The Red Brick Store

It used to be that my favorite thing about writing was getting published. It excited me to no end to think that thousands of people would be reading what I had written. As time has gone on, however, I’ve discovered a new pleasure: I’m becoming an editing addict. Not as in editing other people’s stuff, but as in being edited myself.

I used to consider being edited a necessary evil, especially when it came to my creative work.  It seemed to me that I would labor to create something beautiful, only to hand it on to people with meat cleavers for brains. They would often overstep their bounds by rearranging paragraphs, revealing what they thought were holes, even suggesting entirely different beginnings or endings. They would hand me back what looked like Frankenstein’s monster. More »

July 1st, 2009 | Category: Sunstone | Comments (5)

A few weeks ago my summer fiction issue of The New Yorker came in the mail, and among all the (ahem) “New Yorker Style Stories,” I found Louis Menard’s essay “Show or Tell,” an extended rumination on American creative writing programs and a review of Marc McGurl’s new book, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing.

My first response to the article was “Can Creative Writing Be Taught” exhaustion. As a person with an MFA who also teaches creative writing, not only does the whole argument make me a little weary—this again??—but I’ll admit to a bit of defensiveness, too. The legitimacy of my undergrad major in English Lit was never called into question, and my decision to try and teach a bunch of squirmy, distracted, hormonal fifteen-year-olds how to read, understand, and talk intelligently about the symbolism in The Lord of the Files was deemed an appropriate enough use of my time.

Little did I know that choosing an academic system that purports to teach folks about reading (or literary devices, or rhetoric, or expository writing) was an entirely laudable choice, if low-paying. But choosing an academic system that purports to teach others about creative writing? Waste of time! Ridiculous! A fool’s errand! Or (worst of all) downright dangerous! Didn’t I know that I was contributing to the very downfall of American letters, homogenizing the voice of the masses? More »

June 22nd, 2009 | Category: Irreantum, Uncategorized | Comments (29)

Musings by Lisa Torcasso Downing

Back in February, I vowed to take three or four weeks off from all literary pursuits in order to get my house in order. I’m proud to report that I have finally completed the job. I know, I know. Its June, and June is four months after February. I wasn’t lazy and slow moving: I was naive. I had no idea how much back-breaking labor it would take to clean every square inch of my nearly 4,000 square foot home, particularly since every time I scrubbed a surface, someone scuffed it.

I’d like to prove to you that my house is as clean as I say, and so I invite you to enjoy a voyeuristic visit to my house at open2view.com. Simply click on the state of Texas and, in the “search for property by ID#” box type in 2274.  You guessed it. Now that my never-before-clean immaculately kept home in Heath, Texas is clean, we are selling it.

Let me rephrase: Now that I know what it takes to truly–and I mean truly–keep this house clean, I can’t wait to dump it. [All reasonable offers will be considered.] More »

June 17th, 2009 | Tags: Hard Work, Musings | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (4)

In a recent post, Dallas Robbins (a section editor for Sunstone) talks about Camille Paglia’s contention that religion could be the epicenter of a new renaissance in American literature. This got me thinking about what Mormon writers might be particularly qualified to contribute, and I came up with the following.

The day before my sister married, my father sat the family down and told us about how the next day would be the most important in her life. For some reason, this idea rubbed me wrong, but I didn’t know why at the time. More »

June 16th, 2009 | Category: Sunstone | Comments (35)

A:  Because the ward choir is so bad.

More »

June 15th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (29)

The newest issue of Irreantum–editor Scott Hatch’s final issue–is now at the printer. If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to Irreantum today and don’t miss the following great content:

Fiction

Angela Hallstrom: Faithful
Cara Diaconoff: I’ll Be a Stranger to You
Heidi Tighe: The Memo Box
Russ Beck: Two Things
Shawn P. Bailey: Outside

Criticism

B. W. Jorgensen: Reading about Sex in Mormon Fiction–If We Can Read

Poetry

Nicole Vogl: The Earth Has Stretch Marks
Donnell Hunter: The Story of Wolf; Children of Owl
Joyce Jordan: Blunt Force Trauma
Cassie Eddington: Grandma Was Never a Big Woman
Todd Chapman: Intercession for Fernandito; The Ten-Tone Fountain
Vanessa Arden Nuckolls: I’ll Tell You What the Butterfly Represents
B. W. Jorgensen: Beginning to Bodysurf

Creative Nonfiction

Joshua Foster: Long in the Tooth
Oliver Welch: The Mesa

June 11th, 2009 | Category: Irreantum | Comments (3)

The Touchstones theme for the next issue of Sunstone is Staying/Leaving.

