Comments on: Friday Free-for-All

By: Etta Wilson

Etta Wilson — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:31:24 +0000

It’s so good to see all these valuable insights and so good of everyone to share them. They point up the value of perspective and of time’s healing and energizing qualities. Brian, I’m glad you still had your earlier mss. I’ve just heard from an author lamenting that she had destroyed her work from several years past.

By: Robin

Robin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:20:37 +0000

My picture book characters are upbeat and always seeking new ways around life’s difficulties. I strive to emulate them! During times of struggle I have found writing to be a prop and a pillow. Prop: Pages of journaling helped me sort out complicated issues and vent emotions so I could think clearly. Pillow: like that final sigh before drifting off, I really focus on a writing project to muffle the outside turmoil.

By: Donna Marie Merritt

Donna Marie Merritt — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:54:31 +0000

I write WELL when I am calm. I write what people WANT to read when I am going through a personal crisis. My first two books of poetry were recently accepted. They are about times of turmoil. I hope my poetry can help others get through difficult times.

By: LeAnne Hardy

LeAnne Hardy — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:30:14 +0000

My own turmoils are too distracting when they are happening, but looking back on them later can give significant insights into my characters and their emotions even when the crisis is completely different from my own.

By: Brian T. Carroll

Brian T. Carroll — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:03:14 +0000

My experience has been that ideas tumble out best in turmoil, and finished product comes best when the first draft has set a spell before the rewrite. I have several novels that I began working on in the last couple of years while I wavered between agnosticism and belief (almost 40 years ago). After I made my decision for Christ, I realized they were all good stories, but needed to be written by a mature believer. I put them away for three decades. I am blessed now to have the raw originals, and blessed also to have the distance to look at them more objectively.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:35:21 +0000

The creative process works for me. It takes me out of the present and places me in another “present”. Characters do become maybe not “more real” but just “as” real than life itself. It soothes even in their conflict because with their lives there is a solution waiting. Not necessarily a perfect or lasting solution but by virtue of telling the story, there is a conclusion.

The nature of the conflict and resolution in the stories reminds me that God works wonders in this life even when all looks bleak. Capturing the good and evil, the mundane, the hilarious–it all serves its purpose in our lives and within a story we can be removed from our own chaos if it exists while still resting in the Lord’s care.

By: Lynn Dean

Lynn Dean — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:21:36 +0000

As a teenager, I wrote prolifically when I was upset. It was a way of sorting out all those raging emotions. Now I find that I draw a great deal of my raw material from the inner conflicts we all wrestle with, but I write about them more effectively after a period of calm reflection where the Lord can give me a bit of perspective.

In one recent story, my heroine had just come through a political upheaval (Civil War) that took a great personal toll. She wanted nothing more than to escape her grief and live in quiet seclusion, but the Lord kept throwing her back into the fray, forcing her to confront her own prejudices and fears, and showing her that she still had purpose.