Jonathan Langford's Blog, page 2

Things Rich and Strange: Mormonism through the Lens of Steve Peck, a Sympathetic Alien

(cross-posted at A Motley Vision website)

Title: Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. Peck

Author: Steven L. Peck

Publisher: Zarahemla Books

Genre: Short Story Collection

Year Published: 2015

Number of Pages: 219

Binding: Trade Paperback

ISBN13: 9780988323346

Price: $14.95

Also available as an ebook

Reviewed by Jonathan Langford.

Steve Peck is an alien. A kind of geeky-looking one (wholly appropriate for a professor of evolutionary biology), friendly, congenial, but an alien nonetheless. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for how, in this set of 16 stories, he so consistently manages to provide such startlingly different, yet at the same time deeply insightful, perspectives on the culture and religion he has adopted for his own.

Which is about the only thing these stories — which range from short to long, humor to pathos, realism to postmodernly zany, contemporary to historical to science fiction — have in common. Eight of them have been previously published, in venues ranging from Irreantum to Covenant to the Everyday Mormon Writer contest. Yet the effect is not incoherent. Rather, it provides a sense of the range of Peck’s work, which includes something that will, I guarantee, appeal to pretty much everyone with the slightest interest in reading fiction about the Mormon experience: highbrow or lowbrow, literary or popular, funny or serious, light or thought-provoking. It’s pretty much all here. And while not every story is equally polished, each provides something interesting and (here’s that word again) different.

*****

Full disclosure: I’m a friend of Steve’s (hey, we aliens need to stick together). My first exposure to him was secondhand through my son Nathan, as they worked together in an ultimately failed effort (through no fault of their own) to keep Life, the Universe and Everything on the BYU campus. For almost three years now, I’ve been part of an online writing group with him, Scott Parkin, and William Morris. (Our numbers originally included Kathleen Woodbury, who had to drop out due to other commitments.) Also, I got a free copy of the book, in exchange for proofreading a draft. (The first thing I saw when I opened a print copy was a typo I had missed. Sigh.)

Despite which, I had never, as it turned out, actually read any of the pieces in this collection before. Which made proofreading an especially pleasant process of discovery. From time to time, I would leave my computer to quote particularly funny lines to other members of my family, or summarize a story I had just read (or was currently reading). It was that kind of experience. In the interests of preserving that experience for others, I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers here — but some are nonetheless unavoidable. So if you’re the type for whom knowing about a story before reading it ruins the reading experience, then stop now, buy the book, and discover for yourself.

*****

The collection is divided into two parts: Part I, Other Worlds, with nine stories, and Part II, This World. Which, while accurate enough, is less than usually meaningful, since the “other worlds” described are often as not just a slightly offbeat version of our own, while “this world” includes an imagined setting in sixth century B.C. Mesopotamia.

I’ll start with the first story, “Avek, Who Is Distributed” — a short (four-page) reflection on how alien biology might interact with Mormon practice reminiscent of Eric James Stone’s Nebula Award-winning “That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made” (another must-read in Mormon science fiction). However, Peck’s story, to my mind, possesses a more profoundly Mormon theme and a deeper emotional impact. It is, perhaps, less polished, and I honestly don’t know what a non-Mormon reader would make of it. The key question of the story is how to adapt the essential ordinance of baptism to an entity for whom the physical act is frankly impossible — something perhaps trivial to a nonbeliever, but deeply important both to Avek, the Mormon convert AI, and to POV character Elder Windle, the Seventy responsible for artificial-life relations, whose well-meaning intentions are stymied by his inability to find a satisfactory solution. Metaphorically, the story is about how the gospel, if it is to be truly universal, must extend beyond the historical mainstream. For me, this was a deeply moving story — studded with small, almost cartoonish throwaway details of how everyday life and the Church itself might have evolved in ways transparent to the POV character but unexpected for us. (I particularly like the reference to “Elder Janxvon, the first android apostle and former starship captain whose stories of adventures were always a favorite at general conference.”) Some readers with a distaste for science fiction might find such details distracting; I found them delightful.

Conversion is also a theme of “The Gift of the King’s Jeweler,” a novella (or is that novelette?) that tells the story of a jeweler in ancient Babylon, a convert to the Jewish religion, who in a dream is inspired to make a peculiar brass instrument, then ultimately leave it on the ground outside the camp of what seem to him an uncilized band of vagabonds (who even eat their meat raw!). A consistent theme in this story is the jeweler’s efforts to discern what his duty is in respect to the worship of his new god, based on the promptings he feels — sometimes aided but more often hindered by the (sometimes hilariously mistaken) advice he receives, social expectations among family and associates unsympathetic to his new religion, and his own reasoning. While the story’s impact was (for me) reduced at times by too much of the flavor of the standard Mormon conversion story, complete with explication of basic doctrines, the premise, characters, and setting were sufficient to keep me engaged, and even moved. This is a “feel-good” Mormon story, but a well done and unusually imagined one — a description I hope won’t put off potential readers.

