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Writing About the 1980s Without Nostalgia
When I say I write from moral curiosity, I mean that I ask, What did it really feel like to live there, then? Nostalgia smooths edges and softens harm. Memory, when handled honestly, does the opposite. Jesus tells us that “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), and that includes the truth of our own histories. Healing begins when we stop rewriting the past to make it comfortable.
Finding God Between the Lines
Our God is paradoxical. He speaks through thunder and storms, earthquakes and fire, yet He also speaks through stillness and quiet. Scripture shows a God who parts seas and stills hearts, who roars in whirlwinds and whispers in caves. In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah is weary, afraid, and ready to abandon his calling. God comes to him first in a powerful wind, then an earthquake, then fire. Yet Scripture tells us that “the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper” (v.12). God reveals that, despite His immense power, He often meets us most personally in quietness, in still moments of prayer, reflection, and listening.
What Fiction Can Do That Facts Can’t
That experience taught me something important: fiction can speak truths to us that headlines cannot. Storytelling creates encounter, not argument. It reaches us on a visceral, emotional level rather than a purely intellectual one. Narrative allows readers to inhabit another life from the inside.
Writing Through Compassion Fatigue
Writing about my characters’ pain and trials isn’t always easy. I often find it difficult to separate my own emotions and struggles from theirs. While writing can be cathartic, there are seasons when exploring grief or injustice feels like carrying someone else’s cross. I become weary and depleted, and I need time to rest, reflect, and heal.
Why Setting Matters: The Sacredness of Place
The geography of our lives and stories is deeply intertwined. People are shaped by the soil beneath their feet.
Redemptive Realism: When Faith Meets Fiction
My writing centers on what I call Redemptive Realism: the belief that truth and grace are inseparable, and that fiction can confront darkness honestly while still ending in light.
Writing Memory: How the Past Refuses to Stay Silent
Memory is like an old photograph that never fully fades. Even as the colors soften and details blur, the image keeps returning, asking to be seen again. Memories surface at unexpected moments, carrying joy or sorrow, reminding us of who we were and who we have become. They do not remain in the past. They speak into the present.
Fiction That Faces the Dark but Ends in Light
Consequence is a word with weight.
Often, we think of consequence only as punishment or fallout, something negative that follows a poor choice. But when I write Stories of Consequence, I’m drawing on another meaning entirely. Here, consequence means significance. Weight. Importance. I write stories that matter because they grapple honestly with darkness while still testifying to the reality of light made possible through God’s grace.
The Quiet Power of Ordinary Lives
When I was young, my dad died from cancer and left us with very little—no life insurance payout, no financial cushion. The years that followed were hard. Harder than I knew how to name at the time.
Why I Write About Broken Things
My life has been shaped by imperfection and brokenness.
I have known abuse within my family (excluding my father), the loss of my dad to cancer, years of childhood bullying, and the ache of loving people who could not love me back. Because of this, I have always been suspicious of stories that offer cheap hope. The stories that ring truest to me are the ones that bear scars—stories that acknowledge how long healing can take, how costly grace can be, and how endurance is often quiet and unseen.
There is a certain beauty in flaws and scars, in chipped paint and frayed edges. They speak of time, survival, and persistence. Scripture reminds us that God’s power is most clearly displayed not in strength, but in weakness. The apostle Paul pleaded with God for deliverance from what he called his “thorn in the flesh,” and God replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Grace does not work on our timeline, and it is never cheap—but it is always sufficient. God does not waste brokenness. He redeems it.