Phase 2 of Wedding Letters: The Thank You Cards

I've been working on Thank You cards in response to the wedding gifts my husband and I have received a few months ago. There has been a few things I realized while I've been working on them that I wish to share with those who aren't quite sure what to do for Thank You cards.

1. Don't rush. You want the person receiving the card to know how much you appreciate them and their gift. Time is one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone. Take time on each card. Don't try to get them done in a short amount of time.
2. Be sincere and honest. My husband and I loved all of our gifts. Occasionally we had duplicates of things, but we were so grateful to have too many than to not have one at all. When thanking the person for their gift, really mean it. Find something you love about every gift and mention it to the person who gave it to you. For example, "I just wanted to say how grateful we are for the colander you gave us! We've love using it for our pasta nights or quickly rising vegetables for a stew. Thank you so much." Don't make up a fake reason why you are thankful for it; it reads falsely, and you want to show your sincere thanks to someone.
3. Thank them for who they are, not just what they gave you. This takes longer, which is why time is valuable. It can be hard to know all of your guests. But call your parents and your in-laws. Ask them for some basic information on those you don't know. Mention your gratitude for their presence in your life, in your spouse's life, in your parents' lives, in your siblings' lives, and why. Thank them for always being cheerful. Or always having an open home. Or guiding you. Or being a wonderful example. Etc. Make it personal. Express your gratitude for them.
4. Handwrite them. It doesn't have to be much. Write three or four sentences. But write them by hand. It expresses more of the time you were willing to give to really thank them for what they gave you.

My favorite part of writing these cards is the response I receive from them. "I wanted to send her a thank you card for the thank you card." You can brighten someone's day if you take the time and opportunity. And that, well, it brightens your own.

Supporting the Missionaries

I've mentioned it time and time again, but I love writing missionaries. I really hope that each of you write at least one missionary throughout his mission. Missionaries are special individuals who have been set apart for a period of time to share the Gospel. Receiving letters from missionaries picks up your spirit. They are so full of the gospel and they share their testimony with you and strengthen your own testimony.

I have a friend, Elder Ludwig, serving a mission in Japan who wrote me the following:

"I wish I could share with you all that I have learned and experienced on my mission. I think that would be impossible. I suppose the biggest thing would have to be love. I feel as though my capacity to love others, to show love, to be loved, and share it has grown dramatically. If only I could explain it. I have made eternal friends. I really, truly love my mission."

How can you not love missionaries? How can you not want to write them?

I'm keeping a blog for my brother, Elder Walker, and another of my friends, Elder Remington. (FYI, if you want to have a blog kept for your missionary, contact me). Then there is Elder Barton and Elder Burnham who have their own blog. I've also kept in touch and written all the missionaries that I know pretty well. It's so great to read what they write. They are always so spiritual. They are always learning. Always open to learning. I love writing them. Please, please write them. The missionary and yourself will be blessed. We are all to serve one another, and this is how I've best been able to serve and support our missionaries.

My Brother's Shared Life Lessons

I've asked my brother, an Elder serving in South Carolina, to share the life lessons he's learned on his mission so far. I've already posted a few responses from other Elders and Sisters serving missions previously, but I'll be continuing to do this every time I receive a response from those currently serving or those who have returned. But this is what my brother shared with me:

I have a testimony that the best things in life comes as a result of enduring the hardest things. 

If you seek for temporal happiness, you'll find it, but down the road you'll come to realize you could have had something better. Seek for the relations that lead to eternal happiness through trials and tribulations and patience. 

When you're having a hard time appreciating somebody, pray to God and ask him to show you why He loves that person so you can love them in the same way. 

A full understanding of the Gospel includes wisdom and knowledge of all things, both spiritual, such as the Nature of God, and physical, such as sciences. Prioritize God's commandments above all else, he will guide thee to come to a knowledge of all things. 

We need more Faith. President Holm, my brother's mission president, said, "Most people expect to fail but hope to surprise themselves and win." We need to have that faith or expectation to achieve what we set our minds up to accomplish.

I hope that we can each incorporate them into our own lives and become better as a result. Don't forget to write your friends and acquaintances on missions. They'd love it, and you can take is as an opportunity to grow and to become better friends.

Sisters' Shared Lessons

Question to the missionaries: "What are some of the lessons you have learned?"

I've asked this question of a lot of individuals currently serving a mission, and last month I shared an Elder's response. Today, I had lessons learned from sister missionaries.

A sister, who has just recently started serving in Arizona, said:

"Some lessons I've learned...? A lot of 'Christians' aren't very 'Christian'; shoe tan lines are cool; You can get along with anyone if you love them; Home is the closet thing to heaven on Earth; your parents really do know everything; and you can answer any question with a scripture. :) How's that?"

