4 to 7 p.m.
Here's my backstory as a writer. Read it and make a comment before June 20, and you'll be entered in a drawing for a copy of the book...
I
spent 33 years living in a place I didn’t love, and all I got for it was a book
publishing contract.
Lemme
‘splain.
In
1976, after two frustrating years in a rural Arizona town, two years in Iran,
and two years on Guam, we were looking for a place to settle down. I preferred
an urban setting; my husband just wanted a secure job. We both wanted to be
reasonably close to one set of grandparents or the other so our children could
get acquainted with them. We got an offer from a junior high (which later
became a middle school) about two hours away from my husband’s parents in
Provo, Utah. After visiting the town and struggling to find a suitable place to
live, we landed temporarily in a single-wide mobile home smaller than the one we’d lived
in before, vowing that we’d build a bigger house as soon as possible.
I
remember that after we fasted and prayed about moving there, I got off my knees
and said to my husband, “I wish we didn’t have to go there.” We set up
housekeeping, put our older daughter in a preschool, made friends in the ward,
struggled to learn how the town functioned socially (hint: teachers are targets), and dealt with the main drawback of
being those peculiar outsiders who didn’t care about hunting and fishing. For
the first three months we lived there, I often cried myself to sleep. One
bright spot, however, was that a woman in the ward invited me to attend a
meeting of a writers group she belonged to, associated with a statewide
organization, the League of Utah Writers. I met some lovely people there who
became lasting friends, attended whenever my demanding family life would
allow, and began some serious writing projects of my own.
When
we found a small piece of property on the other end of town and started
planning for a home, I anticipated putting down roots, both literally and
figuratively. I intended to become a country gentlewoman—perfect my knowledge
of gardening, plant fruit trees, make jam, have a root cellar, create bouquets
from flowers in my own yard, and learn all the old-fashioned country homemaking
skills, which are very different from city homemaking skills. In the city you
follow the case lot sales; in the country you pay attention to the length of
the growing season. You learn when to plant, how to water a garden, and where
to get quantities of produce to preserve in bottles and freezer.
We
moved into our house in February, 1977, and subscribed to seed catalogs. That
spring I planted tomato seeds indoors. We put them on an old metal rack in the
sunny kitchen window, a sliding glass door, and cheered when sprouts came
out of the soil. And then I sneezed. And sneezed. And sneezed. I’d never had
allergies before. We decided that next year we’d get tomato plants at the local
nursery. Still, whenever I worked outdoors, I continued to sneeze.
After
a couple of years of this, I realized that gardening wasn’t going to be my lifetime
pursuit. Then I learned that some friends
in the ward were part of a local community theater, and I was thrilled. Drama has
been one of the serious loves of my life—like raspberries and hazelnuts—and to
find an outlet for that in this rural place was a tender mercy indeed.
Fast
forward a few years. Being involved in the ward, I made friends and found a few
things in common with others. My life choices—serving a mission, graduating
from college, being a writer—had painted me into an obscure corner in a
community where all non-natives were suspicious anyway. In fact, when we were looking
for a place to live in 1976, we’d follow up on ads in the newspaper, finding
that doors we knocked on were opened only slightly, and potential landlords
asked why we were moving to town, who we were related to, and if we had temple
recommends. One clueless person cheerfully suggested that as a stopgap measure until something opened up, we could pitch a tent in the KOA campground. Nevertheless, over the years, I met a
few very dear people whose genuine friendship fed my spirit.
Directing plays for community
theater brought some satisfaction, but it wasn’t enough. Even without the acceptance I craved, I couldn’t stay home and watch soap operas all the time. I got a job with the school
district writing school news stories for the local weekly paper. I became involved
with arts organizations, started some that didn’t last long due to lack of support, and launched
an annual art show that’s still going. I became the PR person for various other
community groups that needed my writing skills. I taught creative writing for college outreach programs offering classes locally. Eventually, my three plays based on Book of Mormon stories were produced by the stake with great success. I later became the writing tutor in my husband’s school where
I taught one-on-one to coach children in good writing and thinking skills. In
my home, I mentored a few brilliant high school students who were gifted
writers. Knowing that the world was bigger than the city limits of our tiny town, our three children left home. Later, I found satisfaction serving in the Manti Temple for
three years.
During all this busyness, however, even though I was deeply involved in the community, I
often felt isolated, lonely, and depressed. Writing had always been my escape, so I kept writing. Entering League of Utah Writers contests, I eventually won some
respectable prizes for my essays, poetry, and novels. When my husband retired
and we moved to Provo, I had a body of work that included hundreds of newspaper
articles, a couple of short stories, about fifty essays, a portfolio of poetry,
four plays, files full of undeveloped ideas for future projects, and six novels
in various stages of completion.
In Provo, it pleased me to find a book club in our ward. I joined the American
Night Writers Association (ANWA—a national organization of LDS women writers),
and attended writing conferences for networking and education. I became
almost compulsive about honing my skills and perfecting my work. A writer who did line-and-content editing evaluated five of my novels and encouraged me to submit them for publication. She knew people who
knew people, and pretty soon, so did I. In the writer’s milieu, I felt
accepted, nourished, and valued.
Another set of what seems like
serendipitous circumstances brings me to today. My first novel has been published and I feel like the poster child for late bloomers. Looking back, I realize
that if I hadn’t been in that circumstance of isolation, loneliness, and
depression, my attention would probably have gone to more mundane pursuits, temporarily satisfying, but still transitory, less creatively fulfilling. Only in looking back
can I see the pattern of doors closing, followed by windows opening. It is as Elder Bednar said in his April 2014 conference
talk:
Each
of us carries a load. Our individual load is comprised of demands and
opportunities, obligations and privileges, afflictions and blessings, and
options and constraints… Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is
the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of
the plan of happiness. Because our individual load needs to generate spiritual
traction, we should be careful to not haul around in our lives so many nice but
unnecessary things that we are distracted and diverted from the things that
truly matter most.
Though I found dear friends there,
I still don’t love that place I lived for 33 years. It is familiar, but I don’t
pine away with nostalgia. That place didn’t necessarily love me, and yet I tried to bloom where I was planted. Hard as it was, I do love the outcome of the
struggle.
