Hello there! When I was a child just beginning to speak, my parents drove late into the evening to the rural property they bought. As they drove up the gravel driveway, the sky spread out above us with stars glittering like a million diamonds spread out on a jeweler’s vast black velvet display. Across the fields, a million lightning bugs hovered in the tall grass, their gleaming bodies flickering on and off. I pointed at the sky. “’Tars!” Then I pointed at the field. “Baby ’tars!” Perhaps I...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Hello there! I made a last-minute decision heading to the most recent writer’s conference I attended. I’d planned to take my classy, professional, sleek gray backpack that I’d purchased to replace the original purple one I mentioned in an earlier episode. As I loaded it, I realized that to stay fortified, I needed to carry snacks and lunch each day—maybe even dinner—and it wouldn’t all squeeze into the professional-looking slim gray bag. I needed a bigger backpack. I dug around in my closet...
5 months ago • 7 min read
Hello there! When I heard Anthony Doerr speak at the Festival of Faith & Writing, I struggled to follow his message as he bounced around from this idea to that, speaking a mile a minute. But from the start, he drove home this idea: it's all connected.Turns out not only were all seven parts of his talk connected, but much more.He said (in the talk), "The power of literature to connect two disparate things [through metaphor, simile] is a superpower that has the potential, like all superpowers,...
6 months ago • 2 min read
Hello there! Are you getting ready to attend a writers’ conference? Guess what? So am I! And I want to make the most of my time there, so let’s think through what will help with that. You’re likely going for at least two reasons: to learn and to connect. You might also be planning to pitch your project. Let’s prep, plan, and pack to get the most out of this upcoming event, so you’re even better prepared to learn, connect, and pitch. And given that I work with a lot of published authors and...
6 months ago • 4 min read
Hello there! Attending my first writers’ conference proved to be life-changing—or at least career-changing. In the years since, I’ve attended a wide range of writing events, and each one has in some way substantially contributed to my career. Some deepened my knowledge, others expanded my professional network—most did both. And I can’t imagine where I’d be without them. Could a writers’ conference be a life-changing/knowledge-deepening/network-expanding opportunity in your future, even this...
7 months ago • 4 min read
Hello there! "Many writers have no idea what their next sentence or paragraph will be," says Matthew Dicks in his book Storyworthy. "Much of writing is done in the dark." My friend Glynn says (in a comment at my Instagram post) that writer Harvey Stanbrough calls it “writing into the dark" (emphasis mine). I like that preposition switch, from "in" to "into" because of the sense of forward motion. People who write by discovery (sometimes called "pantsers" because they write by the seat of...
8 months ago • 2 min read
Hey there, writer! Years ago, one of my clients updated me on her publishing journey. She turned in her manuscript on deadline, so that was a huge relief. Then her editor asked for one last piece she'd put off. "Ann, it took me two full weeks to track down everything for my endnotes. Two weeks!" This first-time author knew the editor would ask for endnotes, but she had not kept track of them as she wrote. Putting Off the Inevitable When words were flowing—forming chapters, shaping ideas—she...
over 1 year ago • 6 min read
Hey there, writer! Nearly everyone who writes personal stories in any form has agonized over how much to share. Will writing about an issue from childhood break Mom's heart? Should I change the name of a high school teacher? The next-door neighbor? The dog? The children? Are the hyacinths blooming by the mailbox worth mentioning? We write. We worry. Is this naval gazing or vulnerability? Will people feel I'm airing the dirty laundry or sharing my own struggles so others might find healing?...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read
Hey there, writer! Consider a lowly stick, memorialized by my friend: Little Y StickFragile, knobby crossroads in my fingersBring me eyes to see how God is in my midst. Jennifer Dukes Lee penned that poem after we chatted about a prompt found in poemcrazy, by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. In Chapter 31, Susan instructs us to find something in nature that attracts our attention. Maybe the object has a quality that we're attracted to, or maybe it's just speaking to us in some way. Jennifer...
over 1 year ago • 3 min read