For those of you in the United States, enjoy your time of celebration!
Inspiration
Honoring the Lord with Our Leisure Time
Anyone looking for entertainment can find it everywhere: television, streaming, social media. And, thankfully, books! With so much fun, we all must be discerning when choosing what to consume, and how to spend the portion of our time allotted to leisure. To that end, recently I’ve chosen to spend some of my free time reading classic books I missed for one reason or another. Through this process, …
Three Nonfiction Books Any Christian Writer Can Write
Agents routinely receive proposals from aspiring authors that are the only creative writing they have ever attempted. At the same time, someone who is eventually published successfully likely has a half dozen other things in a file they’ve never shown to anyone. If you are an experienced or aspiring writer and are a disciple of Jesus Christ, you have the opportunity (or responsibility?) to …
Memorial Day
Today in the U.S. we honor the veterans who gave the ultimate sacrifice and died in the military for our country. It is an important day of remembrance. Some interesting quotes to ponder in light of this day: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” — Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address …
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Hello, my friends and fellow word-crafters, I’m taking a short break from writing posts on craft to celebrate the season of Christmas and offer you a bit of encouragement. As writers, we are in the business of storytelling—crafting worlds, creating characters, and weaving plots that resonate with readers. Or, if we’re nonfiction writers, putting together words that offer help, advice, and hope for …
An Agent’s Christmas List
You may be one of those strange and wonderful people who by this time in the holiday season has finished all of your Christmas shopping. Maybe even wrapping. Well, bully for you. I’m not that person. I still have a ways to go. I have a few things yet to get on my list. Among those outstanding items are things I wish (and pray) for my clients, writer friends, and readers of this blog, such as you. …
A Writer’s Thanks
A Writer’s Thanks Gracious Lord, thank you for the joy of writing. For the honor of being published. For the blessing of being used. The miracle of being paid. The wonder of being read. The blessing of my words being translated and traveling around the world. Amen.
My Best Reading Advice
My wife and I, newly married and preparing to enter training for ministry, hosted a seasoned pastor in our home for one of our entrance interviews. He asked what sorts of books we’d been reading, and we answered. I expected him to be impressed with my answer. After all … well, never mind. But he smiled kindly. “May I offer a piece of advice?” What were we going to say? “No”? So we gave the …
Where’s Your Writer’s Galilee? Judea?
Sometimes being a writer—and writing for publication—is so delightful, amazing, and wonderful, that you feel like a pig in mud. And sometimes being a writer feels more like you’re a pig in raisin sauce. Maybe you can’t identify. Maybe you’re just loving the writing life, riding high, cashing the checks, and collecting the awards. If that’s the case, then you can close this window now. Just click …
Can Writing Heal the Writer?
Most of us know, as readers, that the words we read have tremendous power to heal. But can the words we write heal us too? I asked some writer friends if they’ve been healed by the act of writing. Here are some of their responses: When my son was young, we were in a life-threatening accident in which our elevator landed abruptly in a basement and quickly filled with water. Surviving that event …