In this episode, Belinda Pollard, Donita Bundy and Alison Joy interview Kelly Needham – podcaster, mother of five, women’s minister and author of PURPOSEFOOLED and FRIEND-ISH. Kelly has a personal, powerful and honest message about how to resist the pressures popular culture puts on our writing goals, and where and how to find contentment.

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Episode summary:

• How Kelly’s first non-fiction book about friendship emerged organically from a ten-year journey of blogging about a topic important to her, and for which she couldn’t find the right book.
• The process of converting blog posts to a book – it ended up forming an outline rather than the actual content.
• The relief of getting the book out of her, and the process of choosing a publishing path: traditional vs self-publishing.
• Finding a literary agent, and choosing one who connected with her project.
• Finding a publisher who cared about the content and was invested in it.
• How Kelly’s existing marketing platform on her blog and social media was appealing to a publisher, but also not necessarily a huge platform.
• Finding the balance between making sales – which does matter a little bit, partly because it shows us what people need – vs having an enduring impact on the lives of individual people.
• Why chasing our dreams is unsatisfying, and yet we will still do it.
• Giving ourselves the freedom to “fail” as writers.
• False narratives from popular culture about what successful writing looks like, and how we can counter those by intentionally being good stewards of our minds.
• How to cope when our achievements don’t match our goals, and when we get post-partum depression after publishing a book.
• How much Kelly struggled with writing her first book, and how much we should be encouraged that we persevered through that.
• The value of making great Art as Christians.