Tag: writing

Category: {storying}

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{reflection} · {vulnerability}

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The world is upside down right now because of COVID-19. I confess I was already struggling with high anxiety before this virus became a thing anyone anywhere knew anything about, but this new reality of lockdown orders and pandemic fallout has ratcheted the anxiety up to scary levels. And please know that when I say scary,… Continue reading { punctuate : uncertainty }

{inspiration} · {perspective}

{ quote : on success }

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“What we call success is very nice and comes with useful byproducts, but success is not love, or at least it is at best the result of love of the work and not of you, so don’t confuse the two. Cultivating love for others and maybe receiving some for yourself is another job and an important one. The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity, so there’s another kind of success in becoming conscious that matters and that is up to you and nobody else and within your reach.”

—Rebecca Solnit
“How to Be a Writer: 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit”
as posted on Literary Hub

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{character} · {reflection}

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Sometime in 2010, I stopped journaling. That year began with my departure from the foreign mission field in Mexico, continued through transitioning into a a stateside admin role and international discipleship via phone and chat services, and ended with work as a full-time nanny to triplet preemie infants. Woven throughout those milestones was an online… Continue reading { punctuate : chronicles }

{ quote : on writing }
{inspiration}

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“There have been times when for me the act of writing has been a little act of faith, a spit in the eye of despair . . . Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life. That was something I found out in the summer of 1999, when a man driving a blue van almost killed me . . .

“Writing did not save my life—Dr. David Brown’s skill and my wife’s loving care did that—but it has continued to do what it always has done: it makes my life a brighter and more pleasant place.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.

“Drink and be filled up.”

—Stephen King
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
pp. 249, 269–70