Joy

Joy

Call me crazy, brave, or stupid, but I am trying the impossible, to describe a spiritual experience with wholly inadequate carnal words. Why would I try such a thing?

1-Because this is an LDS forum and if I can’t express here, where can I go?

2-Because I want to share light and happiness when so much of what we read and hear today is dark and sad.

3-And I also want to give God credit for allowing us small moments of feeling what I hope will be ubiquitous in our future lives.

Have you had times when you experienced Joy? This December I tasted Joy on three separate occasions and it has caused me to spend time pondering this highly desirable condition.

The only way I can think to share my sensation of Joy with you is to begin with a description of the setting in which I experienced it and to show pictures of when I was feeling it. Lame, I know, but I’m struggling here. Because of length, I’ll share only two of the situations.

The first time caught me very off guard. My husband and I were going to celebrate our anniversary for a couple of days in Salt Lake City. We decided to visit an elderly widow we know on our way out of town. We gave her our simple gift and sat down in her music room to visit a bit. Before long she asked if we would like to hear her play her favorite piano piece, Clair de Lune, (which she wants played at her funeral).

She played it surprisingly well for a woman of 82. As her hands danced across the keys warm emotion poured into me. Tears tricked down my cheeks as I acknowledged the genuine love I felt for this good woman. We hugged her tight and said goodbye. As I walked down her walkway to our car, I felt as though I couldn’t contain the happiness inside me. It was Joy, pure Joy that I was feeling. There was not a particle of the self involved.

I was basking in an altered state of exquisite bliss. Because my body is not accustomed to it, I was reduced to emotion. I cried tears of happiness and was happy to learn than my husband and I were sharing in the same experience. We drove away relishing in the sensations and spoke of what we were feeling for several minutes. Although it didn’t last long in terms of time, it had been so real, so impressionable, that we reflected on it again and again over the next several days.

In spite of the fun and indulgent things we did over the next few days to celebrate our anniversary, nothing compared to the joy we experienced visiting our friend. Honestly, all our activities seemed almost a desperate attempt to achieve happiness and pleasure that simply paled in comparison to the joy we had tasted at Gail’s house.

The next occasion we tasted Joy was the following Wednesday when all our children and their spouses (excepting the one who lives in Mumbai) came to the Provo City Center Temple to participate in proxy sealings for family names. During the session the sensation of joy started in me like the steady drip of an I.V.

I scanned the faces of my family members. Each person looked happy and content. So much goodness was in that room. I peered deep into one of my daughter’s eyes and we communicated without words, just as God was communicating His Joy without words to me.

We must have all been feeling it because no one wanted to leave the temple or each other after the session was over. We sat in the Celestial Room, lingered outside the temple, took pictures, until the tug of worldly affairs pulled us apart.

Joy is greater than a positive emotion, because it doesn’t originate from within us. I’m convinced Joy is a gift bestowed on us from God. I never know when it’s coming nor is there an exact formula to ensure it. It surely is a gift of grace.

Joy is more like an experience or temporary state of being. It is unearthly. It’s like a heavenly commodity that occasionally breaks through our atmosphere and quickly burns up as it rushes down upon us, allowing us to feel only fleeting particles of its most exquisite sensation.

The Joy I have sampled plants deep hope in my heart for a future life beyond the sadness and tears of this one. What a gift to have tasted it. It is more real than the earth under my feet. 

When I Decided to Stop Writing

I Will Make You Fishers of Men

  “So the core landscape of history has been sketched by the pen and brush and words of those who invoke a divine creator’s involvement in our lives and who count on the ligatures of religion to bind up our wounds and help us hold things together.” 
-Elder Holland, "Bond by Loving Ties," Education Week 2016

I woke up two Saturdays ago and for the first time in eight years, I told myself I didn’t have to keep writing. I didn’t have to keep doing this to myself.  The life-crippling anxiety over publication schedules and being good enough or having smart or clever enough ideas, the online marketing, the need to produce something worth reading and then edit it and edit it again, all that, I didn’t have to do.

I read some middle grade and high school entries for Reflections a few weeks ago. Holding their raw words in my hands, it was as if I juggled pieces of aspirations, wishes, and hopes. I didn’t want to put a ranked number on that. How could I tell the girl who so openly shared her experiences with sexual abuse, a drug-addicted mother, and cutting, all before age thirteen, that because she didn’t have as good a grasp on language arts as the other kids in her category, her story wasn’t going to make it beyond the library where I sat reading it?

