My Sunday - William Morris
William Morris edits and writes about Mormon fiction. He is the author of Dark Watch and other Mormon-American stories, the co-editor of Monsters & Mormons, and editor of States of Deseret. His most recent book is The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories, published by By Common Consent Press. He is the new president of the Association for Mormon Letters, a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 to “foster scholarly and creative work in Mormon letters and to promote fellowship among scholars and writers of Mormon literature.” He lives in Minnesota.
A typical Sunday opens with my family and I viewing at-home church on Zoom. Some members of my household aren’t severely immunocompromised but have a concatenation of chronic illnesses, and we are in the fortunate position of still being able to view our LDS ward’s sacrament meeting at home. My Elders Quorum also recently started streaming the audio of their meetings, which I really appreciate.
New Year’s Day will probably be a typical Sunday for me. I lost interest in the Rose Bowl once it no longer was the winners of the Pac-12 and the Big 10 facing off (and I don’t watch much college or pro football anymore anyway). And I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ambitions for the new year. I have several projects I want to self-publish—both as William Morris (Mormon literature) and Wm Henry Morris (science fiction/fantasy meant for the general market). And I’m hoping to release at least one amateurish but hopefully still interesting EP this year. I’m not a musician, but I love making music.
2023 will also be my year to serve as president of the Association for Mormon Letters. My emphasis for the year will be Mormonism and genre fiction, which means AML’s annual conference will focus on that topic, and Liz Busby and I will be co-editing a special issue of Irreantum, the AML’s literary mag, with the same focus.
I know some active members of the LDS Church don’t do creative work on Sundays. I reserve Saturday mornings for my main fiction writing sessions, but I will often write or edit work on Sundays. However, I do focus on work that feels more like it's serving my fellow Mormons.
In fact, several years ago, I decided to no longer write Mormon fiction or Mormon literary criticism and focus on the national market instead. I tried to stick to that decision. Really tried. But I found I couldn’t. It was too much a part of me and my creative life. So instead, I decided that I would write what I want to write when I want to write it, but that I would devote at least 10% of the time I spend on creative work to building Mormon culture. A tithe of sorts.
And I’ve kept that up pretty consistently. In fact, since the pandemic started, it’s been more like 80% Mormon work. I’m hoping to start a new project in 2023 that will meld both audiences/ambitions.
My Sundays always end the same way now: I’m not sure why—probably because it feels like it sets up the week nicely—but we have at-home sacrament in the evening before bed instead of earlier in the day. My wife has celiac and so we use gluten-free multi-grain crackers. We use a Japanese soy sauce dish for the crackers and little reusable plastic cups for the water, and while the communal aspect is missing, there is something lovely and soul-enriching about the experience.