 What would you tell your beginner self after more than three decades of writing? For Christy Award-winning author Lori Benton, the answer blends honest reflection with deep faith: visit the historical places you once took for granted, practice patience through long seasons of waiting, and learn to surrender your dreams—even when cancer and chemo fog make them feel lost. In this candid Q&A for Writing Day Workshops, Lori opens up about the prayerful rituals that sustain her creativity, how great fiction and dependence on God help her break through writer’s block, and why she’s learning to hold her writing career with open hands in her new season of publishing. With wisdom forged through rejections, closed doors, and unexpected timing, Lori offers the encouragement every writer needs: diligence, resilience, patience . . . and more. Keep reading to discover Lori’s hard-won keys to a writing life anchored in faith.
If you could go back to your early writing days, what one piece of advice would you give your beginner self? Perhaps I’d tell my beginner self: visit those historical sites on the east coast (USA) you took for granted growing up, because while you think you want to write fantasy novels forever, a few years after you move out west you’ll realize you really want to write stories set during the colonial years of North America—on the east coast! But had I visited all those places and immersed myself in history as a young person, I mightn’t have been forced to research as diligently as I did when I wrote my first historical novel, 3000 miles away from its setting. Instead, maybe I’d tell myself to be patient. It took 22 years before I saw a novel published (I began writing in 1991; Burning Sky was published in 2013). Halfway through it I experienced cognitive damage from chemotherapy and, for a season, my dream of writing seemed lost. But God still had a good plan for me. Through cancer and years of chemo fog I experienced Him in ways I never could had my writing journey been a quick, smooth sail. I learned, at least in part, what surrender meant, and was able to pour what I learned into my stories. What rituals or tools help you stay productive without burning out? Only one thing works for me, a relationship with the God of the Bible, who understands what it means to be creative and to tell stories that move hearts to give Him glory. That’s what I want to do—tell stories that move hearts to give Him glory. It’s still hard work and yes, burnout is real if I try to do this work in my own strength. So the oftener I can quiet my soul before Him and articulate my need for Him to tell such stories through me, to help me when I’m feeling unmotivated or uninspired or simply tired, the gentler is the writing process on my soul. I can’t count the times He’s dropped the answer to my stuck story issue into my mind or made my hours more productive than seems possible, after I’ve asked Him to. Which leads me to the following question: How do you tackle writer’s block when you’re stuck mid-plot or with a flat character? Prayer foremost but also reading. It’s important to read (or reread) fiction by authors whose writing is stronger than mine, authors who write with prose so vivid and insightful that I read a line and have to catch my breath. Or authors who create characters who’ve become as real as the living friends I’ve known. Reading such authors has sparked inspiration for some murky plot turn or other, or a character I’ve struggled to enliven. The inspiration rarely has to do with the story I’m reading. There’s just something that happens while reading good writing, a mental jarring loose of ideas specific to my work-in-progress.  Buy Lori's new release here: https://tinyurl.com/ydakhnrv Mourning her wayward brother’s death, Verity Wilde has turned her back on Williamsburg society, striving to live by her notion of true religion: to keep oneself unspotted from the world. But when she boards a ship to claim an indentured Scottish clerk, she’s unprepared to find another Scotsman, starved and gravely ill, left on deck untended. With scarcely more knowledge of the man than his name and place of origin—William Crockett of Skye—pity compels Verity to purchase his indenture too, meaning to provide the compassionate death denied him by the ship’s crew. Only he doesn’t die. Will Crockett’s survival upends Verity’s carefully circumscribed life, while he awakens to find his world shattered beyond recognition. As they seek to reconcile their broken pasts, bitterness and fear vie with hope to chart their futures. Can they find the courage to trust each other, and a God who scatters light in the darkness? What’s your secret to creating characters that feel alive and unforgettable? Do you start with backstory, flaws, or something else? I hope my characters feel on the page as alive and unforgettable as they are in my head! And I do start with backstory, after the initial idea of a character, her setting, and place in history are established. In fact, my latest book, A Scattering of Light, is a product of delving into a character’s backstory. While I pondered what sort of parents might have produced her, I grew so enamored with them and their story that I stopped plotting the original character’s story to tell her parents’ story first. Then I got to delve into their backstory, and their parents’ story, but I forced myself to not go back yet another generation! Revision can often feel endless. How do you know when your book is done? When there’s a contract with a deadline, that date tells me when the story is finished! Seriously. I’ve always worked to last minute even if I didn’t really have to. But my recent release, A Scattering of Light, is an Indie so I held the reins as far as when it would be published. Once I’d implemented all the editorial advice I’d been given and felt that structurally the book was as good as I could make it, then I line-edited and proofed it many times over before I reached that point where I was needlessly fiddling with the wording of passages. I could do that forever because it’s fun, but with or without a deadline eventually a writer has to call it done and move on to the next story. How do you balance writing with the business side—marketing, social media, or day jobs—and still protect your creative energy? At this point in my writing career I feel the need to better protect my creative energy, and my overall energy. I’m no spring chicken! That was part of my decision to go Indie with my historical novels. I’d already published two Indie titles in children’s books, Bear Country and Larkspur, and a follow up novella to my Kindred series (Mountain Laurel and Shiloh) called The Journey of Runs-Far. Not having a deadline has banished any anxiety about not being able to keep up with a publisher’s schedule as I age. When I need to rest, mentally or physically, I can rest. What the trade-offs might be, time will tell.
