Keeping my Playdough Clean

I don't buy playdough anymore. Not because it sticks to my carpets, which it does, and not because it dries into shriveled blobs when the lid isn't put back on. No, I don't buy it because we can never keep the colors clean. It starts out great and then one of my children decide to make a blue flower with a yellow center. Her project turns out beautifully but when she is done admiring her work, she squishes everything together and there is this yellow cancerous mass in your blue that you can never really get out. Each time we play it gets a little worse until finally every container is filled with an ugly swirly pinkish brown mess and the playdough is declared ruined.

School had such clean compartments like the playdough containers. Everything stays in its place. A bell rings and it's time to read, another bell and it is time to eat, and another bell and time to play. When I had my first baby, I planned on running my life like that, keeping all the playdough in clean little cannisters but by the time I had my third son in four years everything was smushed together. My days be a mixture of constant eating, bathing, playing, sleeping, reading and crying with no shape or form and with a croupy baby sometimes that continued late into the night. My life was just like that pinky brown swirly mess.

So when my youngest went to kindergarten I decided I was going to change. I was going to have clean lines and keep all my colors separate. My time was my own and I could control it, right? So I planned on spending an hour scripture reading and calendaring, then do housework until ten, when I would start writing until lunch. At which time I would put in my lean cuisine, and write until two when I would put away my computer and make an afterschool snack, happily greeting my children as they walked in the door. My life was going to be orderly, I would be thin and everything would be perfect. So how have I done?

Well, the first glitch was that my wonderful pre-missionary son comes home for lunch (say good bye to the lean cuisine), then my great husband works from home now and then, which is great but a constant interruption. Then my bishop decided I should be the YW president and I've got wonderfully talkative friends. There are always little needs that I can't seem to leave unfilled and then I got this contract on a book I'm writing with my sister and have been feverishly trying to get it done to meet our deadline, writing late into the night, or in the car during basketball practice. Ahhh. My life is still one swirly mess of pinkish brown goo.

Maybe it is practice for the eternities. Maybe life is supposed to be full of noise, fun, hope, work, mess, love and craziness- or maybe I need to plan better, live with a timer and force myself to keep my colors clean. I just bought some more lean cuisines- we'll see.

For You It's So Easy- NOT!

Last night I attended the Worldwide Leadership Training. I had heard it was on raising a righteous posterity and went prepared to feel guilty. Halfway through the event, I found myself crying not with guilt but with relief. I was agreeing with so much of what was said that I left feeling like it was doable and that I was actually on the right track.

Many of Sister Beck's comments were touching and I loved how Sister Tanner reminded everyone that the ideal is one thing but reality often looks very different. But the comment that won the day was when Sister Lant told us about how hard she had worked to get all her little children ready and to church on time. She would start Saturday afternoon and it was exhausting. One day after arriving at church with her brood, a sister walked up to her, put her hand on Sis. Lant's shoulder and said, "Oh, if my children were as good as yours, I'd have a big family too. For you it is so easy." Sister Lant admitted she cried during the entire meeting. It hurt!

Right after I had my first baby and started staying at home for the first time, my visiting teacher was the Stake President's wife. When she found out that I had decided to be a full-time mom, she looked at me and laughed, "Well, it is nice that you can do that, my brain is just too quick to handle being home all the time." I was young and swallowed it, feeling like an idiot and a failure for days.

Why do we do that? The truth is both sides behaved less than their best.

Often comments like those above are done in admiration or ignorance. Sometimes they are subconscious reflections of an individual's struggle with that principle and are said to alleviate personal guilt. In those cases I hope women realize the impact of their words and love and support these great mothers who sacrifice so much to raise a family because it is disgustingly hard. Other times they really are meant to hurt. So what if they are? As I look back on it, my biggest disappointment is in my own reaction.

Most of the world thinks I'm insane for having seven children. I remember walking into a grocery story with my first four children all under the age of six and having a woman sneer at my posse and say, "Don't you know what causes that?" I smiled back and said, "Of course I do, isn't it great!"

