Dipping the Quill Deeper; Finding Writing Inspiration in Life & Scripture

From Edie: Discover how one writer’s story idea developed over 40 years and what it teaches about trusting God’s timing, creative process, and patience in writing and publishing.

Dipping the Quill Deeper; Finding Writing Inspiration in Life & Scripture

by Eva Marie Everson @EversonAuthor

A single Dear Abby letter. One that told a story of a woman who woke up in the dead of night to the sound of a man snoring in the bed next to her.

Problem was, she wasn’t married and he was a stranger.

This was forty years ago, which was about 10 years before I began my career as a professional writer. But I distinctly remember reading this article and saying, “That would make a great novel premise.”

Shortly after I became published, I revisited the story (I had kept the article for years, although I cannot find it now), rewriting it with a Christian bent. I shopped it and, while one editor fawned over it, the manuscript didn’t sell. 

Good thing, too.

So, I put the idea on the back burner. 

Sometime later, while in a writing exercise with several other fiction writers, the idea resurfaced. This time, however, I added the elements of our exercise, which was to write in our genre but to include several things. I can only remember three of them: a sibling, a betrayal, and a piece of jewelry. 

Still, I didn’t have a story, so I continued to do what God placed in front of me.

Then, one evening as I flipped through some of my father’s old papers, I found one that surprised me. No, it didn’t shock me. Just surprised me. At that moment, a single line from the Scriptures crossed my mind (can’t tell you what it was; that would be a spoiler alert).

The final piece to the puzzle that would become the story of Miss Beth Bettencourt fell into place. 

Think about this. I read the Dear Abby article forty years ago. I took part in the writers’ exercise nearly 20 years ago. I discovered the paper in my father’s things about five years ago. 

And it all belonged to the Lord. Every moment of it. Like a butterfly still inside its chrysalis, if we force the delicate pupa, we kill the butterfly. It never stands a chance. I had to wait for all of this story—and I do believe it is one of my best—to fall into place. To fall into God’s timing.

Do you trust Him with your project, whatever it is and wherever you are in it? Do you trust Him with that beautiful thing He gave us: time? 

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Dipping the Quill Deeper; Finding Writing Inspiration in Life & Scripture from @EveresonAuthor on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Eva Marie Everson’s newest novel, Miss Beth Bettencourt, releases May 12, 2026 from Kregel Publication. Eva Marie is the CEO of Word Weavers International, the Director of Florida Christian Writers Conference, and the Director of The Selah & The Foundation Awards for Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference.