Lessons to Becoming a Writer

My Writing Foundations class is one of my favorite classes.
I've mentioned before that in this class I had written an Photo-Autobiography. Which I would recommend people to do. It's kinda amazing. Sorta like scrap booking, but with more words. Rather then the pictures being the center of attention and the words supporting, the words are the main attraction with the pictures being complementary.

The lectures of the class:

Lecture number One
1. Pick a subject that means something to you
2. Have a Reason to write
3. Turn your feelings to account

Lecture number Two
Details = Power

What else have I learned?
That view point matters, that description matters, that the small details in words give a story power. That's what the element of great story telling is. Details. That's why stories told by my mother and family are always silly and rather interesting. Details.

The other day we were required to read an essay entitled "Letting the Light Shine Through" written by Deborah Harrison. What an essay!! Let's see if I can quickly summarize the main points.

1. Style: "It encompasses clarity and coherence and conciseness and voice. But it adds up to more than these individual considerations. ... Our style is made up of the choices we make in presenting our ideas."
2. "Writing forces us to think. The process of writing is thinking."
3. Clarity: "Deep or complex ideas need not be expressed in obscure ways. Indeed they shouldn't be."
4. Coherence: "A coherent essay is one that simply makes sense; it moves logically and smoothly from idea to idea."
5. Conciseness: "When we write, we want the most amount of pawer from the least number of words."
6. Voice: "I mean that you, your personality, or how you want readers to perceive you comes off the page, that I can hear you speaking in your own matchless way, that I can feel you genuinely wish to engage me as your reader."
7. Title: Walker Percy "A good title should be like a metaphor: It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious" (Trimble, 2000, p. 180)
8. "Which person we choose, either first, second, or third person, affects the distance we create between ourselves and our readers."
9. "Choice of tense also affects voice and distance."
10. "Word choice and levels of formality can also affect the sense of voice."
11. Delivery: "It's also important to pay attention to the details of delivery, our punctuation, usage, and layout, so that our ideas can be more easily understood and accepted."
12. Punctuation: "punctuation becomes as much as an art form as painting or drawing."
13. Punctuation: "We need to know the rules so well that we understand when it is appropriate, for our purposes, to break those rules."
14. "Usage has to do with how we actually use the language, our choice of appropriate words."
15. Layout: "A good page layout is a type of persuasion in and of itself."

I believe these are excellent points that all writing can be based upon. I placed it into a context of Creative Writing as that is what I am more interested in, but I can see how all of these previous points can be placed into essays, term papers, research papers, formal letters, fictions, non-fictions, etc.

We are each different from one another. Even identical twins are different. Their personalities are not cloned. We each have a different view on the world even if we are looking at the same thing. The things we can learn from each other if we were to have a book named after each of us in which our every thought, action, event, and experience were recorded and we could read about it. There wouldn't be a library big enough to hold it all. Everyone, once in awhile, writes something in order to present themselves or their ideas. A letter of recommendation. An advertisement. A resume. A novel. An informative book. A pamphlet. There are so many things we write.

John Jakes has said, "Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish." This creates something that is yours and no one else's. It will be a part of you.

Depending on who the audience is we use the rules set for us and bend them into our own form. Perhaps naturally, and then with added tweaking. We have a purpose for writing. If something is recorded it is because we find it is something to take note of. Whether it is for ourselves or for someone else.

It is my impression, that any writer of any sort, in order to seem real and be truly heard through life, needs to intimately know what it is he or she plans on writing on. Whether a skill, a object, a person, a place, or an idea. You must capture the essence of it into written word and to do that you must know it. There are many ways of discovering something. To take from my history class, you can use primary sources, secondary sources, or a general overview of the topic. Primary sources I would include experiencing it yourself. Perhaps, watching and asking a person who has done it for information, but I think that might work better in the secondary sources. Then you can learn the topic from other written words or internet or some other broad source.

According to E. L. Doctorow, "Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." When you discover what it is you plan to write about. Learn all you can about the subject. Writers must be very educated people if they are learning all they write about and write with authority.

These are the lessons I have learned and try to apply. These are the lessons and I will continue to try to improve them in myself. I don't think there is a limit on how high you can go.

Time

Time it marches onward in a steady pace.
Yet, sometimes time moves slowly or moves too quickly.
But perhaps time is only a mortal thing.

When we are learning and are productive constantly throughout the day doesn't it seem like time most quickly? You were able to do and learn so much in a small amount of time that you can practically feel your mind and self progressing. However, when we are lazy or unhappy or our spirits are weary, time seems to be trotting along at the slowest pace possible.

