I always assumed I knew what kind of writer I was supposed to be. Christian living. Nonfiction. Devotionals. I had been a teacher for over thirty years — in classrooms, in homeschool, in every space where children learned and grew. I had a passion for helping parents disciple their kids. I had ideas and outlines and plans.
What I didn’t have was clarity.
At a writing conference, I sat down at a roundtable with an agent who told me, kindly but directly, that I was still heading in too many directions. I needed to niche down. I’d heard that before. I nodded, took notes, and went to find my next session — a workshop on writing for children that I’d been quietly looking forward to all day.
I walked out of that room knowing exactly what I was supposed to do.
It wasn’t a dramatic moment. No lightning, no audible voice. Just the sudden, almost embarrassing simplicity of a calling I had apparently been walking past for years. I was supposed to write children’s books. Of course I was. I had loved children’s literature my whole life, spent decades watching children learn, and carried a deep desire to put meaningful stories in their hands. It was the clearest thing God had ever shown me about my writing — and it took a single workshop at a single conference to surface it.
That is what gathering with other writers does. It creates the conditions for clarity. The right conversation, the right session, the right moment of stillness in the middle of a busy event — and suddenly you know your next step.
That’s what Inkspiration is designed to be. A retreat for Christian children’s book writers and illustrators who are ready to stop circling and start moving. If you’ve been wondering whether your calling is real, whether your story is worth telling, whether this is your moment — come find out.
Sometimes clarity is just one weekend away.
