More than Writers

  As a writer, it’s easy to become discouraged.       Maybe the book sales or blog views aren’t what we hoped for. Maybe negative feedback has knocked our confidence. Or maybe we’re simply tired.       It can be just as easy to feel discouraged as a Christian.       We face difficult circumstances, prayers seem to go unanswered, and the joy or peace we once knew feels distant. Pressure and opposition creep in, and we start to question everything.       In both writing and faith, discouragement whispers the same question: Is this still worth it?        I’ve asked myself that many times, and I’ve learned that moments like these invite us to pause and remember our “why”:       Why did we start, and what were we hoping to achieve?        Why did we begin writing, and why did we choose to follow Jesus? Both were intentional decisions. ...

    January is often seen as a transitioning month, named after Janus, the Roman God who looks back at what has been and forward at where we want to be. We often use it as a time to focus on chang ing our habits or perceptions of ourselves . I joked in my previous ACW More Than Writers (MTW) post, Less is More - Giving up Flabby Writing , January could be seen as a month to give things up. Have you given up on your New Year ambitions yet? February brings its own period of transition as we start Lent on the 18th February this year . Lent is a time of waiting, like Advent, as we take time to look towards Easter. It ’ s common to giv e up luxuries so we can spend more time in prayer and reflection . Though in this age, it can be an excuse to stuff yourself with pancakes and fillings first.   Advent  through to Easter can be the coldest months, where we long for Spring and Summer. These times of waiting for celebrations and looking to a new future can some...

  It’s appropriate that I’ve been asked to be the reserve blogger for the end of January. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions in general –   I tend to have a list of ongoing goals that aren’t calendar specific. Instead, I loosely consider January a month for reflection, resisting (sometimes fighting) the urge to make any new commitments. This year, my month of reflection has looked very different from normal. The end of December was a flurry of activity, rearranging flights last minute to hop over to Princeton, New Jersey on Boxing Day to help my daughter and son-in-law after the birth of their first child (and our first grandchild!), who arrived a little earlier than anticipated. Being trusted to be with them at such a vulnerable and special time was a privilege, but – I have to be honest – I worked extremely hard. In between being the housekeeper, errand girl and assistant nanny, I was also trying to keep up with my actual paid job (which is not my writing) part-time....

  The hardest parts of any job are the tasks that aren’t the actual job. I had a wonderful, healing time writing Sapphire Beach, but what do you do when you get to The End? Turns out, the rest of writing a story is more complex than just telling a story! Parts of the process I really enjoy, like making the cover. Other parts, like marketing and making yourself known I enjoy but find them time consuming at the same time. Building a website is a fiddly job and involves a lot of nitty gritty details. I also have one of those pullup banners, which is a fiddle to set up without losing fingers, but looks good once it’s up. The problem with both banner and website is the upkeep of it. The banner is now out of date, as I have another book published since I ordered it. My website is in desperate need of an overhaul, which is time consuming and needs my full attention, even if it’s for an hour. I also have a podcast, which was rather ambitious and made me very nervous. I did enjoy it, al...

Image Credits:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. If you haven’t read Mnemonic by the wonderful Brian Bilston, I highly recommend it. It is his take on what seems to be the longest month - January. I guess it doesn’t help we’re still well into winter, the evenings still draw in much earlier than we’d like, and there is less natural light around (though things will be getting better on that front by the time this post goes out).   So we press on towards the fact even January must end and spring will come. It is a matter of time. Hands up, anyone who finds it easy to be patient. I’m not raising my hands, by the way.  But pressing on and being patient are crucial parts of both our Christian lives and our writing ones. I know. Logically, with time, we should be getting better at both, right? We’ve got all of that experience of our spiritual lives and writing ones under our belt, right?  Hmm… I am very much a work in progress on both fronts, but I find th...

Image from Wikimedia Commons Have you ever indulged in a bit of aspirational recipe-clipping while eating your porridge? I have, and I’ve got two folders stuffed full of scraps of paper to prove it, some of which go back a few decades.  What behaviours do you indulge in that go nowhere but give you a warm, fuzzy feeling? During the pandemic, I started a few writing habits. One was adapting AA Milne’s poetry with a lockdown slant. I was rather proud of one of them, and a family member shared it in her U3A writing group.  I also started writing 1,000 random words a couple of times a week with the intention of getting my thoughts on the page and garnering ideas for articles. I write with a potential reader in mind, and sometimes use this material as the basis for an article or blog post, such as this one.   What do we do with the wealth of information we hold in the form of clippings, cuttings and random notes on our computers? How can we collate them, or do we sometimes hav...