Personal Writing
Transcript
Fidel Montero: The role that writing plays outside of my profession and in my personal life is huge. I’ll give you an example: this summer I started my doctoral program and I spent most of the summer in NYC and I was away from my family; and so each night I would sit down and write a journal entry for my wife to read about what was going on that day. And doing that helped me to really understand the content that I was studying in my course. It also helped my wife to be connected with me while I was going through that experience in NYC. I love family history and I’m trying to compile as much information about my family, and put it into writing. My grandparents didn’t read or write so most of my family’s history is oral, so stories that have been in our family for a lot of years I am trying to get them in paper so my kids have access to them when my parents pass on.
Susan Black: You could imagine if you write this much it is very hard to write in your journal. I do manage to have some cryptic things, but the goal before I am out of here is ultimately to write my life story.
The first book that I wrote was called Illustrious Forbears. It traced my family in some cases back to the 12th Century where I put certificates. All of my ancestors crossed the plains and I wanted my children [to know] of their sacrifice and what our response would be to that. That was my first book, and I would think that once I retire, now there is the internet—there were only typewriters when I first started—I would imagine I could improve on that. I could improve, doing more of a biographical thing on myself, maybe on my family.
James Christensen: Any active LDS person has a certain amount of time they are going to spend in front of people and so I do occasionally write a talk out for church. I also teach and so I’ll make outlines for myself for classes that I am going to do. And I don’t write a lot of correspondence. Occasionally a pithy email is about as much as I get out. My children all have blogs, and they’re really pushing me to get my own blog going. And I have really resisted that because it’s basically having to sit down and write twice a week or something and I just resist writing whenever I can.
Shanna Butler: I tend to have a lot of opportunities for service with my writing: like if somebody needs something done at church I can help them. If one of the kids in my young women’s needs a paper edited they come to me and I can help them with that. Or I can help them write their stories that they need for school. One of the biggest things I have done is: my grandpa writes a column for the Standard Examiner up in Ogden. He is a very good writer but he doesn’t think he is and so he always sends all his pieces to me and I’ll edit them for him before he sends them to the newspaper. So I found that I can always help my family or other people with my writing.
Abe Mills: I think that personally, as far as that goes, sometimes we can’t always talk on the phone to people that we want to keep in touch with so writing is very important. Sometimes writing is a little bit more personal and a little bit more lasting, when you can write a card or write a letter to someone just saying how much you appreciate them or just asking them how they are doing. I think that people, it’s a lost art and I think it’s something that every individual should make an effort to keep that in some small part in their lives.
One thing that I do try to do is, I keep all kinds of pictures or different advertisements for events that I have been involved in and I try to write just a little piece of something about that event because I figure it’s better to do that than not at all.
Terry Olson: I probably spend as much time trying to write a note of condolence to the family of a good friend that passes away in Texas as I do any professional writing I do. Not because it has to be just right, but because I want it to be direct, I want the words to speak well, I want it to be simple and not pompous and I take some time to tweak those things. From something that seems to be as little as that, to whether its writing my journal or trying to communicate something in a letter to my children, I don’t think I am really pedantic about it but I want to make the letter something that is a joy to read and not just words on a page.
Susan Meyer: I do a lot of writing for the web, sort of para-professional like with this native plant horticulture hobby/bussman’s holiday type of hobby. I do a lot of writing for the internet that never gets printed but it gets read a lot.
I am heavily involved with a couple of organizations where they look to me to provide this material because I am the "expert on this stuff" and I can write and I can write fast and get it done.
The main one that I am involved with right now is utahschoice.org which is about promoting native plants for landscape and I am one of the founders of this thing. I am kind of the chief cook and bottle washer as far as the website goes. It’s mainly things that I have been involved with in getting started.
This is my main obsession—you can't have too many obsessions in life! I still write letters—you remember those? You use a pen, write on paper—not too often, but I have always enjoyed mail correspondence so I still have a few people I write. They keep my letters, they are considered not throw-aways, which is kind of flattering
Geoffrey Germane: Writing is something that touches all aspects of my life, mostly however, professionally. In my non-professional life, in my family or things I do in the church, I do significant amounts of writing. E-mails a lot of times are intended to communicate in an efficient way a lot of information to people, in the particular assignments that I have. Within my family I wouldn’t say there is a great amount of writing that is influential to my family but maybe at some point they might read some things that I have written that they may be appreciative of.