Another sister, who is soon coming home after serving in Michigan, said:

1. The Worth of a Soul is Great in the sight of God.
2. The Atonement covers all pain and infirmity.
3. I can be good at repenting, forgiving, and praying while on this earth.
4. The scriptures heal a wounded soul. Jacob 2:8.
5. No matter what, put God first.
6. Exercise daily, you get fat!
7. Loving a person is easier for me than a lot of other missionaries I have served with.
8. Service will keep a person repentant and humble. But it's not convenient.
9. It is a choice to be positive or negative; Choose the first.
10. The Gospel is Restored, no doubt about it. So share it!

Often we think of writing missionaries as a way of serving them, and it is! However, we also have to recognize how they bless us in return. Write a missionary. Ask them questions that you really want to know the answers to. When and if they have the time to write back, their words could strengthen your own testimony, especially when taken into action. Please remember all those missionaries serving the Lord in your prayers. They'll appreciate it.

Two Lessons for a Writer

My Creative Writing professor gave two parting lessons to those who wish to become published writers.

Write for an hour each day. Thinking about writing isn't writing. Talking about writing isn't writing. Only writing is writing. Schedule a time everyday were you simply write. Block out all distractions. Find a secluded spot and drop your phone in a potted plant on your way there (you can pick it up on the way back). It's best if you go to a spot where it's impossible to have internet access. If your spot does have internet access, turn it off. Be protective of your writing time. Let no one and nothing interfere. Schedule the time. Be protective of it. Be religious about it.

Give yourself permission to write bad. When you have an hour of time sitting in front of your computer, you have to allow yourself to write horribly. Elsewise nothing would be written. You'd think of something to write but you wouldn't write it because it isn't great. You don't like it. But you have to allow yourself to actually write it down. At the end of the hour you may have an hour's worth of junk. You hit the "Control" and "A" keys on your keyboard and then press delete. It just means you'll write better tomorrow. Nothing is perfect the first time. The second time. The third. Give yourself permission to write horrid. You just need to write.

Poetry Meters

I've always had a difficult time with poetry. Not only because I didn't understand what it was supposed to mean and represent, but because I didn't know how to figure out the feet and meters even though I've been taught over and over again. However, I finally got it this past semester.

Trochee    / ˘     as in "ugly"
Iamb         ˘ /     as in "because"
Anapest    ˘ ˘ /   as in "intervene"
Dactyl      / ˘ ˘    as in "butterfly"
Spondee  / /      as in "fast paced"
Pyrrhus   ˘ ˘      as in "at the"

Each of those are a foot. Think of / as the sound DUM and ˘ as the sound da.

Point of View

When analyzing a work of literature, or trying to figure out your own story, it's helpful to ask yourself four questions:

1. Who Speaks?
2. To Whom?
3. In What Form?
4. At What Distance?

Characterization

Characterization is the formation and presentation of a character.

There are two ways an author presents a character: directly or indirectly.

Four methods used for Direct Characterization:

1. Action
2. Appearance
3. Thought
4. Dialogue

Six Word Stories

There's a lot in stories that don't need to be written. An author's most used key is the deletion button.

Writing books is a great goal, but begin perfecting yourself with short stories. Ernest Hemingway's colleagues bet he couldn't write a short story in just six words. He came back the next day with:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

They paid up. Write your stories and condense everything to it's purest, strongest form. Imagine the process of creating perfume. It takes time to discover just the right combination of concentrated oils. You want to perfect your concentration skills before continuing. If the concentration is not perfected, then nothing you do will make it any better. Practice writing short stories. It's hard to write a good one.

Fictional Time

As a writer you control time.

Time.

You control it.

There are four types of fictional time:

1. Scene
2. Summary
3. Flashback
4. Slow Motion

Ten Rules of Good Writing

Brother Josh Allen is my Creative Writing teacher during my Winter semester at BYU-Idaho. I've learned a lot from him that I want to share with those that  have hopes and aspirations to be a writer. He made a list of Ten Rules he believes will make a story much better. If you have all ten of them, you are definitely on the right track.