Maybe that experience was a step to where I was Saturday morning, remembering writing as the gift that saved me, wishing to go back to that time when I wrote, not because I needed to share things inside myself, but because I needed to meet myself. When did I decide I had to share, and why, after so many years, had I never looked back? Why had I kept putting myself, my flaws, my failures, out there for everyone to see? Why had I decided this was something I had to do? 

I turned writing over inside me, and really imagined life without it. I wanted to ask God if maybe it was time to give it up. Was this what I needed to free myself from what I saw as a trigger for failure in other areas of my life? 

On Sunday, I read Elder Holland's talk, The First Great Commandment from October, 2012 about the Twelve Apostles after Jesus Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension. I read about them giving up and going back fishing, and how the Savior found them and called them to the work a second time. 

As I read, I realized I couldn’t give up writing, not if I truly loved my Savior. I sort of knew that all along. I just needed to be reminded.

Writing is and has always been, a way God uses me to reach other people and help them. We all have strengths, ways our talents can help others. As safe and reassuring as it sounded to retreat to that place where I could be alone with my writing again, it was too much like the man who buried his talent, too much like the Apostles going back to fishing.

With God it’s never about just one soul. We are all interconnected. God gives us gifts. Sometimes the ability to write, or draw, or sing. Sometimes He gives us experiences that teach us love, joy, hurt, pain, or empathy. We experience, create, grow, and then He sends us out to help each other.

The words those teenagers wrote have changed me, even if no one else ever reads them. Like the thirteen-year-old girl who's story I can't forget, I cannot reach everyone with my words. Sometimes my stories stop with one or two readers. Jesus Christ alone knows how to reach everyone, and He sends the right people out to bring someone to Him. Where I cannot not reach with my stories, someone else can reach with theirs.

God is not up there keeping track of my forgotten comas and misspellings. He’s not even recording a list of the plot holes or character issues I didn’t fix the way a better author might. He teaches me a step at a time. From the beginning, He’s been using all I can give him, and turning it to good in miraculous ways. Even if what I give is imperfect, His grace gets me to the places He wants me to go.

This is why I haven’t considered stopping before. I know what I have isn’t perfect. I know it’s limited and childish, and I still have so much to learn.

But it’s His.

My gift is His. I will do everything I can to do something good with it. I will walk through the hard stuff, the “tear it apart and write it again” stuff, the “oops, I can’t believe I missed that detail” stuff. I will keep learning, keep walking, and I won’t be afraid of the future I can’t see yet.

I’ll do it so someday, the door that will open to me will reveal a thirteen-year-old girl who doesn’t think she can make it one more day on her own. My written words will be the words that God plants in her heart. She will reach out and I will, in my flawed, limited, author-like way, put her hand in His.

I’ve been blessed by His love. I’ve been changed by Him. I won’t look back. I won’t quit. I will do it for her. I will do it for Him. It’s no longer enough to do it for me.

Natale Syrup: The Schmaltz-free Spirit of the Season

I sat down with a catalogue for Seagull Book today exclusively because an ad for friend's new book was in there. I found it and smiled.  Then I perused the rest of the booklet and found one tale after another that was precious and faith-restoring and had a cutesy reference to mistletoe.

I read one synopsis out loud, my voice crackling over the sugar and my roommate told me I could stop sounding sappy.  I told her I would once it stopped being so sappy.  I found some gems of faith-based storytelling that didn't sound like an Upworthy headline.

I'm not chucking out all sap, but I'd like to address three themes that will make telling a holiday tale more bread and butter than cake and frosting.  As a cynical Bostonian, I feel equipped.

My favorite stories depict the following:

1). You aren't blamed. .
2).  You aren't forgotten.
3).  You aren't faceless.

1.  I remember watching A Christmas Carol and being moved by a scene in Scrooge's past where he unexpectedly is fetched home for the holiday.  He had felt abandoned for infractions or indifference and instead, his family let him know that they could not go through the holiday motions without including him.

Christmas is a time for tearing down fences and building bridges.   Explore ways that you have learned or taught that.

2.  This is actually a Thanksgiving reference.  In The Lame Squirrel's Thanksgiving, a chipmunk remembers a crippled friend who couldn't gather food on his own.  She loads a basket and along the way, others impart of their substance or help pull the basket.  When they reach the squirrel's home, he's gnawing on a rotten chestnut while weeping.  The last line doesn't preach the spirit of generosity. It just says that he ate and ate and ate his thanksgiving dinner.  Underneath is a sketch of him weeping for joy.

I'll admit that I cry every year when I read the story.  I recently injured my back and felt very much the squirrel when friends turned up with a week of prepared food.

This is perhaps the easiest theme to master.  Remember the good and bad of realizing that you or someone else nearly went overlooked.