Mormon life gets a variety of humorous and zany snapshots in some of Peck’s smaller pieces. “The Best Pinewood Derby Ever” — another four-pager — will delight anyone who has suffered through this quintessential Mormon trial of charity and patience. (I printed out a copy and passed it around at church.) “When the Bishop Started Killing Dogs” is a similarly humorous human look at how the trials of life can (and often do) turn even the faithful slightly crazy, while with “Bishop, Banker, Grocer, Fry,” Peck has (to the best of my knowledge) invented a style I can only refer to as “bishop noir.” Zanier still is “Rennact,” a quick look at what a pioneer reenactment of the future might look like, while “The Captain Makes a Friend on the Day His Cravings and Listings Disappear” gives a conversation between two spirits — one a pirate captain — watching as their temple work is done. “Question Four,” though only tangentially Mormon, is either a hilarious depiction of craziness-slash-obsession, or the kind of creative response that graduate school applications deserve but, sadly, never get. Other applications of science fiction convention to a Mormon setting include “Forgotten Zero,” a time travel story; “Recreated in His Image,” another story about personal choices in obedience to faith; “A Strange Report from the Church Archives,” in which James E. Talmage tackles a device that (maybe?) allows reality to be altered; and “Runners,” a postapocalyptic story in which strangers help each other escape from a danger that is never fully explicated.

On a lengthier note is “Let the Mountains Tremble, for Adoniha Has Fallen,” which postulates how a splitoff LDS Church on Mars might have evolved during centuries of isolation from Earth. Faced with a Church leadership who do not understand the implications of Earth’s superior technology, the point of view character — again a “Seventy,” though in this context that means something more like a cross between a medieval country squire and a religious knight — and his fellows must choose between obedience to constituted authority and acting for what they see as the salvation of their people. This is the kind of story we like to imagine would not happen in God’s True Church, and I suppose it’s easy enough to dismiss the Church of Jesus Christ of Martian Saints as clearly apostate, if you’re of such a mind. For me, it was an engaging re-imagining of Mormonism in a distinctly “other” culture (the use of dodos for Christmas dinner just scratches the surface), but ultimately a painful story of a man who (in the story’s last words) “believed himself damned, but who loved Mars more than his own soul.”

Similarly troubling, though in a purely realistic and more personal (as opposed to society-saving) setting, is “Two-dog Dose,” the story of a man whose friend, mind breaking down from Alzheimer’s, invokes a terrible pact they had made during trips into Utah’s Canyonlands. Here is one place I have to invoke spoilers: this is probably not a story you want to give to someone with strong triggers in the areas of either Alzheimer’s or assisted suicide. A powerful, powerful story nonetheless — with sympathies for all involved, particularly the POV character, no longer himself a believer, who does his best to get out of fulfilling his promise but is unable to escape in the end.

Rounding out the collection, the humanity of those in leadership positions is a theme in both “The Problem” — the story of a bishop beset by temptation, who happily does not fall victim to it in the end — and “Exactness,” a slight piece in praise of Carole King’s song “Tapestry” and of some degree of flexibility in applying the established standards to music in church meetings.

*****

So, should you buy this book?

I’m planning on buying another copy. In fact, probably several. I’ll have to think about which of my relatives and friends would most appreciate it; as mentioned, some of the stories won’t be to everyone’s taste, or might cause pain for some readers. Still, I urge you to give it a try. Taken as a whole, this collection is one of the freshest, most engaging, and most entertaining contributions to Mormon literature that I’ve seen in a long while.

Bad Superhero Ideas

Growing up, I wasn’t that interested in superheroes. I’m still not. I mean, yeah, sure, I watched the Fantastic Four on Saturday morning television, but what kid my age didn’t? I certainly never got into the comic books, which at that time was the medium for superhero narrative consumption.

But times have changed. Superheroes have become a major movie franchise, or several. My children debate the classic Batman versus Superman question. My oldest was a fan of The Tick, and (more recently) Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. And of course no one can escape the impact of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in shaping the esthetics of late twentieth century American culture.

And so it is only sensible that as someone with aspirations to making an impact in today’s storytelling world, I should invent a superheroes series of my own.