1. Good writing is about desire. A character is someone who wants. Only people who want are interesting. People who want nothing mean nothing.
2. Good writing is about trouble. Perfect lives are boring and so are perfect people. The only interesting events that ever come to humanity do so because of trouble and human flaw. Therefore, good literature makes use of antagonists.
3. Good writing is carefully structured. Our work should generally adhere to some version of Conflict → Climax → Resolution.
4. Good writing earns its climaxes. Our stories and poems must "reap what they sow." They must build to a climax, avoid the dreaded dues ex machina, and bestow grace or punishment upon our characters only when doing so is warranted.
5. Good writing doesn't happen to characters – it happens because of characters. Good writing is about transformation, so we should avoid the stagnant. We must end our works either 1) in a new emotional place or 2) in the same emotional place but with greater emotional intensity.
6. Good writing "belongs" to somebody. Our works should be about a specific character and that character's struggles. Everything we include should relate perfectly to that character's development.
7. Good writing presents at least one round character. Preferably, characters will not be revealed through summary but through their speech, appearances, names, gestures, actions, and reactions to others. To make a character round, we can set one of these characteristics against the others.
8. Good writing presents at least one dynamic character. Good writing is about transformation, so we should avoid the stagnant. Also, interesting characters learn. They move from Point A to Point B.
9. Good writing communicates emotion through concerete images, not abstractions. "There are no ideas but in things," said William Carlos Williams. Communicate through the 5 senses that humans used to explore and learn about their world when they were only babies. 
10. Good writing avoids clichés. Cliches are unoriginal and emotionless. Don't use them.

These are basic rules for the beginning writer. When you become better, you can tweak these rules. You could use a cliché just to make fun of it. You could do a lot of things that aren't mentioned in here. But these are good guidelines to get off the ground with.

Uses these rules a basis for critiquing your own and other's work. I've found them to be extremely helpful in my own.

Note: Other posts where I've talk about things I've learned in relation to writing this semester are Two Poems of Mine and Mosiah 11, Alma 30, and Alma 42.

Alma 30

My Creative Writing teacher, Josh Allen, was teaching us that as writers we need to use more than one sense to describe something. "The moist-earth colored brownie tasted like the desert sand." This covers sight and taste, two of our senses. However, this description only works if the reader has seen the color of moist earth and if they have tasted sand or something simular.

In Alma 30, Korihor is leading the people away by his words using arguments that still face us today. One such example is that he says, "How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of the things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ" (15). Korihor's saying you can't prove what you know, thus it must not be true. It's an argument that faces us all the time.

Two Poems of Mine

I'm taking a creative writing class this semester. Currently, we are covering poetry. I've recently discovered I actually enjoy poetry (some of them). Once, I tried my hand at poetry in high school and decided never again. Yet we keep covering it in all my English classes for some reason. This particular professor gave us some of the reasons why we often do not have a positive experience with poetry and thus avoid the following:

The 7 Deadly Sins of Poetry

1. The Impenetrable Haze Poem - the work as a whole does not suggest a theme that any two people can agree on.
2. Truth-in-a-nutshell - poem tries to define truth, beauty, love or evil in the abstract, it is apt to sound like a little essay in short lines.
3. Oh-Poor-Miserable-Me! - based on unrelenting self pity. Belongs in a psychiatrist's office, not writing class.
4. The Marching Band Poem - heavy-handed rhythms and rhymes drown out subtleties of sophisticated poetry.
5. Hark, The Antique Language! - you are writing for the 21st century.
6. The Wailing-Violin Poem - the reader's emotions are manipulated to evoke tears. The poem is no longer sincere.
7. The Collective-Group Poem - we all resent being included in sweeping generalizations about all women, all men, all students, all Americans, all parents, or all anything.

As an assignment, I was to actually write some poetry. Here are two of my sincere attempts. Ironically, they are both based a little bit on my youngest brother. Tell me what you think!

Journals

I love my Journals and believe they have kept me sane. I received my first one when I was 8 years old. However, I didn't really get into journaling until I was a 6th grader headed off to Outdoor Ed. It was my first time away from home without any close friends for an extended time. The week previous to Outdoor ED, I had been sick and stayed at home, it was also the week I received my first pair of glasses.

In anycase, that's when I discovered all of what a journal could be: a friend and a place where I could order all of my thoughts. It was also a placed where I shared my experiences; experiences of a girl from the age of 11.5 years old to 19 years. Honestly, sometimes I would read what I wrote the day before and shake my head in laughter at the things I had written. I'm sure that someday these journals could share the thoughts and experiences of a teenager from the years 1999–2011. From a girl going from elementary school, to junior high school, then high school itself, and finally to college. It amazes me that it has only been a decade and so much has changed. Both in myself and in growing up as well as the world. I remember before the time technology became such a part of our lives, a 24/7 part of our lives. I remember the United States presidential election in 2000, then the 2008 election. I remember when 9/11 changed our lives. And currently I know of the Facebook/Twitter revolutions. Remembering all this and having much of it written down kinda scares me. I mean if all of this happened within a decade... what could happen in the next decade? and in the one after that?

