I am not my right breast.

Uh, okay. I thought in response. I’ll take your word for it.

I was browsing the “For Sale” books at my local library, and that first line was the title, stretched out along the peeling spine of a hardcover. I continued looking over the assorted bundles, sniggering at the Mills & Boon titles (“Sheik For Hire!” and “Baby In The Boardroom!”) and rescuing the dejected pile of knitting magazines from tumbling lemming style off the table – all the while with a chunk of my brain chewing on the original title.

What if I AM my right breast? What would that mean? I like my bosom buddies, so that’s kind of a compliment. What if I’m not my right breast? What would I be best summarised as; my left bicep? My odd little toes? Why them? Why not? That is a clever title for a breast cancer survivor book though… If I was going to write a book about something I know what would I call it? “Can I Please Have a Tazer? A Guide to Surviving Divorce”? Maybe “7000 Reasons to Eat Dessert/First”? Then I realised I was running late (libraries ambush me all the time) and I had to shove the whole discussion into the impossible, universe-deep drawer labelled “Inspiration” and go buy carrots and toilet paper. And that right there is what frustrates and delights me about inspiration – you never know when you’re going to dodge a falling piano, or get smacked upside the head with an insistent alien tentacle.

Or if you have a huge, perfect (or even fair-to-middling but fascinating snippet of an) idea, are you going to remember the idea, or remember where you put the reminder or prompt (Pinterest is what I’m using at the moment for my online ideas). Of all those I know who write, they don’t schedule in time to get ideas. Sure, many of them carve out allotted time to write, but as for dancing at precisely 6:15am with their muse… The muse is a little commitment-phobic shall we say.

Then, if it’s not the absence of ideas, there’s being petrified that I can’t do the idea justice. That maybe I could do something worthwhile with it, but I’d need to work out the plot, then characters and maybe flesh out some conversation and I just don’t have seventeen hours right now!  I know several people who signed up for NaNoWriMo, or who are blogging every day for November. I like the idea of just letting the words foam and froth, dribble and dry out onto the page or screen – just to be writing something and not overthinking it to oblivion.

So let’s try something – take a phrase out of this post, or one of the prompts below, (or something from one of the comments!) and give me a chunk of words. Nothing huge – it can be a bit of a conversation, or the next two sentences in the action. It could be something totally unrelated, but inspired from what you read. The prompt or phrase can be the first, middle or last bit of your comment, or not included at all. Just don’t think about it – let the words tumble out. And feel free to add something that inspired you lately.

1. So, I licked the kitchen floor.
2. The sound of a soft-drink can opening.
3. A glob of slobber the size of a Volkswagon landed
4. My shadow scares me.
5. The sun shouted Alleluia
6. Truth or dare, my rules.
7. Hey, wanna start a fight?

Related posts:

1. I Write?
2. You’re Invited: Segullah Studio Night
3. A Call for Essays from BYU Women’s Services

We started breakfast with tray upon tray of fresh-baked Rhodes cinnamon rolls and orange rolls. I can’t tell you how many of these I ate because a true lady would not reveal such indulgence. Kathryn Soper kicked off the conference portion by helping us see how the lunchtime musings of a handful of women went on to become Segullah. Over its five years of life, the journal has expanded, the blog was born, and books have been published.  Steffani Raff’s keynote address on storytelling was fabulous and fascinating; she had us entranced. She helped to get us all talking and listening in ways hitherto not experienced.

Lunch—Mini’s Cupcakes:  salads, gourmet sandwiches, and cupcakes. Is there a better lunch?

Then we had the afternoon workshops. Angela Hallstrom, as an accomplished writer and editor, has such command and mastery of story.  She helped me think in terms of the underlying mechanics, the necessary foundations and grounding components of strong writing.  Brittney Carman is awe-inspiring; her ability to craft words and evoke emotion is indescribable. Her personal  essay class drove me to spend late vacation nights at my husband’s laptop attempting to put the powerful images in my head into words—my childhood experiences in Turkey and the magic of taking my sons to our quaint rustic New England town beach. Darlene Young and Sharlee Glenn put their crowd to happy work with writing exercises that got their poetic juices flowing.

The power-blogging panel of Michelle Lehnardt, Heather Oman, Shelah Miner, Kellie George, and Dalene Rowley explored using blogging as a tool for developing good writing. They dove in with real examples to show how good blogging can take many shapes and forms. Takeaway blogger nuggets: “tell the truth but tell it slant”; find unique perspectives to write from.

Café Rio (we all know that pork in fresh tortillas needs no explanation, in my book) but blend that with sharp company that would rival any good dinner party (oh, and throw in a slice of key lime pie) and you have the Segullah dinner social!

Art studio night was a treat of creativity. It was fun to see each person move in their own direction, exploring their own ideas and using media in different ways to create unique, symbolic pieces.  Those who participated in the creative writing studio got to talk with editors and get the always helpful critique and direction for strengthening their work.

