By Amy Clipston Through the years I’ve found that my book projects fall into two categories—they either write themselves or writing them feels like having my teeth drilled. In other words, the characters either tell me the story or I push them through the story as if they were dead weight. My novella “Bundles of Blessings” included in the collection …
ACFW New Releases: March 2021
March 2021 New Releases More in-depth descriptions of these books can be found on the ACFW Fiction Finder website Biblical: Miriam’s Song by Jill Eileen Smith — In her eventful lifetime, Miriam was many things to many people: protective older sister, song leader, prophetess, leper. But between the highs and the lows, she was a girl who dreamed of freedom, …
Using Secrets in our Stories
By Darlene L. Turner Have you ever kept a secret from your mom as a kid? I did one time… “Don’t tell Mom,” I said to my brother Murray. “She’ll kill me!” Once again, I didn’t listen to my mom and decided to take our friend’s 5-speed bike for a ride. We had pleaded with Mom, but she wasn’t ready …
Unmasking Righteousness
By Christine Sunderland In my recently released novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock Publishers), the hermit Abram calls for repentance, crying from a precipice, preaching to a gathering in the meadow below. He does not mask his words or his face. He tells the truth as he has been told to do. As Anglicans, we observed Ash Wednesday last week, …
Finding Purpose, Promise, and Blessing in Writing
By KD Holmberg As a woman of a ‘certain age,’ I embarked on a writing journey I didn’t plan, know what to expect, or even have a destination in mind. Like the patriarch Abraham in Genesis, God spoke to me as a friend, and on May 12th, 2006, He gave me a purpose, a promise, and a blessing. I attended …
How Many Hats Do You Wear a Day?
By Glynn Young The hats we writers wear can seem awfully heavy. The hat we wear every day is the writer’s hat. This is what we do. This is what we’re about. We’re here to tell a story, and that can be difficult enough. It looks like a baseball cap. We learn to write by listening, memorizing, and repetition. We …
Discouragement Is a Choice
By Henry McLaughlin One given in the writing world is we will get discouraged. An area where I’ve been discouraged is when a story doesn’t work. My fingers are like stones on the keyboard. What seemed like a great story idea flickers like a dying fire. The plot is what my Italian friends call a frittata. The characters are flat …
Formulaic vs Great Expectations
By Davalynn Spencer “I don’t want to write formulaic stories,” the workshop attendee said. “They’re predictable and boring.” I understood what the man was trying to say, but I didn’t agree which how he said it. And isn’t that what this writing gig is all about – how we say what we say? Readers who enjoy specific genres of commercial …
Who is in Your Writer Community?
By: DiAnn Mills Most people believe writers lead a solitary life. But a professional writer thrives on community. We writers can’t achieve measurable success without surrounding ourselves with others who share our goals, dreams, and values. In this context, a community is a group of people who have expertise and passion for the same interests. In a writer’s community, each …
A Little Sprig
By Terri Gillespie “For who despises the day of small things . . .” Zechariah 4:10a, TLV My husband and I knelt in the brittle, dry earth and dug a hole to plant a Cyprus tree. The event was part of an Israel tour I had coordinated. Since the 1900s, Jewish people and people who support Israel have purchased trees …