Write His Answer

This will be Dianne Butts’ 24^th year at CCWC.
I asked her to share why she keeps coming back.

My first year coming to the Colorado Christian Writers Conference was 1989, and I’ve come every year since.

In 1989 my husband and I lived in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I worked at a beer distributor, a job I really enjoyed. But my knowledge and understanding of Jesus was growing and I longed to share what I was learning of Him. It hadn’t been that long since I came to know Him and I knew there were many people who were like me, who would want to know Him if someone would just make the introduction. I wanted to be that someone for them. But how could I reach them? I tried to be a good witness to the two other ladies I worked with, but I wanted to reach more.

I often thought about one high school teacher who encouraged me to write. I’d never wanted to be a writer, never had that dream like so many other writers I know now. But this teacher had seen some silly teen-angst poem I had written and she took an interest. She took me to the library and introduced me to the Writer’s Market. She taught me how to format my manuscript and what a SASE was, and together we sent that poem off to three markets. We got rejections from two. I remember one rejection letter had scrawled across it in handwriting, “This sounds like a Hallmark card.” That wasn’t a compliment. We never heard from the third market.

And that’s all I knew about writing. But I kept thinking if I could write something—maybe an article, though I really wanted to write a novel—and get it published, I could reach many more people for Jesus than I could just trying to be a good witness in my daily life around town. I visited Steamboat’s library. I found the Writer’s Market. It didn’t have many Christian markets in it. I wondered if Christian markets would publish anything I wrote anyway, since I had no training or education in Biblical studies.

One day on the Christian radio station that was rebroadcast into Steamboat Springs, I heard a lady interviewed. Debbie Barker talked about a Christian writer’s conference that spring in Thornton, a suburb of Denver. I couldn’t believe it! A conference for Christian writers?! I asked my husband who said yes. I took a day off work to go. I signed up for the “beginning writers” workshop. I couldn’t believe how many people were in that room! I found an empty seat and sat among them feeling totally inadequate, and yet I took notes as fast as I could, absorbed as much as I could, and laughed at the cartoons about writing the instructor, Marlene Bagnull, kept putting up on the overhead projector.

During an afternoon session, a fire alarm sounded. Nobody moved. Mrs. Bagnull said she didn’t really think there was a fire, said something about the devil didn’t want us learning what we were learning, stopped in mid-sentence and prayed, and then continued on with the workshop shouting over the alarm. The alarm eventually quit. I went home with so much information ringing in my ears I hardly knew where to start, but at least now I knew what to do.

It took a few years before I got my first publication in 1991 in The Lookout, and I’ve been writing ever since—first part time while I worked part time after we moved from Steamboat, then full time after we moved again and jobs were scarce. I now have more than 325 published articles including articles published in Great Britain, Bulgaria, Poland, Canada, and Korea. I’ve contributed to 19 books and have written two of my own—the first, Dear America, published by Marlene’s Ampelos Press, and the other, Deliver Me, out just last year.

We’ve moved many times around Colorado following my husband’s job, so it has been the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference and the friends I’ve made there that have been the constant in my life.

It was my hope and prayer that my writing would go where I could not, to reach people I otherwise would not. But my writing has taken me places I never dreamed of. Talk about Ephesians 3:20!

I think it was in 2000 when a woman named Barbara Nicolosi came to the conference to talk to us Christian writers about writing for Hollywood. You mean screenplays and stuff? I didn’t know the first thing about that kind of writing. But I found myself sitting in all Barbara’s workshops. And I’ve sat in on every screenwriting workshop since, including Ted Baehr’s in 2010. (I plan to sit in his class again this year.) In 2010 I applied to Barbara’s school, Act One, and attended the writer’s seminar that summer in Hollywood.

In February 2011 some of my Act One classmates came to my house in Colorado and we made a film for the 168 Film Project. I learned a ton. I learned so much, in fact, that I decided to form my own team for this year, and in February 2012 I headed up my own film team. (That makes me the Producer, along with my supportive husband, Hal.) I also wrote the script and directed the actors and the entire project. Our 10-minute film, The Choice, isn’t in the running for any awards at the 168 Film Festival coming up March 30-31 but our film is still going to screen the evening of Saturday, March 30, at the Hope Theatre in San Fernando. The Choice is based on a true story in my book Deliver Me: Hope, Help, & Healing through True Stories of Unplanned Pregnancy.

While our film may not be a “winner” in the eyes of the 168 judges, I am very proud of the film we made. I know our short 10-minute film is going to have a ministry of its own beyond the 168 Film Project because this film is going to reach people I otherwise couldn’t or wouldn’t reach with the message of forgiveness and salvation in Christ Jesus.

Last week we made a movie trailer which you can see here: The Choice – Trailer