Sometimes I wonder. Is an aspect of mortality to be learning about time? Because as immortal beings we wouldn't otherwise understand it? Are we to learn to be organized and not wasteful in our time allotted to us?

It's only been 27 days since I've been in Rexburg. I say only, but there are times when 27 days is long, but sometimes it can be short. In anycase, I have been here for 27 days. I've made great friends. Met new people. Felt my world widen around me. Feel my mind making connections as I absorb knowledge like a slightly damp sponge soaks up water, but my brain doesn't have a limit on how much it can hold. I discover that I have lived with the barest hint of the Large Picture of Everything. So time moves so quickly, yet I'm learning so much. Much more then I ever have before.

The question becomes: Is 27 days a long time? Or is it short?

There is just so much to contemplate on this matter of time.

I love it. :D

Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness

I'm sure I've mentioned at how much I love my classes and how they make me think and stretch my mind in directions I hadn't previously thought of. Today I had one such class. Now all my classes do that, but today, it was just amazing learning things I sorta knew, but now really understand.

The class was American Foundations. It's a class everyone at BYU-I has to take at one point or another. But I have it with Brother Ryan Johnson. It's amazing.

There are quizzes based on the readings, but you don't know when you will have the quiz and when you will not. So no matter what you have to do the reading. The reading I did was This Nation Shall Endure by Ezra Taft Benson. He's given it several times to several different groups of people. I would highly highly recommend just getting the book to read. In anycase, I read parts 1-3 for my assignment. I love it. It basically states what the purpose of Government is, or the Principles government should follow, more especially, this wonderful country of the United States of America. It tells us to not tare down the characters of our Founding Fathers and make them less then they were. They received the ordinances of the temple after their death, so they were worthy of such a thing. But read it, because I honestly don't know how to explain it to you properly. READ IT though, so that you can understand the rest of what I am saying, although, you might understand it anyways.

So to properly begin:

The Founding Fathers were led by Heavenly Father to create this country's Declaration of Independence and Constitution. All men are created equal by their Heavenly Father, as they are all children of His. Natural and Inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness existed before government and was given to each of us by our Heavenly Father. God gave them to us. The Government's Job, according to Benson and in which I agree and I'm sure the Founding Father's would as well, is to protect these Natural Rights and that is all. That is the moral justification of Government. To Protect these rights by deriving their power from the people.

The Ten Commandments. I'm sure you all know them. But let's quickly go through them again.
1. Thou shalt have no other God before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing in heaven above, or things which are in the earth beneath.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor thy father and they mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10. Thou shalt not covet . . . anything that is thy neighbor's.

Now think about all the redistribution the Government does now a days. Would you call that taking away from some to give to others? Is it a form of legalized stealing?

If just because it's a law of a country make it right? The twelfth article of faith states: "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law." So in terms of Hitler and the Nazi's in Germany was it right to follow the law or to stand up for moral righteousness? But what if everyone only had a certain degree of light, or knowledge, of the awful things going on about them. If they had a greater knowledge do they have a responsibility to share that knowledge even if it means death? So then coming back to the United States, if a law legalizes something that goes against the ten commandments should we do it?

Should we turn to the government for financial support when we are between jobs or suffering from heavy medical bills? In the church the standard is more like you depend on yourself first, then on your family, then the church. If you must get government help, it should first be the local government, then the state government, and only as a very very last resort should you go to the Federal Government.

If we believe that God truly blessed us with these Natural Rights of life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness, we must practice faith in that belief in that God will provide.

We must humble ourselves sufficiently to ask for such help.

If we wish to incorporate it into our lives study it out, prayerfully, and have faith to apply these principles.

In my class, we discussed the right or wrongs of food stamps or government college grants, but it's each a person decision and between God and yourself.

Moses 4:1-5
After Heavenly Father presented his plan, Satan presented his, but it doesn't really seem like Heavenly Father even asked for another's idea. It was The Plan. Satan's plan wasn't even possible. He wouldn't be able to come through with his promise of security in Exaltation because to be saved one must have agency. He probably didn't convince people to follow him and his plan by telling them they will loose their agency, probably just that they will have security in that choice.

Revelations 12 the Chapter Heading, John sees the war in heaven in the beginning when Satan was cast out and he sees the continuation of that war on earth. What is that war over? Our agency. We have the ability to choose liberty or a sense of security in bondage. Like the scripture in 2 Nephi 2:27 "Men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or choose captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself."

