SLANT LETTER: How to Wake Up Your Writing

The art of making the common uncommon.

Happy new year, friends!

As we begin again, I’m thinking about wonder and how it wakes up our writing like nothing else.

I will never forget the awe of the total solar eclipse of 2017. Zach and I had just relocated to Knoxville for his doctoral program, which put us in the path of totality, so we drove into the mountains for the best view. There were picnickers and motorcyclists and kids climbing the rocks, and I won’t forget the way the sun just…dimmed, snuffed out, the way the birds swooped in confusion thinking it was nightfall, the magic of witnessing this cosmic event together. 

Though not everyone felt that way. I am paraphrasing from memory, but a high-profile CEO tweeted at the time that while everyone else might be staring at the sky through their cereal boxes that day, she would be in the office making millions. 

I don’t think I could come up with a sadder statement if I tried. 

This woman considered herself too busy to be bothered by the wonder of a world outside herself. She was opting for the security of the measurable, the predictable, all that can be calculated and forecast and scaled. 

Yet by doing so, she was opting out of the sheer gift of being wowed. 

And I really want to be wowed. Isn’t this why we read—for our world to be opened wide? Isn’t this what compels us to underline sentences—because they have awoken something in us? Isn’t this the very heartbeat of telling it slant—making way for surprise and discovery? 

It is human nature to want to be wowed. For writers, the slant is the art of the casting the common uncommon. It is the art of revealing the astonishment of what has always been true, but perhaps unnoticed before. 

Let me give you an example, because I just don’t have the heart to land on the million-maker story hustling away under the fluorescent lights instead of the stars.

Environmentalist Paul Hawken returned wonder to the common most memorably in his commencement speech, 

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.”

Every night! There is a cosmic event. Every night, an invitation to participate in what psychologists refer to as the experience of “perceived vastness,” or awe. Now that’s a slant. (Although not here to knock television—we contain multitudes!) 

As Hawken highlights here, we tend to tune out the familiar. What gets our attention, in writing and in life, is the familiar made fresh, and that takes craft and intention.

Instead of the self-evident, craft your big ideas to be singular. Aim for the exclamation point of “Wow!” rather than the closed-circle, “So what?” Create space for discovery and stage a double-take for your reader. Make ‘em a cereal box eclipse viewer of their very own.

Editor’s Note for a New Year

Some of you have been reading this letter for the seven years (!!) I’ve been writing it, and some of you are new and saying who is this, anyway? 

So perhaps an introduction for a new year. I’m a reader first, writer by passion, and editor by profession. I’ve worked in publishing for nearly 15 years and spend my days as executive editor for Baker Books, developing bestselling and award-winning writers and new voices, too. 

Last spring, I graduated with my masters in theology, a journey I started with the mindset that writing can be a profound practice of spiritual formation, and that the editorial process, at its best, is a pastoral process. The creative collaboration that happens in the studio is a sacred space to me. And I have loved the way my seminary coursework and manuscripts are in constant conversation, as this was exactly the hope. 

I live in Pennsylvania with my husband, Zach, and our daughter who just turned two, and every now and then write more personally about my transition into parenthood. Maybe like you, I am untangling the threads of a faith tradition that has a conflicted history. So when and where I do encounter awe, I try to dwell there, and places of beauty for me have been quieter, contemplative streams and the rhythms of the liturgical year.

I appreciate nuance, black coffee, and bold lipstick (you can definitely swing it). I dislike pretense and overpromising and bad metaphors. You can find me writing snippets on Instagram and on my fresh new website, courtesy of the talented Karla Colahan at The Inspired Foundry.

Mostly, what I want to say at the top of this new year is thank you for being here.

I am astonished every time I hit send to know that this letter will go out to thousands of inboxes, and your reading time and attention is a sacred trust to me. Thank you for the depth of insight and conversation you bring to this letter, for not just reading but sharing and saving and printing (the ultimate compliment!) these dispatches. As always, you can hit reply to this email and I love to hear from you—especially what would support you in your creative work in the coming year. 

Until next time,

Take heart. Write on. You got this.

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P.S. // A Blessing for Writers

SLANT LETTER is about both craft + soul care for the creative life. So for each issue, I want to speak this blessing for all of us anxious, ambitious, internet-exhausted writing folk.