I came home from the writers’ retreat and immediately set to work drafting the essays that started percolating in my mind as I sat in the workshops listening to the presenters. I came home with a million new painting ideas I can’t wait to bring to life on canvas.

Many thanks to Melonie Cannon and all the Segullah staff who worked hard to make it happen. And thanks to all who attended—it was a treat for me to meet so many of you! Thanks for a great summer memory.

Were you there? What was the best part? (Well, besides the cinnamon rolls!) Were you inspired? What did it prompt you to do?

Related posts:

1. Are you bored with blogs?
2. It’s just art–don’t be afraid
3. The Art of Blogging

Then, on good days, I tell myself to chill, take a deep breath, shut down Microsoft Internet Explorer, open up Microsoft Word, and start typing.

While writing has been rewarding for me in so many ways, sometimes I think writing’s most tangible benefit has been the lessons I’ve learned about facing fear and insecurity, about pushing through doubt and coming out the other side—not necessarily unscathed (oh, I’ve been scathed!), but better. Stronger. More myself. The truth is, writing is scary for all of us. Well, maybe not all of us. Maybe Marilynne Robinson wakes up in the morning, yawns, stretches her arms high above her head, and thinks: Goodness! Wonder what species of genius will spill onto the page today? But for 99% of us? Writing is scary, writing is hard, and being a writer (or “a person who writes,” if the term “writer” is too intimidating, which it has been for me in the past) is a decision you have to make and re-make every single day.

So, if the reason you’re not coming to the Segullah Writing Retreat is because you’re scared? Sorry, my friend. Not a good reason. Because if everybody who was afraid didn’t come to the retreat, then nobody would come. Not even the presenters.

And if the reason you’re not coming to the Segullah Writing Retreat is because you don’t really know anybody and you’re not sure if you’ll fit in? I can tell you right now: You’ll fit in! The Segullah women I know are some of the kindest, warmest, most welcoming women on the planet. More than anything, we want this retreat to be a safe, inclusive experience for everyone who attends. This retreat is NOT a “Segullah-Regulars-Only” kind of deal. And it’s not a “Super-Genius-Writer-Snob” kind of a deal either. (Because who wants to hang out with Super-Genius-Writer-Snobs? I certainly don’t. They’re tedious.) We want anybody and everybody who is interested in writing and making new friends to come join us: women and men; published writers and bloggers and dabblers; even non-writers who enjoy the Segullah community and would like to try something new. You’re all welcome.

And if the reason you’re not coming to the Segullah Writing Retreat is because you can’t travel to Utah or you’re going to your family reunion in Nebraska or your mother-in-law is staying with you that weekend? Well, that’s just a bum deal, and hopefully we’ll catch you next time.

But if you have no serious impediments to attendance other than nervousness and apprehension, then there’s no excuse! And there are lots of options at the retreat. You can come to the main event, from 8-5, and learn a lot about the craft of writing, generate some of your own new material, and enjoy both breakfast and lunch. You can pop in for our dinner social from 5:30-6:45 to hang out and chat. You can sign up for our evening studio night from 7-9, where you can have one-one-one time with one of Segullah’s editors OR spend the evening painting with Segullah’s own amazing artist, Leslie Graff. (We’ve added more information about the Studio Night, so please take a look.) Or you can hang with us for the whole shebang! Which is the option I recommend.

It’s bound to be a wonderful day, and I guarantee you’ll be glad you came. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Don’t waste life in doubts and fears. . . . All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”

Come experiment with us!

Related posts:

1. SEGULLAH WRITING RETREAT REGISTRATION DEADLINE
2. An Oasis in the Writing Desert
3. Spring is in the air . . .

Eliot starts off pretty well, with the sentence, “Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.” But after that, Eliot breaks off into a tangent about blessed virgins and Italian painters, and if you’re like me, easily distracted by a toddler or the conversation of people at the next table, you’re probably lost after a couple of lines. Eliot, like Dickens and James and other writers of her time, lived in a time when readers were often willing to invest time in 800 page novels filled with semi-colon laden paragraphs.

We twenty-first-century readers, who often turn to the internet for our news and to blogs for our reading material, often aren’t as willing to figure out what Eliot’s actually saying in all of those dependent clauses. Last year I signed up for Twitter, just as I’d signed up for a blog five years ago when the blog craze hit. I know that many people disparage Twitter. “How can anyone say anything worth saying in 140 characters?”

It’s true, most Tweets are pretty lame, but they don’t have to be. When I started Twittering (or is it Tweeting?) mine usually were along the lines of  “unloading groceries– excited for the new ice cream I bought.” Short enough, sure, but also pretty boring to anyone who isn’t a) going to eat the ice cream with me or b) my mother. Much like blogging, there’s an art to Tweeting. Here’s what I usually do:

1) Write about things I’m thinking about or commentary on what I’m doing, rather than just report on what I’m doing, which is usually pretty boring.

