Award Winning author Interview with Patricia Tiffany Morris

How long have you been writing?

I wrote a 15,000-word story before attending my first small writing conference in Iowa. Once I made the decision to make writing a career in my fifties, I designed a website, opened a dedicated FB profile with my pseudonym.

I attended my first two writer’s conferences in 2019: ACWC, (Asheville Christian Writers Conference,) and BRMCWC, (Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference.) I’ve been exploring various genres ever since.

Which of your WIP (Work in Progress) is your favorite?

Currently, my favorite work is my children’s gift picture book called Grief Like Rain. This piece won 1st at WCCW conference and also Best in Conference. The Golden Goldie Award and 3 other awards for this piece in 2023 have encouraged me to illustrate the work, also. I formatted the book as lyrical poetry and it speaks to childhood loss of a parent. It is by far one of my most personal pieces.

Why do you write? Do you have a theme, message, or goal for your books?

In addition to writing to heal, I write about hope and redemption. There is something cathartic about developing characters and situations to ultimately bring readers closer to the God who created each one of us. Without hope, I flounder in my selfishness and discouragement. Without identity in Christ—in something bigger than my finite life on earth—I tend to wander along a timeline of meaningless pursuits. I want to bring the God of the Bible into our everyday moments as well as our most desperate and difficult circumstances and show that there is always hope. Always.

What does your writing work schedule like?

When I create a schedule, I create “blobs of time” to bring a loose structure for the week. I focus on the specific demands intrinsic to a particular project and create an atmosphere conducive to the type of story or poetry I am working on.

Utilizing a hand drawn bullet journal, I create headings of ideas, collections of smaller tasks, or anything that comes to mind while reviewing the next week. When I have schedule events with specific dates and times, I fill those in first. Then I define larger blocks of time. I like variety so I sprinkle time for illustration, client work, specific projects, social media, and my shops.

Do you have any favorite tools to help you organize your schedule?

Two of my favorite time tracking and management tools:

1. An old-fashioned, hand lettered bullet journal, black markers, and Prismacolor branded colored pencils. I create monthly and sometimes weekly pages to transfer my brainstorming ideas into organized thematic or topical sections and assign them to a general week or date.

2. An app called Structured, by Leo Mehlig, syncs with my google and apple calendar events and then allows me to further subdivide and schedule smaller blocks of time. Visually, color drips into the event shapes in real time like sand in an old fashioned hour glass. The colors import from my main calendar and I find that one of the keys to getting a lot done each day.

Do you have an interesting writing quirk? If so, what is it?

I can’t write with music or sound. I suppose I design with the musicality of the words, and other external sounds tend to drown out my inner composer.

I’m inspired by my rhyming, pun-ny husband, who reads in delightful character voices. He also brainstorms tech-laced plot threads with the realism from his 42 years experience as a civilian government employee

What has been your greatest joy(s) in your writing career?

Nothing beats the thrill of brainstorming sessions with other artists and writers. Recently recognized for my love of helping others in the writing community, I received “Member of the Year” award by Word Weavers International in 2023.

On the humorous side, mastering the one space between sentences, after decades of the two-space rule, was a huge milestone sometime during the pandemic. I have perfectionist tendencies so it was purely pragmatic to form a new habit.

I also learned to use my left hand to run the mouse, and my right hand to delete. From my mechanical typewriter days of holding the backspace key, I knew I didn’t want to waste time backspacing to delete.

Do you have a favorite character or scene in one of your works?

In my literary fiction WIP, I adore writing about Sophia and her mom. Taking the best and the worst of my experiences from childhood and motherhood, I find myself writing to heal and to grieve through a combination of lyrical and suspense-filled language and situations. My poetry affinity and my traumatic background make interesting emotional connections.

Some of my favorite scenes are written from the point of view of seven-year-old Sophia as she experiences her past. I also enjoy writing from the mother’s perspective at that same timeline and bringing vignettes of redemption and forgiveness into the current day timeline as the two characters work through their misunderstandings and loss. Weaving issues of adoption and identity prove extremely cathartic.

Tell us about an award you won that was particularly meaningful.

In addition to the WW Member of the Year, I placed as an honorable mention in Serious Writer’s Writer of the Year. That meant the world to me. That same week while watching live streaming ceremony of West Coast Christian Writers Conference, I heard my name mentioned for 1^st place in children’s and YA literature for my children’s gift book called Grief Like Rain. While I sat teary-eyed watching the ceremony online, wishing I was there in person, I called for my husband to celebrate with me, and my name was called again for “Best in Conference” and awarded the Golden Goldie Award for the same piece.