When I had my fourth child, a little indian woman who believed the world was already over populated delivered my beautiful first daughter. While I was on the delivery table she asked me if I was ready for a tubal, since I was already numb. I looked at her in shock and told her absolutely not. She shook her head and commented, "Then you'll be here next year in the same position." I smiled at my perfect new baby and replied, "I certainly hope so."

When people in the world make such comments, I am delighted because it allows me to express truth. I believe that if they bring it up, the topic is free game and I can openly express my side of the issue, which I do- in detail. But when women in the church do the same thing, especially someone I admire, it hurts- but it shouldn't. If I really remembered what I knew to be true, I would be sad for them, that they didn't have the vantage point that I do.

At my father's funeral my entire family came to mourn his early passing. I have eleven brothers and sisters with large families. We have never lived very close to my family but that day all the brothers, sisters, spouses, cousins, grandchildren, great-grandchildren sat side by side in the chapel. We filled the entire center section. In the middle of the funeral we stood up and sang our family song, "What does it mean to be an Edwards!" In the very heart of our grief I knew and my children knew the joy of being couched in a loving family. They knew that no matter what there were hundreds of people that were bound to them eternally and would do anything to help make their life better. They felt the joy of the most essential part of our Heavenly Father's plan.

That's why I had every one of my beautiful babies and changed thousands of diapers and spent day after day being more like a chair than a human being as my clingy, croupy third baby was never happy unless he was in my lap and I wasn't doing anything else but rocking him. That's why I get up way too early every morning to drive my teenagers to seminary in my pajamas and stay up way too late helping them with homework at night. That's why I drown in laundry on a regular basisand spend half my life either doing dirty dishes or nagging my children to do them. That's why my thyroid blew out with hormonal shifts during pregnancy, my knees where pulled out of alignment from widened hips and I lost my waist entirely. But the price is worth it, so worth it.

Tonight we all gathered together and watched a stupid movie with arms and legs hanging over each other in comfortable, connecting peace. Earlier today my thirteen year old spoke in church with confidence, expressing his pure testimony and I beamed. And two days ago my second son came home doing a victory dance because his missionary papers are finally in. The price is huge. It is yucky, hard, routine work to raise a big family but it is also fun, glorious, intellectually and physically satisfying, and the most incredible blessing of my life.

So the next time someone says something about how easy it is for me, I'm going to smile confidently and say, "I wish! But the work is worth it because look what I have to show for it."

Writer's Block and not Doing your Homework

Tonight was bedlam. I was watching a nine-year-old girl for a friend and the younger children were running around our feet, screaming in glee and showing off. To top it off I was late starting dinner and forgot I was having dinner guests until they arrived at the door. Somehow I had also asked my teenager to make dinner rolls. Of course, they weren't ready in time and the kitchen sink was piled high with all the dishes she had used for her small little salty mounds of what tasted like hardened playdough. My older sons and my husband were loudly debating the option of writing in Kermit the Frog on their ballots rather than vote for McCain who looks like the GOP candidate with our guests and I was running around frantically, trying to get edible food on the table. It was bedlam.

By the time the guests left and dinner was cleared I noticed my thirteen year old son who had been working on his math homework the entire time slumped over face down in his open book. I sat next to him, looked at the broken pencil and bent dinner fork, and guessed it wasn't going well. "Can I help you?" I offered.

"No! This is so stupid; it is impossible. It won't do what I want it to. I hate it!"

"Well, buddy," I tried to soften his frustration, "maybe if you look at it a different way..."

"There is no other way!" He smashed his face two or three times back into the page, returning to his lifeless stance.

I lifted the book and saw percentages. I explained that the key to percentages is that "of" means its the denominator but he wouldn't believe me. So I went back over his work, most of it incorrect and showed him how to do it. After the third correct answer in the back of the book, he began to see hope that it might work out. He did a problem and got it right and then grabbed the pencil and I became to him. Less than ten minutes later he closed the book with satisfaction, finished with his impossible task and ran upstairs to catch the last of American Idol before family prayer.

