NaNoWriMo commences!

Okay. I will be, for the first time in seven years, participating in National Novel Writing Month. The last time I tried it, in 2007, I stopped after the second day of writing, not because I gave up or didn't have much story to go with, but because of some severe heartbreak that was impossible to disassociate from the story I had planned.

And pretty much every year after, I've been engaged in full projects and haven't really needed the outside motivation to write and complete a work.

Anyway, now I'm back on the NaNoWriMo scene. But for probably a slightly different project than most people.

Yesterday I finished the last scene of my novel No Romance. Earlier this year, in April-ish, I began the process of rewriting that book. I originally wrote it during the summer of 2012 and then put it through a developmental editing service at Leading Edge, BYU's spec-fic magazine. That dev edit was exactly what I needed: a lot of hard truths. Some of the original story worked, but not all of it, and definitely not the way I intended. So I put it aside for a long time, intending to come back to it and implement the changes suggested by the dev edit. Over the last couple of years, I've been re-imagining it, and the vision I had for it blew even me away. (By the way, I don't mean any self-praise for that---great visions for stories are easily come by; making them real is the hard part.) So, as I said, earlier this year I began to rewrite it.

I started at the beginning of what was formerly Act Two. I knew that (what was formerly known as) Act One would stay roughly the same, because much of it worked, so I left that alone and proceeded to work on the new Act Two and everything after that. Then I took a break for a few months to work on a couple of side projects and focus deeply on my collection of talks, To the Saints: A Rousing Cry. I am so grateful I took the time to revise that book because it is now being published by Cedar Fort---my first published book, and not self-published. I'm proud of that.

When I finished that book, around the end of August, I knew it was time to go back to No Romance and finish what I started. And so over September and October, I did that. I finished (what was formerly known as) Act Three, getting to last line at about 3:30 AM early Halloween morning. (That has turned out to be a tradition in my life; exactly a year previous, I finished the rewrite of Sea of Chaos after working all night from the 30th to the 31st.)

According to just about everyone I know who's read my stuff and is currently reading the new No Romance---and that includes me---my writing has improved a LOT over just these past two years, and this new version is leagues beyond the old one, not just in writing but in ideas and philosophical clarity. So now, with that improved ability, it has come time to rewrite Act One.

And that is my project for this year's NaNoWriMo.

It probably won't be the required length usually associated with NaNoWriMo (50,000 words), partly because I plan on chopping about a third from the original version, but I do consider it a month-long effort nonetheless, and I do intend on joining the community of participating novelists, both online and in our local public library which I'll be visiting close to daily.

And so, hopefully by the end of November, I'll have, along with my fellow writers, a complete novel, though perhaps one closer to its final form.

A new life for this rambling blog.

Sitting down to write something, including and especially this blog, injects some anxiety into my nerves. I won't bother explaining why in too much detail. Just a lot of pressure, it feels like. I get the same anxiety when I think about writing in my journal.

To use the heart-wrenching words of Gob Bluth, I feel "so much pressure to be bright." Or to get things down in sufficient detail. To not forget anything that might be important. And the odd sensation of opening the floodgates---I tend to overwrite, to try and get everything out there, even if it might not be important to the reader or even get in the way of the point. I desperately need to learn the skill of distilling. Sadly, my brain hasn't yet fully graduated from the old days, when I used to be self-conscious about my word count, needing it to be as high as possible to fend off the feeling that I'm not writing enough. And these days, I have a lot of thoughts, and I could go on for awhile about them, so it's like having to channel the water from those floodgates into the tight passage of a kitchen faucet. A lot of stress trying to contain my rambling brain.

And see my skills of concision there, just now. Writing words that just don't need to be there. Good job on your first ever post as an officially soon-to-be published author, Neal.

Now, the point: This blog is coming back. It's going to be updated regularly. At least, as regularly as I get new updates about the publication process on Cedar Fort's side and marketing updates on my end. And we'll see what I feel like writing about in the absence of those.

My book "To the Saints: A Rousing Cry" is being published by Cedar Fort. It is LDS nonfiction, a collection of talks turned into very direct essays using stories from popular culture, such as Batman and Star Wars, to encapsulate certain theological principles as a means of rousing our generation from its sometime spiritual stupor.

Those are the facts. For now.