2) Write everything I want to say in the little Twitter box, then go through and cut and cut until it’s as short as it has to be.

3) Read lots of Tweets, because becoming familiar with the genre is a great way to getting better at writing anything worth writing (are Tweets worth writing?).

The great thing is that writing with a 140-character limit has made me pay attention to being more concise as I write. Even when I’m not writing in a tiny box on my computer screen, I now often go back and delete unnecessary words and rework phrases so they’re as streamlined as possible. I even find that I’m blogging less, because sometimes I can express in 140 characters or less the same ideas it took 300 or 400 words to get out on my blog.

Consider this Tweet:

“A child who exclaims ‘it’s ruined’ as she surveys her wet dress should really be potty trained.”

In the past I probably would have blogged about the experience, but I hope that the 100-something-character sentence encapsulates the thought that I have a kid who is precocious in many ways, but it’s clinging steadfastly to her diapers. And also that I feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to actually do the potty training. See, now wasn’t that easy?

Even if you never plan to Tweet, sign up for Twitter. You’ll see the good, the bad and the ugly of what the 140-character format can squeeze out of writers. And besides, you can get great updates from Segullah.

So Twitter, love it? Hate it? Why? If you’re a Twitterer, what are your tricks of the trade when it comes to writing Tweets?

Related posts:

1. Icebreaker
2. 15 Minutes a Day
3. Book Club Reminder: Mockingjay Next Thursday

One of the things we want to do here at Segullah is “encourage literary talent.” Of course, one of the ways we try to promote good writing is by providing some examples of it here, at the blog . . . but did you realize Segullah isn’t just a blog? Seriously! We also publish this pretty little ink-and-paper novelty called a magazine. It’s a cool contraption because you can read it in the bathroom, on the toilet OR in the tub, two places where you might actually be left alone for five minutes at a stretch. (And yes, technically, it’s true the talented among us can manage a laptop in the bathroom. But paperless revolution be darned, I will always and forever have a magazine on top of every toilet in my house, I solemnly swear.)

I bring this up since I’ve heard that some of you blog-readers are interested in submitting to the magazine. This makes sense because nothing much beats seeing your name in print . . . inside a magazine . . . that you imagine sitting on top of toilets in bathrooms around the world. But what’s keeping you from submitting is this: You feel pretty good about blogging, but you’re not so sure about writing “creative nonfiction,” which is what we magazine publish-y types call any kind of literary writing that both exhibits artistic merit and is based in personal experience. (“Isn’t that what blogging is?” you ask. We’ll get to that.) The problem is you’re not sure if you can write “creative nonfiction” because, well, you don’t know what it IS, really.

Here’s a little secret: nobody knows what creative nonfiction is.

Okay, so that’s a little disingenuous. Good creative nonfiction is like pornography, in one way and one way alone: it’s difficult to define precisely, but you know it when you see it. And we here at Segullah want to see more of it. (Creative nonfiction . . . not pornography, of course.)

Within the genre of “creative nonfiction” there are many sub-genres. We’ll focus on one specifically, since it’s the type of creative nonfiction we’re most interested in seeing here at Segullah: the personal essay.

The personal essay has its origins in personal experience. The writer may choose to use a personal experience that happened yesterday or that happened years ago. The “experience” doesn’t have to be earth shattering or traumatic. A personal essay can even stem from a simple, seemingly mundane observation: a child lining up her rows of school supplies, a melted popsicle on the pavement, a limping dog on a busy road.

What’s important, though, is that a personal essay uses this experience to illuminate a point greater than the experience itself. The essayist Philip Gerard says, “The subject has to carry itself and also be an elegant vehicle for larger meanings.” In other words, the explicit topic of the essay must hold our attention. The personal experience you share must be interesting in and of itself—there must be some kind of conflict, or surprise, or pathos, or humor, or something in the story. But that experience must also do what I like to call “double duty”—it must be representative of a greater truth or insight that extends beyond your personal experience, and this greater truth must be somehow communicated to your audience. It seems to me that one of the biggest differences between an average blog post and a well-wrought personal essay is the successful communication of this greater truth.

Creative nonfiction is a literary art and, therefore, uses the techniques found in literature. It is useful to remember that good creative nonfiction often reads much like fiction, employing the skillful use of dialogue, scene, figurative language, etc. With fiction, however, the writer isn’t supposed to be intrusive, telling the reader what the story means. The writer is supposed to tell a story and let the reader figure it out. But with the personal essay things tend to get trickier: the writer is expected to intrude, at least a little bit, and interpret the events for the reader. Usually. Kind of.

