Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “writers”
How Do You Use Awards to Define Yourself? @bethvogt The first award I ever won was for an elementary school spelling bee. I remember standing in a line with my classmates against the chalkboard. Waiting my turn as the teacher called out different words. Silently spelling my classmates words. Concentrating, letter by letter, as I spelled the word I was …
Someone came up to me the other day and said, “I didn’t know you were an author!” I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.” Whenever someone says something like this to me, I pause and remember I’m living my dream. This crazy, challenging, some-days-I’m-not-sure-I can-do-it career? It’s my childhood dream come true. And sometimes, I forget it all started because …
We all have different goals. Different dreams. Different opportunities. But no matter what we’re aiming for, we all hope to succeed. I’ve attended lots of writers conferences in years past. (Not lately. It’s been more about my daughter’s volleyball tournaments — and I’m okay with that.) When I’m with writers, we talk about the books we’re writing. The books we …
I like it when successful people talk about their failures. Take, for example, when another writer shares how many times their manuscript was rejected before they landed a contract. (The Help by Kathryn Stockett was rejected 60 times.) Or when a pro athlete shares his struggles. (6’7″ NBA pro Paul Pierce was cut from the varsity team in high school …
Whatever an artist creates, it is an echo of their life. When a reader turns the pages of one of my novels, if she listens closely, she’ll hear whispers of my life escaping from between the lines. Yes, I’ve plotted fictional characters facing obstacles that I placed in a specific order leading to “the end” of my design. But often, …
Brokenness fascinates me. It seems the theme of brokenness intrigues a lot of people — a lot of writers, to be specific. Elisa Morgan wrote about it in her book The Beauty of Broken. Then there’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Henry T. Blackaby’s Brokenness: The Heart God Revives; Finding God’s Blessings in Brokenness by Charles Stanley; and of course Ann Voskamp’s best-selling …
As a writer, I sometimes focus on the work of it all. Writing the story synopsis. Developing the characters. Putting the fast draft down on the page, scene by scene. And then rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Somewhere along the way from synopsis to rewrite-rewrite-rewrite, I forget that, at the beginning, I fell in love with the story and the characters. I …
“Mom! Don’t take his picture!” I was walking around Breckenridge, CO with my husband and 16-year-old daughter. I had one camera and my daughter had another as we captured images of the town. But my daughter whispered “Don’t!” when I stopped to photograph the painter standing near a bridge, intent on the hanging basket of multicolored flowers. How could I …
I’m counting my blessings tonight. And because I just spent 4 days in Nashville at the 2016 American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) Conference, those blessings have names like Rachel and Susie and Cathy and Kristy and Roxanne and Alena and Lisa and Dee … and oh, the list goes on. My heart overflows with gratitude because I spent time with my …
There’s a lot of truth packed into today’s quote. Some people are going to like you. Some people aren’t. It’s as simple … and as challenging … as that. Another way to put it? You can’t please everybody. But, oh, don’t we try sometimes? You know what finally convinced me that some people will like me and some people …