What’s one book (or author) that transformed your writing? It’s hard to choose since various authors had different impacts on my writing. One is Ellis Peters, who wrote The Brother Cadfael mysteries decades ago. From her I learned that description needn’t be passive or boring, that it’s possible to describe a character’s physical traits and impart to the reader a good deal of their character through that description. I was still a young and inexperienced writer when I encountered her work, and it had that transformational impact on my writing. How do you reconcile the tension between writing what you love and writing what the market demands? Have you ever regretted following (or ignoring) trends? Writing is the hardest creative work I’ve attempted (I’ve also been a painter and a photographer). I need passion for the story itself as a motivation to continue. I don’t think I could finish a book written for a market demand that wasn’t first drawn from my creative well. If that aligns with a market trend, great. But whether anyone wants to read a book I’ve written, or likes it when they do, I have to write what I’m passionate about, else not write at all. When crafting a novel, how do you decide which themes or messages to weave in without making the story feel preachy or heavy-handed? By letting those themes emerge organically. I always think I know what a theme will be when I begin writing. Most often I’m wrong and what I tried to weave in falls flat. I might be halfway through a story before I realize what I’m truly trying to say with it beyond an entertaining plot and character growth. It requires frequent pauses to go back and read through what I’ve written, coupled with prayer and waiting on God to reveal those deeper layers, paying attention to what He’s teaching me in my own life, and in my own Bible study, then lots of rewriting once I’m confident I have a handle on the spiritual threads or deeper themes the characters are wrestling with. If there’s a trick to nailing those sooner, I haven’t found it yet. I don’t think I want to. I value the process of working it out between me and God, even when it takes a while. It builds my faith and trust in Him—but has on occasion made meeting a deadline more of a challenge.
What advice would you give new writers chasing their first big break? Writing isn’t easy, so practice diligence. Publishing can be bruising, so practice resilience. Getting published (or finishing a novel) can take far longer than you thought it would, so practice patience. Provided you can do those three things then, unless God tells you otherwise, don’t give up. And do all you can to educate yourself, not hard to do these days when everything you need to know is a few clicks of a keyboard away. Looking back, what’s one choice you made early in your career—about your writing, publishing, or mindset—that you credit for your longevity as an author? Whether or not it’s led to longevity, I made a conscious choice years before I landed an agent, then a publisher, to ask God to shut every door He didn’t want me walking through regarding my books being published. Since then, I’ve accepted every closed door I’ve encountered as from Him. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t disappointment involved, or a season of regrouping, even questioning, which leads me to the next question… Was there ever a time when you had a project fail—a book that flopped, or a rejected manuscript? Did that setback teach you something unexpected about yourself, your craft, or your career? That time is now. A Scattering of Light, a story about trusting God when plans and dreams crumble, or we face losses and setbacks, didn’t find a traditional publishing home for a variety of reasons. I was already teetering on the edge of going Indie with my future books when I found myself in this situation, so that’s the direction I decided to go. But long before now I became acquainted with rejection. I experienced 15 years (counting that five year break with chemo fog) of nothing but rejections before I finally signed with an agent. Then after another 18 months only one publisher wanted Burning Sky, my debut novel (which wasn’t the novel we originally pitched to them!). It was one Yes in a sea of No. But I had asked God to keep firmly shut every door He didn’t want me going through. Now that certain doors are shut again, I feel He’s teaching me to hold this writing career not as something to be clutched like a toddler with a cookie, but loosely, trusting Him to lead me through this next season that doesn’t look how I expected it to look, even to be willing to lay it down if that’s how He leads.
 Lori Benton was born and raised east of the Appalachian Mountains, surrounded by early American and family history going back to the 1600s. Her novels transport readers to the 18th century, where she brings to life the Colonial and early Federal periods of American history, creating a melting pot of characters drawn from both sides of a turbulent and shifting frontier, brought together in the bonds of God's transforming grace. Lori's debut novel, Burning Sky, earned the 2014 Christy Award for First Novel, Historical, and Book of the Year. Lori's latest novel, A Scattering of Light ,is out now.  This post was complied by Brandy Vallance, a literary agent with Barbara Bova Literary Agency, an award-winning author, and a Story Consultant for Writing Day Workshops. Brandy is the winner of two national writing awards, one of which included a $20,000 prize. Her novel, THE COVERED DEEP, has been featured in USA Today & Writer’s Digest. WITHIN THE VEIL has been called “passionate and riveting” and Publisher’s Weekly encourages those who like sweeping Scottish sagas to dive in because “the journey is wonderful.” Brandy loves helping writers break the chains of fear and self-doubt. You can find out more at brandyvallance.com.  Attend a Writers Conference in 2026:
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