Write at Home: Featuring Ann Voskamp
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This month we feature one of my personal favorite homeschool writer mamas, Ann Voskamp, who blogs at www.aholyexperience.com and is the Home School columnist for Christian Women Online. We can all learn from this lovely lady who has graciously taken the time to share with us today!
Ann, how did you get started writing?
I started writing because of a list scratched out on the back of an envelope.
It was all I really had in my grandmother’s writing. Just a list of miscellaneous things scrawled across the back of an envelope, tucked into her Bible. I hungered for more of her. I wanted to know her dreams and her disappointments, her stories of raising her children, of being a wife, of finding her place in the world. I wanted her on paper. But she hadn’t left any traces of ink before her departing…
And I realized with startling clarity that, of all she left behind, that was what I desperately wanted: to know who she really was, in the dark corners of her days.
I powerfully realized the legacy of words. These archs and curves and lines… these were the things I wanted to leave behind. Words unveiling who I really am, for my children and grandchildren, the recording of God’s story on our days.
So I tentatively began to gather words on our online journal…. Other writing projects have simply spun out of that initial and ongoing tracing of our lives…
You have a unique voice and writing style. Did you have to work to develop this or is it just what flows out of you naturally?
Like a young child first finding words and expression, finding my voice has been a process — many years and much practice. When a child learns to speak, his or her language reflects the accent and intonations of community, what they are listening to. So I’ve read and read and read (the default for a home-educator). And, for me, I wonder if I found my voice in deep silence, in the still when I could hear God, hear my own thoughts. My online writings run counter-cyberculture: I write in silence, without a comment box. Writing in a space where you think no one is reading, that you’re just “writing in the dark” has allowed me to just engage God, to let go of preconceived ideas of how one needs to “sound” or “write” — and create in unconventional ways. Perhaps not unlike a child who has made up his own unique form of communication after years of talking to himself?
Every time I sit with a keyboard, I still need to work on finding that unmasked, still interior– that stillness in His Presence. That’s work– much like the work of prayer. For me, I return often to Kathleen Norris’ words about a series of talks she once attended: “Coming out of the depths of silence, these talks elicited a response that could only lead back to silence.” I think when we still ourselves long enough to listen to God’s whisper, we have words to write… those words should then lead readers back too to the stillness of God.
Such is the paradox: I think we find our voices in silence.
As the homeschooling mother of six, how do you find time to maintain a blog, plus other writing projects, and school your kids?
Please, no misconceptions. I don’t do it all… and what I do, I don’t necessarily do very well. I have been graced with an unusual life circumstance: my husband commutes nowhere to work. Because he farms full-times and shares three meals a day with us, he is very much co-parenting. Our children all go to the barn with him each morning for 2-3 hours of work before breakfast which leaves me a block of writing time. And then I usually write again after children are tucked into bed. Those are my fringe hours, early and late, where “in the writing I too find the Spirit of God.”
The main of my hours, when children fill these rooms, is mothering, teaching, homekeeping. And I have much support in our teaching: several of our children are enrolled in online, live, interactive classes offered by Veritas Press, several of our curriculum selections include DVD instruction (latin and math) which frees me to read and work one-on-one with younger children, and my husband is often available throughout the day to help direct children also. And what mama who loves words doesn’t love hours every afternoon of reading with her most favorite people?
So there’s a rhythm: early morning personal writing while children are working with Dad… mornings of working one-on-one with younger children while older children work on independent learning … afternoons of long read-alouds and collective exploring and discovery …. and then late night blog writing when children dream. It’s a rhythm that can pitch into loud and chaotic notes, dissolve now and then into a real cacaphonic mess… but He’s faithful to keep making His grace music here!
You advocate reading aloud to your kids. What are some of your family favorites?
Where to begin? So many books, so little time!
Caddie Woodlawn
The God Smuggler
My Side of the Mountain
Words by Heart (Sebestyen)
Wind in the Willows
Pilgrim’s Progress (an annual read)
Jip, His Story
The Yearling
Little House series (perennial favorite)
The Sign of the Beaver
Basket Moon
The Lupine Lady
The Story Girl
You are the author of A Child’s Geography. Tell us how that project came about? Was this your first publishing experience?
I think most writing is about answering some question that just won’t let us go.
While our children and I were reading Hillyer’s classic and OOP “A Child’s Geography of the World” as part of our daily read alouds, questions arose as we finished each short chapter ….
How had the world changed in the last 60 years?
What were those countries like now?
Was what Hillyer had experienced when he traveled still the way it was now?
We wanted to travel to those countries and see! So I began researching and writing — for our children. But perhaps there was a way to share our discoveries with other curious learners? So I began posting the discoveries in a travel blog for other families to read also — and their enthusiasm sort of swept this project along into one book and then another!
Eventually, another home-educator and creative wordsmith, Tonia Peckover, graciously joined the work bringing her keen editorial eye, and Knowledge Quest Inc. became the publisher of the series. While I had published in compilations before, yes, A Child’s Geography v. 1 and v. 2 are my first book-length projects.
Tell us about your visual journal. Does keeping up with that help you in your writing?
I believe we all hunger for beauty. It is why God alone satisfies: He is Beauty personified.
And where we create bits of beauty, we catch a glimpse of the Spirit of God, and lost parts of us inside find their places.
And that is what creating a visual journal is about: making a beauty place to collect bits of our life. Just taking a blank page journal, thrifted magazines, and snipping and ripping and gluing layouts that make your heart sing. Images that reflect beauty and express you — it’s a childlike artistic endeavor: cutting and pasting! And in the remaining white spaces, your ink gathers up your days: your verse for the day, a prayer request scrolled around the edge of the page, tonight’s menu circling about in the middle, a funny quote from a toddler scratched down, a to-do list jotted out in a corner (so you can happily check it off! or better, perhaps — just a place to write down what did get accomplished, after the fact!), a place to count your blessings for that day.
Just a journal laying open on the counter to capture the imprint of God in your ordinary life — all in real time. And a netting place like that always helps your writing!
(For a tutorial on how to make your own visual journal and to see some sample layouts: http://www.aholyexperience.com/search?q=visual+journal )
Finally, any exciting news on the publishing front?
Oh yes!
While publishing for me has always been primarily about a publish button at the bottom of a blog (Blog publishing has staggering kingdom potential: it crosses cultural, economic, and geographical lines… and is universally available to all writers or “scratchers.”) … I’ve stumbled into this startling, God-Authored page-turner of an amazing author– someone was reading my quiet corner of the web, who connected it to an agent– someone who began reading, who then passed a post onto …
Well, I haven’t found all the words for that wild story…. but yes, the craziest publishing news that still leaves me shaking my head at His knock-your-socks-off grace!
Congratulations Ann! I can’t wait to read a book written by you! Thanks so much for your shared wisdom here today. I know many mamas will benefit from your expertise!
Marybeth Whalen is homeschooling mom to six children ranging in age from teen to toddler, as well as a speaker for Proverbs 31 Ministries. In her writings, she addresses things like burnout, dealing with interruptions, and handling homeschooling from a very practical perspective. Be sure to visit her blog, Cheaper by the Half Dozen.
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