by Lynn H. Blackburn
When I was younger, I frequently made the following statement: I’m not creative. At all.
This was before I began writing. But it wasn’t before I knit, crocheted, cross-stitched, scrapbooked, baked, played the piano, and did all sorts of other things that I now consider to be creative expressions.
Somehow, I had bought into the lie that I wasn’t creative because I couldn’t paint or draw (Which remains true. Really. Stick figures are my nemesis.).
I considered baking, playing the piano, and crocheting to be crafts or hobbies, but I didn’t recognize them as being creative pursuits. Why? Because in my mind, I wasn’t creating anything. I was copying what other people had created. I was simply following the recipe, playing the notes, and making the stitches that some wildly creative person had come up with.
But over the past couple of decades, I’ve come to embrace my creativity and to see wild diversity in the creativity of others. I wish I could take that younger version of me and show her all the ways she was creative, even before she ever took the story from her head and put it on the page. I would point out that plenty of people bake, but that my creativity showed in how I knew how to tweak the recipe just a little. As far as I’m concerned, any recipe that says “add one clove of garlic” is clearly in need of tweaking. One equals four in garlic math! And while I’ve never composed a piece of music, I have played music with my own expression and style. And just because I don’t write crochet patterns doesn’t mean there’s no creativity involved in choosing the perfect yarn for a project.
I’ve learned that all of us are creative in some way, and I’m quick to point out the creative expressions I see in people around me. I firmly believe that we are all creative because we were made in God's image. As His image bearers, creativity is literally in our DNA.
It was this background that led me to be intentional about finding creative pursuits for my characters in the Gossamer Falls series. Before I wrote the first word, I made a list of people I knew who had creative businesses or hobbies far outside of my own skillset. Then, selfishly, I gave my characters similar hobbies so I could pester my friends and have them show me what they do!
In the first book of the series, Never Fall Again, the heroine is a potter and the hero does exquisite woodwork. In my new release, Break My Fall, the heroine, Dr. Meredith Quinn, makes floral arrangements from wood. She uses flowers that are made from paper-thin wood, and then dyes them to suit the needs of her own whims or the people she’s creating for.
I have a real-life friend who does this, and her arrangements are exquisite. They last forever, and they don’t make anyone sneeze! As part of my research, I went to her shop and saw where she dyes the flowers and how she stores everything. We talked about how she used to make each stem, but now she buys them in bulk and lets her creativity fly in the way she dyes and arranges them. All of that found its way into Break My Fall.
In Break My Fall, it’s Meredith’s hobby, not her day job, that drives the plot forward. It turns out that even something as seemingly harmless as agreeing to create the bouquets for a wedding can have deadly consequences!
As a writer, one of my goals is to write stories that reflect Truth and point readers to the great Love of their lives without being preachy. While this message is never explicitly stated in Break My Fall, I hope to encourage readers to see that God uses everything, including our creative pursuits, for His purpose and glory. And that everyone, in some way, is creative.
About the Author
Lynn Blackburn is the award-winning author of Never Fall Again, as well as the Dive Team Investigations and Defend and Protect series. She loves writing swoon-worthy Southern suspense because her childhood fantasy was to become a spy, but her grown-up reality is that she’s a huge chicken and would have been caught on her first mission. She prefers to live vicariously through her characters by putting them into terrifying situations while she sits at home in her pajamas. She lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with her true love, Brian, and their three children. Learn more at LynnHBlackburn.com.
About the Book
Now that she's back home, Dr. Meredith Quinn has made it a point to offer clinics to children and adults in nearby underserved areas. Unfortunately, those same areas are known to harbor drug traffickers. Police Chief Grayson Ward suspects that local law enforcement is looking the other way. To keep Meredith alive, he must keep her close, while trying to keep his heart closed off.
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