3. Finally, The Polar Express.  The protagonist receives the first gift of Christmas, a bell from santa's sleigh.  When he searches his pocket later, he finds only a hole, but Santa remembers him and his desire and leaves the bell under the tree.

The best gifts are ones that show how close you pay attention to a heart's desires.  Turn your thoughts to that.

Can your Romance Stand Alone?

A Tribute to the Clean, Proper and Sweet.
and compelling, gritty, tense, angst ridden, smart and fun.

As a historical romance writer of clean fiction, I get asked every so often, "Is there a market for clean romance?"

When I tell them, most exuberantly YES! Many adults nod their heads gratefully. "Great! Let me know when your first book is available."

But sometimes a well meaning friend will ask, "Who's your market? Teenagers? Middle Schoolers?"

So I thought I would explain why I write clean romance, why the market, especially among adults, is growing, and why it proves to be better, more compelling literature than its steamier erotic sister.

1. Often, it is just plain better writing. Steamy scenes can be a crutch. Sex sells to its audience, but remember it has a specific audience, not an all-encompassing one. The temptation to go from one such scene to the next with only a weak plot in between is too much to resist for some writers. AND take note, even if the scene or plot naturally calls for such a scene, even if it has a purpose and is character driven and important to the story, the sex immediately ruins the story, because the story can morph into a plot about the sex.

Where the story used to flow in a happy progression, characters interacting in subtle and hinty ways, rising toward a climax unrelated to any physical act; instead, the story fires up all the receptors at once, climaxes in a different way, and then completes, stops, and leaves us hungry for more: but not in a hooky, story-thirst kind of way, more in an unhealthy, outside the story, physical kind of way.

Just like the gentle touch on your hand, fingers lacing together sends thrills of expectation up and down your arm; once you kiss, the hand holding is nice, but you hunger for the kiss. Also in a romance, once you include a sex scene, everything else dulls because it cannot measure up, and the story escalates from one hot moment to the next. The story, the romantic arc, the plot points, are not powerful or compelling enough to keep up.

2. Where the sex might ruin a story, the suggestion of it, the anticipation , the desire and yearning for it can make a story, lead a story and romantic arc for a hundred pages or more without anyone tiring. The thirst is far more compelling than the satisfaction. A hint of more, even a clear understanding of white-hot madness going on behind a door that remains closed to you, leaves far more to the imagination than a detailed, play by play of the action. Anticipation and yearning, aren't those the things that turn pages? Don't we write hooks and cliff hangers for a reason? Unrealized sexual desire is the ultimate hook of all time.

But what if you as a reader thirst for a whole book and there is never any fulfillment? This is where clean romance sings.

3. THE SECRET: Emotional fulfillment is far more satisfying than physical fulfillment. And if you can accomplish true emotional fulfillment, where hero and heroine come together in a way you never thought possible, in a perfect blend of a whole, completing each other in just the right ways, the audience leaves feeling far more rewarded than if they had tangled up in someone's sheets for a scene or two. And here is where steamy romances often fall short. So much physical fulfillment is reached that the other aspects of the relationship can feel neglected or superficial. Again, better story, better writing if you leave all that out. And I submit that unless you are reading erotica, as a reader, you really are reading more for emotional fulfillment than for physical.

4. Personal reason number four. I think art should stay away from interpreting our most sacred expression of love. The holy moments shared in complete intimacy are better in real life when untainted by interference from the imaginations of others.

5. As a historical writer, is your philandering time-period appropriate? It pains me to read Regency romances with open groping and closet make-outs, and sex between nobles. None of that is time period appropriate. The heroes and heroines not only do not act in a manner appropriate for the time, but they don't think like a hero would in that day. Attention authors: most married couples did not even share the same bedroom--Intimacy was not discussed, not referenced, not public in any way. If handled any differently in the next Regency you pick up, the character's ideas and passions are obviously modern and historically inaccurate.  And that grates the historian in me. Note: My books have some really really fun kissing, but it's secret, or accidental, or married, or shocking or otherwise appropriate for the time.

And, the key, the clincher:

Ask yourself, can your romance stand alone? Is your story good enough that your audience would read it with or without any steamy scenes at all?

So, yes, there is a market for clean romance. The market is large and consistent and reliable, and it is growing. The authors are well known and established, many bestsellers with bids for movies. Just one Goodreads group has over twenty thousand clean romance books listed in it. And the market is larger and farther reaching than the inspirational lines of books that you would expect, larger than the Christian publishers. For example, Harlequin has a line of clean romance.

