February 13, 2026
Establishing a Writing Life
Over the past three years, I have collected many suggestions and expert opinions about how to make a writing life. Almost everyone prioritizes consistency over everything else. Write every day. Find a specific spot to write in. Determine a time that works best for you. Write a certain number of words every day. Write for a consistent length of time every day.
They differ on the details, of course. Some say you should create a space at home to write, while others favor coffee shops and bookstores. Some write in the morning, others in the afternoon or evening. Some write 500 words a day; some write 4,000. Some write with music, while others opt for silence, and still others choose the ambient noise of a public space. Some say you should block off two or three hours to write, but others say you can write for shorter lengths of time, spread out over the course of a day.
In the end, it is almost always suggested that you should determine your habits and then stick to them. Plug along steadily, doing the same thing in the same ways every day.
I do not work that way.
If I am consistent in anything, it’s in being inconsistent. I write at different times and in different spots. Sometimes I choose silence over noise; sometimes I don’t. Some days I write for three hours; some days I write for thirty minutes. One day I revise a couple of chapters in my novel, but the next, I write a short story. Or I take notes on a new project. Or I write a blog post. Some days the words come easily and I complete a task in minutes. Some days the words barely come at all, and I stare at the blinking cursor for hours.
Some days I choose golf over writing.
I wonder whether I should work on consistency. Maybe I should obey the experts. After all, I trust them to know what they are talking about. They’re experts for a reason.
It’s just that at different times in my life, I have found that I work better when I stop trying to change myself. I accept myself as I am, and then things fall into place. For example, I stopped expecting myself to adopt exercise as a new habit. I focused instead on changing my eating habits in order to lose weight, and I have to date lost over ninety pounds. Another example: I relinquished my desire to finish every book I start, and now I give it a good run, but if I find myself dreading it, I put it in my stack of books to sell. In short, I pick my battles. I decide on my priority, and then I put my efforts into making changes that will support it.
The writing experts might say I am not making writing my priority. They could be right. I am not as prolific as I would like to be, and perhaps I could achieve prolificness if I became more consistent in my writing habits. So for the time being, I will continue to vary my places and times of writing, but I will set an amount to accomplish every day. Starting small is a good idea, so I will write 1000 words a day. I can build one consistent habit if I put my mind to it.
Here’s to writing on the daily.
Five hundred words down, five hundred to go.
As always, keep the ink flowing.
February 7, 2026
Joining a Writing Group
A couple weeks ago, I joined a Christian writers’ group for the first time. They were warm and welcoming, and I was encouraged by the fact that more than one had self-published multiple books. While I prefer traditional publishing, I feel at home with this group. These are people who take writing seriously.
I have written several pieces, but no Christian fiction, until now. The group’s upcoming critique session lit a fire under me last week, and I began a novel I’m tentatively calling The Scales from My Eyes. In it, a college literature and writing professor will learn about Jesus and about healing her marriage from an elderly blind man to whom she volunteers to read. I have 1200 words for review by the group. I am eager to hear what they think.
Some people might think that writing is a solitary activity, and to some extent it is. Sitting down to get words on the page is something I do alone. However, I need others to bounce ideas off of and to read my work for the purpose of giving feedback. In short, I need beta readers before my audience sees a finished work. Writers need a writing community. That’s what I had with my cohort at Wilkes University. And now that my program at Wilkes is completed, I am seeking local writing groups. (That’s not to say that I don’t have my cohort anymore. We are keeping in touch with each other and encouraging each other to keep writing and revising, to submit our work, to collect rejections, and to work toward publication.)
I found two writing groups on the website for the Nebraska Writers Guild. One is, of course, the Christian writers’ group. The other is a group that is open to all genres. I will share my secular writing with the second group. For this first meeting, I just joined in as I could. I appreciated the encouragement that the writers gave each other, identifying first what was working well in their pieces and then making suggestions or asking questions for clarification. As a group, they write across several different genres. Some specialize in one or two. Others dabble in many.
I look forward to reading their writing and sharing my own. I am considering sharing a piece that I wrote several months ago about a little girl whose dad goes missing from a Barnes and Noble. The piece might be a short story. It might be a novella. It might be a novel. I don’t know yet. The expectation within the group is that we submit questions along with our writing so that the others know what sort of help we are seeking. I might ask about the form this story should take. Maybe not.
I think what excites me more than anything is the possibility. I am moving forward on this path toward publication, but I don’t know what I will encounter on the way. I’ll likely find a lot of rejections, but each one will bring me closer to an acceptance. Until that time, I have a lot of questions. Which piece will be the first one I publish? How big will my first publication be? What will authorship look like for me? Those are just the tip of the iceberg. And until I have the answers, I’m going to enjoy every minute of the journey.
So here’s to writing every day. Here’s to reading deeply and widely. Here’s to loving this life. I hope you find something in my writing that resonates with you. If so, keep visiting this site. And, as always, keep the ink flowing.
February 5, 2026
My Faith and Writing Journey
Several years ago, I was a high school English teacher who thought of herself as great–one of the very best, in fact. I was prideful. I was also distant from God. I wasn’t developing my relationship with Him at all. I was too busy working and being a beloved teacher. As hard as I worked, however, I felt I had reached my peak as an educator, and I was ready to achieve new accolades. Rather than seek God’s will for me, I was relying on my own skills and talents to forge a new path to success.
I applied to a doctoral program at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. I didn’t get in.
I applied to a master’s degree program at the University of Nebraska Omaha. I didn’t get into that program, either.
I tried to earn a National Board Certification. I failed at that as well.
By this time, I was thoroughly beaten down and depressed. In my despair, I turned to God. I began to pray again. I asked to be shown His path for me. I relinquished my pride and my control over my life. (As if I had any control over it!) And after a few years, He led me to a new venture: creative writing. He helped me step out of my comfort zone to take a class in creative writing. And then I won a contest with my first short story written in that class. I remember praying in the car after the Creative Writing Forum where it was announced that I won. I asked God if this was the path He wanted me to take, and I said I thought that it was and that I would continue moving forward with it.
Now I am confident that I am where He wants me to be. I have an MFA in creative writing, and I am writing and revising every day. I will be a published writer one day. I am assured that God will lead me toward that goal. As a response to His work in my life, I am venturing into writing Christian fiction. My first foray into that genre is the beginning of a novel tentatively titled But Now I See.
Keep an eye out for my name on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. And as always, keep the ink flowing.
Kimberly Muta Writes 