What surprised me as I watched him go was how similar his experience had been to my own just the day before. I was working on a chapter about "small sins." I had a scripture I wanted to weave into a C. S. Lewis quote that totally correlated to the topic but everytime I tried to segue it together, it was AWFUL. I couldn't make it work; it just wouldn't twist and squeeze into compliance. The entire day I only produced four pages of ragged, nasty copy and when my husband got home, I felt like I was an idiot to think I could even attempt such a massive project with my addled brain.

My patient husband pulled me away from the computer and we talked about it. My problem was the same as my son's, I wasn't willing to let go of my false idea so I could let a better one enter. Greg made some other suggestions and we talked about themes of the book and the big picture and a whole new and better connection came to mind that lead to the introduction of three more quotes and life was fabulous and you couldn't tear me away from flopping out the ten fabulous pages I produced today.

Now as I look back on it, I wonder how many times I wasn't willing to let go of what I had to take in something better. How many times have I felt too busy to attend a meeting or said no to a friend who had invited me to lunch or didn't ever make a phone call I thought about but let life get in the way? I remember after I lost my baby and my father passed away just four days later I sort of shut down. One day a woman my husband worked with came over to take me to dinner. I told her I didn't want to go out but she would not let me politely say no. When we got in the car, I began by talking about my loss but she wouldn't let me. She said that it would be there when we got back but for an hour I was going to go on vacation from all that pain and have fun, and I did. When I got back, it was amazing because suddenly I wasn't still marinated in it. I realized I could be free of some of the extreme emotion that was drowning me. I hadn't realized I had that ability but once I did, it was easier.

Part of being a writer is seeing connections others don't see. They say there are no new plots, only new perspectives on the old ones. But if we don't let go every once in a while and open our minds and hearts, we can spend our whole lives trapped in the same old, same old.

Thank goodness for mothers that can do math, husbands who can put up with their crazy wives and close friends who pull us out of our comfort zones against our wills.

Reading People

Tonight was date night for my husband and I. Usually we go to a fast food joint and hit a movie, but tonight was different. I gently persuaded my husband to take me to POWELL's which claims to be the largest bookstore in the world. For a man who dislikes reading email, this was a real stretch and proof of his undying love for me because he hated every minute of it.

On the other hand, I was in heaven! I loved peeking at books I had only heard about. C. S. Lewis talked about George MacDonald's Princess series which I looked at and was surprise he liked them so much. I found an incredible commentary on Shakespeare that is simply brilliant and I got to see a large author's signing, dreaming that someday I would be in the chair of honor with a line around the room waiting for my signature and a few choice words of advice. We left with my head still in the clouds and as we buckled up, my husband Greg let out a shudder and said, "I have never seen so many weird people in my life."

I looked at him oddly, ready to refute what he said and then paused. My mind had been so enthralled in the books that I hadn't really focused on the people in the crowded downtown bookstore late on a Friday night. Recalling them, it suddenly all became clear to me. (Now this is in no way an exhaustive study so if I offend you, take it in stride. It was also late on a Friday night which precluded teens and young mothers) but what I noticed was there were three types of people that were there- no four.

1- The most noticeable group was the Fantasy/SciFi , edging to occult crowd and they were prolific. Although some are just typical teens and Young Adults, many have multiple piercings and tattooes, and color their hair either black or some non-human shade. As a group they are surprisingly amiable and intellegent. I think they are just trying to make the world a little more like the books they read and have a screaming desire not to get lost in the crowd. I like them a lot but I can see why my husband feels out of his element- and I guess that's a good thing.

2- There was also the hoity-toity intellectual types. They usually wear cashmere scarves or shiny leather gloves and are impeccably groomed. At this store I noticed quite a few but they may have come for the booksigning which was in the art section. It was a very high-brow affair from the snippets of conversation I caught about his career in Chicago and his fascinating insights...blah...blah. The only problem with these people is I have an uncontrolable desire to mess up their hair. One day I'm going to blow.

3- There was also a large number of dishevelled, slightly overweight, quick thinking nobodies. These are the voracious readers who live with a true reading addiction that must be fed. Living in their minds is so vivid, it beats any type of reality. I ran into three literally. They are the people who are so focused on what they are doing that they don't notice you until you bump into them and even then, they might not respond. Perhaps all true readers are this way to some degree.