AND there is a growing adult audience that actively seeks  nice, fun, compelling romance with no sex. Pay attention to the past success of Clean Flicks and now Vid Angel. Media in all forms is neglecting a paying, large audience of adults who would prefer a cleaned up version of excellent entertainment. Also in literature, at the time of my writing this list, Amazon has a category called, "Clean and Wholesome Romance" with 5,894 books currently listed. A quick scroll through the first page of the list showed many five star options with reviews in the hundreds. Multiple best sellers are available with publishers who are actively seeking clean and proper romance.

As readers, we can seek them out, praise authors in our reviews and pay attention to the excellent stories that are told without crutch or gratuitous device. I hope we will, because it will only further draw attention to a growing, marketable and lucrative sub-genre.

How to write stress-free during the Christmas season

The wreaths I made for my office

by Jewel Allen

It was the perfect set-up for that illness that inevitably strikes overachievers before Christmas.  Long days at the computer, late nights already at holiday parties, and a punishing self-imposed deadline. Last night, I came down with a cold and cough. Fortunately, the only thing on my to-do list this morning was delivering rolls (which my husband sweetly bought for me already last night) for a funeral. After sneaking the rolls over in my jammies to the Relief Society president, I went back to bed. It felt good to sleep in. I then spent most of the morning decorating the house for Christmas. By the time two o’clock rolled around, I was ready to tackle edits on my manuscript. I also felt so much better. My fortunately quick recovery inspired me to think of some ways writers can write stress-free through the holidays.

1.Be realistic. It is good to set goals and still keep working on your manuscript so that you don’t lose your momentum. But maybe scaling back on your page or word count is necessary so that you can still check it off your list that day.

2.Spend a morning doing Christmas things. I had the materials to make two small wreaths and hankered to hang them on my double French office doors. I felt kind of guilty that instead of writing, I was channeling Martha Stewart. But I am so glad I did it. That pine scent...mmm. Plus every time I enter my office and sit at my desk, I see this wreath and I am just filled with sensory happiness.

3.Play Christmas music. I know, it’s distracting to write to music with lyrics. Especially Christmas music if you aren't writing something Christmas-y. But Christmas music can also lift your mood. I played music all day today, and it was lovely. It almost made me want to write a Christmas scene into my historical novel just so I can capture the warm and fuzzies of the holiday season. But then, I thought, no more research. Maybe I will just have to write a Christmas novella sometime.

4.Take a break. Give yourself permission to sleep in. Sleep is good. I wasn’t doing NaNoWriMo this year, so I had the luxury of not writing over the Thanksgiving weekend (which technically speaking is the start of the Christmas season). I slept in. Just did things I felt like. It was heavenly as a flannel blanket fresh out of the dryer. When I was ready to tackle my manuscript on Monday, I was raring to go.

5.Go outside. Soak in some sun and fresh air to avoid the dreaded winter blues. Bundle up and take a brisk walk. Make a snowman. Shovel the driveway. You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise.

6.Enjoy your family. My daughter is coming home for Christmas. I am soooo looking forward to it. My writing output will probably go to pot. But that’s okay. Time with family is always worth it. If you still want to write, communicate your goals with your family and make sure you are able to spend some time with them still.

7.Attend parties. Writers are guilty of being hermit-like when it comes to parties. Attend parties and talk to people. Consider the conversations as book research. It is also great for networking. You never know who you might meet. If nothing else, you’ll get to sample all sorts of yummy food.

8.Simplify. On the flipside, don’t feel like you have to attend every single social event, bake a gazillion cookies, or participate in all sorts of charity groups. Pick a few or none and call it good. Everyone else is in slow-down mode. Give yourself permission to scale back, too.

9.Write a gratitude list. I don’t know about you, but last week, the winter blues hit me bad. I felt like all my troubles came down like a bad snowstorm and I couldn’t dig myself out. The antidote: a Family Home Evening spent writing down things we were grateful for. Really, when you look at it, things aren’t as bad as you think. There is so much to be grateful for.

10.Indulge in color and laughter and happiness. We can make Christmas how we want it to be. Christmas can be a chore, or it can be a blessing, depending on how we look at it. Decide now to allow the good things to rise to the top. And that includes our writing.

What a blessing it is to be a writer in this day and age. Years and years ago, someone decided to write the greatest story ever told – the birth of Jesus Christ. So write on, friends, and have a wonderful and blessed Christmas! See you after the holidays!

Jewel Allen is an author and ghostwriter. She has two books out, the paranormal mystery Ghost Moon Night and a political memoir, Soapbox. Visit her at www.jewelallen.com.