Touchstones are short personal essays (usually not exceeding 500 words) that resemble stories much more than they do sermons.

Click here for some samples.
Deadline for this theme is June 20. Send submissions to Touchstones editor, Cheryl Bruno: clbruno [at] hotmail [dot] com.

June 3rd, 2009 | Tags: touchstones | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Sometimes when I tell people what I do, they give me a funny look. “We already have the Ensign and the New Era,” they say, “why do we need an independent Mormon magazine?”

The easiest way to understand the function of independent Mormon publications is to consider the state of Mormon fiction.

The Church probably made an editorially sound decision when it pulled fiction completely out of its magazines. Church magazines are meant to preach right living in as straightforward a manner as possible; thus, they have little room for irony, metaphor, conflict, or many of the other tools fiction writers use.

However, the Church’s decision also reduced the number of places where Mormon fiction writers could publish, which is a shame because every up-and-coming fiction writer needs to get some practice, interact with good editors, and garner some publishing credits.

Since the Church is no longer supporting fiction, someone has to step in and give these writers a place to publish their work. Right now, national magazines and journals aren’t very interested in Mormon fiction, probably because so few Mormon writers have had the opportunity to learn to write about the unique challenges of Mormon life with nuance and creativity.

That’s where independent Mormon magazines come in. More »

June 2nd, 2009 | Tags: fiction, independent, Milton, Shakespeare | Category: Sunstone | Comments (3)

by Features Editor Shelah Miner

We’re delighted to announce that Segullah’s summer issue will arrive in mailboxes across the country this week. The topic, “Gifts of the Spirit,” was inspired by our ongoing quest to find and develop the spiritual gifts which we’ve been given. In her editorial, Allyson Smith says, “I have met many people who come by patience (or faith, or discernment, or trust) with remarkable ease. To some is given one gift, to some another. going back through the list of spiritual gifts laid out in Moroni 10, I am well aware that I did not come installed with most when I was born. But the lack of them hasn’t let me off any hooks. I may be low on original patience, but that doesn’t mean I’m not under injunction to develop some. And so it goes for us all. We start where we are, with what we have.”

The issue includes personal essays by Heather Oman, Michelle Lehnardt and Tarasine Buck, where the authors find themselves in possession of spiritual gifts they didn’t know they had until they were put to the test. I’m particularly excited about our features: an article by Barbara Bishop, who views dreams as gifts of the spirit, and an interview with Marilyn Brown, who sees her role in developing Mormon writers as her own spiritual calling. The issue features amazing art by Leslie Graff. If you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now, so you can read more great stuff like this poem by Darlene Young, which reminds us how spiritual gifts are sometimes given to the people we’d least expect to receive them, and spiritual experiences often catch us unawares:

“Shepherds”

by Darlene Young

Don’t tell me about rose-cheeked Arcadian youth
gathering daisies on a hillside
piping tunes to their cloud-fluffy sheep
under the stars.

No, these were foul-smelling, lusty
men with dirty necks, greasy hands,
snorting, arguing, joke-telling, nose-picking
men—one wearing stolen
sandals (although I admit he felt
guilty about it)—gambling on who
had the best aim as they chucked rocks
at a nearby lizard.

You talk about salt of the earth—
these men were salty, alright
downright ornery, some of them,
fighting sometimes and yelling
at their wives when they were home,
which wasn’t often.

Yeah, I’ll grant you Dan
was an innocent
and Dave had some noble moments
and none of them was really evil
but they all had dirty fingernails
of one kind or another
when the light came—

yes, it came.
But don’t take away that moment just before—
flies whining over the sheep dung
and Jake and Zeke having a
spitting contest—
that’s the key moment, you see,
in all their grimy glory;
it has to be

because the light came to me too,
Alleluia.

June 1st, 2009 | Tags: darlene young, Segullah, summer 2009 | Category: Segullah | Comments (2)