By Bill King
This week I am beginning my tenth year of writing what you are now reading. The second week of January 2014, I wrote my first weekly column for The Opelika News. The editor of the paper at that time said, “We’ll try it for a few weeks and see how it goes.” He said, “Some people think they want to write a weekly column, but after a few months, they can’t think of anything else to say.” I guess I’ve always had the gift of gab. He said, “Write us around 600 words each week of something uplifting, inspiring, and not too heavy.” Now here we are, starting my tenth year, so I guess it has gone pretty well. Amazingly, I still find more things to write about than I can use. People often ask me what my column is about. The simple answer to that question is life.
That new opportunity to write was not my first time writing a newspaper column, but it was my first time writing one every week. My late dear friend Chyron Wood was writing a column for The Cullman Tribune back then. He told the editor of that paper that he should print my column each week. Soon afterward, that paper became the second one to run my column. Through the following years, and even as recently as a few weeks ago, other newspapers have added my scribblings to their pages each week. The most recent one was The Valley Times-News, which serves Valley and Lanett, Alabama, as well as West Point, Georgia. Since I now serve as pastor at Lanier Baptist Church in Lanett, I am especially glad to have that writing opportunity there.
Way back in the early 1980s, I wrote my very first newspaper column. I was living in Fort Payne at the time and a member of the Fort Payne Ministerial Association. On a rotating basis, one of us wrote a column for Fort Payne’s Times Journal. I don’t remember now how often my time came around, but it was several times each year. I did the same kind of occasional writing when I lived in Southaven, Mississippi, for The DeSoto Times. Ironically, Fort Payne’s Times Journal is one of the 18 newspapers across the state that currently carries my column each week. This includes towns as far north as Stevenson, as far south as Atmore, and all in between. Although I write periodically for a Christian magazine, and I have written ten books, including everything from my humorous Billy Bob stories, serious Christian novels, column collections, and illustrated children’s stories, this column has been and still is my favorite writing activity.
Sometimes I enjoy browsing back through some of those old articles and remembering and reliving some of the happenings, like the Blizzard of 2014. I might be using a bit of writer’s license with the word blizzard, but we rarely see snow way-down South, so 2 inches seems like a blizzard to us!
Anyway, thank you to The OA News for giving me that start back in 2014 and to all the other newspapers that have picked up my column since then. Thank you to all my readers. I hear from many of you through email, on Facebook, and in person at stores, churches, or wherever. I love to find out my words have brightened someone’s day a little and maybe even given them some encouragement. Please keep reading, and I’ll keep writing. I am blessed to have this opportunity to do what I love to do.
