Writing

Warming Up to Prayer

I live in a community, Jesus People USA, a real-life intentional community with 250 other people. That means I experience a lot of connecting, but not much quiet.  In 2002, having lived in community for 10 years, I was so restless and distracted I could barely function. Communal living has so many blessings, but it […]

Stirrings

This is an excerpt from Suanne Camfield’s new book, The Sound of a Million Dreams: Awakening to Who You Are Becoming.  The stomach flu was a bad one. Eric was sick. Clay was sick. Sadie had just gotten done being sick. It was the eighth time we’d had the stomach flu in four years, one of […]

2017: Entering In

We are excited to leap into 2017 with you and have some exciting announcements to share!! Sad news first. We’re saying goodbye to Abby Norman, who has been with us since the beginning. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a pastor and needs to focus her time and energy on seminary. We will miss her […]

Go to Jail

Ten years ago, I sat around a table with a group of six girls, trying to teach them creative writing. We shared poetry, short stories, and personal memoirs. I wasn’t that much older than them, and yet our worlds were oceans apart. For we sat in the library of a local juvenile correctional facility, and […]

Soul Bare Giveaway!!

    A small hybrid press announced a new community project called Soul Bare: Reflections on Becoming Human, created by Cara Sexton. The original call for submissions was announced on July 12, 2012, with a deadline of November 1, 2012.   It was to be a collection of raw, personal stories by some well-known Christian writers […]

Meet our Newest Writers!!

We’ve added some new writers to our Mudroom family and can’t wait to introduce you to them. You may already know them from their online presence and stunning writing. These women are thoughtful, gritty, and engaging, and you should be following them everywhere. Please join us in welcoming . . .    Grace P Cho […]

Reflections on the Festival of Faith & Writing

The Festival of Faith and Writing in April was extra special for us. Most of us were meeting each other for the first time, after a year of building The Mudroom. In that time some of us had experienced deep depression, overwhelming disappointment, loss of loved ones, career setbacks, parenting and marriage stressors. We walked through it […]

The Curious Blessing of Rejection

Ten years ago, in 2006, I was rejected by a publisher.  It went like this: after four years of student ministry and thinking about a post-modern culture, I had an idea for a book that explored characteristics of student ministry in the context of postmodernism – a sort of analytical, practical, theological-yet-readable sort of book. […]

Lifting the Veil

Our collective imagination is haunted by a certain image of the artist: a solitary bard, brooding alone, awaiting a burst of inspiration from a mysterious and magical muse. We see the person with the creative spirit as one who stands above and apart from the common lot, a secular priest who mediates between regular folks […]

We Need Whitespace to Create

The responsibilities keep piling on. The calendar gets filled up with more events. We’re moving from one thing to another with barely a moment to breathe. I run the family around from home to church, on errands, on playdates, to Target and back. Everything is always rushed. My temper is short, and my patience is […]

The Everyday Words

I’m not sure why it came as such a surprise to me. A few months into a period of not-writing-much-at-all, I discovered that I was suffering from what some might call writer’s block. I had gone from blogging a few times a week to a few times a month, if that. Pitches and proposals had […]