Podcast: Weaving Faith into Your Writing with Katie Blackburn
We know that many of you listening come from some sort of a faith background—and that occasionally you want to weave that into your writing. But sometimes when we read or start to write about our faith, it can sound like we’re almost using a felt board to teach a Sunday School lesson, or we write with such heavy-handed obvious analogies to whatever biblical principle we want to convey that we end up smacking our audience with an overtly holy 2x4. We want to communicate our faith in a genuine and authentic way, and who better to talk about this with than a woman who writes about her faith from a place of humility and grace, our very own Katie Blackburn.
Katie Blackburn has been with C+C since the beginning, and she writes about her life and her faith is in a way that it’s impossible to separate the two. In addition to her writing, Katie teaches adult education at Whitworth University, and she and her husband, Alex, live in Spokane, WA with their five children. You can find all of Katie’s C+C essays here and more of her writing on her blog, Just Enough Brave, and you can follow along with her observations about motherhood, friendship, and faith on her Instagram account.
Resources we talked about:
Our Exhale podcast with Katie on resting seasons is here.
We referenced Katie’s essay “Quite the Collection” when we talk about lightening up a faith message, and one on her personal blog called “Glue in the Cracks.”
A few faith writers that Katie enjoys: Jen Wilkin, Emily Jensen and Laura Wifler at Risen Motherhood, Shauna Niequist… and our own April Hoss, of course.
Our prompt Katie has for you:
Katie nabbed this from Jeremy Writebol: Choose one of the attributes of God and write 300-500 words on how that attribute influences your motherhood journey. As you try this, you will find it hard. Keep going anyway.
A submission idea Katie has for you:
Coffee + Crumbs, of course! (We’ll open in the Spring!) In the faith-specific scene, Katie recommends both Risen Motherhood and Deeply Rooted as places to land faith-based writing.
A quote Katie shared:
“Everything you write is either going to obscure or illuminate the character of God.” -- Jen Wilkin
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