Writing Archives | Philip Yancey

Learning to Write

Philip Yancey — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 08:47:45 +0000

I’ve recently begun a book about writing. Now and then I’ll include a brief excerpt from this work in progress as a blog post. These days, everybody is a writer. Several billion of us connect daily through a variety of social media platforms and email programs. For the first time in history, something you write ... Read more

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Word Play

Philip Yancey — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 07:54:50 +0000

Visitors to my Facebook page and website have proved that they love words. Here’s a test: Do you know what an eponym is? Homonyms are words with more than one meaning, such as rock, or fall. Synonyms mean nearly the same thing as another word, while antonyms mean the opposite. Acronyms combine the initial letters ... Read more

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John Donne Redone

Philip Yancey — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 08:41:01 +0000

I have an ancient poet to thank for my first book. During my mid-twenties, while serving as the editor of Campus Life magazine, I came across John Donne’s book Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. I knew of Donne from fragments taught in high school—“No man is an island…”; “for whom the bell tolls…”—but I almost avoided ... Read more

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Now More Than Ever

Philip Yancey — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 03:14:35 +0000

I wrote What’s So Amazing About Grace? more than twenty-five years ago, at the close of the twentieth century. I feared that some parts of the church were growing so shrill and divisive that bystanders no longer heard the gospel as good news. In fact, I submitted the book to my publisher with the proposed ... Read more

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The Secret of Memoirs

Philip Yancey — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 08:53:57 +0000

When I decided to write a memoir, I went to the library and methodically made my way through every memoir on their shelves. For years I had been writing idea-driven books, and now I had to learn how to write pure narrative. A memoir should simply tell a story, without analysis or commentary. Before long, ... Read more

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Through a Writer’s Eyes

Philip Yancey — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 08:09:11 +0000

As someone who has been writing articles and books for half a century, I read the Bible differently than most people. I can’t help peeking behind the words to the human authors. I read Isaiah and marvel at his soaring prose and shining images of restored creation. I read Jeremiah and identify with the reluctant ... Read more

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My Untold Story

Philip Yancey — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 06:21:28 +0000

For as long as I’ve been writing, I have wanted to produce a memoir. I’ve read great memoirs on other religious groups: Frank McCourt’s account of Irish Catholics in Angela’s Ashes, Chaim Potok’s memoir-like novels on Orthodox Judaism, Tara Westover’s bestseller Educated about fundamentalist Mormons. Yet my own tribe of evangelical/fundamentalists, hardly a fringe group, ... Read more

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A Melancholy Thanksgiving

Philip Yancey — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 07:58:54 +0000

I’ve been working on a modern Devotions, which he wrote in 1623 during a bubonic plague outbreak. One-third of London’s residents would die, and in November Donne himself, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, fell ill. His journal of illness captures the melancholy mood of that time, not so different from what we experience in ... Read more

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The Power of Love and the Love of Power (Shakespeare: Part II)

Philip Yancey — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 07:27:26 +0000

William Shakespeare knew love, and also its complications. At the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior. Six months after the wedding, Anne gave birth to a child, which no doubt sparked local gossip. Later, he wrote love sonnets to a man—Was the playwright a closet homosexual?—and then composed ... Read more

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What Makes Shakespeare Great? (Part I)

Philip Yancey — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 09:02:32 +0000

Some years ago I read through all 38 of the plays by William Shakespeare. I chose one night per week, drank lots of coffee, and used an edition that explained his archaic words and allusions. The first few weeks it seemed like homework, but soon I found myself swept up in the plays, which were ... Read more

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