The Democratic Nature of Writing
If genuine, open-hearted engagement is the basic ingredient of the creative process, then we all have the capacity to move a reader.
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Writing as Sacred Journey
Marty’s Gift: Better than Publication
Never have I read a recovery memoir that was so ripping hilarious, emotionally astute, and theologically provocative. Marty was a fantastic writer. He worked on that tome (three volumes long!) for as long as I knew him—over a decade. It was one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever supported.
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Love Matters Most: My Latest Writing Credo
Love is literature’s essential ingredient. If we writers can center ourselves in our love—for the subject matter, for the writing process, for the language, for the readers—then we’ve got it made.
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Reading and Writing–For the Love of It
Perhaps we writers love to write because we love loving, and we intuit that writing exercises this capacity.
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Writing and Forgiveness
Forgiving ourselves and proceeding regardless is a fundamental part of living fully, and writing well.
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Why I Write, Part 1: Nikki Kirby
Stories weave themselves into the fabric of our lives and irrevocably change us. That my story did this for Nikki seems a miracle, or at least an act of grace. Perhaps the miracle is that I actually got to know Nikki and watch her build her own amazing story with my words in the margins.
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Moral writing? Uncool, but bring it on!
If moral writing is “unmistakably and unsentimentally rooted in love,” bring it on!
Moral writing? Uncool, but bring it on! Read More »
Broken & Beautiful: How the Light Gets In
The funny thing is that, wrong as we are, we do belong here, and wrong as our work may be, it belongs as well. Everything is cracked, and everything is beautiful.
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Undoing the Single Story
Revision insists that we reject the single story in favor of layered, complex, and contradictory stories. Just as intimacy and awareness break down our stereotypes, intimacy with and awareness of our material break apart our over-simplifications and half-truths.
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Silence: A Writer’s Source
Recently I attended a secular conversation at which the word “Source” was batted around the way religious folks use the word “God.” I find “Source” a helpful term, although perhaps not big enough to encompass my sense of divine presence. But it got me thinking: What’s a writer’s source? What grounds us and inspires us?
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