Thus without further ado, I introduce the following members of a noteworthy team dedicated to tracking and retrieval:

The Minuteman—Long rifle in his hand, master of traps and snares, once he is on the trail, villains don’t stand a chance! Unless, of course, they turn the tables and ambush him, but We Don’t Talk About That Time.
Constance Vigilant—In her Granny Clampett dress, this schoolmarm with an attitude may not move fast—but she doesn’t need to. Evildoers better watch out for her ruler!
Troy Othello—With his magical glowworm Sind-fer, Troy is a master of fire and illusion, cunningly employed with his traps, snares, and nets!
Insalata Russa—A specialist in camouflage, Russa saw this name on a menu and knew at once that he’d discovered his alter ego!
Propter Hawk—Not a regular member of the team, but a solitary tracking birdman who sometimes works with them on especially tough cases. He closes accounts on villains, bringing home to them the consequences of their past actions!

Okay. Now that I have that out of my system…

Root Canal

Which kind of says it all, you know? Except, of course, that clearly I’m going to go on and say much more than that…

Last Friday night: intermittent toothache. You know, the kind of thing that makes you wonder if you got something stuck between your teeth. Except that after re-flossing for the fourth time, you clue into the notion that there’s something more going on. I wasn’t even completely sure what tooth it was that was bothering me.

It was hard to know just how seriously to take the thing. Sometimes it didn’t seem so bad Other times, it was hard to concentrate on anything else except how that portion of my mouth was feeling. By Sunday evening, I was ready to leave a message on our dentist’s answering machine. They called back Monday morning, and I an appointment to go in Thursday — “but call us up if it gets worse. I’m sure Dr. Page will come in early or stay late if you really need to see him.” (There are several reasons we really like our current dentist.)

And then Tuesday morning at 2:30, I woke up with my tooth feeling much worse. Couldn’t get back to sleep. Constant pain. Any kind of pressure made it worse — even just running my tongue over it. As did cold.

(Telling my older son about this, he reminded me of the bad joke: “When is it time to see the dentist? 2:30! [i.e., tooth-hurty].” Because, you know, there’s nothing like a touch of humor to make things seem better. Or not.)

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It’s remarkable just how much pain in one small body part can do to can ruin your ability to concentrate on anything else. After waking up, and while waiting for the dentist’s office to open, I tried all kinds of things to occupy my time and try to distract myself. A little work on a research report, though I won’t vouch for the quality of what I wrote. A little creative writing. Took a shower. Ate some yogurt. Read some books about medieval cities. Read some stories. Took ibuprofen and aspirin. Sat with my eyes closed and tried to make my brain reinterpret the pain as pressure. (This is something I remember reading about in a science fiction story years ago; it actually helps, believe it or not.)

About 5:00 I went outside for a walk. It was a gorgeous time for it: light in the sky but the sun not yet up, chorus of birdsong, very little traffic. A bit chilly. I hadn’t taken a sweater, so I wound up going back inside after about 15 minutes. Still, it was very nice. Not only distracting, but also a chance to burn off the nervous energy that background pain can translate into.

Around 6:30, I decided it was time to call the dentist’s office, though I was quite sure they wouldn’t be there yet. 7:30, they called me back, and told me they could fit me in at 8:30. And the rest is history. Three shots, or maybe four, to numb the tooth. (Our dentist subscribes to the theory that if you do it a little at a time, the pain is less. It seems to work.) Then a partial root canal, where they take off the top of the root and pack in stuff to pickle the rest, to use Dr. Page’s colorful phrase. A prescription of hydrocodone (generic for vicodin) and instructions to take lots of ibuprofen, plut another appointment for a little more than a week from now to dig out the rest of the root, if I understand the process correctly.

And now it’s Tuesday night. The novocaine wore off a long time ago. The area where my tooth was worked on is sore; bafflingly, the soft tissues under my jaw on that side are even sorer, especially down toward the front far away from where any action took place. It’s hard to swallow, and hard to spit, and even kind of hard to talk. Each hydrocodone provides an hour or two where the pain is ignorable. Sadly, I have to wait 3-4 hours between pills (I’ve taken three so far). I’ve been eating yogurt, and broth with little bitty pasta pieces that I can kind of let slide down my throat, and instant butterscotch pudding. Each time I have to swallow, I briefly cock my head to one side, which seems to make it a little easier. Soon, I get to go to bed — which will be its own kind of experience, since there’s no way for me to sleep that doesn’t put pressure on the swollen area under my jaw. (CPAP machine.) So I don’t expect a very restful sleep. (Later note: sadly, this prediction was correct.)

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I’m not very good at dealing with pain. I really have to wonder how I would have done in pioneer times, or the middle ages, or basically anytime prior to the last 50-plus years when we get to experience the benefits of modern dentistry. (Thinking about this yesterday, I briefly considered inserting a scene into the fantasy stories I’m working on in which a character has to deal with toothache without the benefits of modern medicine; however, I quickly realized that grittily realistic though this might be, it’s far too close to what we experience in everyday life to interest fantasy readers. There is nothing of the exotic or heroic in an aching tooth or jaw.)

