All of the desire for empowerment and the encouragement and the love of the arts and the desire to help people find and celebrate their true self come to life for me through words.
I use words to try to bring these things to others.
The hymn texts I’ve written are often empowering ones. They deal with such things as fear, grief, loneliness, mental illness, injustice, and seek to work through the experience and give hope. (I also write joyful ones, but they, too, generally build to a call for justice and a focus on hope.)
My fiction often, though not always, includes some aspect of the arts, either as a major focus or as a background. My writing for adults often has main characters who are over the age of fifty, as I want to show that older adults can have vibrant, novel-worthy lives.
I also use words to teach. Although I thought about being a teacher when I was growing up, I followed a different career path. However, as my mother often said, we are all teachers. I love to teach, to help someone open up to a new way of seeing or doing or thinking about something. I have often used my blog posts as teaching tools. Some of that creeps into my novels, as well, although I work hard to guard against being didactic.
Empowering, encouraging, teaching, sharing my love of the arts, helping people grow into a full expression of their true self – I hope my words can, in some small way, do that.
Here are a couple of past blog posts about words:
Words and Pictures and Reinventing Oneself: https://www.bethstilborn.com/words-and-pictures-and-reinventing-oneself/
Music and Words are Powerful Things: https://www.bethstilborn.com/music-and-words-are-powerful-things/
A blog post about my writing process:
https://www.bethstilborn.com/the-writing-process-blog-hop/
And some little bits of writing!
The Missing Fourth: https://www.bethstilborn.com/the-missing-fourth-story-contest-entry/
No Deer This Year? Oh Dear! https://www.bethstilborn.com/no-deer-this-year-holiday-story-contest-entry/
Scaredy Cat: https://www.bethstilborn.com/scaredy-cat-susanna-hills-halloweensie-contest/
New Skates, Please! https://www.bethstilborn.com/susanna-leonard-hills-holiday-writing-contest/
Ghoul Stuff – A Halloweensie Story: https://www.bethstilborn.com/ghoul-stuff-a-halloweensie-story/