Writing

Writing My Way Back to God

I was a freshman in college when I first started keeping a prayer journal. Merging my love for writing with my love for God was exactly what I needed to take my faith to another level. My prayer journal became a collection of love letters to God. My prayers became poetry and suddenly God was everything and everywhere. God was a post-workout smoothie. God was the sun kissing my brown skin when I would lie on the quad reading. Once on New Year’s Eve, I felt God with me on the dance floor of a night club.

Prayer has not made me immune to crises of faith. These crises usually happen when so-called Christians are being racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic in Jesus’ name. I stop going to church and I start questioning everything – until I remember the God I fell in love with so many years ago.

But this time things are different.

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Author Q&A with A.S. Mackey

As a Christian, I strive to have childlike faith in God, but the book The Edge of Everywhen by A.S. Mackey reminds me that sometimes even children can struggle to believe in the goodness of God when times are tough. But this novel offers a message of hope that will prove particularly poignant for writers and readers who believe words can change lives.

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Could the Enneagram help you be a better writer?

Originally published May 31, 2020

Could the Enneagram help you be a better writer?

I started asking myself this question earlier this year as I began to delve into this ancient personality typing system that has seen a resurgence of popularity and been thrust in the mainstream in the past few years.

The Enneagram teaches that there are nine different personality styles in the world. Each type has a distinct worldview and underlying motivation that affects how that type thinks, feels, and behaves.

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This Journaling Practice Could Change Your Life

The first time I felt like a real writer I was 19 years old.

I wrote a news story about an affordable housing initiative, pitched it to a newspaper in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and that paper published my article.

I had my first clip and I felt legit.

But these days I feel more like a writer than I ever have before and it has nothing to do with my byline, with this blog, or with the book I’m working on.

These days I feel more like a writer than I ever have because of my new journaling practice.

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3 Things You Should Know About Hybrid Publishing

When it comes book publishing, we often think we only have two options – work for years and years to land a literary agent and a book deal with a traditional publisher or strike out on our own and try our hand at self-publishing. But there is another way to get your work into the world and that’s through hybrid publishing.

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