Waiting for my chance to see the dentist, there were times I had the impulse to simply grab my tooth and yank it out. Get the pain over with in one major wash of agony. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked that way: one of the many reasons why I was not seriously tempted to try this. (Others include the fact that I’m a wimp — and that I seriously doubt I have the strength or tools to pull out a tooth, even were I to try.)

It’s hard to simply sit there and endure pain, even when there’s nothing else you can constructively do. I’m both deeply respectful and utterly appalled to remember that for many people, chronic pain is a way of life. How do they deal with it? It’s outside my current realm of understanding. Nor do I want to gain the firsthand experience to help me comprehend it better. Maybe it’s true, as God once said to Joseph Smith, that “all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good”; but I don’t find it in me to desire any more of this particular good. “Sufficient unto the day is the toothache thereof” — and hasten the time when this one is over.

Update: It turns out that in the wake of my root canal, I got a lymph gland (or possibly salivary gland) infection. Which explains part of why I did not start feeling better. Now I have three great big pills to take four times a day. “All these things shall give thee experience…”

Wisdom, and the Lack Thereof

February was a hectic month. Multiple deadlines. Multiple projects. Trying to help my family hold onto their collective and individual sanity, at least to the degree that this is still a relevant goal.

Which, naturally, made it the ideal time for me to take on another project: low-income, not all that high importance if I’m to be honest, and nothing I was under any obligation of doing. For no good reason except that it caught my eye, and, well, I wanted to. Did you expect anything else?

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The project, ironically enough, is a book about Mormon Wisdom, consisting of wise-sounding or otherwise noteworthy quotes from Mormons. I got into it when a friend of mine with whom I’ve worked on some other projects asked a list of people if they wanted to review an early draft. And I, of course, said yes. Then, after I had providing detailed feedback on the first bit, my friend asked if I wanted to do an editorial pass on the whole thing. Since, you know, I seemed to have Opinions. How long do we have? I asked. A month, quoth he.

And so of course I said yes.

#######

My efforts were concentrated in three areas.

Based on the project’s budget and timeline, quotes had been collected, up to that point, largely by canvassing online quote collections about various individuals. Based on my own spot-checking of some of these, I found myself deeply suspicious. Goodreads, it turns out, does not verify their quotes. A quick check of some suspicious-looking sources found some that were misattributed, and some that had been heavily edited in unacknowledged ways. So I persuaded my friend to have the third contributing editor (who had done most of the initial collection of quotes) go through and do source-checking, using a spreadsheet I had compiled and my set of suggestions on how to do such a thing. Then after that was done, I reviewed the result, did additional searching for quotes he hadn’t been able to find, and made needed corrections into the file.

One of the things that bothered me about the initial draft was the preponderance of men, and particularly of LDS church leaders. My second area of effort lay in trying to bring in quotes from lesser-known Mormons, and particularly women. This task was made considerably more challenging due to one of the restrictions under which we were working, that all quotes had to be from people now deceased (for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here). My efforts in this respect did not meet as much success as I would have liked — but I did wind up adding some 16 names to the bios list, more than half of them women. It was a bit.

One of my reactions in reading through parts of the initial draft was that much of it sounded like a “Best of General Conference” or “Best of Church Sermons” collection. My sense was that (a) this is a need that is already being met, and (b) the title “Mormon Wisdom” promises something a little more eclectic, with a mix of the spiritual and the practical. My third area of effort related to trying to make this happen, though a combination of cutting, editing (like cutting except that you keep part of a quote and throw away the rest), reorganizing, and plugging in new quotes that helped to fill out some of the topics — followed by a final read-through to make it flow better. (At least, to me. Such things are notoriously subjective.)

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So, should you buy the book? Short answer: I don’t know.

A lot will depend, I suppose, on just how much it costs. Which I don’t have any ideas about. I never had any direct contact with the publisher (Skyhorse Publishing), and don’t really know much about them, except that they seem to be a bona fide national publisher with decent-looking books. That’s a plus, I suppose?

I can’t really say that this book was done the way it ought to be done. For one thing, that would have taken a lot more time than we had, or were being paid for. And a lot of the quotes are ones that anyone who’s been in Mormon circles for a while will already be familiar with.

There are also some missing that you might expect. For instance, that quote from David O. McKay about no success compensating for failure in the home? Actually it was something he quoted from someone else (not a Mormon). So, no.

It’s certainly not what you’d call a deep or profound book. Of course, that’s not what books of this sort promise.