4- Last but not least there were the tag-a-longs. Poor men and women dragged into the store against their will who try their hardest to look interested in something that couldn't care less about. They were peppered throughout the store in sorry numbers either munching at the coffee bar or sitting in the SciFi section reading books on Zombies.

Either way, it was a wonderful night and I came home with a stack of books nearly as tall as I am. It was great until I starting thinking- which type of person am I? There is a definite part of me that is the rebel that doesn't want to get lost in the crowd. I don't have tatoos or piercings but sometimes I'll do or say outlandish things for the shock value.

There is another part of me that I fight against that is the elitest. Sometimes I feel that I am the only defender of the truth and the rest of the world are idiots. I'll sit listening to a conversation with my arms folded, amazed that anyone could even think in such low-flying circles and never see the glory of what was really meant by a piece of literature, a scripture or political commentary. I spent most of BYU in my elitest mode which was a bad thing.

Lastly, the reading nerd- yup, I suppose I'm guilty of that one too. When I get into a good book, the house could be on fire and I would be totally oblivious. I do try to descend to reality on a regular basis but I recently found out that writing is worse than reading for taking us away to a place that only exists in our minds. It's wonderful but a little odd.

I looked at my normal husband and was suddenly grateful for the anchor that he was. Wow, do you think being triple wierd is like a double negative and they cancel each other out? I sure hope so.

Be True to the Star Within You

Today was a red letter day for me as far as writing was concerned. I finished a chapter that has had me stumped for two weeks and when I typed the last words I felt estatic because it was really, really good! What was so interesting about the writing process is that it went in an entirely different direction than I had originally planned.

At first I wanted the chapter to follow the same bullets as Sister Beck's talk but I couldn't force my muse into the unnatural pretzel shape I would have had to in order to package it that cute-ly (probably not a word but you know what I mean.) Then I was going to string together unrelated topics with a thin thread of logic that was making me hate myself as a writer- a very bad thing.

Finally I let my writing lead me. This meant long delays as I searched for new information, rather than manipulating my copy into the information I had already gathered but as I let my mind follow its natural path, I found new corners I hadn't considered and ended up full circle- even using a quote I had found two years before and simply adored but thought I'd never be able to use again. It was exhilarating.

I consider myself a VERY immature writer with a lot to learn. Perhaps that is because I am a VERY immature person with a lot to learn, but this is something I hope I have learned sufficiently to never forget. When a writer writes, he or she must be true to his own voice. When we try to cut corners or package ideas, we cheat ourselves and the reader. I'm not saying we don't need to edit or adjust our tone to meet our audience but in so doing we must still be true to our inner voice.

A few days ago I received an awesome Christmas CD from my cousin Peter Asplund. His entire young family sings and raps and he does this cool remix thing- it is a joy to listen to. Anyway, in his accompanied letter he mentioned his young daughter is very talented in many ways and has perfect pitch. Apparently they have been encouraging her to sing so she left the following note on her parents' door-- I've lost the original so please accept my paraphrasing until I find it amid the ocean of papers on my desk- but it went something like this: "I know you and Dad are encouraging me to sing. Music is not my inner star, art is. So please stop it. I must follow my inner star."

It is so refreshing to hear of a child so assured of her "inner star" and it is a little embarassing that it took me so long to remember to find mine and follow it.

Idealism vs. Pragmatism in the Publishing World

Years ago I heard a story about Abraham Lincoln that has stuck with me. During his early political career as a statesman, Lincoln became frustrated with the unwise decisions of a collegue who had recently been voted as state treasurer. Specifically, the man, a Mr. Shields, I think, made a rule that state taxes would only be accepted in gold or silver and not the paper money issued by the state. The irony of the situation made for easy attack and Lincoln wrote some scathing letters to the local newspaper under a psuedonym. Others added their feelings also incognito and the whole thing snowballed into a vicious attack of the man's character. Sheilds was so offended he demanded of the editor who started it and Abraham Lincoln's name was divulged. The man challenged Lincoln to a duel which was cancelled at the last minute but since that time, Lincoln vowed he would be more careful with his words, realizing their power.