I’ll let Janet Burroway, author of Imaginative Writing, explain: “A [personal essay] is a story, and like a story it will describe a journey and a change; it will be written in a scene or scenes; it will characterize through detail and dialogue. The difference is not only that it is based on the facts as your memory can dredge them up, but that you may interpret it for us as you go along or at the end or both: this is what I learned, this is how I changed, this is how I relate my experience to the experience of the world, and of my readers. ” Burroway also gives this practical bit of advice: “The success of your essay may well depend on whether you achieve a balance between the imaginative [the story] and the reflective [the interpretation]. . . . Often the story and its drama will fill most of the sentences—that is what keeps a reader reading—and the startling or revelatory or thoughtful nature of your insight about the story [the interpretation] will usually occupy less space.”

This is hard to do well. One of the reasons I prefer writing fiction to nonfiction is because it is so very difficult to balance the story and the interpretation, the showing and the telling, in a satisfying way. And being Mormon bloggers, the Mormon side of our writerly personality may sink our personal essay in one direction, and the blogger side many sink it in another.

The Mormon side of our writing-selves might be tempted to write a sacrament meeting talk instead of a personal essay. We’re so used to the format: introduce topic, illustrate with anecdote, flesh out the “moral of the story” with scriptures and quotes from church leaders, bear testimony, amen. While this method may (or may not) help you keep the attention of 300 hungry/hot/wiggly humans trapped in a room on a Sunday afternoon, vary rarely is it the recipe for a successful personal essay. The problem is the writer intrudes too much with this method. You approach the essay as one who’s been assigned a “topic” instead of as one with a story to tell . . . and is it no wonder this method, based as it is in preaching, comes off as preachy? Almost always, the story itself should be the center of your piece. Nothing turns a reader off faster than too much authorial pontificating.

The blogging side of our writing-selves gets us in trouble in another way. While an essay styled like a sacrament meeting talk can give the impression of a writer standing at a pulpit, expounding Truth, an essay styled like a blog post can come off like the writer’s in the hall, whispering a secret to her very best friend. In a sacrament meeting talk, the writer is too conscious of communicating a broader point for an audience; in a blog post, the writer’s not conscious enough.

I’m of the opinion that effective blogging is a skill in its own right, but blogs are not essays. For one, a good essay is revised (and revised and revised—and, yes, I realize some of you revise your blog posts, but I’m speaking generally here). But the difference I want to focus on is one of audience. Very often, blog posts are focused on personal daily experience and are written in a chatty, intimate way that doesn’t dwell on the universal significance of the experience shared. As Burroway says, “The personal essay is a form that allows maximum mobility from the small, the daily, the domestic, to the universal and significant.”

Although every once in a while I will read a blog post that is more like a personal essay in that it delves more deeply into its themes and attempts to communicate a greater meaning to a large audience, most blog posts don’t venture too far beyond the bounds of the experience itself. The writer’s stance before the audience is different, too: in a blog post, the writer assumes a certain intimacy with the audience. (And even when a blogger is very popular and doesn’t “know” most of her readers, the assumed intimacy creates a feeling of peeking inside another person’s window and is part of what makes reading somebody else’s blog an interesting experience—that sense of being allowed inside somewhere we’re not entirely supposed to be.) A personal essay, however, assumes a wide audience from the get-go. It’s not a secret whispered between friends that was somehow overheard.

Of course, there are many effective essays that do very little authorial interpretation of the event but still manage to communicate a larger, universal theme to a wide audience. See, for example, Brittney Carman’s Barcelona, Venezuela from Segullah’s Spring 2007 issue. She only gives one line that I read as authorial interpretation: “I understand that, even for the faithful, desperation will run comfortless at times—deep and wild.” But the greater meaning of her experience is present throughout the entire essay, there between the lines.

Other effective essays may have more philosophizing and interpreting alongside the storytelling. For example, in “Keeping Attendance” by Julie Ransom, Segullah’s essay contest winner in 2007, Ransom begins the essay by telling a story, but uses this story as a jumping off point for rumination on significant themes, using the experience as a metaphor for that greater meaning. (I love how a story about arriving late at church because of a broken foot winds up in a place where the writer is comparing the similar Latin root of the word “ligament” and “religion.”)

These pieces are quite different from each other, but they are both effective—and beautiful—personal essays.

Like I said at the beginning, “creative nonfiction” is very difficult to define, but there are elements common to all effective personal essays that a writer can strive to emulate. And once you do, who knows? You might find your essay inside the pages of a handsome print magazine—and you can put that magazine on a shelf, by your bedside, or on top of the toilet in your guest bathroom. It’s entirely up to you.

Do you write creative nonfiction as well as blog? What are the differences as you see them? Do you want to write personal essays but haven’t made the leap? What’s stopping you?

And, if you’re interested, I’m teaching beginning creative writing at the BYU Salt Lake Center this fall. Thursday nights from 7:30–10:00. You don’t have to be a matriculated BYU student to attend.

Related posts:

1. The Art of the Essay: An Interview with Patrick Madden
2. Call for Submissions to Segullah: Gifts of the Spirit
3. Want to write for Segullah? Read Segullah!