This specific story, Grief Like Rain, is particularly close to me as I am illustrating a lyrical walk through the rain as an analogy to walking through periods of grief, and I am literally illustrating the pages with my art background from college. Most profoundly meaningful were the words of the judge who offered her heartfelt comments through the MC of the event. I felt strengthened and empowered to keep writing. And found courage to show this project at a future agent appointment.

Could you tell us about a dark moment in your writing career?

Indeed, dark moments affect all aspects of our lives, our jobs, and our relationships. I began writing because of broken relationships. So, in a sense, I felt as low as I have ever remembered before beginning to write and claiming this as my career. Since writing, healing has blossomed from that dark place and is reaching valiantly for the light with God’s help.

How many times in your career have you experienced rejection? How did they shape you?

I record every rejection next to my list of submissions. Yellow for submissions. I wait for the answer or results. Green for submissions that are accepted with an award or a publication. Red for rejections. I love red. I embrace the red. Rejection? Yes. But because the blood of Christ compels us to press forward in whatever we do as we honor the Lord; the color red might just be turned around into another redemption storyline.

God doesn’t promise success. But he shapes me as I write. He promises to walk with us through our journeys as we acknowledge Him.

And every bit of “rejection” holds wisdom, refinement, and growth if I learn from the experience. But I confess, once I color a submission check box red, I need a white paint marker in my bullet journal to cover the rejection, but it turns pink. It reminds me that in my strength, I can’t be perfect. But I resubmit a new version of a once rejected story, and have a new opportunity to see the check box turn to green.

Where do you get your ideas?

That is a powerful and mysterious question. I have many thoughts. Ideas rarely stop.

I find inspiration in the details of current events. Not necessarily the historical nature of the event, but a turning of the premise. For example, I enjoy technology advances and challenges, and in one of my books, I found a historic storm that should have been 60 inches of snow, but fizzled out. I wrote the fictitious storm as if it were reversed: a non-eventful spitting of snow that morphed into a crippling storm, camouflaging clues and character escapes, and formed the antagonist for the first act.

Who is your favorite author to read?

This question is never easy to answer. I’ll go with my first three names.

1. Amanda Cox. She writes with a freshness and with insight into lost identities and sorrow in split timelines.

2. Amanda Dykes. Similarly dual times with rich history and poetic language.

3. Jane Kirkpatrick. Historical fiction grounded in American history, using real people like Pocahontas and Lewis and Clark, with stories steeped in emotional themes tugging at our sense of identity and feelings of being “enough.”

What advice can you give aspiring authors that you wished you had gotten, or that you wished you would have heeded?

Don’t wish for a different life. I had discovered this path before my late 50’s. I have so much yet to say and experience, and so very much to heal.

We can’t go back in time. Embrace the path you are on until God directs you differently, but don’t regret your path at all. Our journey refines and molds us. Allow the Lord to wash and heal and free your heart to love and learn all you can in the writing path you have chosen.

What are common mistakes you see aspiring writers make?

1. Calling themselves “aspiring” writers. If you write, you are a writer. Embrace your calling.
2. Not considering writing a professional business.
3. Feeling a change of direction is a big loss, instead  of a course correction.

Where are you published and where can people find you?

People can find me on You Tube, Amazon, under Patricia Tiffany Morris and Tiffany Inks Studio LLC.

I hold publishing credits with Guideposts (essay and devotional books), Lyrical Iowa and National Federation of State Poetry Societies, EnLiven Devotionals (poetry, essay, book cover and font design), The Ekphrastic Review (short story and poetry), Word Weavers International blog (poetry, essay, and articles), and others.

I also published an artistic collection of journals and planners on KDP called Journaling Scribbles Collection.

An eclectic creative with a geeky-tech affinity and a poet with three names, Patricia Tiffany Morris has earned several awards since 2019.

In 2023, she placed 1st in children’s and won “Best in Conference” at the West Coast Christian Writers Conference. She earned honorable mentions for Serious Writer’s “Writer of the Year” award for a YA novel and for the Cascade Writers Contest for poetry.

But nothing beats the thrill of brainstorming sessions with other artists and writers. Recognized for her love of helping others, Patricia received “Member of the Year” award with Word Weavers International in 2023.

In addition to writing, Patricia’s business, Tiffany Inks Studio LLC, creates branding, resources, and illustrations for writers. She adores designing fonts, scrolling Pinterest, and finds social media intriguing in her search for community.

Website:  https://www.patriciatiffanymorris.com

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

• PINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/patriciatiffanymorris/
• FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaTiffanyMorris
• IG WRITER: https://www.instagram.com/PatriciaTiffanyMorrisWriter/
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/patriciatiffanymorris