life + prayer = writing

The awareness that for me there’s an intricate connection between writing and life was a pivotal moment in my faith journey. 

But I often need reminding!

When I say connection, I’m not talking about balancing the hours of the day, or how to handle interruptions, or the necessity to often shift gears, or even my response to family demands. 

Certainly, all of those are skills and values that I’ve learned over the years. And how I react to “life” makes an enormous difference to the quality and the quantity of my writing. That is true. And for someone working out of a home office perhaps doubly so.

Yet there’s a weaving from my writing to my life and from my life to my writing—a back and forth flow, that is both indisputable and difficult to describe.

I’ve written here about my latest book project, the biography of Father Stanley Rother, Oklahoma martyr.  You can see some specific blog entries and read more about it here, here, and here.

And—you will be hearing a LOT more about the book and about Father Stanley’s story in the next few months, because it is in the final stages of production (woo hoo!) with a publication date of September 2015!

What you may not know is that I consider this book somewhat of a miracle, or at the very least, full of Divine interventions.

During the year that (under contract) I agreed to complete the book manuscript—and the six-month extension I requested, the “events” of my life included:

• ·      Multiple stays at the hospital with and for my dad and countless doctor visits as his health issues became more and more complicated;
• ·      The decline and death of my close friend and fellow writer Carrie Swearingen;
• ·      The diagnosis of brain cancer and death of my best friend and Camino de Santiago partner Pat Stankus—as well as
• ·      The births of THREE glorious grandchildren

That’s a lot of emotions, all intense ones – and to my weird, creative temperament—all energy sucking emotions. Or is there any other kind?!

There was one point as I saw my deadline looming closer and closer when I remember saying to a close friend, “I am certain that I was meant to write the biography of Father Stanley right now… so what is God telling me by what is happening in my life?  I honestly have no time, let alone any energy, to actually complete this book!”

My friend Patricia was silent for a moment, before replying, “María, it’s like prayer. You have to trust that the events of your life are meant to be incorporated into your writing, into the telling of Father Stanley’s story. Don’t separate the two… let one guide you to the other.”

That’s how I got from this:

To this!

you can pre-order the book on Amazon by clicking here