By Henry McLaughlin After several years on this writing journey and from talking with others on the same path, I’ve found six things I wish I had done differently. Maybe you share some of them. 1) Following trends instead of my heart We all have stories in our hearts. Stories that we need to write. Sometimes it’s for our own …
Perseverance and Dreams
By Darlene L. Turner Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. – James 1:4 (NIV) What happens when our well-thought out plans for our writing journey start falling apart? We receive rejection upon rejection. We get to the point where we shudder every time that dreaded ding announces an incoming email. …
Unexpected Blessings
Unexpected blessings could be waiting for you in your writing life . . . My first winter in Florida, I visited churches to call “home” while there. My church in Ohio I love has a little over five hundred. I visited one church, and I walked into a room of thousands of people. Overwhelmed, I stayed. I loved the kind …
Where Does Your Validation Come From?
By Tammie Fickas Early Tuesday morning my phone vibrated with an incoming text from a friend congratulating me on being a finalist in a flash fiction contest. A whoop of surprise burst out before I could stop it. I quickly found the email that congratulated me on being chosen and relished the excitement. Later in the day, while I was …
Heading for Heaven
by Christine Sunderland In The Fire Trail (eLectio, 2016) I considered the border that runs between civilization and un-civilization, between the civilized world and the wilderness. Once Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, mankind has worked to tame the natural world and its wild-ness in order to survive. Man created communities, cities, safe shelters, protected from …
Can God Use Your Writing?
By Tammie Fickas Can God use you for His glory? Do you ever wonder about that? Writers are often their own worst critics, and the enemy loves to capitalize on that. He can get your thoughts all tied up in knots until you are certain that your life has nothing of value to offer in written word, and that God …
Show Up Empty
By Linda Thompson I spent an evening a couple weeks ago at a Bible study, discussing John Chapter 2 and the wedding at Cana. The story is a familiar one. Our Lord turned water into wine, and the master of the feast, who didn’t know where the wine had come from, declared it the best he’d tasted at the feast. …
Battling the Chickenhawks of Writing
by Laurel Blount Let’s talk about chickenhawks–and writing. My sister and her husband recently adopted a beautiful little girl, and our whole family fell in love. Hayleigh is spunky and and refreshingly honest–as three year olds tend to be. My sis, previously blessed with an adorable, rough-and-tumble little boy, has entered the world of pink dresses and oversized hair ornaments. …
A Writer’s Whisper
By Shannon Redmon Writers run scared sometimes. Like my friend Chelsea. She loves to write, but her fear of rejection has kept her fiction writing hidden away in the cave of her desk drawer. When I encouraged her to let others read her stories, she refused with the reason she was to afraid she wasn’t good enough. Elijah, God’s chosen …
Living and Writing Through Storms
By Tara Johnson “If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.” ~ C.S. Lewis When my debut Engraved on the Heart released last year, I lost count of how many people said, “This will be the most exciting year of your life.” It was, but not for the reasons they thought. …