writing - Liz Busby

What I Read: November 2022

Taken after the 5K, as I never smile while running

A lower intensity reading month. I finished wrapping up my dad’s campaign for Salt Lake County Auditor. He didn’t win but did manage to get over 40% of the vote as a third-party candidate which is impressive. I also ran my traditional Thanksgiving 5K, shaving about :20 seconds off my most recent time even though the course was full of hills.

I managed to finally smash my word count goal this month, writing 6240/4000 words. Most of this was on a new short story which has the codename of “Robot Nanny” but I think will probably be called “Memory” or “Memories.” I can’t decide about the plural, but the story turned out great. I’m sending it in to Writers of the Future this quarter.

What does it say about us as parents that this is the pose we automatically went for?

Part of November was spent attending Dragonsteel Con 2022 to celebrate the release of The Lost Metal with my family. Bonus that I got to record a special episode of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree talking about the echoes of Mormonism in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. The recording turned out super well and was released on Thanksgiving. We also released an episode on Howl’s Moving Castle with author William Morris (whose new short story collection is reviewed below). We also have a very fun Christmas special talking about A Christmas Carol, why it’s so popular, and lightning reviewing several adaptations.

I also spent time this month learning to use Descript for podcast editing, and after some wrestling, I got it to work with our Zencastr recordings. I’m hoping to make some quick video tutorials on our process so that others don’t have to struggle as much as I did. I think it’s really going to boost editing efficiency on the podcast, which has been my biggest complaint about the process.

For December, I’m polishing up the “Robot Nanny” story and starting a new creative nonfiction piece whose codename is “Landscapes of Faith,” comparing and contrasting the landscape and church experience in Seattle and Utah. I’m also brainstorming ideas to submit for the Association for Mormon Letter’s virtual conference this spring. The theme is genre fiction, so I obviously have to be there! We’re also wrapping up season one of PCAT with an episode on Rings of Power.

How to Keep Writing: My Process for Short Stories in Late 2022

Conor Hilton recently asked on the Association for Mormon Letters Discord server about people’s process for writing short stories, specifically with the goal of having a regular process for producing work. My reply got a little long, so I thought I’d expand it further and turn it into a blog post.

leaves hang on rope — Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com

I am still struggling to get back into a regular creative rhythm. Part of that is me getting too excited about all the different opportunities open to me and accidentally turning all my writing time into time confetti. But part of it is also that I am a baby fiction writer. In college, I developed a pretty good process for creating creative nonfiction on the regular (implementing that now is one of the aforementioned time-confetti creators) but developing fiction is a whole different animal.

With that caveat, for my last two short stories, my process has been something like this:

What I Read: May 2022

I’ve been having a blast in the “fairy tales and other speculative fictions” class I’ve been taking at BYU this term. In fact, it’s almost over! Most of my reading this month was for the class. I have a good stack of books I’m halfway through but can’t seem to make progress in because of all the assigned reading. I forgot how much time college courses absorb. But no regrets, because I’ve also done of lot of reading on theories of speculative fiction, which doesn’t show up here, as it’s mostly articles, but will no doubt help me in future research.

Writing updates: I didn’t make the cut for the Mormon Lit Blitz this time, but I’m very intrigued by the titles of the finalists. If you’re reading along, join me on social media to chat about the entries. For my class’s final project, I’m working on a paper about Piranesi and the power of stories in the pandemic. And this weekend I’m presenting at the Mormon History Association conference about Mormon colonialism in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive. This builds off of last year’s paper on Mormon theology in the series. If you missed it, also make sure to check out the latest episode of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree about films and faith crisis based on an essay by Chris Wei. I think it’s our best episode yet!

Book reviews after the cut.

Author’s Note: Buyers, Renters, and Belonging

Read “Buyers, Renters, and Belonging” in Irreantum 18.2 – Building Zion.

Writing this essay was like writing a eulogy. A eulogy for all the groups of women who made my years as a young mother survivable. The steady presence of these two groups of women was the thing that got me through all the experiences of parenthood that make you think you’re losing your mind. Those groups no longer exist, though I occasionally still talk to some of the women who were part of them.

people holding miniature wooden house — Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com

It’s also a eulogy for the suburban wards of the Pacific Northwest. You can see the slow decline of the wards in the area by looking at a ward map. Our ward had two church buildings inside its boundaries, buildings that used to house several wards each but have been hollowed out by the area’s financial success. It’s nearly impossible to find an affordable house in the area that can accommodate a typical Mormon-size family, and so the ward is filled with young renters and older couples who bought in before Microsoft happened.

This essay is also a very vulnerable one to me. The turn in the essay where I realize exactly how privileged and well-off we were is still something I am coming to terms with over and over in my everyday life. Talking about money and success is very taboo. There are different problems that come with financial success, and it’s hard to talk about them with anyone without coming across as bragging. There’s also the guilt of having money in a religion where we promise to consecrate all that we have. I often agonize over if we are giving enough to thank the Lord for his blessings.

I should note that though the ending to this essay is pretty bleak, we were actually quite happy to move to Utah. I grew up around my extended family and had wanted that for my kids for a long time. The pandemic provided the ability for us to be untethered from the Pacific Northwest. Still, the move was bittersweet like a breakup from a long-dysfunctional relationship. We already knew that it was over, but leaving made it feel so final. It meant admitting defeat in creating a community, one that we had covenanted to build. I felt bad for abandoning our ward in the state it was in, with so many in need of help and so many having to leave. In fact, in the months after we moved, several more of our remaining friends in the ward have left the area.

The Story-a-Day Challenge and How to Set ABC Goals for Writers

In September, I set out to participate in the Story-a-Day challenge. If you haven’t heard of it, Julie Duffy runs a challenge called Story-a-Day in May and September. As the title implies, she emails you a different prompt each day from which you are challenged to complete an entire story, beginning to end, in one day. These stories can be as short as you want; the only goal is to finish them. Ideally, by the end of the month, you’ll have 30 completed story drafts.

green typewriter on brown wooden table — Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

If you’re familiar with human nature, you won’t be surprised to hear that I did not end the month with 30 finished stories. I wrote 12 stories, 4 of which were complete drafts and the rest of which were outlines or ideas or the first third of a story before I ran out of time or lost the will to finish.

So do I consider my Story-a-Day experience a failure?

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