Cheers!

There is a town, lost somewhere in the endless beauty of Idaho mountainscape, where bearded men check their guns as often as you check facebook.  These guys throw around phrases like “Sh’riff tole me I can do what I gotta do if they’s trouble.”  Look at their eyes and you know they mean it.  There’s no HOA, only earth, sky, and shotgun. 

Bill told me he hasn’t had to shoot at too many people, just the stupid ones.  We laughed at that, but I didn’t ask if he’d missed. 

Bill’s a war vet, most of them are.  They keep to themselves, wrestling their terrors with hard work and drink like I wrestle mine with pen and paper.  More aggressive maybe, but equally intoxicating.  Somehow I think their way must be more satisfying.  The closest I’ve come to blisters after a frenzied write-fest is a little indentation I get on the middle finger of my right hand.  If things get really intense I’ll get a bruise too, but that’s nothing compared to Bill.  His hands are a shade softer than tree bark.  A deep cut would open up rings that tell the story of his seasons.  Survival is in his blood. 

What’s in my blood?  I like to think I know, but when I write, I’m not sure anymore.  Why doesn’t the girl in my head look like the one that ends up on paper?  Somewhere between self and ink, she gets all dressed up in someone she’d like to be.  A hat for sophistication, pearls for elegance,   and shoes sprinkled in wit.  

 Bill would laugh too loud and tell me I could find myself real quick at the bottom of a bottle.  He would know.  He may be a bottom-dweller as far as bottles go, but Bill doesn’t get dressed up for anyone.  Well, when the pastor comes into town, he puts on a shirt.  That aside, Bill is comfortable in his own skin.   He’s right, of course.  But since I don’t drink my bottle’s filled with a darker liquid.  Ink.  The only way to get to the bottom is to write myself there. 

Here’s to a new year boasting empty bottles and overflowing manuscripts.  A year of self discovery and self acceptance, a revolution of “self.” Bill would be proud. 

Bottom’s up everyone one!  Cheers!

The Last Thing You Need to Know About Writing in 2010

For several days, both of my writers groups have been having an impromptu discussion of goals and writing and resolutions and what it means to be a writer and a member of a writers group.

Conclusion? Writers groups -- carefully managed and organized -- change everything.

I started my first writers group almost ten years ago. None of us were published. Today Laura Anderson and Ginger Churchill have agents, I have a three-book deal, my wife has had a 20-page excerpt of her WIP published, and interest from a publisher. Eric James Stone is nearly renowned, a huge name in the science-fiction community.

Brooklyn Evans will be done with her master's thesis this year, allowing Eliade's Return to her measured, seismic narrative voice. Matt Evans -- the guest blogger here in January -- will get an agent for his magnificent opus, a book I've watched being written for nearly a decade and a book that has the potential to change Matt's life. (And he doesn't care. He drives me nuts).

And just this week, our group has added three new members, something we do only rarely and carefully and thoughtfully. 2011 is going to be, collectively, our brightest year.

My other writers group, which runs this Smash site, was born a few months ago, gathering the best of my most talented, tenacious students, who had become my friends and trusted readers. And while this group is in its youth, comparatively, the members are determined, filled with ambition.

I predict that James Dalrymple will have not only an agent in 2011 but a publisher.

Janiel will have an agent in 2011, and a publisher.

Scott Livingston will have an agent. Scott has laser focus, and a deep belief in the power of stories to be meaningful and useful -- and he means business like no other writer I have ever met. He has huge success in his future because he will write the book that only he could write, as does Janiel.

Loraine will have her second book published, but the publisher might surprise you, and her (I'm hoping. I can't say more. I haven't even told Loraine yet).

I hope that Maegan Langer won't mind me saying that, from my perspective, she has retreated just a bit back into her private space. This means she is working, on several fronts. I've learned in life that the quiet, talented people are those that get things done. Maegan is fighting her manuscript, and she does not fight in public. Her story is important, her talent large. She writes like one of my favorite people, Louise Plummer -- precisely. Words are weighed and measured. Maegan is not interested in fame -- acclaim would alarm her, frankly. She has the most vast imagination in our group, and the most delicate process.

Cally is Woman. Her spare time is the rare earth of her life, and she gives it over to writing. She has vision, and she uniquely understands the authority that a person must give him or herself to create success. She cultivates ambition and faith every day -- her marriage, the family business, her children, and her writing. Cally teaches quietly. Sometimes I'm not sure she knows she's teaching. But she's taught me much about myself. Cally has been on the cusp of national success for a year. 2011.

Maleah has always taken me with a grain of salt -- my wife will be the first to tell you that this is an indication of personal intelligence on Maleah's part. Maleah grasps better than anyone I've ever met the saturnalia power of community. We are they. We are us. We are in charge of becoming who we are, entirely. Her writing reflects and resonates this. She has a lot of people leaning on her right now, and she manages that pressure with grace and truth. Writing will be her recompense, publication her children's gift, and to their generations.

Which leaves Dave and Russo. Dave would win the world. His writing is an exploration of both his mind and life. What Dave needed more than anything when I first met him was a bit of humility. He believed in himself too much, knew himself too well. His voice was outsized, and hubristic -- he reminded me very much of my first writing teacher. Dave listened, and he changed. That was how I knew he was approaching his path. As soon as Dave figures out that writing can change his life, his life will be filled by change. What Dave needs now is to read one of Maleah's stories.

