Today on Writer Wednesday we welcome Jill Eileen Smith, author of When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams.
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Jill
Writer Wednesday with Jill Eileen Smith: Where Writers Write
My writing area is ever-changing. For years I wrote in a little area off the family room that used to be a wet bar (previous owners), then a play storage room, then my messy office. I spent a lot of time writing on a desktop there. (All of those photos are Idea Boards for books in progress at the time.) Now I use Scrivener to keep characters and their photos straight.
When our kids moved out, I took one of the bedrooms and made it my office. We painted and put in new carpet, and I moved in with all of my scattered writing paraphernalia. Sometimes I actually write here.
When I gave my desktop to one of my kids, however, I ended up exclusively with a laptop, so now my office is “wherever.”
My normal place to begin writing is at the kitchen table, but Tiger (our cat) likes to sit on my lap there and he has an uncanny way of messing with the keys as I’m typing. (He has to hold my thumb with his paw.) Eventually, I set him beside me in his own chair, and he’ll often settle down or go look outside and watch the squirrels play.
When I get tired of sitting up in a straight chair, I move to either the couch or the recliner in our family room. You would think this would be my first choice because what sounds more comfortable than a recliner? Unfortunately, my back requires good posture and movement, thus my ever-moving office.
I’m working on three projects this year, promoting two new releases, and editing next year’s release. I haven’t had time to write outside as I sometimes do in the summer, but it’s been too hot anyway.
I write biblical fiction and am working on Miriam’s story for Revell and Samson’s mother for Guideposts along with the second nonfiction on Bible women, which follows When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams, the book featured here. When Life came out in February 2019. This book delves into the lives of twelve Old Testament women and applies their lives to our lives today. Though centuries may separate us, human nature doesn’t change and many of their struggles are ours as well. When Life explores some of their deepest trials and carries the tone of a memoir in some of the application.
At heart, I’m a novelist, and I do enjoy studying each new character. Setting up the story and imagining how things might have been is much easier than actually putting the words on the page. (First drafts are not my favorite.) But everything else gets a little easier after that.
Right now I’m reading research materials for Samson’s mother while I let the next nonfiction sit for a week or two. One thing about writing…it is never dull. Where I actually type the words may change, but eventually, they do end up written. And I love “having written!”
Jill Eileen Smith is the bestselling, award-winning author of the Wives of King David, the Wives of the Patriarchs, Daughters of the Promised Land, the Loves of King Solomon series, The Heart of a King, and the nonfiction When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams. Her research has taken her from the Bible to Israel, and she particularly enjoys learning how women lived in Old Testament times. Jill lives with her family in southeast Michigan.
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More about When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams
Life is full of twists and turns. Relationships falter, careers fizzle, health fades. We may be faced with choices we never wanted to make or have situations pushed upon us we’d never expected. Yet, in all of it, God is at our side–even when he feels far away.
Drawing on her extensive research into women of the Old Testament, novelist Jill Eileen Smith turns her pen to the lessons in trusting God that we can learn today from women like
– Eve
– Noah’s wife
– Sarai
– Hagar
– Lot’s wife
– Rebekah
– Rachel
– and more
Readers will learn from what these ancient women did right–and even what they did wrong–when faced with dashed expectations and deferred dreams. And they’ll come away with the confidence that ours is a faithful God who loves us and is forming us through our trials into the women he longs for us to be.
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