Talk #1

Talk #1 - The God Arc

You’ve all heard of Luke Skywalker. In the story of Star Wars, Luke starts out a as a moisture farmer on the barren planet of Tatooine, but ends up becoming a key player in the rebellion against the evil empire, and eventually a classic, quintessential hero. The adventures and battles he faces on the way to this hero-dom is called the Hero’s Cycle, a literary and mythological concept first formed by Joseph Campbell, author of a book called “Hero With a Thousand Faces.” In the book Campbell details the various trials and stages a would-be hero has to go through to obtain that status. This cycle was based on myths and stories and legends of old, in which every hero, he found, to one degree or another, goes through similar experiences. George Lucas, the writer and creator of Star Wars, followed this cycle perfectly with his protagonist Luke Skywalker. And the timeless nature of that story is one of the primary reasons the Star Wars movies (and I’m speaking of the original trilogy here) are so universally loved.

So that was the Hero’s Cycle, or Hero’s Arc. There’s another arc I’d like to talk about, however. I like to call it the God Arc. It is about Man’s potential to become like Heavenly Father. Just as Luke progressed through various stages of character development in his unconscious quest to become a hero, so must we advance through different stages of existence, even different states of being, in our conscious quest to join our Heavenly Father in all His glory and domain.

Paul in the Book of Acts called us “the offspring of God.” In Romans chapter 8 he writes, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” Christ in the Book of Mormon says “Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.”

It started with a plan. We call it today the Plan of Salvation. The Plan of Happiness. A plan to take us from blurry-eyed intelligences all the way to exaltation and eternal life in the presence of the Father. This plan was presented to us before we were born into this world, when we were mere unembodied spirits. In that state of being we lived with Heavenly Father as His literal spirit children. He had a spirit as we do, and as it is an essential part of us, so is it an essential part of Him. That was our first stage of development, to be spiritually born to heavenly parents. This is where our potential to become like Heavenly Father began.

In that pre-earth life, our first given estate, we made certain choices that allowed us to be sent to this earth and be given bodies. Once just a spirit we then became a full soul, which is both the body and spirit together. This was our next stage of development, our next state of being. This is also an essential part of godhood, for we know from Joseph Smith’s First Vision and other modern-day revelation that God Himself is tangible and has a body of flesh and bone. We were created directly in His own likeness. To use the exact wording, in His image, and in the image of His Only Begotten. In other words, we look generally like what He looks like. Fully-grown, adult human beings.

But we don’t share attributes in physicality alone. We also share similar traits of character. We feel emotions and passions as God does. Love is the most prominent. And sadness, too, for God feels sadness just as we do. It has been said that mourning is the deepest expression of love. We feel sad because we love. If He wasn’t ever sad, He wouldn’t truly love us, for we all make mistakes and turn away from Him and His way at some point in our lives. Sadness is a godly attribute. One emotional trait that we don’t share, however, is fear. We have heard that fear is the opposite of faith. When we are told not to fear by the Lord it is not a suggestion or word of comfort. It is a commandment. We are commanded by the Lord to “doubt not; fear not.”

We hear constantly about other godly attributes that we can apply to our everyday lives. And the reason we hear them constantly is because we really need to practice them. To actually make an effort to foster those traits in ourselves and in how we act and in how we think. Traits like faith, hope, charity, virtue, knowledge, humility, diligence, obedience, and, my personal favorite, patience. We are given opportunities to practice patience all the time. With both other people and inanimate objects. Take, for instance, a stoplight. You’re in a hurry to get somewhere and waiting for the light to change. It’s not turning green and your blood pressure is rising. Stress is increasing. You become irritable and more liable to curse at that filthy, dumb, stupid [bleepity bleep bleep] red light. Why won’t it change? It’s really an inconsiderate stoplight. It has no regard for those in a hurry. Okay, there it goes. Finally. Now you can go. Now you can move forward. But now you’re in a horrible mood and you can see how impatient you were. Whereas if you showed some patience, and accepted that there are some things in life that you cannot change no matter what mood you’re in, you could have felt a lot more peaceful, a lot more calm; you could even be more receptive to the Spirit, and your day would be considerably brighter. Having patience and suffering long is what “enduring to the end” is all about, after all.

It is after we receive of the ordinances of the Gospel, after we show our faith in Christ and repent of our sins, after we live righteously to the ends or mortality and endure to the end — that we can advance to our highest state of being: the state of exaltation. The attainment of a celestial glory, an everlasting happiness, a perfected state, both physically and spiritually. An inheritance of all that the Father hath.

