This website dedicated to those who seek stories that reach heart and mind.
I’ve grown to believe God gifted each of us, for our pleasure and for the good of others. You know the line from Chariots of Fire? Eric Little says, When I run, I feel God’s pleasure. I discovered when I write, I feel God’s pleasure.
When I was twelve, I wrote a poem about an osprey that I’d been watching from a boat while I was fishing with my brother. The osprey brought up fish effortlessly on almost every dive, while my brother and I sat waiting like frogs on a bench. Aha! When I got home, I wrote what I’d experienced. For the first time, I wrote not because my teacher assigned it. I wrote because I wanted to. I still write what I want, not what the market says I should.
I’m an English teacher by trade, and luckily, I can also teach the way I want to. Teaching is my job job, while it also supports my writing habit. It’s a great synthesis.
As I write, I grow to love my characters. If I don’t feel anything by the third of fourth date, haste la vista, I move on to create another world with other characters where I can fully immerse myself. I trust if I enjoy what I’m writing, readers will probably like it too. If they follow a character’s journey to the last page, I know I’ve succeeded. Yes, I write for myself, but ultimately, I write for other readers. God, the world, family, and society have given me much, and by writing I’m giving back.
I was raised in small towns among good people without a lot of money or status, some of them on the margins. They’d give you the shirt off their backs if you were in a pinch. Not many wrote books, but they could give you a story over the kitchen table, occasionally a homily over the back fence. I can see composites of some of these folks in my novels.
My dad was a church pastor, so he was used to speaking to a crowd. But he could also weave a story that captivated his audience of eight kids and wife around the dinner table. It would start with a twinkle of an eye, a twitch of his finger, or a startling line like, “Who laughed and jeered at him!” My love of writing was seeded and nourished around that dinner table. Every story starts with a twitch.