How do we grow to become writers who both write the truth and write it beautifully? Some of the steps are quite simple to implement, but they also come with aged wisdom and years of practice.

Maybe writers serve an audience best when we don’t think about that audience as much as people say we should.

Have you ever felt like motherhood completely swallowed you whole? Like your identity, life, and passions all evaporated? I did, and as I neglected myself, I slowly fell apart. Yet God led me to stories, and used them to piece my heart back together.

The writers who know their words—just like the grass of the field—won’t last forever will be able to write better words.

Slowness to speak isn’t just for our benefit, but for all those who will hear our words—and words usually only grow wiser with time.

Giving space for our children's imagination requires our patience. Here's how God has helped me learn to slow down and give my little ones the space to imagine—and how that's helped my own imagination in the process.

Though writing in itself is often a solitary work, it shouldn’t be done in isolation. As writers, we need a team of people to sharpen, encourage, carry, and guide us. I don’t mean a hired team to run your social media accounts, manage your website, or reply to comments. I mean friends and mentors, supporters, and loving editors. We need these kinds of people in our corner to keep us accountable, lift up our gaze, and grow us in our craft. 

When we feel that fire inside of us, we need to tame it with a pause. As James wrote to the dispersed Christians, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19–20 ESV). How can we practice being slow to speak and quick to hear? By pausing, studying, and listening.

What does it mean to trust God when it seems he’s dealt scarcely with us? In my scarcity mindset, I became much like the dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

As writers, we endure many deaths in order to grow. Our “darlings” fall before our eyes as editors cut them from our work—from beloved words to entire paragraphs we labored over. This is the process of the outer bark and old leaves wilting away. But as writers, we can trust these deaths will sprout growth too—not just in our writing, but in our lives too.

We all have stories. Some are meant to be shared to encourage and give voice to others’ stories. But some are not meant to be proclaimed on the internet. There is power in a picture and strength behind a story, but sometimes it’s more important to protect those I love, including myself. Here’s how we can discern the difference.

Patience is a virtue I am continually chipping away at. In a similar way to these ordinary tasks, I’m learning to be slow and patient with my words as well. And I find these two pictures of patience from my husband to be a helpful reminder of what that patience looks like.

There’s value in taking time to re-evaluate and ponder what someone’s words could have meant before criticizing them. We should listen to a person’s story before voicing our counsel, and hear what others may have to offer for advice first.