In Mosiah 29:38-39, King Benjamin creates the Judges. Giving them the choice to choose agency and the continuing in that agency. With this plan God will judge the people of their choices (Mosiah 29:12) because they have greater agency then they did under a king because of the Rule of Law, which is a where the law are constant throughout different leaders and generations creating stability and having the rulers constrained by those laws as well. Rather then a Rule of Man where with every leader the laws are changed.

We then talked about the United Order verse Communism or Socialism. The difference? Agency. The United Order you choose to donate and sacrifice. In Communism or Socialism you are coerced into doing so. Security at the expense of agency verses respect of agency.

Without private property rights your agency is limited. It becomes a violence. And violence and force is the opposite of charity and love and willingness. There becomes a breakdown.

For what reason did God free this land and continues to be free?
The Restoration and so Zion can be built. It is a special land on which Adam dwelt, the Jaredites lived, and Lehi's descendants live.

It was one of the most thought provoking classes I have had for a long time. Or ever. A full hour and a half. And the question then comes to mind, how to apply these teachings best into our lives now??? How can we affect our country, or whichever country we live in, to become better in following these principles??

Other sources of information:
Socialism and the United Order, Elder Marion G. Romney, April 1966
J. Reuban Clark, 113th Semi-Annual Conference, Oct. 1942
President Benson, Ensign, Jan 1988, p. 3, 5
1st Presidency Message, 112th Annual Conference, April 6, 1942

Discovery!

College. It's full of discovery. It really is.

Things you discover:
~more about yourself
~more about the gospel
~more about the world

It's really interesting. College is much like an expedition for some hidden treasure, but you don't know quite what it is your looking for, you just have some vague idea.

You find your interests. You find how well you do without family around. You find out how well you get along with people you've never met before in your life and how to live with strangers and make friends. You find out about your habits. You find out where you need to improve and where your strengths are.

You make connections with the gospel that you hadn't made before. You are constantly spiritually fed, at least at BYU-I. You learn how to be strong in the gospel and help those who have a testimony strengthen theirs. You learn how to be attuned to the spirit so you can be a better person, be aware of those around you and their needs. You learn the power of the priesthood when you've just had it in your life as a constant, you realize that the brethren in the church are all priesthood holders and you can depend on them if you need help.

You learn how to pay bills and what groceries you need. You learn the scholarly knowledge that you gain at college. You learn about the viewpoints of the world. You learn how to survive and adapt to the environment, aka the cold.

Discovery. It's an adventure.

Photo Autobiography

Have you ever tried to create an autobiography? It's difficult!

I love to write. I love to write about myself. I did it all the time in my journals. But goodness! Its harder then you would think. Starting from a beginning and ending at an ending. You don't know where to beginning or where the ending is. Should I start with my parents? Or should I start with my birth? Should I end at some eventful moment in my life? Or should I keep writing it until I've past on? That would be very difficult. :P

In anycase, for my Writing Foundations class I'm writing an Autobiography. Not just any autobiography. But a picture one. SO for every picture you are to have a story and it is about you and who you are. Because I am so used to writing in a Journal, I use that same language in writing something like this. But pictures? that's new. So I went and took some pictures and then found some and put it all together. To tell you the truth I'm rather proud of it.

Or at least the part I have done.

Today I am to have completed 5 stories with 5 pictures. I currently have 5 sections, each with at least 2 pictures and perhaps 2 or so stories in each. I don't know if I did it quite as was expected. But that's what this teacher likes. He likes us taking risks, or discovering things on our own without giving us much direction because he knows that he doesn't know everything and that the student has their own ideas on things. So if I do say so myself, I'm going pretty well.

But what a challenge! I think everyone should try such a thing. Write a brief photo autobiography. It's rather fun and exciting. And you certainly learn a lot. :D

The College Life

Love it.

That's all there is to say on the matter.

I'm up at BYU-I. It's beautiful. Not because it's freezing, but because of the gorgeous white, almost like a black and white photograph. But in reality. Not just a photo. The scene outside my window, well, my window frames a lovely evergreen tree with snow on it's branches and white untouched snow underneath. It's all rather wonderful.

The people here are just as beautiful. They are from all over the world and country. Alaska, California, Utah, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, England, China, etc. They are all beautiful people. Smiles all around. Hello's and Hi's called to each other as we pass. Friendships made at a drop of a hat, or scarf perhaps in this case. The way of politeness and fantastic excitement exist side by side. Knowledge being shared. Free tutoring help for every subject.

This place might be isolated in Idaho, but yet, it's the center of the world. People from all over arrive to learn and grow mentally and spiritually and perhaps socially. It's a great thing. Life. in College.