at an early stage of development for me, but I'd like to publicly wonder what we as writers in other forms can learn from primary song writers, the best of whom may be our community's greatest artists.

A few thoughts:

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Right now, Jonathan Langford and I are collaborating on a volume tenatively titled "The Latter-Day Saint Family Encyclopdia," which will be published this fall by Thunder Bay Press and sold fairly widely. As you might imagine, we're taking advantage of the opportunity to write a good, meaty entry on Mormon literature, and I've included Jonathan's draft below. May we invite you all to review the following text and, in this post's comment section, let us know any clarifications or enhancements that come to mind. We can't let this entry get any longer, but we can certainly refine what's here. Thanks in advance for your help! More...