I doze in the sleeper chair next to my son’s bed in the pediatric critical care unit, my mind monitoring the room:  the beeping of the IV pump, my son’s ragged, labored breathing, the bubbling of the humidifier to his oxygen mask, the periodic hum of the blood pressure cuff around his leg taking its regular measurements.  Caught in the limbo of his latest brush with death, I wonder if he’ll be coming home this time.  I shift in the seat, my legs stiff from lack of movement, my back, head, and heart aching.  Suddenly, a clatter of ID tags and claws on the linoleum floor rouse me from my reverie – the therapy dogs have come to the floor.  From my corner in the room I crane my neck to see a small fluffy furball followed by a larger, older lab mix, their tails wagging in frenetic anticipation.  Immediately I straighten in my chair.

Veterans of the PCU, we have seen the therapy dogs before – wiggling balls of fur and happiness, allowing themselves to be held, stroked, and loved by arms covered with IV lines and bandages.  I hear them in the rooms next to E’s – happy panting accompanied by squeals of delight.  Patients with cancer, HIV, or other diseases and disabilities are once again children rather than cases and conditions.  I see the nurses in the corridor, smiling and talking animatedly to each other, nodding in approval.

At last, I look up to see the therapy dogs’ handlers pausing at our door.  “Can E have a visit?”  I immediately jump out of my seat, my inert legs welcoming movement.  “Yes!  E would love to have a visit!”  Then turning to my son, I exclaim, “E!  The puppies are here to see you!  Look at the fluffy puppies!  They want to play with you!” in the crooning sing-song voice only used for talking to small, furry mammals or babies.  E turns his head and lets out a long Chewbaca-like howl – his sign of happiness and approval.  I nod at the worker and the smaller furball jumps up on the bed, stepping over E’s legs, tubes, wires, and equipment, sniffing, waiting for the onslaught of love and affection.  “E!”  I squeal, “The puppy loooooves you!”  E lies in the bed quietly, his body still, but his eyes dance back and forth with new sensory input.  “Can he see the dogs?” the worker asks.  “No, but he can hear them and feel them,” I respond.  I can see her reviewing E’s medical record in her mind. “Hypoxic brain injury…cerebral palsy… epilepsy… developmental delay… no purposeful movement…”  The furball looks confused at the lack of effusive affection and jumps down off of the bed.  “Maybe we should come back another time,” she says, “when E is feeling better.”  My heart sinks as I look over to my son.  It is only then that I notice the lab – his nose has nudged its way under E’s immobile hand so that it is now resting on his head.  He stands next to the bed patiently waiting.  Hand over hand, we stroke the curly brown fur together.

Related posts:

1. It’s a Miracle…
2. Spoiler alert
3. Be Still My Soul

The next thing I work on as I write is essay structure. What I mean by essay structure is this: the essay knows where it’s going, and every piece of it is placed in a way that it helps the essay reach its destination.

There is no one perfect way to structure an essay. Each one will be ordered differently, according to the needs of the story you’re telling, and the insights it brings you. Once I’ve got the heart of an essay, and all the scenes and stories that are the essay’s pieces, I have to find the way they fit together. Structure is different for every essay, but I’ve got to be aware of it. Good structure doesn’t just happen.

So, let’s look at the structure of some Segullah essays to give you an idea of what I mean.
See Your Beauty, Feel Your Power, by Angela Schulz, is structured chiastically. So is Greater Good, by Kathryn Lynard Soper. Chiastic structure is highly ordered, and each element of these two essays is clearly set off from the others. I love the elegant structure of chiasm; I’ve tried to do a piece that way, and alas, it did not turn out. It’s tricky. But worth analyzing and enjoying.

On the other hand,Barcelona, Venezuela, by Brittney Carman, is structured with deceptive chronological simplicity: it all takes place in the space of a couple of hours, and the story moves from bus, to small room, outside again. All the insights discovered happen along with the action. It has a clear beginning and a clear end: getting off the bus is the beginning, and leaving the dying boy’s home is the end. It’s a brilliant piece, and the structure seems simple enough, but the genius is in knowing exactly where to begin and where to end. Notice that Brittney does not spend two or three paragraphs talking about Venezuelan buses before she begins, or an extra couple of sections at the end discussion how terrible, and how powerful, her experience with the dying boy was. She begins and ends it where the story demands.

“Small and Simple Things,” by Brooke Benton, begins with Brooke receiving a challenging calling, playing the piano in Primary. She flashes back to help us understand why this was such a hard thing for her, and then forward again to the way she handles the calling. The final scene is her epiphany, as she discovers the interrelationship of God challenging us and blessing us at the same time. Brooke’s childhood scene helps us understand better the challenge of playing the piano as an adult; we feel her pain better. But she doesn’t stay there, she moves back, giving us enough cues to help us follow her clearly.

