In my last blog, I wrote about one of my three pilgrimages to Oxford. Each visit I’ve pondered what Lewis wrote: “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen…I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.”

If you are trying to become published, stop looking for short cuts. Do not ask a published friend to introduce you to an editor, do not print your manuscript on pink paper, and do not send it to your favorite author in an e-mail. Simply write an irresistible story. Keep working at it until you find an editor who agrees.

I was asked recently about what the biggest payoffs and challenges in my writing are. One question was whether writer’s block is one of the difficulties.