 |
eMail Anne |
About Small Talk
Small Talk started out as a little writing experiment in 2005. I’ve always dreamed of writing a column, but the timing was never exactly right. Suppers needed to be cooked, children needed love and other writing projects always stayed on the top of my “to do” list. I was always chicken-scratching thoughts on bits of paper and stuffing them, right along with my writing dreams, in a file marked “Perhaps In Your Next Life.”
I truly believe that God sends us angels, bearing the messages that we crave and desire. Someone I’d never met who read an essay I’d submitted for publication served as my angel. After telling me that my work had been selected for inclusion in the book, he said something very powerful to me. He told me I needed to be writing a whole lot more than I was at the time. I started on my first novel that very night.
And not long after, the opportunity to bring up the possibility of writing a column for my local newspaper presented itself. I wasn’t sure exactly what would develop, but The Paper’s publishers, Mary and Mary Boma, were gracious enough to let me see if I had the chops for column writing. They agreed to publish the column once a month and to donate $100 to an area nonprofit organization or effort each time Small Talk ran. Since the column started, The Paper has given more than $4,000 to benefit the community of Dwight. I’m very thankful to have been given the chance to give this a try.
Small Talk has proven to be an enormous blessing for me. I’ve been humbled by the amazing responses I’ve received almost daily since we started this experiment. Everywhere I go, someone stops me to comment on the column. Some have even been kind enough to send me notes or tell me that they’ve clipped one out to put on their refrigerators. I wasn’t expecting this at all, but it should not have come as a surprise. I live and work in a very tightly-knot community filled with people who are basically good and just living their lives one day at a time.
There’s something very comforting about sharing common ground with other human beings. If we feel like we have shared experiences, then we start to belong to one another on a level that strips away all the superficial differences, exposing what I believe to be the genuine human condition. I think that is what Small Talk celebrates: the genuine human condition, which is at once hysterical, poignant and truly a gift from God.
My thanks to everyone for their kind encouragements.
Read Small Talk, in The Paper
Small Talk is published on the first Wednesday of each month in The Paper, a free newspaper that circulates to Dwight and surrounding communities. For more information, call 815-584-1901.
      |
|
| ©2008 Anne Shaw Heinrich • All Rights Reserved | Designed & Hosted by Schultz Media |