By Kathleen Denly Most campers pray for clear skies and pleasant weather. The summer before my senior year of high school, however, I was fervently praying for a rainstorm. Not just any rainstorm. I wanted a gully-washing downpour that would cause the nearby river to wipe out our current tent site. You may think this was because I hated camping …
Am I a Real Writer?
By Christa MacDonald In the news recently an actor who had been on a successful TV show was seen working at a grocery store. Someone took a surreptitious picture of him and posted it online saying how surprised they were to see the actor working such a lowly job. Then the shaming began. The only thing social media loves more …
Three Boredom-Busting Tips
By Linda W. Yezak “The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself”—John Mortimer. If you follow Mortimer’s rule not to bore yourself, chances are good you won’t bore your reader either. So how do you make certain your reader stays hooked throughout your novel? The basic answer is to have a …
Conference Dos and Don’ts
By Patricia Bradley With ACFW Conference coming up, I’m sure you’ve seen all the blogs about what you should do and not do at the conference. You know, things like take a one-sheet for your work, not the whole manuscript, pitch a finished story, not an unfinished one, make new friends and connect with old ones, and don’t stay up …
Introvert’s Conference Survival Guide
By Leslie DeVooght As we prepare for the ACFW conference, I wanted to share my tips for introverts attending for the first time. Two years ago, I attended my first Christian writers’ conference, and like many writers, I was scared to death. Being an introvert in a crowd of hundreds of strangers seemed like a cruel joke, but everything I …
If I Could Start Again Writing Christian Fiction
By H.L. Wegley A few months ago I was asked what I would do differently, as a novelist, if I could start again—a complete do-over. In answering this question, most of us would include starting to learn the craft at an earlier age. Now that I am beyond my three-score and ten and into those years Moses called “labor and …
Battling the Self-Doubt Virus
By Laurel Blount When I was in college, the local water supply became contaminated with a particularly unpleasant parasite. Soon the infirmary was jammed with moaning students, all of us dealing with the tummy bug to end all tummy bugs. Because the illness was linked to the water system, nobody was immune. Pretty much everybody got it. See where I’m …
Dancing
By Christine Sunderland It is said and it is written that Jacob dreamed of angels descending and ascending a ladder between Heaven and Earth, and that later he wrestled with an Angel of God. Just so the Christian writer dreams and the Christian writer wrestles. For we dream of Heaven but are rooted on earth; we wrestle with God’s spirit …
When “No, Thank You” is Really “Not Yet”
By Kathleen Y’Barbo You keep track of my sorrows. You have collected my tears in your bottle. You record each one in your book. Psalm 56:8 The process from idea to publication is sometimes much more difficult than a writer expects. Fresh plots become words on a page. Those words are polished, deleted, and added back until the manuscript …
What Is the Message?
By Jean Kavich Bloom As an avid fiction reader and a fiction editor with more than thirty years in the Christian publishing world, I understand the power Christian fiction can have. Perhaps that’s one reason I’m concerned about a topic that can be a Pandora’s box of emotions and opinions—the message a fictional character’s response to sexually oriented advances sends …