And Russo. Many people have made the mistake of dismissing Russo in her life. They were wrong. One day, during a difficult semester at BYU, I couldn't take it anymore and I drove to Sigurd, Utah, to make an unannounced visit to my grandparents. I needed to retreat, to return to what is real. I told my grandfather that I wasn't sure this whole college thing was going to work out. And Grandpa told me that while working on his doctoral dissertation, he'd felt the same thing, until he'd realized that this is success: the drive to work harder than everyone else around you. If your degree is important, work harder than everyone else at BYU, he told me. (I miss you, Grandpa. Thank you.)

Russo's life will surprise her. She has raw talent beyond what she knows, and she knows how to work, and why. Watch for her future to bloom like fireworks in the night sky.

Just like Matt Evans, my lovely wife, who is a member of both these writers groups, feels not the slightest inclination to announce her talent to the nation. She has no yen for commercial success, only for personal integrity. She understand's Plato's Cave. We've been in Plato's Cave. I'd tell you that Charmayne's writng will change lives, but she'd stop writing. Or laugh at me for an hour. Charmayne has known exactly who I am from the moment we met (this is disconcerting, take my word), and I her. We have what I can only describe as a fractal relationship -- so beautiful, so mysterious, etched by a poetry beyond human ability. Her writing is fractal too -- elegant, vast, intense, subtle, charged. A pillar of the world, as the Egyptians would have said.

Writers groups change everything. I know, because when the class my wife was taking from me almost ten years ago ended, I quickly started a writers group because I had to find a way to keep this woman in my life. I first asked her out in that writers group. And she's been my best reader ever since -- both of my work, and of my soul. And my future.

The last thing you need to know in 2010 about writing is this: Success is designed. If you don't design yours, the flotsam and jetsam of the cosmic system will wash up on you, and stick.

Watch and see.

Keep writing. -Caleb

A Wintry Poem

Ode to a Snow Shovel

My kitchen drawer beds a dandy tool,
Used January through December Yule.
I mix a bowl of chocolate dream,
It scrapes the sides and folds in the cream.
When I need to stir, into the boiling sauce it will go,
Or I stuff it in the freezer to wait with the dough.
By the end of each meal, it's been washed and rinsed thrice,
My heart beats "thump, bump" for such a functional device.

Then out to the driveway with shovel I trudge,
Time to move snow - a chore I begrudge.
The shovel leaves trails of uncaptured snow,
The handle breaks off, in the trash it will go.
Every years it's the same, I'm left so bereft,
Until I find a snow shovel made by Pampered Chef.

Goals vs Wandering

When people start talking about setting goals, a roar begins in my head, the brakes go on, shattering glass and metal on metal. Then I shut down.

I’m not good at setting goals.

But people are always trying to get you to set goals. Why is that? Better yet, why do they care? Particularly irksome to me is when people want you to set goals they think are important. The worst offenders are young women leaders. I don’t think I need to review what those goals are but they invariably have to do with getting married, etc. etc. Nothing wrong with getting married (I’ve done it twice). Nothing wrong with setting goals. Lots of people do it. But it makes sense to me that if you’re going to set a goal, it should be something you really want to accomplish, otherwise you’re just buying a ticket for a guilt trip.

Personally, I think goal setting is over-rated and belongs to that group of people that like to chalk up their sales record on a white board. But that is probably because I’ve always meandered through life. I’ve frequently been astonished at places I’ve woken up – figuratively speaking, not literally. Please understand that I am not one of those people who passes out at a bar and wakes up on a lumpy couch in a strange apartment. It’s just that I’ve never sat down and written a list of things I want to accomplish – call it rebellion or laziness.

But I have gotten places – good places, I never expected to go. I did graduate from college even though I never intended to go to college. And I got married and had six beautiful daughters which is a gift beyond anything I ever imagined. Then I got married again – to a sensitive, intelligent, funny man who writes me gorgeous poetry. How could it get any better? It did, because now we have grandchildren. All accomplished with no New Year’s Resolutions.

So I’m a little apprehensive about setting a goal to finish my novel. It may not happen. I may crash and burn. Perhaps I should just wander into it. But I’ve been wandering into it for quite a while now and Caleb says he wants me to finish it before his birthday. Would finishing it be a goal or a birthday present? I’ll try to think of it as a present.

Tips on becoming a better writer

I've long enjoyed The Copy Blogger's insights on the process and craft of writing. Here are 73(!) tips on becoming a better writer. See you in 2011!

Two Vast and Trunkless Legs

Ozymandias. By Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Christmas Concert with David Archuleta

I'll admit, I used to be a semi fan. I liked his singing voice but saw nothing else. After today, I am a super fan. At the end of the concert, Mr. Archuleta said something that totally got my mind thinking.


Amid a picturesque Christmas scenery, he humbly said, "In 2006 I was sitting in the audience and now, I'm on on stage performing."


So, I paraphrased his exact words but you get the gist. Anything can change.


You never know where life will take you. The key thing is to keep working on your craft. The rest will work itself out.