Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I think apart from one more cookbook, Sis prob only has no more books left. Maybe she’ll convince her kids to write something.
It's hard to think of what she would write about. Her entire writing career has revolved around Christian faith, first by writing Bible studies, then by writing about Christianity and contemporary life, and then by writing about tearing all of that down and rejecting it. All of that was also interwoven with sharing about her family and personal life.
Now that she's covered that entire personal arc, she'll have to find something completely new to write about or just become another among the endless number of progressive Christian types who make a career out of complaining about conservative, orthodox Christiany and offering their new "improved" to version. There is definitely a market there but it's wildly oversaturated.
I found her at her most compelling when she was actually DOING something, which happened to be her international adoptions. She verbalized a fresh perspective from the trenches of her labor. She said things that dared to challenge the fundie church adoption narrative. Mainly, wow, this is not a happily ever after, and this kids have had traumatic loss beyond words, and there is massive work to be done. Eventually, she stopped discussing it, which was probably best for the kids' privacy, but man, the fundie narrative around adoption ("It's all part of God's plan

!") like God's plan was for children to suffer the loss of their natal families, be torn from their culture, and be placed with white family across oceans, and be part of the fundie church. I appreciated her words so much back then.
But she hasn't really DONE anything since. She just writes about regular life events - kids graduating, marrying, having a baby, approaching menopause, empty nest, divorce. She is in the trenches of absolutely nothing interesting. Again, I get she doesn't want to keep writing about Ben and Remy's adoptions - that is good. But she could have chosen to do anything else real. The reason her words on her post casts, posts, etc fall flat to me is that she is not telling me anything a wine filled evening with friends in these life stages would not bring me - and with much less preaching, preening, and main character syndrome. Like go effing DO something if you want to be a writer.