John Donne wrote, “No man is an island Entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.” This statement is nowhere more true than in the life of a writer. Writers are reputed to be loners, and that often is true. We do our best work alone. After all, we need solitude to think, to research, to compose, and to edit and revise and rewrite. We tend to be introverts, shying away from all crowds and most social engagements. We need others to help us disc

One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting on the couch beside my grandfather (we called him Pappaw) in his house while he silently read his Bible. I watched his hands as he read, tracking his progress along the lines of text with his calloused and arthritis-gnarled index finger. But Pappaw’s wisdom was not the erudite wisdom of philosophers, articulated in esoteric and academic terms that too often confuse rather than enlighten. His was a common-sense wisdom that wa

“Write what you know.” “Your writing becomes like what you read.” Since I began writing for publication back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I’ve come to acknowledge the validity of those two mantras, but my writing has tended to reflect a slight modification of them. While it’s true that you should write what you know in the sense that you should be knowledgeable of the topics about which you write, you can also get a lot of mileage from writing about what you don’t yet know

Just when I had about concluded that true chivalry was dead, I saw the living embodiment of that very quality. It wasn’t exhibited by some old codger like myself who was reared to believe that chivalrous conduct was the normal attribute of a Southern gentleman; it was lived out by one of the younger generation whom we older folk so often castigate for their lacking that quality (among others). All that seems to have changed. Now that the legal code and common practice have ma

We buried Virginia Mae Dietterich, my wife’s mother and my mother-in-law, on Monday. (In case you’ve been wondering, that’s why I haven’t posted recently.) My own mother had been killed by a drunk driver only about four years after I married. I’ve written about her before. (See https://dlpedit.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/growing-up-rich/ and https://dlpedit.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/reflections-on-mother.) I knew Mother for only 27 years. I knew my mother-in-law, however, for 42

This week marks my wife’s third week of school already, not counting the week of in-service training, and the stories she shares when she gets back home every night are a mixed bag. Some are just downright funny. For others all I can do is shake my head in amazement, either at how tech-savvy today’s kids are or at how they do or say things that we’d never have dreamed of saying. But all of them bring back memories of my own days in school. Back in the “good old days,” eons an

I have often felt like that. I’m not famous for anything. I’m not widely known. Even when I go “back home” to the community where I grew up, no one knows me. When I left there to go to college in another state, no one, not even my closest friends or track teammates, kept up with me or what I was doing. Forty years later, when the hometown newspaper published an article about the release of my first book (along with my phone number and e-mail address, courtesy of the editor, w

Mother—Hazel Margaret Summers Peterson—came from good stock. The Summers family of Heiskell, Tennessee, were special to me, and, although I don’t get to see them often any more, they remain so. Nannie and Paw taught their children well. Mother was a woman of firm convictions and deep devotion to both her faith and her family. One of my most vivid memories of Mother is of an incident from my childhood. Just before the school bus came one morning, I suddenly remembered that I h

On a day when our writing might not seem worth it, when we are not seeing fruit like that which our mind imagines we should, when we wonder if it’s worth the effort, comes the following thought-provoking assurance from Doug Phillips: “A good and truthful story can change lives. Such stories are landmarks set in the mind of a child, reminding him of what is expected in the hour of adversity.” What we write does matter! May those of us who are God-called writers be encouraged t