“Because the world needs more Mormon novels”

Those were the words that I read over at A Motley Vision a few minutes ago. And it really struck me.

He said it in the context of encouraging LDS writers to join a Write-a-Novel-in-a-Month challenge being put on. He was spelling out the reasons why writers should participate.

At first, when I read that line, I thought he was being sarcastic. Because there seems to be so many mo’ novels coming out almost on a daily basis, does the world really need one more? But then, he added, “even if they don't end up being published.” That showed me he meant it. It’s true. More needs to be written, even if they don’t end up being published. Or, even if they only end up being self-published on the web, or whatever.

I’ll go one step further and say that they need to be written even if they aren’t any good. Because that’s the only way the writer will ever get any better.

And, as I always do, I turned my thoughts to music, and I paraphrased that sentence as, “Because the world needs more Mormon songs!”

See, a long time ago, a good friend of mine compared art and creativity to a giant lake. And there are streams and rivers and puddles and springs that feed the lake. Each drop of water that pours into the lake is some kind of work of art that got created. Some are big drops of clear, pure water, others are not so big and maybe not as delicious. But they’re all feeding the lake. And if the rivers and streams and puddles and springs (the creators) stop creating, stop feeding the lake, then the lake dies. It dries up.

So, every act of creativity is a great thing, no matter how good or bad or publishable or whatever it is. Because on one level, it boosts the whole. It feeds the lake.

And if you take that analogy and show it on a larger scale, beyond the mo’ market, the creative lake that the world has is getting more and more polluted. And the best way to clean it up is to feed it more and more pure water.

Yes! The world needs another Mormon novel. It needs more Mormon songs. Sculptures, paintings, poems, plays... It needs thousands more.

MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com