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I recently spent several days at the beach with my daughter and her best friends. This was the spring break of their senior year, and she was only days away from turning eighteen. The days were noisy, chaotic at times, full of hair dryers, and loaded with snacks of all kinds. There were late nights of giggling, afternoons that ended with sandy feet trekking into the condo, and mornings that were quiet in the way they can only be when everyone else is asleep. And it was all gl

Silence keeps showing up in my life, waiting to be noticed. It’s where life stops performing and starts telling the truth. What I’m realizing is that it’s not the emptiness of silence, but the fullness of it that asks me to stay a little longer in the quiet. This week I’m starting a series on silence; I’m inviting you to join me. We can talk about your own quiet moments – and how they are much more than empty space between moments that matter. We’ll look at silence not as abs

Short stories don’t ask for your life. They ask for your attention. A novel wants stamina, to commit to a long marriage to an idea, a willingness to live inside a world for months or years. A short story wants something different. It wants a sharp glance. One charged moment held motionless long enough to examine. That’s its quiet demand: look closely. This is part of what makes short stories so deceptive. They appear small. Manageable. But what they ask of both writer and rea

Most days, when I sit down to write, I don’t feel especially brave or inspired. I feel ordinary. I make my tea the same way I always do. I open the same document. I reread the last paragraph I wrote and wonder—quietly, not dramatically—if I’m doing any of this right. I tell myself I’ll keep going after  I feel more certain. After I’m more confident. After I see some kind of proof that this book matters. But books, like faith, rarely offer proof in advance. I’m in the middle o

I think that most of us, beyond writers and communicators, love to tell stories. Whether it’s about stories from a time and place that’s far in the past, or making mundane occurrences sound fascinating, there’s a little bit of a storyteller in us. Storytelling is how we make sense of the world, or at least how we make sense of our small part of it. Throughout recorded history, telling stories is how we build culture, grow families, share our histories – it’s how we live. And

What do you like? I have always loved reading. The way I read has changed – some of that is due to new technology and some of it is due to new reading glasses. I can get lost in a book or a story even now. I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat outside my destination in the parking lot to listen until the end of the chapter on an audiobook. As much as I love to read, I don’t love to read everything. Science-fiction isn’t my go-to kind of book. Neither is horror, although

When I began shaping Laurel’s story, there was one character who came from real life more than any other. I even kept her name. Laurel grew up with her Aunt Ann, the woman who stepped in when Laurel’s parents couldn’t care for her. Together they figured out how to build a life, and it was Aunt Ann who pushed her to look beyond the boundaries of their small town and imagine something bigger for herself. I had an Aunt Ann, too, and I loved her dearly. She was my grandmother’s s

Now, as Laurel looked out toward the ocean across the wooden deck worn to gray, she saw the first streaks of light painting the sky. The water had begun to take on an ethereal luminescence that accompanied the changing light. A tune played through her head, and she whispered the words “here comes the sun”. Last year I wrote a short story about Laurel, who was starting over after facing a tragedy. She fled to the beach, mostly because there’s always been something calming and

We're a few days away from what is being forecast as a major winter storm, expected to have a significant impact on travel throughout the U.S. Here in Alabama, it doesn't take a very big winter storm to have a quite major impact on travel, and everything else. I was born in Alabama, about an hour from where I live now. We've lived all over the place - both the east and west coast of the U.S. and overseas on three different continents. After years of being told where we were m

Starting something new often feels like stepping into the unknown, and for me, writing my first personal blog post is exactly that. After years of writing for others, crafting stories, articles, or content tailored to someone else’s voice and needs, I'm looking at a blank page. This time is different, because I’m writing for me. I’m sharing my own thoughts, my own experiences, and hoping that someone out there will want to listen. The Fear Behind Writing for Yourself When I w