Joseph seemed to be averse at first to even speaking of the First Vision and his other heavenly manifestations. This may have been because soon after he experienced the vision, he shared it with a minister who rejected it. Because of this rejection, at least according to one scholar, Joseph did not even tell his immediate family about the First Vision. Likewise, George A. Smith, Joseph's cousin, recalled a letter his family received from the young prophet while he was translating the Book of Mormon. According to George A.'s recollection, Joseph called his cousin's family to repentance and denounced the religions of the day but said nothing of his heavenly visions.

...Perhaps Joseph did not produce such personal records in the 1820s simply because he felt no inclination to express himself on paper; perhaps agricultural life was work enough. We don't have, after all, a flood of diaries from agrarian workers in nineteenth-century New York. Joseph also may have felt that language was an imperfect medium-comparing it to a "little narrow prison"-in which to share or understand sacred events.

...Although Joseph was learning the importance of recording the words of God, he still did not produce writings conveying his own experiences or feelings. The Prophet's earliest documents show a man committed to capturing the newly revealed gospel in writing but not as enthusiastic about transmitting his own thoughts on paper. Nowhere do we have Joseph's early comments on the revelations or other latter-day scripture. The prophet and translator set God's words to paper before his own.