The Roots of Creativity, Seen Through a Three-Inch Frame
A fellow author’s challenge, to write what you can see through a one-inch frame about your childhood, led me to a photograph of myself. It’s an old Brownie camera photo, about three inches by three inches, but it’s a good, tight frame. And it’s filled with details. In my nonfiction book, The Hinge of Your History: The Phases of Faith, I wrote about the fact that our lives have hinge points at which everything changes. For Sarah in the Old Testament, living a life where everyone saw her as a childless old maid, the hinge was the miraculous birth of Isaac. For me, one of those significant changes occurred at the point of this photograph. Take a tour of this photo with me. The setting is Northeast Elementary School in Farmington, New Mexico, at the...
Reason #166: Because of Letters Like This
I sometimes get letters like this. They do indeed cause me to pause and re-evaluate my reasons for writing what I do, and reasons why I won’t return to the LDS Church, in spite of the joyful experiences I had there. Here’s the letter, and my reply. Mrs. Scott, I received your book Latter-Day Cipher from a very important person in my life for my eighteenth birthday this week. The person who gave it to me was unaware that she was giving me anti-mormon literature. Because the title included the words “latter-day” and she saw that you were a graduate of BYU, she assumed that I would appreciate the book. However, after reading the back, I made the decision to not read the book. Though I commend your writing abilities, I do not understand why you...
A Book and Eternity
I love (and often mention) the generalization we can derive from Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 – where the lunch of a little boy could do the work of a man laboring for five months. Two completely incommensurate things, a small amount of bread and fish and the sweating of a man for 150 days. That gives me courage and tells me that God doesn’t need what I think is needed to accomplish His purposes. And if a writer is called to write, God can and will maximize resources – including hours and minutes – to get them to accomplish His outcomes. Not only does the finished product of a book reflect the way God has enabled an author to write, the book itself illustrates the relationship between time (the realm of where we live) and eternity (where God...
On writing
Recently I the ExMormon Foundation honored me by requesting that I address them at their annual conference on how to write well. Here’s a link to the 8-part (about an hour) presentation, Out of the Mormon Mirage. And in the course of the address I referred to a short, handy resource list for writers or those who would like to get started in writing. It’s here. Blessings to all!