It’s pleasant enough. (And wow, isn’t that a lukewarm endorsement?) Maybe a good coffee (pardon me, Postum) table or bathroom book? You may find a few quotes in it that you’ll want to read out loud to others. Or perhaps not. Frankly, at this point I’m too close to know for sure one way or the other. I’ll let you know what I think once my contributor copy arrives later this year…

Mortality as an RPG

1978. I’m a 16-year-old college freshman, living in the dorms. Struggling (and often failing) to muster the self-discipline to attend class and do my homework assignments.

And then I hear about this cool role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons, it’s called. D&D. Really popular, especially among college students, especially among geeks. And I start playing with a group on my dorm floor.

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The story doesn’t go entirely the way you might expect. I mean, yeah, I didn’t do terribly well in my classes that semester. But D&D is only partly to blame. Really, I was looking for excuses: something else to do with my time when I should have been studying or sleeping instead. If it hadn’t been D&D, it would have been something else. In fact, most of the time, it was something else: books, or long philosophical conversations with newly minted friends, or (on one or two particularly stupid occasions) sitting up all night watching other people play Risk without using cards. Let me repeat that: watching other people play Risk without using cards (which just about triples the length of a game that’s already fairly tedious if you’re not one of those playing). If that doesn’t show how far I went in my quest to avoid schoolwork, I don’t know what does.

Truthfully, I was never as much of a D&D addict as I was a reading addict. And nowadays, I hardly play video games at all. But I get to see a lot of playing of video games among family members, particularly RPGs or role-playing games: games like D&D where you control a character who advances through a set of challenges and build skills through going on adventures. My oldest son in particular waxes lyrical about the potential of RPGs as a storytelling medium, while acknowledging that for the most part it’s potential that hasn’t been heavily utilized thus far by video game designers.

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Which brings me to the notion of RPGs as a model for mortality.

Video games involve a lot of dying. You start the game, you goof up, you die. Simple. Then you start again. Typically (but not always), as a player you get periodic chances to “save” your game, so that when you die, you don’t lose everything you’ve already done. Sometimes, though, you discover that you made a basic mistake earlier than your last save, so you have to go to a previous save. Or start all over again.

Video games involve a lot of learning new skills. Okay, typically as a player you don’t actually learn how to backstab or climb walls or whatever it is that your game character does. But you do have to learn how to manage the controls, the particular set of moves that allow you to solve a particular puzzle, the proper way to deal with specific characters and situations you encounter on the way. No one expects video game players to know this in advance.

Video games are arbitrary. I know of one (okay, it’s actually a text-based computer game rather than a video game, but whatever) that requires you to ask multiple times what you see, before the game gives in and tells you what was actually in front of you the whole time. What’s up with that?

Video games involve a lot of apparent dead ends. This is one of the things I find most frustrating on those rare occasions when I try to play one. You reach a certain point, and all ways forward appear to be literal dead ends. Usually that means there is something you neglected along the way, or someplace you have to go back to — but good luck figuring out what that is. Hence the popularity of FAQs — files posted by other gamers explaining what you have to do in order to beat a particular challenge. Or gamers may talk to friends and family members for a hint. There are probably some purists out there who insist on doing everything on their own, with no help from an outside source, but from my experience, such people are rare. Game designers don’t expect players to figure out everything on their own.

Video games can involve hours of tedious practice and multiple attempts in order to gain some important (though often intrinsically trivial) advantage. One very popular RPG requires the player to take time off from killing monsters and saving the world from a corrupt power company (!!) in order to breed and race large ostrich-like birds (!!!). Another involves playing an invented card game, over and over. Still another involves potentially hours of virtual fishing. Hello?

It’s really quite amazing that anyone ever engages in such a frustrating and often apparently pointless enterprise as playing a video game. Except, of course, that all these frustrations are actually part of the appeal. It would be a pretty sad game that didn’t require multiple tries, dead ends, pointless frustration, and other miscellaneous vexations. Which says something interesting about us as humans.

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This came to mind earlier today, thinking about the real-life travails of several people I care about who are struggling with job difficulties, attempts to find work (and a direction in life), health problems, spiritual struggles, and other personal issues.

I do not want people who are important to me to experience a life that resembles video games. Because really, that would kind of suck. I mean, who actually wants that in real life?

And so I plead with God for these people. I say, please give them what they need, even if I don’t know what that is. Please help them have a happy life. Help me figure out how I can help them.

And I don’t get any clear answers, and my attempts to help don’t often help all that much. And I’m left with the reality that people do live lives composed in large part of frustration, toil, and painful growth, ending in death.

