Today my guest is Michelle De Bruin, with whom I’ve had the pleasure of sharing a lot of chapters online. Michelle De Bruin is a worship leader and spiritual services provider in Iowa where she lives with her husband and two teenage sons. A romantic at heart, Michelle is always looking for glimpses of God’s love through the window of a good story.

Check out Michelle’s website at – https://michelledebruin.com/

Links to her book – Hope For Tomorrow, by Michelle De Bruin – Amazon or Barnes and Noble

Here’s what Michelle says about the workings of a writer’s mind

In developing a character or writing description, my mind functions much like the attic of an old farmhouse. If you’ve ever visited one, you find that after taking the stairs to the second story, and then using a ladder or a narrower, steeper set of stairs than the first, the third story of a farmhouse opens up into a spacious wilderness begging to be explored. No walls break it up into tight, small corners. Windows from at least two sides of the house let in the light shedding revelation on all sorts of interesting heirlooms to put to good use.

Against one wall are an old full-length mirror and other antique articles of furniture. Under a window is a trunk filled with dresses and accessories from another era. Crammed in drawers of the antique furniture are black and white photos, love letters, newspaper clippings, and church bulletins that tell the story of generations of family that have lived and loved, grieved and rejoiced in that home.

When I write my mind, and thus my imagination, travels from the trunk of clothing to the drawers of memorabilia, borrowing inspiration and generating ideas. It goes over to the window for a look outside at the clear sunny day, the blue sky, and the crops in the surrounding fields. Then it ends up in front of the mirror to take a look at all I have created.

And when my mind comes back to the present moment where I take all I have learned from the past and everything I want to remember about those I love most, I write it down.

(Gail Sattler’s comment) I have never been in a old farmhouse, in fact, I’ve only been on a farm once in my life, and it was soggy and rained out and we were kind of trapped, so I didn’t even actually see the farm. But going up into an attic like that sounds like a super adventure. My first thought is, if the access is that narrow and up multiple flights of ever-narrowing stairs, how did they get all that stuff up there?

Just sayin’.