To Write or Not to Write: Susan King
Over the years, Susan King continues to be one of the most frequently requested conference speakers within the Wordsowers community. We are blessed that once again, she will be joining us. This year, her workshops include: Making it Look Easy – Achieving Excellent Style in any Genre, and Turning Personal Experience into a Devotional Message.
Susan King: For over 23 years, Associate Editor Susan King has served at The Upper Room, a daily-devotional magazine that reaches millions of readers in more than 100 countries. One of her greatest joys has been representing The Upper Room every year at several of 23 different Christian writers’ conferences in the U.S. and Canada. Two years ago, she retired from 27 years of teaching English and feature-writing classes—most recently for Lipscomb University but also for Biola University and Abilene Christian University. Formerly, she served as writer, book editor, and radio-program producer/on-air talent for The Institute of Scriptural Psychology; wrote magazine features as a freelance writer; and functioned as a seminar facilitator in leadership and group dynamics.
Susan lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband Joe. Her three adult children live in three different states, and she is delighted that one of them still lives in Franklin—with his wife and Susan and Joe’s two young grandsons.
If you were at a book event and someone asked you, “Why do you write?” what would you say? At the risk of using a cliché, I can’t NOT write. I am a very opinionated person and give much critical thinking in arriving at my opinions so I believe that others can benefit from reading those opinions. Thus, I write feature articles (rather than fiction—probably because fiction may communicate the same thing but does so way too subtly!)
Share a tidbit that has helped you in writing and/or marketing. Early on, the advice to start out with magazine writing rather than clinging doggedly to writing a book made all the difference for me.
Do you ever struggle with writer’s block and if so, how do you overcome? Everyone struggles with this at some time or another. The best way for me is to freewrite/brainstorm. With the former, you put the topic at the top of the page and then write everything that comes into your mind for 10-15 minutes, non-stop, with no editing/correcting/hesitation. With the latter, the information is in the form of a list rather than one long paragraph. Both of these tend to overcome the tyranny of the blank page/computer screen and not only help me to overcome writer’s block but also give me ideas on the topic that I might not have explored before.