Why do I balk at this? If it’s good enough for video game designers, why do I want something different in real life? Except, you know, for the fact that it’s real life pain, not just (imagined) mental anguish. And the part where I hope for a better set of ethics from God and the cosmos.

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Which brings me back to my first point, or maybe my second point. Which is that video games, like much of life, are about growth. Challenge. Becoming more than what we are.

Comfort is apparently not a goal that contents humanity. We seem to have an innate desire to test ourselves against something — ourselves, our surroundings — find out where we fall short, and keep trying until we can do better, no matter how much unpleasantness that involves. It’s less a case of life being like a video game, and more of video games reflecting this key facet of life. (And how can you reflect a facet? Don’t facets do the reflecting? Bad Jonathan!) Growth, apparently, is the bottom line, even — or perhaps inevitably — at the cost of pain, frustration and the like.

Which leaves us, I guess, with those classic video game values. Namely: Find out the game shortcuts. Ask for advice. Learn new skills. Rethink assumptions. Practice. And keep on trying.

Christmas 2014

Author’s note: I’ve now officially given up on my occasional “columns” that I was sending out monthly, or at least quarterly, for several years. Sorry to those of you who were following these. In any event, the plan is for me to take up the slack with more frequent posting at this blog. So here we go.

Waking up at 5:00 a.m. Christmas morning with a pounding headache, after only 4 hours of sleep, is not the most promising beginning to things. Excedrin and a mug of homemade hot chocolate have taken the edge off, though at some point today I should probably try and take a nap.

And I had to go out and find a place to buy milk, since I foolishly did not verify that we had enough before going to bed last night. Fortunately, there was a convenience store open. So I’ve now been out — I don’t think I’ve ever seen the streets of our city so devoid of traffic — and came back, and made pancake batter, which should eventually become breakfast for some. And I got a ham in the oven, largely because it’s what I want to eat, and just because I could. So there. I also had a short conversation with a colleague in New York (hiding out from his family, who like mine are making a late morning of it) about some work I’m planning to get done over the next week or two while he’s out of pocket. Because, you know, nothing quite says “Merry Christmas” like an early-morning business call.

We’ll see how the rest of the day goes.

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It’s Christmas in Wisconsin. And there’s no snow on the ground. Not that this makes me particularly sad, but it’s a peculiar thing, especially since there there has been snow most of the last month.

And I’m in Wisconsin. Which — sorry to all you family members out there in Utah who may regret our absence — actually makes a pretty nice change from our typical routine. There’s nowhere like home for simply sitting around and relaxing. And after this past fall, relaxation is a good idea.

All of our immediate family is in town — including our oldest, who flew in yesterday evening after finishing up finals in what should be the last semester of his bachelor’s degree. Which is nice. We had a bit of shifting to do in order to make him a place to sleep, but that’s okay. And he kept us up until 1:00 this morning regaling us with tales of his last several months, which pretty much always happens. Which, you know, makes him to blame for my headache. He owes me.

And I think I’ve blathered on long enough. Not that I couldn’t go on some more. Still, at some point, my family will be up and about, it will officially be Christmas. Right?

Fake Persimmons

Since my childhood, persimmons have been one of my favorite fruits. Soft, wet, sweet — almost slimy — and mildly spicy, with a brilliant orange coloring, they are — as I recall reading from a food writer, though the particular source is now forgotten — pretty much a dessert unto themselves. I still fall into reveries on occasion over the particularly large and delicious specimens from the fruit markets in Italy.

This, of course, is the classic persimmon (most commonly known nowadays through the Hachiya cultivar): roughly peach-shaped, flat with a dried calyx on one end and doming to a point at the other end, which is unbelievably astringent (puckery) when firm and only becomes really edible when it is so soft that you would swear it was spoiled and rotten, if it were any other fruit. (Note: If persimmons can become overripe, I’m not aware of it.)

There’s another kind of persimmon, most commonly referred to in American stores as the Fuyu persimmon. It’s flatter, kind of a pumpkin or flattened tomato shape. It never gets as soft as the Hachiya persimmon. It is eaten while still firm, but the flavor (in my opinion) is nothing special. I speculate that it might make an interesting salad ingredient, but have never performed the experiment.

In recent years, Fuyu persimmons have become more common than Hachiyas in American stores, I’m guessing because they are far less delicate to handle. Perhaps there’s an education issue too, in that Americans are leery about eating a fruit that has roughly the same texture as a water balloon. This is a shame. In our area, there’s only one store that has Hachiya persimmons at all reliably — County Market, oddly enough, which is one of those discount-end stores. You’d expect that the more yuppy-oriented stores like Kowalski’s would have the good persimmons, but no.