The unsubstantiated part of the story (and if anyone finds out if its really true, I'd appreciate a resource) is that when Lincoln had sensitive things to say he would often write one letter with his true feelings in plain English and keep that copy for himself and then write another gentle, well-crafted letter to send out to the world.

As idealistic, unpaid writers we often live in a world of passion, fantasy or twisted fiction far from the realms of paid technical writers. As we create our prose, we sometimes grow a sweet attachment to the cleverness of our plots but in so doing relegate them to be forever archived or to sit unnoticed on Snippets or some other sites where no one really reads them.

This was me. Then one of my sisters (I have seven) read my manuscript and made a suggestion to make it more marketable i.e. take out the entire plot and make the subplot the book. At first I was offended, how could I destroy my masterpiece? A few months later after thirteen rejections I bent and it sold! What a surprise. I felt excited but shaken at the same time.

A few weeks later one of my past missionary companions from Scotland who I haven't seen in twenty years somehow found the original version on Snippets and loved it. She encouraged me to keep it and I thought of Abraham Lincoln.

Recently I've been doing a lot of research on C. S. Lewis and I found out that he hated writing nonfiction. "Mere Christianity", "The Problem with Pain", "The Great Divorce" were more obligations. While writing the "Screwtape Letters" he confessed that he hated what it did to his soul and would not write a sequel. Even "The Chronicles of Narnia" weren't his favorite work. No, he liked fiction...and perhaps most ironic of all the man who had difficulty with simple math and disliked science as a rule, loved to write science fiction. "Paralandrea" was one of his personal favorites, which very few C. S. Lewis fans have ever read. "Til We have Faces" which was his biggest flop, was the book he claimed to be his very best. There is even some question whether these books would have been published at all if C. S. Lewis hadn't pragmatically bent from his first love of poetry (like Elder Maxwell he wanted to be a poet) and write that which the public was reading.

As writer's we often are driven to write what is in our hearts but sometimes the result is not very marketable. On the other hand, if we stifle that creative muse within us, we can lose the power of our unique voice- the very thing that makes our writing meaningful. Perhaps, Lincoln didn't have a bad idea. Go and write your heart's desire. Do you BIAM. Then turn around and look what is selling. Can you take a current work and shift it into something marketable? If not, can you find a project that fills a hole or enter a contest or write a magazine article. Anything to strenghten your portfolio.

Hopefully, if you balance your writing efforts between the idealistic and the pragmatic you can create a big enough name to release your real dreams on the world like C. S. Lewis did. Even though many didn't read his favorite books, I did and both stories lifted me and opened my eyes. I love "Til We Have Faces" best and if you have self-esteem issues (feel fat or ugly) you've got to read it. It starts out slow but the last chapter is life changing!

I believe, maybe idealistically, that most writers long to be read. That is why we write, it is part of the drive and I hope that those who are willing to pay the price will do what it takes to become part of the "conversation of humanity"- even when the price is bending not morally but perhaps artistically. It isn't unethical to do so, only pragmatic.

A New Year's Curse

I have a friend from Chile who has spent the last week feverishly cleaning her house. In her country there is a tradition that however your house looks on New Year's Day is the way it will look like most of that coming year. Well, we had a wild day yesterday. My husband was working and I was trying to update my website but it wasn't going well. Meanwhile, the kids were running to the park, playing with friends and watching TV. I totally lost track of the time and when my husband walked in the door, I suddenly looked up and realized we were already late for a party. We got the kids cleaned up and ran out the door, leaving a tornado behind us. So I guess I'm cursed to spend the next year up to my armpits in piles of old school papers, dirty socks and sneakers, and cast off jackets and scarves.

Luckily, I don't believe in curses. I'm actually looking forward to wonderful things happening in the next year. My second son who will be leaving on a mission (the first is still out.) Another son will hopefully finish his Eagle and go off to college. The other kids are doing well in school. I'm going to have my first book published and my second book has already been accepted (if I ever get the rough draft done.) Lastly, I am surrounded by wonderful people in a new area of the country and hope to continue to meet new people both professionally and socially.

It looks to be a great year. Now if I can just get a a corner of my desk cleared off... oh, well. Maybe I do believe in curses.