So: your assignment (if you want to) is to pick one of your favorite Segullah essays and think about its structure. You don’t have to get all English class detailed with it. Just think about why the scenes are ordered the way they are, and how they work together to create the essay’s overall effect. Then comment on which essay you’ve picked, and what you thought about its structure…

…and finally, go to your own essay and analyze its structure. See how the pieces fit together. Does it begin and end where it needs to? And most of all, have fun with it.

Related posts:

1. UP CLOSE for March: Depression Roundtable
2. O Revise, What Can I Say More?
3. The Tinker Stage

For many people, that leaves the alternative of the much-disparaged form letter. It’s the perfect way to get a whole bunch information out to a whole bunch of people, but the results are sometimes cringe-worthy. They’re often either too long or too braggy or too obviously unproofread (or all three). There are plenty of things I’m not good at, but I’m pretty darn good at the Christmas form letter. If the prospect of writing your letter has you sweaty-palmed and palpitating, here are some tips to give you confidence this holiday season:

1) Don’t try to do too much.

My mom has a tradition of writing a family newsletter each year. It’s several pages long, laid out lots of color pictures and articles highlighting her kids and grandkids. It looks like she paid someone big bucks to put it together. But she hates writing it. She puts it off until she can’t put it off any longer and then works on it in a frenzy until it’s done. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.

2) Pick a theme.

So many of the form letters I receive  resemble a bulletproof list of the year’s accomplishments, which gets a little boring after the twentieth letter. One thing that works for me is picking a theme for the year’s letter. I write an introductory paragraph that introduces the theme, and then include a short paragraph on each member of the family, which ties in somehow to that theme. A few years ago, I assigned each person in the family to a character in the Nutcracker, and wrote about the characteristics the fictional character had in common with the family member. For example:

The swashbuckling Nutcracker Prince is a natural fit for Bryce (5 ½), who can most often be found with a light saber in his hand. The Star Wars craze hit our house, and Bryce would much rather answer to Anakin than his own name. He started kindergarten this year and also played soccer for the first time this fall, and freely admits that his favorite part of playing was getting his trophy at the end of the season.

This December, our youngest daughter would not cooperate for Christmas pictures, so I decided (by default) to make imperfection the theme of year. Here’s my intro (and the picture we’re sending with it):

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I’m not above coaxing, bribing or threatening to get my kids to smile for the annual holiday picture. The promise of an ice cream cone is usually all it takes to get everyone to sit still and look in the same direction for at least one shot. We live far from our families and many friends, so the Christmas card picture is the only glimpse into our lives that some people get. If I’ve only got one chance each year to show us off, I want to do it well.

Unfortunately, there was no doing it well this year. Theoretically, we should have gotten a great picture. All of the kids had matching outfits from Grandma, which miraculously still fit from last year. But we forgot to take into consideration Maren’s iron will. She didn’t want to put her dress on, hated her tights, and absolutely refused to sit near her brothers and sister. I tried taking the kids’ pictures on Sunday afternoon, and she was okay as long as everyone else gave her about ten feet of personal space, which wasn’t exactly conducive to harmonious compositions. We tried again on Monday, this time with a friend enlisted to take pictures. Although her photography skills are better than mine, she didn’t fare much better in getting Maren to smile or sit.

This year, you’re not getting a wonderful holiday picture from the Miners, but you’re getting an accurate glimpse into our messy, loud, imperfect lives. Sure, the background looks great and the outfits are cute, but perfect it ain’t. It seems an apt metaphor for our lives in 2008—we’re trying our best, but chaos often reigns.

Yeah, this year’s intro is a little long, but it still works, doesn’t it? Please tell me it does, because 110 copies of it are on their way to mailboxes all over America right now.

3) Let the personalities of your family members come through.

Highlighting a whole year’s worth of accomplishments without sounding boastful can be hard, and with some family members, particularly babies, it’s hard to find something to write that will be interesting to anyone except the doting grandparents. So I try to pick one aspect of each child’s personality, and tie that into the things he or she has done during the year. I also include basic factual info– age/grade kind of stuff. This year, when considering my daughter, Annie, I could have written that she loves to read or takes ballet lessons or skipped first grade, but I abandoned all of those options as either too boastful or too boring (doesn’t every six-year-old take ballet?). Instead, I came up with this:

Annie (6) is our second-grade social networker. She contributes to the din at the house by gabbing on the phone with friends, practicing tap routines on kitchen’s tile floor, singing with the radio, and trying to best her big brother on the piano. If you email her (anniesfakeaddy@email.com) she’s sure to email back, and might even try to chat with you if she notices you’re online.

If you read closely, you can see that Annie’s paragraph focuses on noise, which goes back to the whole loud and messy theme for the year.

4) Write more than you’re going to use. Then cut.

I usually write two pages with the intention of sending one. Then I go through and cut and cut and cut (and readjust the font size) until it fits on the front of a single piece of paper.

5) Keep it short– but not too short.

