I have been writing for nearly as long as I can remember. I wrote my first real story at the age of 5, which was entitled “Suzy the Butterfly” and told the story of a young girl’s birthday party and the butterfly she finds in her garden. From there, I wrote a lot of similar page-long masterpieces like “Clara’s New Baby Sister” and “The Meadow Twins.” When I was a little bit older, I started trying to write chapter books, typically about families and heavily inspired by Sarah Maxwell’s Moody Family series. I never made it past the first chapter or two, though.

Fast forward another few years, when I was around 11, and I was super into Adventures in Odyssey. Writing fanfiction was a fun outlet to express my enjoyment of the fandom and practice my creative writing. This was the majority of my writing for a couple years, until I decided to try my hand at writing longer works again. I started a few different novels but didn’t make it very far with most of them, except for one, titled Daniel’s Journey, which I finished drafting when I was 14. This 25K-word novella followed the story of Daniel Darrow, a young man who had aged out of foster care and spent some time in prison for pickpocketing, as he works to rebuild his life and finds Jesus. Looking back, the story was a little cheesy, but it was my first big writing accomplishment and was great practice for where I am now. Writing got put on the back burner for most of high school, with just some occasional work on some short stories, fanfictions, or attempts at beginning editing Daniel’s Journey.

Last year, after rediscovering my love for writing through a college composition class, I decided to take my writing seriously again. I decided to write something for the middle grade audience, since I think there’s a great need for more well-written, God-honoring middle grade fiction. That is when the idea for The Sullivan Six was born. I joined King’s Daughters Writing Camp that fall, hoping to make more connections, and heard of their Peace anthology. I realized that one of those random short stories I began writing in the last few years, “I Heard the Bells,” worked perfectly with the theme of peace, and I got to work finishing and polishing it. I was happy to finally get it published in the anthology this February! 

It is probably evident to you now that writing has always been an important part of my life! It is only recently, though, as I have considered publishing and what direction I want to take with my writing that I have been thinking deeper about why I write. What do I want the purpose of my stories to be? That is what I am going to be sharing about today! I will be explaining the top three reasons why I write. 

First of all, I write to better understand others and bring understanding and awareness to different life circumstances. This is something that has always been important to me in my writing; in fact, even in the stories I wrote when I was really young, a lot of my characters were orphans, lived in different parts of the world, or otherwise just had lives very different from my own. Currently, some topics I am really passionate about bringing awareness to are foster care, adoption, and disability/chronic illness/neurodivergence. In my published short story, “I Heard the Bells,” the main character, a young military veteran, is struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. In The Sullivan Six, the four Sullivan children were all adopted from foster care, and most of them have a chronic illness/disability (Type 1 Diabetes, dyslexia, dyspraxia, epilepsy), and another main character is Deaf and communicates with American Sign Language. I try to make this a natural part of the story, not sugar-coating the hardships of foster care or the details of the characters’ disabilities or just using it as a plot device, but showing what the lives of a foster child or someone with that disability would really be like. My goal is to foster empathy and awareness in others. 

The reason why I chose to write a middle grade novel specifically is because I want to give others the kinds of stories I would have wanted to read when I was younger. There just doesn’t seem to be enough well-written, God-honoring middle grade fiction out there. I was a voracious reader as a child and enjoyed a wide variety of books throughout the years, but I sometimes wished for more good Christian fiction, especially in my middle grade and young adult years. Also, as a middle-grade reader, I had somewhat niche interests. Of course I did enjoy your typical mystery novel or horse story, but I also enjoyed learning about some of the topics I mentioned previously. I wanted stories that could teach me something or help me understand the perspectives of others better. Most importantly, though, I wanted stories that were clean and Christianity was actually part of the story, not in an overly preachy way, but woven in naturally. That is what I aim to do with my stories. 

The final reason I will write about today is that I write to point readers to Jesus Christ in all situations. We need more fiction that shows readers that no matter what they are going through, Jesus is with them. We need fiction that shows readers that the Gospel is the solution to every problem. I have read many Christian books, especially middle grade, that are overly preachy, cheesy, or just don’t really reflect real life. While I think there is a place for these happy-go-lucky kind of stories, I also believe that we are doing children, and adults, too, a great disservice if we don’t give them stories that tackle difficult subjects with grace and truth. I don’t mean writing stories that are dark and hopeless, but writing stories that handle real-life situations by showing the hope of Christ. People aren’t perfect, life isn’t perfect, and kids need stories that reflect that. They need to see a character struggling with the same sins they are struggling with, or dealing with the grief they are dealing with, or whatever the situation may be, and seeing how they can overcome that through Christ. While listening to the audiobook of Jared C. Wilson’s The Storied Life, one part that really struck me was when he talked about Philippians 4:8. Some writers may read that verse and stop at the parts about dwelling on what is lovely or pure, thinking we should only write about what is perfect. However, the verse also says to dwell on what is “true.” Writing a story that whitewashes life isn’t true; however, writing about characters going through real-life situations and struggles but pointing readers to the ultimate truth of the Gospel through that, is. We are portraying the truth best when the whole truth is on display; if it weren’t for our imperfections, we wouldn’t need God’s grace! God’s light and grace shines brightest through the darkness (of course, this doesn’t mean dwelling on the darkness, as we should be dwelling on hope and truth, but it also means not ignoring it). Again, there are a place for light-hearted, simple stories, but we also need the stories that show that God’s grace applies to every situation. This is the message I want to convey to my readers. Yes, war and PTSD are messy. Yes, foster care is messy. Yes, chronic illness is messy. But God can work through all of those situations, and His grace is sufficient. If my readers only take one thing away from my writing, that is what I would want it to be: look to God in every situation. 

If you have made it to the end of the post, thank you for reading; I know this was a bit longer than usual! If you are a writer, did you identify with any of these reasons for writing? What are your own reasons for writing? Let me know in the comments! I will be back again next Monday with a book review!