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With this as background, you will understand my interest this year in the appearance in local stores of something looking very much like a Hachiya persimmon, but called a “percinnamon.” I was, nonetheless, suspicious. The skin looked a little different from the classic Hachiya: less shiny-smooth, a little more textured. And there was no warning about waiting until it was soft before eating it.

I bought a couple. I brought them home. I looked on the Internet, and found very little about them. Most germane was a blog entry by someone who had eaten one and found it not terribly exciting. However, this was someone who had never eaten a persimmon before.

I waited. And a couple of nights ago, I cut the first one open.

The verdict: This is a FAKE PERSIMMON. It is a Hachiya-shaped Fuyu. It is bland. If you like Fuyus, then by all means buy these, if you find them at a decent price. But for those like me who yearn for the large and luscious true persimmons of yesteryear (or of Italy), this is naught but a mirage. The quest, alas, continues.

Writing a Novel

A member of my writing group recently put out a request for those of us who have written novels to talk about our composition process and experiences. As preparation for that upcoming discussion — recognizing that I’m still discovering what worked and didn’t work in my one successful and other not-yet-successful novel-writing efforts — here are some top-level thoughts.

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Story ideas, for me, start with a character, a situation, and a setting. It might, for example, be a wizard, a couple hundred years old, shadowy ruler in a country considered backward and oppressive by its neighbors, who suppresses the magical talents of his citizenry by rituals he enforces on them to prevent any rivals from arising. His background might be that of a lesser talent from the peers of his own time period, who has nonetheless outlasted them all through careful husbanding of his power and avoiding the limelight.

This, by the way, is one of several ideas I’ve been thinking about off and on for quite a while, but have yet to develop into anything that feels ready to start turning into a story. In this connection, you may notice the lack of a plot, or even a central conflict. One of my great problems as a story writer is developing a clear idea of what actually happens.

From my experience, there’s no real point in trying to move on with a story in any formal way (drafting, outlining, etc.) without at least the following:

A sense of the character’s starting point
A sense of where the character is at the end of the story
A top-level sense of the basic change(s) the character undergoes from the beginning to the end of the story
Some touchpoints along the way: key incidents, intermediate conflicts, etc. These aren’t by any means final or complete, but give a starting-point for thinking about what the substance of the story might be.

Until I reach this point, what I have isn’t really a story idea, but something more primitive.

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Even after this point, there’s still a lot more to do before I’m ready to start writing, mostly detail/background work: developing the setting, developing the character, generating more interesting incidents. A lot will change during the writing, but I’ve found that I need a pretty full bag of existing ideas before I start drafting, or my writing will wander all over the place.

Primary tools for these initial phases are brainstorming, note-taking, open-ended research, and multiple points of attack over an extended period of time — taking care not to push beyond an inwardly sensed point where I’m no longer letting things fall together, but rather pushing things forward artificially. Cautious mental probing, like Gimli’s description to Legolas about opening up new caves for exploration: “with cautious skill, tap by tap—a small chip of rock and no more perhaps, in a whole anxious day.” Kneading the mental bread dough, adding a little flour, letting it rest, over and over until it has the right feel.

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And then there’s the drafting.

The actual course of composition, for me, is messy. With No Going Back, I started at the beginning and wrote until the end — but also jumped ahead on multiple occasions to write a scene I had just envisioned, or that I knew would be happening and wanted to nail down.

This worked surprisingly well. It gave me something to work on when the main line of my writing was stuck, and helped me figure out where the story was going. Some adjustments had to be made when it was time to fit these scenes into their places within the main narrative, but less than I had feared.

I didn’t do formal detailed outlining. However, I spent a lot of time thinking about the larger plot lines and how they fit together. One of the things I’ve found is that I seem to have trouble writing a single narrative line and making it feel like it’s going somewhere. My solution (to the extent that I have one) is to weave together multiple plot lines with separate characters and conflicts, and use that structure to help generate a sense of energy and forward motion. That requires a lot of thought to make sure each separate thread flows naturally and that they all fit together the way I want them to. Timelines, for me, seem to be more essential than outlines.

Another thing I’ve found about myself is that I can’t do what some people suggest: that is, writing something I know is garbage with the intention of fixing it during the editing. Which isn’t to say that a lot of my writing isn’t garbage, and that a lot of revision doesn’t have to happen during the editing. But writing something that isn’t as good as I can make it at the time poisons the whole process. This is where allowing myself to work on other scenes is so valuable, since it lets me keep drafting while I’m figuring stuff out.

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Boiling it all down:

Develop an overall story plan.
Put the pieces together over time.
Incorporate multiple story threads.
Plan in advance (but no outlining per se).
Write from beginning to end, but skip ahead to write other scenes.
Draft as well as I know how, but plan to revise.
Don’t push things.
Put in time consistently (my most frequent failing).

