brooke@gilavalleycentral.net
SAFFORD – And that, ladies and gentleman, is not all she wrote.
Pamela Howard visited the Safford-City Graham County Library on Tuesday to talk shop about following her dreams as a writer.
Pamela Howard’s Psalms of an Ordinary Woman is a book of verse written to worship God through an age-old technique of praise of psalm. A high school English teacher with more than 30 years experience, Howard is a writer of poetry and prose.
Always involved in Sunday School and church, Howard says she was born with pen in hand. When her husband became ill, she turned to writing psalms for comfort.
“I started writing them as a personal conversation between me and God,” Howard said. “In six to eight months I realized I had over 108 psalms. It was a way of finding peace and contentment in the circumstances of life. It was a time of chaos, and I always wrote. It was a way for me to figure it all out.”
It was Howard’s second husband, Terry, who found her large collection of psalms in a notebook. After reading her work, Terry exclaimed how good they were and wondered why she hadn’t published them. Together, Terry and Howard worked on editing and polishing the psalms to ready them for the publisher. That was the beginning of her path to publishing.
“Because of him and his encouragement, I completed that part of the project,” Howard said.
After the major editing was complete, the task of finding a publisher loomed ahead. Howard was very careful in her selection of self-publishers because she wanted a specific format.
“I didn’t want someone to edit the passion out of my poetry,” she said.
The book of psalms is Howard’s first published work, but a second book will be coming out at the beginning of next year.
Inspired by nature, Howard would tell any aspiring writer to find their niche.
P.S. Howard’s book Psalms of an Ordinary Woman is available on amazon.com.
