Finding time to write is one of the biggest challenges for writers, but what if we're thinking about our relationship to time all wrong? Spiritual Director Charlotte Donlon is here to help us reframe time, freedom, and rest, offering new perspectives to support our writing practice.
Highlights
Spiritual direction as a framework to ask good questions, cultivate belonging, and create pathways into creative mystery
How recognizing that "everything in life is the writing life" helps us stop seeing other responsibilities as competitors and reframes them as support beams
Why naming yourself as a writer is the doorway to finding more time to write
Reframing time from something to battle against to something fertile with possibility—and how 15-minute writing sessions keep you connected to your work
Writing as a basic need and why ignoring our writing practice is a way of ignoring ourselves
Viewing the passage of time as accumulation rather than depletion
Charlotte's a-ha moment in the midst of a grieving period that led to a radical perspective shift and a new narrative about what it meant to be a writer
Unraveling productivity stories around rest and practicing self-compassion when faced with loss of all sizes
Interrogating the stories and rules you've absorbed about what it means to be a writer helps you reclaim agency over your time and energy
Why she doesn't write every day (and doesn't believe in writer's block)
Trusting the magic and mystery that permeates the creative process
Links & Mentions
Spiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing Life
Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls (Substack)
Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hershey
Meet Charlotte
Charlotte Donlon is a writer, spiritual director, creativity coach, and faculty member for Alma College MFA’s spiritual writing pathway. Her work has woven together themes of belonging, art, and soul exploration for more than 25 years. With a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing (2015-2018), a certificate in spiritual direction (2018-2020), and a life coach certification (2026), Charlotte guides writers and other creative souls in developing sustainable and nourishing practices so they can make their art, do their work, and love their people.
A Christian in the Episcopal church who believes the tenets of the Nicene Creed, Charlotte employs a universal framework of belonging and connection in her spiritual direction work. She fosters meaningful, soulful conversations and gatherings that are welcoming to all—regardless of faith tradition or spiritual inclinations.
In 2020, Broadleaf Books published Charlotte's first book, The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. Here Below, a new imprint of Eerdmans, published Spiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing Life in 2026. Three volumes of Charlotte's "Guidebooks for the Soul"—Take More Retreats, The Great Belonging Project, and Belonging Through Art—will also be published in 2026 and 2027. Her essays have been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Writer’s Digest, and The Millions, among others. An essay about art conservation, Joan Mitchell, and mystery is forthcoming with Image journal. An essay on AI and the soul is forthcoming with Literary Hub. She and her husband, Tim, live in Birmingham, Alabama and are the parents two young adult children.
Connect
✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here.
