Story Warren Weekend, Vol. 14, Issue 3

Hello and welcome to the weekend,

The essay from last Monday is available here if you’d like to revisit it. I received a good handful of emails that told me that many of us are going through the same things. Can I also recommend this collection of Richard Wilbur’s poetry as an antidote to the noise of the present universe? If I’m making poetry part of my daily habits, I just read one a day—like a vitamin for my heart and mind.

Around the Web

Tim Challies reflects on the importance—and relative non-importance—of memory. “I have long since learned that God sometimes works his Word into my heart the deepest in those times when even a day later I couldn’t recount the outline or describe the content.”

Here’s a good reminder for all of us, not just writers: little consistent efforts add up. “Because it can be hard to see the long-term effects of our most gradual efforts, we (by which I mean definitely me and probably you) often fail to realize how quickly little groups of words and parts of paragraphs add up. If you were to write just 150 words, about one paragraph, per day, you will have written 54,750 words in a year. To put this in perspective, The Giver by Lois Lowry is about 44,000 words.”

Around the Warren

On Monday, we featured a little poem from Langston Hughes: “If-ing.” This is one of those poems that makes you stop and think about the imagination required to live in hard circumstances.

Wednesday’s post was our Mended Wood Literary Society giveaway for January. This month we’ve got lots of favorites for wintertime, plus we’ve added two runner-up prizes! If you haven’t entered yet, there’s still time: the contest ends at midnight Eastern tonight (January 24, 2026).

Something to do with your kids

In our home we never let Groundhog Day (February 2) go by without notice. It’s just one of those odd American traditions that merits a little bit of amused attention, in my humble opinion. With that, I give you this recipe for groundhog cupcakes. I have made these on more than one occasion, and I promise that they are not as alarming as they look in those photos.

Something to watch

A creator imagined what would happen if AI tried to take over his job:

Thanks for reading. We’re on your side.

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Kelly Keller

Kelly Keller is the managing editor of Story Warren. She has her BS in Elementary Education from Messiah University and has taught various ages, but her favorite was worldview and literature with high school students. The “gap” in her resume is actually a window of eighteen years of homeschooling, which she recommends as an effective, though demanding, way of expanding one’s home library.

When she’s not behind her laptop, Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. Kelly hails from beautiful snowy New England, but after nearly two decades in North Carolina, she feels right at home.

She invites you to subscribe to her newsletter, On the Common, or to follow her on Twitter or Instagram.

Latest posts by Kelly Keller (see all)

• Story Warren Weekend, Vol. 14, Issue 6 - February 14, 2026
• Why We Talk About Imagination - February 8, 2026
• Story Warren Weekend, Vol. 14, Issue 5 - February 7, 2026