Below is the text I had prepared for a panel at last summer’s Sunstone symposium on (you guessed it) Mormonism’s impact on me as a writer (slightly edited). Headings toward the bottom in bold below are taken in part from the panel description in the program. I no longer remember how much resemblance what I said bore to what’s written below, but I rather liked what I came up with to say, so…
Archive for the ‘Thoughts on Writing’ Category
Choose the Write: Mormonism’s Impact on Me as a Writer
Monday, April 12th, 2010Interview Questions and Answers
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010Here are some questions I recently answered for a journalist related to No Going Back and my experiences in writing it.
The Writing Rookie #11: Overcoming Fear
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010This column is cross-posted from A Motley Vision website. For the complete list of columns in this series, click here.
Fear is, I’ve come to realize, one of my great personal enemies as a creative writer (along with laziness). Part of this is probably just because of the kind of person I am. I suspect, though, that part of it may be endemic to the writing process.
Grateful for Writing
Saturday, November 14th, 2009I was walking outside earlier today — because, you know, sitting in front of a computer screen all day is not actually all that good for your mental health, particularly when it’s a computer screen that’s inside your own house, so that you can pass whole days without even glimpsing the outdoors if you don’t actually make the effort —
Where was I? Oh, yes, talking about walking around outdoors, because it’s still actually warm enough that you can walk around outdoors (unusually so, for Wisconsin in November). Not that I tend to walk that long anyway. But it helps to clear out the mental fumes, and does a better job at correcting unfortunate moods than just about anything I know. Taking walks — a key to sanity.
I started today’s walk more or less disgruntled about my writing: the lack of response, lack of sales, etc., and the part of me that wants to be disappointed about this and invest my emotional energy in something more potentially rewarding, such as, say, goldfish raising. In short, I was mentally whining about my lot in life as an unappreciated, unread, and (mostly) unpurchased writer, when I was smacked by the realization of just how ungrateful I was being, and how forgetful of the many wonderful things that have happened to me throughout this whole writing process — which the various accompanying disappointments don’t really subtract from in any meaningful way.
On Writing a Realistic Novel
Friday, November 6th, 2009It’s interesting being the author of a novel about a topic that matters so much to a lot of readers. Sex and religion are topics that people care about passionately (if you’ll pardon the double pun), and when they intersect, there’s little that’s more potentially volatile.
That’s all to the good when people like my book. I’ve gotten some amazing comments from people, not just about how the book affected them as a story but about the positive good they think it can do in the world. I’d like to believe those comments are all true. But it can be especially unpleasant when people don’t like my book — especially those who share my religious beliefs.
The Writing Rookie #12: Realism and Artistic Convention
Thursday, June 17th, 2010Here’s a somewhat belated addition to my series based on insights from writing my first novel, No Going Back. For the complete list of columns in this series, click here.
Cross-posted from A Motley Vision website.
If art is, in part at least, the imitation of reality, it’s an imitation that’s largely bounded by and grounded in artistic convention. That’s something I’ve long been aware of from a literary/critical perspective, but writing a novel myself — and then seeing the reaction of different readers to the specific choices I made about where and how to be “realistic” — has borne that truth in on me in a particularly vivid fashion.
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Tags: A Motley Vision, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jonathan Langford, No Going Back, reader comments, reader responses, realism, writing, writing process, Writing Rookie
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