More than Writers

I don't know about you, but I so often get caught up in the whole grind of being an author. The writing itself is the fun part - where creativity can be set free, and all your days and nights are entirely caught up in the excitement of your idea (for some reason, my mind likes to write scenes in the middle of the night - anyone else? I always keep my phone by my bed so I can make notes on that midnight inspiration!)  Then comes the editing. There's the self-editing, then the sending out to external editors or your publisher, and all the waiting that entails. The frustration as you work out what words and even entire chapters you need to cut in order to refine and polish your work to the highest possible standard. The pain as you murder your darlings and then realise the book is all the better for it. Then the proofreading - how did you not spot that typo? It seems so obvious now! We've all been there... Then there's getting the book out. If you're being traditionall...

One of the things I love and value most about ACW is the support and encouragement we can give to one another as Christian writers. It is a beautiful thing to see one another thriving in our work and to cheer each other on. Today I am delighted to be chatting to Maressa Mortimer today about all things writing and especially her brand new book, Walled City. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I’m Maressa, I’m Dutch, but married to an English pastor. We live in the Cotswolds with our four children who we adopted seven years ago. I homeschool my kids, so writing is my hobby, which I get to do by myself. I started writing in the evening a couple of years ago, finding it a great release. Your new book, Walled City , looks fascinating to me as a YA dystopia fan. What gave you the idea for the book? Entice us with a little of the blurb for it.  I enjoy telling stories to answer ‘what if’ questions. I’m no good with abstract, so abstract theological books are not really my thing...

  Liz Carter's new book, published today! I am so appreciative of ACW. We are such a fun, eclectic group, and it is wonderful to be able to interact via the Facebook page on days when I am finding writing hard or are lacking motivation. It is great when someone posts a thought-provoking question, or provides tips for marketing etc – thank you to those that do, and please keep doing so! Here are a few ideas of other ways we can support one another more fully:   Buy each other’s books! This is the most obvious way we can show our support, but I recognise that we are a prolific group and we can’t buy everything that is produced! But if we all made an effort to choose titles we are interested in ourselves, or know would make great presents for a friend or family member, then we can show our support very practically. As thoughts turn to Christmas present buying, why not think about purchasing books by our members?   Share social media posts While we are all connected via ACW, ...

I’d been out of hospital just 5 days, after a nasty case of double pneumonia, when I began to tell myself I was not doing enough. I should be updating my blog, growing my mailing list, engaging more on social media, writing my next book, pitching to editors for articles. I should be doing. Doing. Doing. It didn’t help when my royalty payment arrived, and the numbers were way way down from the first six month’s sales. For some reason I’d put expectations on myself, expectations that said the book should sustain sales, or I wasn’t doing it right. The fact that sales were far lower sent me plunging into deeper depths of beating myself up. People were telling me to rest and recover, but I was doing ten rounds with my own daft expectations, and coming out of it black and blue - just to add to the multiple canula bruises from my IVs. Thankfully, the lovely people of ACW made me see sense, reminding me that books do this, especially Christian non fiction books. There’s a boost in the firs...

I came across this passage from 2 Corinthians the other day, and it made me think about how we are all love letters: Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letters written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:1-3) We are letters from Christ. That’s not always an easy thing for us to accept, is it? There are days we may feel like we are reflecting the love of God, and days where we feel like we are letters of grumpiness, misery and general rubbishness. I know that’s true for me. As a writer, this passage speaks strongly to me of how our lives - not just our writing, but everything we do, say and think - will be a demonstration of where our hearts are. When our h...

Writing can be full of fun, hope, spark and mischief. But it can also declare the very depths of the human condition. I was reading an article written by a person who didn't feel church was for them because the songs didn't seem to reflect the wide realities of life, capturing only the hopeful and joyous sides of faith without admitting to the hurting. I know what they mean, and yet I've been heartened in the last few years to note many worship songwriters producing songs which share raw pain as well as turning to hope. And that's been reflected in the Christian writing community, as well - with many writers feeling able to pour out their rage, their sadness - their lament, at last, instead of donning masks and sticking to a saccharine kind of pretence about life with Jesus being all joy and no depths. But writing lament is difficult. It rips pieces from us as we plunder the depths of our own pain and sorrow, and leaves us exhausted, spent. It's ...

I sometimes think about words and get completely blown away. It's pretty much impossible to come to an exact number of words in the English language. The Oxford Dictionary estimates that we have 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. But we can't know exactly how many words we have - for example, do we count 'dog' as one word or one of a few - it can be a verb as well as a noun, after all, and that's before we start with plurals and tenses. However many, what strikes me is that we as humans are able to express ourselves in such a crazy multitude of ways. We don't just like something; we admire, we love, we adore, we cherish, we relish, we prize. (And that last isn't just a verb, either!) Our ability to convey such depths of emotion and describe our thoughts is unique to us as the human race, created for so much more than survival. We're created for beauty...

That blank page feeling I’ve been reading a book written by poet and songwriter Michael Card, about creativity and faith – Scribbling in the Sand. It’s come at a good time, because I’ve been feeling somewhat ‘dried-up’ in my own creativity; I sit at a screen and see a blank page, and ask myself what I have to contribute to this page today. Early in the book, Michael refers to a ‘voice’ that ‘frustrates, befuddles and frankly terrorises me every time I sit down to write anything, be it a letter or a song. Sometimes it sounds like my own voice; at other times I do not recognize it at all. These are the kinds of words it whispers: ‘There is no conceivable way someone like you can create this.’ ‘How can you possibly hope to do better than­­­-------?’ ‘No one will listen or care what you have to say.’ ‘Aren’t you too tired?’ ‘What do you think you are, some kind of celebrity?’’ I recognise this voice. All too well. What about you? It stalks me at my worst tim...