Your words are truly powerful. You have the ability to speak life or death (negativity) into your life and situation with your voice. This is considered true in pretty much every religious context, but has also been acknowledged in psychology and scientific contexts as well. What we speak out of our mouths matters. Continue reading
Remove Unforgiveness: The Enemy (Part 5)
Have you ever been past anger? I mean—virulently and completely livid with someone for something they did? Now here’s the second part of this line of questioning: Have you ever found out later that you were wrong? That you had misdirected your anger? This happened to me just recently. And I really thought I was right. Continue reading
Remove Unforgiveness: The Evidence (Part 4)
As a creative writer, it’s hard to type this, but imagine yourself as a garden. Because this is the point in the series where the often-used symbols of seeds, plants, and fruits come in. Continue reading
Remove Unforgiveness: (Part 3)
Have you written your Kill List? .
When I finished writing out my own list, I wrote a brief description of what each offender had done. I looked carefully at the details of the offenses. The verbs of what people had done. Continue reading
Remove Unforgiveness: (Part 2) The Kill List
Who have I not forgiven? I wrote this down, and as I considered, there was one particular person I knew I was carrying a fresh and violent anger towards–with good reason. Continue reading
Remove Unforgiveness (Part 1)
“Remove Unforgiveness.” God spoke these words to me in February 2020. Continue reading
Write Your Book in 2019
When I tell people I’m a writer, they usually respond with some version of, “I’ve been trying to write a book…” and then this trails off into infinity. Continue reading
And Then You’re Holding a Copy of Your First Book
It happens to all of us. Some mornings I wake and immediately shake my head. It’s because before I begin the day, I’m already physically or emotionally exhausted, and I wonder how I’ll do it. How will I get through my to-do list when I already feel so tired and overwhelmed? Continue reading
Exercise is to Writing as Writing is to Exercise
Writers write. Writers work-out, too. While we spend a lot of time mulling over ideas, working, and generally adulting, we also workout. I LOVE seeing photos on social media of writers going to the gym. Continue reading
3 Ways to Demystify Writing
1) Know this: there is no such thing as writer’s block. There is you, in front of your screen or holding a notebook on your lap, typing or moving the pen over the page. This can always happen. Even if you don’t know the direction the work is going. Even if you feel like every word is awful. You know how to write, so do that. An idea I’ve always liked is, “You have to get through the bad stuff to get to the good.” And I’ll repeat it again, stop expecting literary gold every time you sit down to write. The beauty comes by way of revision.
