More than Writers

A smile from a passing stranger.. A beautiful blossom that has opened overnight… Conversation with a friend who just ‘knows’ what you need… Inspiration for a piece of writing… Interest from a publisher… A good night’s sleep… A wonderful and timely gift from a precious couple… The chance to be stretched in leadership… Laughter with family… There are so many ‘little’ moments that we can overlook every day. But God has been reminding me of something He first taught me during a rather frustrating walk with my then toddler daughter. We were walking into town, but it took a good 10 minutes just to walk to the end of our road. She was totally distracted by everything around her. She noticed a little flower growing through a crack in the pavement, a ladybird crawling up a lamppost, a cat sitting on a garden fence. I was getting more and more impatient, urging her to hurry up and pulling her along with me when God spoke to my heart. He told me to stop...

If you are anything like me, you will have your sights set on that end goal: finishing your book, finding a publisher, seeing your book on the shelves of bookshops… While I know quite a few of our members have books just out or about to be out, for many of us, that process can be extremely long-winded and can get us down. Others may be writing for a different reason and so it isn’t all about chasing that elusive publisher. The end goal may be different, but we still tend to focus on whatever it is and perhaps miss what is going on around us in the here and now. Wherever you are at today, I just want to encourage you to celebrate the little triumphs that you have along the way. We can be such sensitive souls, taking every knock back and every struggle over scenes in our books so much to heart, and yet we gloss over the good things that happen in our writing processes such as what we learn about ourselves through the struggle, or the pure joy when we FINALLY get that ...

The last few months have seen me wearing the two distinctive hats of writer and editor. While I’m co-writing a book and writing my usual columns I’m also juggling the editorship of Families First for three issues. As a freelance writer and editor, I do regularly take on both types of jobs, but the experience of having such finely delineated roles for an extended period of time has been quite fraught at times. I’ve been deep into making editorial decisions and endlessly chasing up text and pictures while all the time longing to get my teeth back into the chapters piled up on my desk. At other moments I’ve been sluggishly working through amendments on the manuscript, longing to get back to the easier, and quicker, checklist of jobs to do on the magazine. The overall process has made me reflect afresh on how one area of my working life (and indeed wider life) can inform the other. Lessons on making headlines snappy can make me look at extended writing in a more critical w...