The Aliveness of Completed Work
The unpublished memoir definitely exerts a subtle but important influence on me.
Audience
Writers, This Is Our Moment.
Whatever we’re given by inspiration we must augment with effort and then release to move and heal and connect and transform the wider world.
Finding Value in your Creative and Spiritual Endeavors
We write within a vast web connecting those we’ve read and those who’ve come before us and our writing colleagues and our readers and all we love; this web forms the ground of our being, it moves through us and beyond us. It does not discriminate. It simply radiates life, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
Unpublished But Powerful
Annie Dillard once said that an unpublished, unread manuscript gathering dust under an attic bed still exerts its influence on the world. Is this true? Can we pin our faith and our work’s worth on this hidden, immeasurable impact?
Finding Acceptance in Surprising Places
What if the new life we look for (in publication, in success) might also be found elsewhere?
How does creation happen?
The story itself—the emergent life inside the inspiration—is a dynamic participant in the creative process.
Six Ways Blogging Helps You Be A Better Writer—And Person
Blogs put a writer in conversation with real people.
The Democratic Nature of Writing
If genuine, open-hearted engagement is the basic ingredient of the creative process, then we all have the capacity to move a reader.
Why I Write, Part 2: Because it’s worthwhile.
What’s the real value of our writing? Others may answer this differently, but here is my take: Does the act of writing help you come more alive? Then it’s valuable. Does your writing help even one other reader come more alive? Then it’s valuable.
Why I Write, Part 1: Nikki Kirby
Stories weave themselves into the fabric of our lives and irrevocably change us. That my story did this for Nikki seems a miracle, or at least an act of grace. Perhaps the miracle is that I actually got to know Nikki and watch her build her own amazing story with my words in the margins.