But how is this possible? The whole crux of the Gospel, what every doctrine is founded upon, is, as it says in 1 Nephi 10:21, that “no unclean thing can dwell with God,” or in the presence of God. And as Paul says, we are all imperfect, we have all fallen short of the mark. And here we see the primary problem of our life on earth, and then the glorious solution that the Plan of Salvation has provided us. Yes, it’s true that none of us can reach the next state of being on our own. But God has not left us alone. He has provided a Savior to rescue us from those imperfections. That Savior is Jesus Christ. It is by His power and His sacrifice and His Atonement that we are able to move past this problem. And not just His acts alone, but also by His love.

Because the Gospel is really all about love. Notice how it is such a small and simple thing that is required of us. All we have to do is love God and keep His commandments. That’s all. It’s not much. And we don’t even have to be perfect in that endeavor. We just have to try. We are asked to do relatively little in comparison to what’s at the end of all this. None of us really deserve the happiness that is promised us. A finite, mortal sacrifice for a pay-off that is eternal. It’s too much. We haven’t earned it. And God knows it. He knows we don’t really deserve it. But He’s given us this way, this salvation anyway. That is how much love He has for us. A love that it will take us a very long time to truly understand, if we ever do.

We must take absolute and total advantage of this gift He’s given us. This gift of salvation, this gift of love. This potential for perfection, for eternal increase. Because it should be pointed out that this is potential. Potential does not entail success or accomplishment. It does not mean that it will, in fact, happen. Take, for instance, another stoplight allegory. A car is again sitting at a stoplight. It has the potential to drive sixty miles an hour, but it’s just sitting there idly, waiting for its turn to cross the intersection. And if you never press on the gas pedal, it will never go. You have to exert some kind of effort for it to reach that mile-a-minute possibility. Without any input, you too would be sitting there idly. Something Heavenly Father never wants us to do. But He can’t force us into this. And fulfilling the potential God has in mind for us is definitely not as easy as putting your foot on the gas pedal.

Such a blessing as eternal life is, of course, conditional. We have to do our part. We have to live the way He wants us to live. Keep His commandments. Work hard every day. Love Him and love our fellow man. Become like His Son Jesus Christ in persona, and then one day be like Him in totality. He wants this more than anything. He is our Father, and He loves us more than anything else He has created in ocean, earth, or sky. As it says in Moses 1:39, this is His work and His glory — “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

He is a god. We are His children. Alma 32:31 says that “Every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.” Now, seeds don’t look anything like the trees that produced them. If you didn’t know any better they would be totally separate things in your mind. Likewise, an embryo doesn’t look very much like a human being. In fact it doesn’t look anything like it. But nonetheless, that is how we all started out. That was our physical beginning. Taking it a few steps further, a baby doesn’t look very much like a human being either. But we don’t call a baby any less of a human just because it has not reached that stage of adulthood and maturity. It is a human — just not developed yet, not fully mature. But when it finally does, it has the same basic form and bodily functions as its parents. Kittens grow up to be cats. Puppies turn to dogs. So what do children of a god turn into?

Author and Christian apologist CS Lewis somehow knew of this very doctrine, and said concerning the matter, "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”

Exaltation. Supreme happiness. Supreme love. Sealed to your family, to your spouse, to your parents, to your children, from all eternity to all eternity. Given the power to create worlds. To know all things. To do all things. To have all things. All that the Father hath. It is our right and privilege to inherit the kingdom of God if we live righteously to the ends of mortality. By the Atonement and power and priesthood of God, we may achieve this state of being. And we will be in the presence of the Father forever.

General authority Vaughn J. Featherstone related the following story:

“Many years ago I heard the story of the son of King Louis XVI of France. King Louis had been taken from his throne and imprisoned. His young son, the prince, was taken by those who dethroned the king. They thought that inasmuch as the king’s son was heir to the throne, if they could destroy him morally, he would never realize the great and grand destiny that life had bestowed upon him. They took him to a community far away, and there they exposed the lad to every filthy and vile thing that life could offer. For over six months he had this treatment—but not once did the young lad buckle under pressure. Finally, after intensive temptation, they questioned him. Why had he not submitted himself to these things—why had he not partaken? These things would provide pleasure, satisfy his lusts, and were desirable; they were all his. The boy said, ‘I cannot do what you ask, for I was born to be a king’. ”

Brothers and sisters, that is what we were born to be: kings. Queens. Rulers and Creators. For we are children of the most high, and heirs to a heavenly throne. Remember this fact in your daily lives. Remember it when you say the things you say and do the things you do. Remember it as you press forward and endure to the end.