Finally Friday - Your Inner Writing Soul 2026

2026  Fresh Start:

 Here's a good book for writers, dear blog friends - Writing Creativity and Soul by Sue Monk Kidd

She wrote The Secret Life of Bees, The Book of Longings, and more. 

Now she imparts a part memoir, part philosophical investigation, part advice to aspiring writers, and touchstone for the spirit.   "If you encounter writing infused with soul, you know it".  "It feeds you somewhere inside...our internal revolutions, our reach for our true selves, our struggle to write unsayable things with brave voices".  cover blurb. 

If you love Sue Monk Kidd's writing, then you need to enjoy this book. She writes about her struggles to become the writer she knew she could be, while she was a mother raising kids. She writes about her doubts, her fears, and the time it took to truly acknowledge herself as a writer.  She imparts some writerly wisdom, but it's really just common sense.  You - if you truly wish to be a  writer- must do the work.  Think, sit, write, research, read and repeat.  And repeat.  And repeat.  It's hard work.

Sue Monk Kidd said she has to work from an outline.  She has to really know her characters - what do they want?  Where shall the story end?  

She bares her writerly soul in this book and as you read this, it is as if you are hanging at a kitchen table and just talking.  I really enjoyed this memoir and it has inspired me  to take up the pen again.  We'll see what happens in 2026. 

Happy Writing, my friends. 

Book Review - The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

A few weeks ago I wrote about the author talk I watched with Sue Monk Kidd. She was so thoughtful in her discussion and had obviously done a lot of research for the Biblical time period of her latest novel - The Book of Longings.  I really, really liked this book. The writing is beautiful and her characters are richly drawn. The story is compelling and from my point of view (not religious) - plausible.

So, what if Jesus had a wife?  Now, now. Don't leave yet. (cover blurb) Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history. She imagines a strong young woman named Ana - rebellious, ambitious, and scholarly. She pursues writing scrolls - narratives about neglected and silenced women. She's expected to marry on old widower (horrors), and a chance encounter with eighteen year old Jesus changes everything.

There's abuse, peril, fleeing, danger, and startling revelations. Let's just add that her dark sheep brother is Judas.  cover blurb - Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. 

(cover blurb) The Book of Longings involves a young lady's bold struggle to realize passion and potential in a time when women were silenced...

p. 66 Ana - I tell you, there are times when words are so glad to be set free they laugh out loud and prance across their tablets and inside their scrolls. So it was with the words I wrote. They reveled till dawn. 

Revel with Ana and truly enjoy an excellent book...The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd.

Virtual Arts and Letters Live - Sue Monk Kidd

Arts in the new Era - a Virtual ticketed event to hear Sue Monk Kidd give an author talk.

Totally worth the price of admission. Thanks to the Dallas Museum of Art and their Arts and Letters Live program, I was able to enjoy an hour long outdoor fireside chat with Sue Monk Kidd. Her new book is called Book of Longing.  I have not read it yet - a copy is being sent to me as part of the ticket price. Nonetheless, it sounds intriguing and I enjoyed hearing the author's comments on her process, concerns, and efforts to bring this book alive.

"You put yourself out there, " she said.  She decided to write a book about Anna, her creation - the wife of Jesus.  As her husband said, "What could go wrong?"  She approached it with trepidation, but felt there was a story there. It's fiction, but she believes writing is " a fight of courage."

She did a year of research and then took over four years to write the book. She wants the novel to "inspire our longings, our largeness." It was a feminist quest, a concern for freedoms, and to give a voice to a strong woman.

Sue Monk Kidd said, "My writing is a prayer."  She's seventy years old now, began writing at age thirty - a tad late to the game.

She was classy, well spoken, sincere, had a super sense of humor.  This program was a delight to watch. It would have been more fun live, but this could be the new norm and I am happy to pay for a ticket.

Sue Monk Kidd - author and neat lady.

Book Review: The Invention of Wings

On Sarah’s eleventh birthday in 1803, she is given ownership of a handmaid – ten year old Handful. This starts in motion an excellent novel The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. Over thirty five years, ”both strive for lives of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement, and the uneasy ways of love.” (cover blurb). 

Sarah is never easy with the concept of slavery and her journey beyond Charleston to Philadelphia marks her as an early pioneer in abolition and women’s rights. She dons the Quaker gray cloth and vows to fight alongside her sister for their beliefs.  Handful, a talented seamstress, embraces her mother Charlotte’s story quilt and is emboldened by the blackbird wings – sure she will achieve freedom someday.  

The author has done a lot of research about the early 1800s and the slavery issues, along with women’s rights issues. Her characters are strong women “whose struggles for liberties, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.” (cover blurb). Indeed, I enjoyed the intertwined tales and strong voices. I worried for Handful when she was sent to the Work House. I felt for Sarah as she yearned for love but had to say no to a man she loved. She would not compromise her principles.  

Sue Monk Kidd is a superb writer with a smooth delivery.  P. 3 “We weren’t some special people who lost our magic. We were slave people, and we weren’t going anywhere. It was later I saw what she meant. We could fly all right, but it wasn’t any magic to it.”

 

Read The Invention of Wings and fly away on a writer’s words.