So far, that’s what seems to work for me.

Gifts of the Earth

(originally written a couple of days ago)

For breakfast this morning I had some leftover bread pudding, with a bit of homemade plum syrup and whipped cream over it. Heavenly. Plus a small pear from our favorite orchard.

There are, on my countertop, large brandywine heirloom tomatoes from the local farmer’s market, waiting to be sliced for bacon sandwiches on bread from our favorite Italian market in St. Paul. Also on the counter are a bowl of small cherry tomatoes from the local farmer’s market, sweet and intense — for some reason, cherry tomatoes are able to achieve in Wisconsin an intensity of flavor that mostly escapes the larger tomatoes. Two local ears of corn, waiting forlornly for their turn as part of some meal or other. We have sweet-spicy chestnut crab apples in a bag for lunches and casual eating, and other apple varieties for eating and cooking, including the peerlessly intense Haralson — I spent some time this morning looking over recipes for a tarte tatin (a la Julia Child) and wondering whether we could combine that with a piecrust top. And I’m contemplating the odds of getting my beloved-but-busy spouse to make a chicken pie, using the chicken thighs that we boiled last night in broth for their flavor, if I can help with the filling.

And, in short, there’s a lot of good food to be had, if I will take the time to cook it, prepare it, eat it. Doing so almost feels like a spiritual duty: appreciation of the gifts of God and the earth.

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And what does this have to do with writing? Not an awful lot — unless, perhaps, the random thought that writing, like cooking, is a way of seeing and appreciating the world around us: sharpening our sense of its intense reality and then sharing that sense with others. An act of thankfulness, worship, and creation.

Two Hours a Day

Spring and early summer were unusually busy for me, workwise. And then the middle of summer was largely taken up with a family vacation, helping my mother move, getting our house ready for my mother-in-law to move in, etc.

All that is mostly settled now, however. And the question now is, how much time can I realistically put into my creative writing? And will that be enough for me to get anywhere?

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There’s power in putting time into doing things. There’s no guarantee, of course, that hours spent tapping away at the keyboard will translate into wonderful and eloquent writings. But it’s pretty clear that without the hours, chances of it ever happening drop to zero.

A while back, I calculated (not very scientifically) that in light of my writing speed and process, I probably need to put in a minimum of four hours a day on my story writing, 5-6 days a week, in order to build up a decent enough momentum to actually have a fiction writing career. That includes both general research (e.g., reading about medieval technology, soil types, climate, etc.) as well as writing activities: worldbuilding, outlining, writing, and rewriting. It doesn’t include marketing efforts, since I need to get that far before that becomes an issue; nor does it include peripheral activities like participation in my writing group.

This doesn’t seem like it should be that hard a goal. In particular, it doesn’t seem like it should be a hard goal to reach on weeks when I have 20 hours or less of paid work to do, which to be honest describes a pretty fair proportion of my weeks. And yet I seldom or never find it possible to put in that much time. Why is that the case?

One reason, I think, is that my brain gets exhausted. After a certain amount of time on a particular project, it’s hard for me to focus on it anymore. I also find that with my creative writing in particular, if I put in large amounts of time, it starts raising the emotional bar in ways that make it harder for me to face writing at all.

And then there are the distractions, of which there are many. Indeed, the fundamental question that determines whether I will have any kind of creative writing career at all will very likely be whether I can make myself write instead of goofing off, reading fanfiction, etc. That’s a question as yet largely unanswered.

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And so my current goal is to put in two hours a day.

Advantages of this goal are that it is small enough to be feasible. It’s a rare day when I can’t fit in two hours, if I try — especially when that includes reading general interest nonfiction books. It’s small enough not to be intimidating.

Two hours a day creates a certain consistency and keeps me engaged in my writing. Most days, it’s possible for me to come up with one or two new ideas: a new character or plot point, landmark, or magical ceremony. I currently find that this kind of piecemeal creativity works better than brainstorming everything at once, or (worse yet) trying to invent it all as I write the story.

And two hours a day is enough for me to make perceptible progress. I’ve seen my plot ideas start evolving. My electronic notes files are growing. I’ve even started making progress on the stack of papers where I’ve jotted down ideas from times past: processing these, turning them into part of a mental framework for the story I’m currently writing. While I don’t as yet have significant draft pages to look at, it nonetheless feels like I’m going somewhere.

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Someday, I think, I will need to accelerate. Someday I’ll need to put in four hours a day or more. It may even happen more or less automatically, as things start coming together and I’m further into the process of actual drafting. I can only hope.

In the meanwhile, two hours is better than nothing.