Interview with Kinsey Holt

Today we chat with my fellow blogger Kinsey Holt of Shine Like Lights about books, writing, and glorifying God.

Hey Kinsey, thanks for doing this!

No, thank you for having me! It’s great to get to chat with you! You have no idea of the monster you’ve just released, though. I could talk your ear off for hours… you have been warned. 😉

Tell us a little about yourself!

Well, I’m a writer and blogger. I primarily write fiction, but I’ve done sci-fi and paranormal mystery as well. I also write book reviews and nonfiction articles dealing with storytelling, worldview, and culture. Ultimately, however, I’m a Christian. Writing is my way of evangelizing, sharing truth, and building people up – at least, that’s the goal. Of course, getting published would significantly help with spreading that, but that’s my aim even right now with my small audience.

Tell us about your writing journey and your current projects!

Thanks, I’d love to! There’s nothing that will get an author going like that question. 😄 I’ve been writing and coming up with stories all my life, but I decided I’d write a book at thirteen. It was, of course, terrible, but since then, thanks to many wonderful friends and mentors who have come around me, I’ve been able to join the Young Writer’s Workshop, learn from professionals, and find other amazing resources to grow.

Well, ‘current projects’ is quite accurate. I’m always working on multiple things at once. My most prominent current project, coincidentally, is returning to that old story I wrote when I was thirteen. I revised it at fourteen and then left it to sit for several years. I kinda viewed it as practice and nothing worth taking any further, but my friends and betas loved it, so here I am all this time later coming back to it. It’s involved a lot of reworking, but it’s also really amazing because I can look back and see how much I’ve grown, and how much better I am at spotting my own mistakes. As major elements of the plot are still in the works, I can’t give you some sparkling, shiny elevator pitch, but the concept is a nerdy kid finds out that he’s going to inherit magical powers, but that in reality they’re far more dangerous than he expected, and that the world he must journey to in order to learn how to control them is nothing like his safe fantasy books at all. Think magic school meets chosen one meets demon apocalypse.

Who inspired you most to become an author?

So many people. I am a HUGE nerd and bookworm, and the ones who inspired me were all of the authors I loved. S.D. Smith, Wayne Thomas Batson, Brian Jacques, Tolkien, Lewis, Andrew Peterson, Stephen Lawhead, Brandon Sanderson – they’re all incredible authors, and their stories all deeply impacted me and formed me. I saw the deficit of good books around me and how difficult it was to find something solid and clean, and yet not boring or trite. This quote, as recounted by Tolkien, sums it up best:

“Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to write some ourselves.” — C.S. Lewis

Tell us a bit about your blog and its mission!

Absolutely! (There’s another thing we authors love: free marketing!) So, I run the blog shinelikelights.com. I talked about it a bit earlier, but basically, if you’re looking for good books to read, if the junk out there today annoys you, if you want to hear my random ramblings, sarcasm, and passionate condemnation of the evils in pop culture, then my blog is for you. Its mission is the same that I aim for in everything: Soli Deo Gloria. I’m not saying I’m good at it, but that’s the Christian’s goal in life, yeah? I’d like to spread truth and help others think critically. I’ve got readers who are authors and readers who aren’t, but no matter who you are, you need to know the truth and be able to speak it in love. I’m not saying I always get it right, but I get to learn from some pretty incredible people and I share it as well as I can.

Do you have any advice for other young writers? Mistakes that you’ve made that others can avoid?

Well, I often hear a lot of writers tell younger writers something along the lines of ‘keep typing’ or ‘persevere.’ And yes, absolutely. Keep writing, keep trying, keep fighting the good fight. Finish something, no matter how terrible it is. You can only come back and make it better once you’ve written it. But, as I thoroughly dislike being cliched, I think I’ll give you some specific advice. Write an experience.

This is sorta like ‘show-don’t-tell,’ but I find it helps me to think about it this way. As a pantser, I’m usually figuring things out right along with the characters, but I’ve learned that I need to really slow down and immerse both myself and the reader in the story. Jonathan Rogers says in his writing classes to use the five senses. Absolutely do that. Make it gritty. Stories, see, have so much power to move people, and the ones that move me the most are the ones I get absolutely sucked into. I’m so riveted I don’t even notice the lessons I’m learning along the way, the eternal truths that resonate on a deeper level than the intellect. So much Christian fiction these days suffers from preachiness. But the answer isn’t to remove all truth and be indistinct from the rest of the world. It’s to put in the hard work of making a story worth reading, of characters worth imitating, of unconscious, powerful themes worth remembering.

Is this easy? Heck no. It’s one of my biggest struggles. But keep working at it. ‘Keep typing.’ ‘Persevere.’ 😁 Hey, cliched or no, it’s good advice.

What are some resources you recommend to young writers?

The Young Writer’s Workshop, absolutely. For free resources, Story Embers has a lot of great articles, as does FightWrite and K.M. Weiland’s blog. But don’t just invest in writing resources – make sure your heart and your worldview are in a good place too. I just finished a book by Charles Colson called How Now Shall We Live? It was absolutely fantastic, and I would recommend it for any Christian, regardless of whatever vocation they have. I may be posting a master list of resources on shinelikelights.com sometime this year, as well.

Where can we find out more about you?

You can find out more about me on my blog, and I’d love to learn more about you, too. Please, please do comment. Engaging with people and exchanging ideas and conversation is part of networking, fellowship, and critical thinking, all of which are key for the writer.

Until Next Time,

-Lori