Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

writing

The one thing you don't need to do to call yourself a writer {and 3 things you do!}

I’m honored to be a guest at Ritty’s Adventures in Writing today.

“When do you put ‘writer’ on your business card?”

I was about to teach a workshop at a writers conference when a woman in the front row asked me this question. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly, so I asked her to repeat it.

It seemed an easy question to answer, and I gave her an easy response. But the question is more complicated than I made it. My own writing journey testifies to this. I’ve had business cards that say “writer, editor and speaker” on them for years, but that doesn’t mean I always believe I’m any of those things.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

In college, I was a mass communication major. We liked to joke that we were getting a B.S. in B.S. (For the record, I have a B.A.) I didn’t put a lot of thought into my major. I just knew that I liked to write. I took my first creative writing classes in college (and received my first soul-crushing critiques). But college is also where I began to see myself as a writer. And try as I might, I couldn’t deny it.

College is also where I heard a statement about writing that has stuck with me for more than a decade. Jane Friedman, a colleague at my college newspaper who has gone on to be an influential voice in the publishing and writing world offering countless words of wisdom to writers, spoke to a group about her self-discovery as a writer.

She said, “I don’t want to be a writer. I am a writer.”

Powerful stuff.

Read the rest here.

Saturday smiles: Words and heroes edition

A book sale with 40,000 used books. Sounds delightful, right? And, oh, it was. For the most part. Somewhat overwhelming, but we walked away with a box of books for $15. If we go back today, it’s $10 a box, but that might be excessive. (As if buying a box of books when you haven’t fully unpacked the boxes of books in your new house isn’t already excessive. Don’t judge us. We’re book nerds.)

Also, this.

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I got copies of the Thriving Family edition in which my first of three articles appears. Name in print=giddiness. (If you get the magazine, I’m on page 27.)

Tomorrow, Phil and I are heading to Philly to catch a Phillies game so he can cross another stadium off his list and buy a shirt to add to his collection. Last night he informed me that the new interim manager of the Phillies is Ryne Sandburg. (SHRIEK!) Because the only thing that could make sitting in a stadium watching a baseball game between two teams you care nothing about is sitting in the same stadium as one of your childhood baseball heroes. I mean, he won’t know I’m there or anything, but that might be enough reason to wear a Cubs shirt and shout obnoxiously. (Of course, if you know me at all, you’ll know that either of those things would bring WAY too much attention to me so it won’t happen.)

And in the last two days, I’ve seen 6 hot air balloons in the sky. I love hot air balloons.

We’re headed to a missions aviation fair today at a local airport. Looking forward to seeing the kids’ reactions to planes up close.