We get form Christmas letters ranging in length from a couple of paragraphs to several pages. If you have a big family like we do, several sentences probably isn’t enough to capture a glimpse into the life of your family. But if it’s too long, people won’t read it. For our family of six, I can usually develop a theme, highlight family members, make important announcements and wish everyone well in about 600 words.

6) Wrap it up.

If you’ve established a theme for your Christmas letter, come back to that theme in your conclusion (Remember the five paragraph essay back in high school? It works here too). Here’s how I wrapped it up this year:

So there you have it—our lives are full and enriching, and, yes, a little messy. If you showed up at our door you’d probably find crumbs on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, and lots of noise. In 2008 our Christmas card, with its imperfections, is a candid representation of our family life this year.

Wishing you (and us!) peace in the holiday season and in the new year.

6) Sit on it for a day or two.

If you write at the last minute, you’ll be forced to send it out without giving yourself a chance to mull it over. I wrote mine a week before I sent it off, then fine-tuned things several times during the week. I also enlisted my husband to read it before we hit print– he’s a much better proofreader than I am and invariably catches things I miss.

7) Emailing your letter is free!

Postage and printing too expensive? All stuffing and licking got you groaning? Email your friends the text of letter, attach a picture, and voila, you’re done! I’ve gotten a couple of Christmas cards by email already this year. I’ll admit that I love the hard copy (I put all of the pictures on a bulletin board in my laundry room and they make an otherwise unlovely place much more festive) but if it’s going to be email or nothing, sign me up for the email, please.

Now that I’ve told you what I like and what works for me? What do you like? What works for you?

Related posts:

1. January Word Games
2. Word Challenge!
3. Practically Perfect in Every Way

One of the first things I look for when evaluating an essay is its truth level. By this I mean, how honest is the core issue of the essay? Does the writer give it to me raw, in a way that shows me her pain/poignant funny moment, instead of telling it to me? Does she also give the essay’s healing and resolution their own show-don’t-tell moments?

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:

From “I Look Like My Sister,” published in Spring 2008: Roots and Branches, by Lisa Rumsey Harris (and Lisa won our essay contest in 2006 with “Honor in the Ordinary”):

I found out too, that her choices were strong and selfless choices—choices that I value now, choices that I have made myself. I have gone through financial despair with my husband. I’ve lived in tiny apartments wherein you decorate the bathroom in green to camouflage the mold. I’ve turned down important jobs to stay home with my children. And one day after my Sasha was born, I locked myself in the bathroom, away from my bewildered three-year-old, away from the screaming baby, and I sat in the tub, my face in my hands, and cried.

Read that italicized sentence again. It’s so honest. She shares this moment of pain, which is also an experience that helps her identify with her sister’s mothering struggles. She doesn’t gloss over it. She shows it in a scene, and she gives us just enough detail to allow us to empathize, without wallowing in it.

That there is honest writing. An honest heart explores the pain (from our fabulous editor Brittney Carman: “If it hurts when you pick at it, dig deeper.”) and also sees beyond it..

Wallowing/martyrdom and glossing are the two enemies to writing with a naked heart. When writers wallow, they explore the messiness of the issue more than it warrants. Misery, a good dose of self-justification, little healing, and therefore little truth. Don’t be a martyr when you write.

But. Don’t be a glosser either. Don’t fall into the trap of telling the most important part of your essay, the whole reason you wrote it, instead of showing it to us. What if Lisa Rumsey Harris had written “I had a really hard time as a young mother, including many moments where I felt alone” instead of “I locked myself in the bathroom… and I sat in the tub… and cried.”

If she had written “I had a really hard time,” she would have spared herself some pain. It was probably not easy to relive the bathroom crying episode. But she would have glossed over the truth, and the essay would not have been as powerful. Her willingness to have an open heart, to bare herself for us, made this essay strong.

Let me give you another great example, from “Keeping Attendance,” by Julie Ransom, co-winner of our 2007 essay contest:

I hit a pool of melted snow. My crutches slide out in opposite directions, clattering loudly across the wood floor. I fall to my knees—not an inappropriate pose if I were, say, lighting a prayer candle near a reliquary in a Gothic cathedral, but a bit dramatic for a crowded Mormon meetinghouse. A hundred and fifty heads, including that of the organist, turn to see what all the noise is about. They are my friends, my brothers and sisters, and their concern and sympathy flow back at me like a tidal wave, but I am still humiliated. Humbled. I give them all a timid smile from my penitent position. So much for discreet.

I turn down many kind offers of assistance, crawl over to the nearest row of free chairs, and motion for my kids to join me. They bring my crutches from both sides of the room. We are barely settled after the sacrament when a feud breaks out over the crayons. Then the boys begin to squirm and complain about being bored. I am surrounded by trout on a boat deck. There is much arching and flopping—from chairs to floor to my knees to the floor again. I catch only a few phrases of a talk that, to be honest, holds no interest for me.