I suppose I'd just make the best of it. I'd probably write it down in my journal.

Because of these many years of journaling, especially during the time when my mind was becoming wired, I seem to be able to only make sense of the thoughts churning in my head once I write them down. It's very hard for me to capture a thought and follow it to its end without writing it down as I do so. The writing actually captures the thought. In fact, I've been able to use that for much of my blogging. Often I have a vague idea of what I wish to write on, but it's only once its written that I've finally figured it out.

Journals can become anything you want them to. I don't write to a certain individual, in truth I just have a vague idea of an audience; a reader, I suppose, weither that reader is me, my future generations, or total strangers. I believe journals are written for self and for future. As previously mentioned, journaling organizes thoughts, but it also helps you become aware of yourself. How your inner thoughts actually work. Once that is discovered you realize what you need to change to become better. I mean, if what I had written sounded complaining, I realized that I was actually complaining. There's the proof in my journals written in my handwriting. But at the same time, it caused you to help you realize your self worth. Journals also helped me with neatening my handwriting. It was terrible and probably would have stayed terrible if not for the years of writing, and now? I have pretty great handwriting. It's now a talent. A journal also helps to discover what actions I should have done rather than what I had done. It has also helped with the keeping of memories and feelings of a certain time in my life. Journals can help you realize your goals, whether realizing that you have something as a goal or actually accomplishing it. Writing helps you with both.

I'm sure you know the many ways it could help those in later years, but just to remind you they can help educate another generation. They can tell the future what the past was like. They can show that there are many of the same struggles now as in the past, especially socially. They can teach principles. Journals can teach about life. That's something to recognize and value.

The reason for this post? Today, I started my 13th journal (not including an online one I plan to have published and sent to me when I have the money set aside). My 13th journal within 12 years. I'd like to say that's impressive. Especially considering the fact that my first several journals took more than one year to complete. Now, journals only take a few months. The one I've just finished was started Sunday, September 19, 2010. That's only 5 months. It's a great feeling to finish a journal. It's a great feeling to start a journal. I love the blank pages. To me they represent a future. A future that I'll record. A future that I could make anything happen, where anything could happen. I just love life. :D

(My 13 Journals)

Creative NonFiction

Many of you know that I like to write. That I like to write in my journals. However, I think I've recently discovered that Creative Writing is not exactly what I am looking for. I mean its fun to write and imagine and create a picture or a movie with only words. Its rather amazing to me. And it truly is a lot of fun to make up a story on the spot and tell it to your younger siblings and have them comment, adding to the story or making up their own interpretation and telling me that the characters should actually do something else instead of the thing they were doing.

But then I was thinking which genre would I wish to write in? Fantasy? Science Fiction? Historical? Modern? I just had no idea.

I would like to have an element of each in anything I were to write. However, I then begin to write and I come up with no real true interest nor motivation. :D I'm sure that I just have to push forward and of course everyone is going to do something they don't quite like doing in the process of doing something they enjoy.

However, I have discovered something today that makes me quite excited.

I've been kinda wishing that some entries in my journals could just be published, as they are rather hilarious in my own personal opinion, which might be a little bit biased. Well, I had then come to the Conclusion that when I write a fiction book I want to write just as I do in my Journals. It adds something to the "voice".

Well, I've discovered that there is actually a genre called Creative NonFiction. Which is exactly what my Journal Writing is.

Here's a website: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/

In it it explains what Creative NonFiction is: "The word 'creative' refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible."

When I eventually have the extra cash to spend I think I'd subscribe to this Literary Journal. But doesn't this sound exciting? This genre includes essays just as Emerson and Thoreau have written. I love their essays! In fact, I was thinking the other day that bloggers nowadays are much like Emerson and Thoreau but on a smaller scale of writing professionally. I think I shall address this another day.

In the meanwhile, this is something I would like to do. Write essays about life, about different topics. I'd write personal essays. Much like I do on here and in my Journals, but perhaps more official and revised and more thought out. I should be using the same process of writing a fiction in writing nonfiction, or even an essay. Such as brainstorming, organizing thoughts, etc. I mean, I'm sure you can tell here that I'm a little scattered brained. But these ideas! They would take much time to write. And there are so much thoughts and ideas and facts I learn in college that it seems almost impossible to effectively write on every topic I wish too.

College. You certainly Learn. More about Self. Others. The World. Abstract Ideas. and the Intangible.

On this day I've learned exactly what genre it is that I would enjoy writing in.

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.

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