The call of a creator is the call of abundance.
But first we have to look deeper. And in that looking we step into a space made solely for us—our sandbox of discovery, of beauty, of joy. A place where we can build castles and tear them down only to make them better. A place where we bring in buckets of water just to see what kind of rivers and moats we can create.
I am using this metaphor because once, when I was talking about the pressure of being a writer, a mentor of mine said, “Just play in the sandbox with God.”
That stuck with me. It freed me. I hope it helps you too.
I’ve walked the places this video highlights, and it is exactly as he described. Mythic and deep. An invitation around every carved wall.
(Website friends can watch the video here:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcUwzsDgVOb/?igsi=MWtmd2I2dDBrcWZuaQ==)
We who write are doing the same work those stone carvers and architects and glassmakers did in Oxford. We arrange words the way they arranged light and line and weight. We are trying to make something that makes the soul lean forward. Something that says, Look. This too is true. This too is possible. This too is charged with meaning.
Tolkien called it sub-creation. We take the raw material of the world God already made—nature, longing, ordinary Tuesday mornings, the way light falls across a kitchen table, the complexity of humans—and we shape it into story so that others might feel the weight and the wonder of it more clearly.
This is not a small vocation. It is a high and holy calling, even on the days when the sentences are still tangled up inside.
Beauty does not wait for us to feel strong enough to receive it. It keeps arriving—through a well-turned phrase, a character who surprises us with grace, a single image that somehow carries more truth than we planned. And when we steward that beauty carefully, when we refuse to rush past it or cheapen it for the sake of speed or trends, we participate in something larger than ourselves.
There is a particular kind of abundance available to the writer who will slow down long enough to notice. Not the abundance of metrics or platforms, but the abundance of seeing. Of naming. Of offering a reader a place where the soul can rest for a moment and remember that the world is still enchanted, still held, still worth the labor of love.
You are not just writing a book.
You are practicing the ancient art of making beauty that points beyond itself.
Keep going.
The world is still hungry for what only you can create.
And I am here for all your pages, even the messy ones. ♥️
Brandy