I have no choice but to ask myself a terrible question. It strikes me not with urgency but in a seeping flush of frustration and resignation. Why am I here? I do not ask because of a crisis of faith, or even because I feel picked on and impaired and am wishing for sackcloth and ashes to make my persecution complete. I mean, generally speaking, what is the point of our weekly attendance, our weekly battle? I am not at the verge of exiting the church (slowly, very slowly), and leaving my membership records at the door, never to return. I simply have what I feel to be a highly practical proposal: If my home is a temple, can we please, please just worship from there?

She’s got a funny, poignant scene going on, one we can all identify with: the desire to worship from home when it’s tough to be in church. She does get to the heart of the matter, though: she tells us honestly about the way she fell on her crutches, and about how humiliating that whole Sunday was. She doesn’t become a martyr from it, nor does she gloss over it. The heart of the essay is there, true and real.

So: go back to that essay you’re working on. In my last contest post, I talked about revising. This would be my very first recommendation as you revise your essay: evaluate the heart of it. Do you show us, in a vivid scene, what we need to know to empathize with your situation? Do you show us without wallowing or glossing? If you’re wondering about how to make the heart of your essay more clear, more powerful, here are a few more links to essays I think do a marvelous job at this:

“That Girl,” by Laura Hilton Craner
“Small and Simple Things,” by Brooke Benton
Elizabeth’s Quilt by Julie Donaldson
See Your Beauty, Feel Your Power by Angela Schulz

Related posts:

1. Structure
2. The Tinker Stage
3. Now Accepting Entries

Maybe I should just stop there; maybe the admonition to revise thoroughly ought to speak for itself. But I’m a talker, so I will do more than that, with these Reasons to Revise.

1- All the cool writers are doing it.
For example: if you have a secret writer crush on Shannon Hale (what? not me! of course not! I’m just thinking of other people who might.) you might be interested to read what she’s got to say on the subject. In this link, she gives a word count for each of the twelve different drafts of Austenland. This piece, full of great advice for wanna be writers, uses the word “rewrite” seven times. She’s quite fervent on the subject. She’s also got a great link full of quotes from other famous authors on rewriting, here. And then, as an editor, I really love what she says on this link about working with an editor. As you’re working on your contest essay, find yourself a good editor, take Shannon Hale’s advice, and apply it.

2-The wanna-be writers (that would be, um, me) are doing it too.
Case in point, with a bit of shameless promotion. The new issue of Irreantum will contain my essay “Beauty for Ashes” in it. Am I excited? You have no idea. I’m very much a novice writer, and I feel all tingly that I get to be there. Not worthy, not worthy. A bit of background on that essay: the version you will read in Irreantum is at least the tenth draft. To be more honest, I have lost count of the number of drafts it’s been through. It went from loose ideas on beauty, all messy, to a more organized structure, to an super-organized structure, to a less organized structure that worked better, to picky analysis of every sentence, by me, and by two editors, plus a copy editor. I swear I have analyzed every “to be” and passive verb, every blasted prepositional phrase, in that thing. Am I sick of it? Well, yeah. I’m also excited to see it in print, though. As a novice writer, I’m always surprised at the level of work, of revising, required to take something from an idea in my head to words on page. Writing is work! It’s fun, yes. Satisfying. But it’s also work.

3-Revision is an act of humility.
Every time I show my writing to someone, and say “Tell me what you think. Be honest. No really, I can take it.” it’s so hard. Because what I’m secretly wishing for is that they’ll say “This is amazing! Astounding! Send that puppy in–it doesn’t need a single thing more.” And I adore my first drafts. I write them in this lovely haze of inspiration. I read them over and memorize their brilliant lines to myself.

It’s so humbling to have someone tell me that this and that and the other need to be changed. Even humiliating, sometimes. But here’s the thing: until I learned to humble myself, find a good editor, get the critiques, and implement them, I never improved past a certain point. Rough drafts can only go so far. A good editor will help you make the words on paper come closer to the words in your heart. That is the only way your readers will be able to really appreciate your experience as you’d like them to. And the humbling is so worth it, when you write something that really connects with a reader.

4-Revision is an act of truth-finding.
I used to think that the first draft of an essay was it. There it came, fully formed, out of my head and onto the computer screen, voila! But what I’ve found is that the first draft of my essay is really only what I think about the issue on that day. If I write about the same thing a different day, something else will come out. And another day, and another. What I absolutely love about revising essays is the way these truths coalesce, so that I can find what’s really going on in my head and my heart. The better my rewriting, the more true my essay becomes. Messy, early-draft essays have the seeds there, but they are not as clear, as resonant, as the later revisions.

5-I want you to win this contest. I really, really do.
Okay, not everyone can win it. Sigh. But you could. Those ideas you’re kicking around, that you’ve been playing with? Another few drafts, and they could turn into a winning essay.

Related posts:

1. Want to write for Segullah? Read Segullah!
2. The Tinker Stage
3. Segullah Writing Contest Questions and Answers