By Jaime Jo Wright, @jaimejowright
Dear Writer,
I know that now is a difficult time for you to write. While fiction is often an escape from reality, sometimes reality barrels down on us with the audacity of a brazen hurricane and we simply cannot escape. It is beyond impossible to find creative flow when the very breath has been stolen from your soul. Or it’s horrifying to try to compose words to minister to someone else, when you can barely push a prayer past your trembling lips.
I want you to know that you are not alone. As life disables even our most precious gifts, you are not sequestered on an island, unseen, unloved, or untouched. Expectations dominate your thoughts—whether they are self-imposed, editorially imposed, or simply just that: an imposition. The reality is the imposition is very persistent and it leaves you (or us) feeling bereft of spirit. But you are not bereft of strength.
No.
The strength of words is the healing elements that soothe like a cooling balm on a burn. While the words may be hard to find, they are there. We are there.
We are a community of writers. We understand in a way no one else will, or can, simply because we too have found that solitary island of grief, or heartache, or brokenness, or the stealing of words that leave pages blank, books unwritten, words unpenned. We understand what it is like to whip your writerly self into a bleeding wound, convinced we are worthless, helpless, hopeless. We understand the way our souls crave to pour onto the page the emotion that is boiling in our hearts, and yet, that pouring can only come with the wasting of ourselves, and that—that is too painful to comprehend, let alone follow through with. We are a community of writers who understand that grief and brokenness murder the joy of creativity, leaving a victim in its wake, with piles of letters beside them that cannot form into coherent thoughts.
No.
You are not alone. You never were alone, even though you feel that way. Your words were never worthless, or hopeless, or pointless. Your scribblings weren’t for naught and your thoughts to page weren’t a waste of a moment. For mine felt like that once. Mine were that once. Mine still are today. Or so I feel.
You see, crafters of words are drafters of literary musical notes. They rise in crescendo and then descend into a low cadence of minor keys. But those minor keys are where beauty erupts, and melody becomes victorious. Those low notes of despair are where God begins to write on your soul, composing a symphony of words and notes that later will become your story. Your message. His message.
Today you sit alone. Tears may be your only companion. A deep ache in your gut is your only sense of hunger. Longing for peace might be your only glimmer on the horizon. And yet, there is purpose in your journey. Faith in what He will write on your story, which will become a story, and then will emerge into beautiful script on a page.
No, dear writer. You were never alone in your brokenness. We are there too. Beside you. We will share your pain. For sometimes words simply fall far short.
In His Grip,
One writer to another.
On the Cliffs of Foxglove Manor
1885.
Adria Fontaine has been sent to recover goods her father pirated on the Great Lakes during the war. But when she arrives at Foxglove Manor–a stone house on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior–Adria senses wickedness hovering over the property. The mistress of Foxglove is an eccentric and seemingly cruel old woman who has filled her house with dangerous secrets, ones that may cost Adria her life.
Present day.
Kailey Gibson is a new nurse’s aide at a senior home in a renovated old stone manor. Kidnapped as a child, she has nothing but locked-up memories of secrets and death, overshadowed by the chilling promise from her abductors that they would return. When the residents of Foxglove start sharing stories of whispers in the night, hidden treasure, and a love willing to kill, it becomes clear this home is far from a haven. She’ll have to risk it all to banish the past’s demons, including her own.
Jaime Jo Wright (www.jaimewrightbooks.com) is the author of six novels, including Christy Award winner The House on Foster Hill and Christy Award Finalist Echoes Among the Stones. She’s also the Publishers Weekly and ECPA bestselling author of two novellas. Jaime lives in Wisconsin with her cat named Foo; her husband, Cap’n Hook; and their littles, Peter Pan and CoCo. To learn more, visit www.jaimewrightbooks.com.