God, WRITiNG, AND THE WORLD: EMMA MILLER ON WRITING AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Emma welcomes me into her home on an overcast Friday afternoon and offers me tea; the ceilings are high, and the living room is filled with eclectic furniture. The home has the quaint academic feel of a Harvard dormitory, and as she sits across from me on the couch, birds chirp through the cracked-open window. Nature is one of her inspirations for writing, and whenever she writes poetry, she loves to sit outside on her own and write with pen and paper. Many times, however, inspiration comes in bursts.
“I typically get big spurts of inspiration and spurts of dedication and energy to commit to a work,” she notes. “And so I try to keep myself disciplined by always at least thinking about a story or piece that I’m working on, especially when I’m walking from place to place. That’s a great time to process. And I typically am also spontaneously praying through my works and asking God to bless them and chatting with Him about my ideas.” Biblical themes are a big part of Emma’s work, and she discusses how these themes are relevant to everyone, whether they are intentionally included in a piece or not: “I definitely think that they’re universal themes that all of humanity clings to and draws from, whether that’s love or sacrifice or struggle or hospitality.”
Emma sees writing as a journey taken with God, and her faith plays an intimate part in her work. When describing the ways in which her writing has touched others, Emma observes that “it’s a sweet way that God holds out a sheet of paper in front of us, invites us to create something with Him, and then He goes off and does stuff with it.”
Emma’s epiphany came in high school, when she realized that all of the daydreams she entertained in her mind could be placed onto paper and shared with others. For her, sharing her writing with the world is one of the purposes of writing. “There’s a special escape to writing, but it’s not something we get lost in,” she says. “It’s something we spend time in, steep in, and then go share with others.”
Emma’s passion for writing involves changing and growing. “I think I really love writing because it invites people into some sort of change and some sort of deep experience that’s gonna leave them different by the time they’re done with it,” she shares. “Writing gives me the opportunity to welcome people into either a story about myself or a story about someone else to explore some sort of emotional theme or idea that can hopefully expand their mindset by the time they’re done with it.”
As the birds continue chirping in the cloudy Friday sky, Emma sits comfortably cross-legged on the couch, her mug of tea cooling in her hands. To her, the most important thing about writing is that “it is something that anyone can do and something that anyone should do…because being a writer isn’t necessarily being revolutionary or being super skilled; it’s being someone who writes words. As simple as that.”
She places importance on writing as a form of processing life and learning about new mindsets, sharing that “we don’t have to feel all this pressure when we come to the blank page because there’s so much to be found, and there’s so much to be discovered in the process.”
“We don’t have to feel all this pressure when we come to the blank page because there’s so much to be found, and there’s so much to be discovered in the process.”
Emma’s pieces give the grounded impression of stories that could happen to any person at any stage of life. She notes that her style is “descriptive and often immersive with the five senses,” explaining that she tries to “approach emotional things with sensitivity and to slowly ease readers into something, not just slam into emotion.” For her, stories are a path of discovery. “
I like to let my stuff marinate and allow myself to have the rough draft of just spitting something on paper,” she says, “and I’m typically learning along the way what the piece is supposed to be as time goes on.” She recalls Edgar Allan Poe’s “single effect,” in which an author hopes readers will come away with a single intended emotional effect by the end of the story. “That final effect is what first hits me, and then the whole mountain to climb is then to write the work that is gonna hopefully build that lasting effect.”
Writing is an art that allows both writer and reader alike to explore the inner workings of the mind. Building empathy for others in the world requires an honest look at why people do what they do and how to turn feelings into words. The craft of a writer is never easy, but through finding gentle ways to talk about emotional topics and expand mindsets, Emma gives her readers a transformative experience that they can both enjoy and learn from.
