Art of the Margins: Unearthing Your Creativity in Obscurity

by D.J. Williams

This countercultural manifesto calls us back to creating not for platform or praise but to restore beauty where it’s been fractured, speak truth where it’s been blurred, and rekindle hope in a weary world.The moment we exchange our soul’s call to create for our culture’s demand to be seen, joy gives way to exhaustion. We stop chasing rhythms and melodies, words and ideas, light and color. We’re too busy checking the charts, the clicks, the views, the endorsements. But true creativity is not sustained by visibility. It is forged on our knees in the presence of our Creator.Art of the Margins calls creatives to embrace obscurity as the sacred birthplace of purpose. Across thirty cinematic chapters, D. J. Williams blends personal story and biblical wisdom to reframe hidden seasons as holy ground. This guide propels us to create from conviction, live from calling, and have lasting influence―even when we’re unseen.Creativity not only belongs in galleries, studios, and pulpits. It belongs in the forgotten places where we may feel invisible. It belongs in the margins.

256 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 20, 2026

About the author

D.J. Williams is best-selling author, storyteller, executive producer, and director born and raised in Hong Kong. Growing up between cultures shaped the global perspective that now defines his work across fiction, nonfiction, and brand storytelling.

He is the author of the Chase Hardeman thriller series and the Beacon Hill trilogy, novels known for blending high-stakes action with deeper cultural and spiritual tension. His books have reached #1 on Amazon Hot New Releases and have been featured in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Writer’s Digest, with endorsements from bestselling authors and industry leaders.

His forthcoming nonfiction book, Art of the Margins: Unearthing Your Creativity in Obscurity (David C Cook, 2026), explores how meaningful creative work is formed in hidden seasons where calling is forged.

Reviews

[Keisha]

I really loved the idea of this book: “creating not for platform or praise but to restore beauty where it’s been fractured, speak truth where it’s been blurred, and rekindle hope in a west world.” Unfortunately, I realized at 38% that I was not the audience for this work. As a result, I chose to DNF, but I do feel I can bring valuable insight for other readers to determine if this would be a good book for them.

It became pretty obvious to me that Williams was a storyteller. He typically writes fiction, and I believe some of that talent poured over into his nonfiction. The problem for me is that, while I typically enjoy a good story with somewhat “flowery” writing, when I read a nonfiction book I’m looking for a little bit more text that’s to the point. Williams uses a lot of words and drawn out thoughts as well as multiple stories to illustrate his points. As a reader, I don’t often gravitate towards this style of nonfiction writing.

Williams makes lots of great observations about how our creativity grows in obscurity. During the times where opportunities may not be presenting themselves to us, seeds are being planted, watered, and are growing.

A quote from the book that I enjoyed said: “You see, creativity isn’t born in comfort; it’s birthed in the tension of being unseen yet still choosing to create.”

It’s points like these that influenced me to continue reading; however, some things just became a bit repetitive. I got tired of digging through long sections to find the nuggets I wanted to highlight.

At the end of the day, I think this was mostly a me problem. I think Williams ponderings will be enjoyed my many creatives. So, while this book may not have been for me, I am happy to recommend it to anyone whose interest is piqued.

Other quotes I enjoyed:

“The creative life isn’t a straight line. It spirals. It circles back. It digs a few more ditches. It resurrects.”

“Fear and doubt don’t haunt work that’s hollow - they haunt the work that holds weight.”

“Leaders who choose to lead must be willing to walk in the wild with others throughout the seasons, not when it’s convenient but when it’s disruptive.”

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for extending me an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

[Brandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Art of the Margins is marketed as Christian, but with its emphasis on creativity as the be-all end-all of life, allowing humility to be bred in you through “Presence” amidst the aloneness of dry spells, and constant reference to that “Presence,” this book reads as new age zen philosophy, with Bible verses undergirding it all as if to get a pass from the religious market. This is not Christian forefathers’ faith. It’s some new age version of God who is here to help us achieve our own ideas of purpose through creativity.

The main emphasis is to persevere no matter what and learn to be at peace with being unknown and unmade when things aren’t going well and you aren’t making a public splash, what Williams refers to as “in the margins.” Then, Presence will bless your hard work, with success as proof of the work’s holiness and the blessing of Presence. Yeah, not Christian. But there is much encouragement to the discouraged creative who doesn’t care about following God. For Christians, things ought to be different.

These points are so repeated that the first fifteen chapters could be condensed to one. The rest expounds on what’s already been hammered, with other illustrations, and done so with passive voice and vague generalizations that make it hard for the reader to care or apply them to their lives. After awhile, chapters read like devotions that lack essential takeaways. The book concluded in false ending after false ending. Overall, it could have been reduced to a third of the length without missing anything.

Williams misuses scripture to support his ideas: David poured out his soul to God in the highs and lows of life, when unknown, because God was his sustenance, not because he wanted to create songs, and Paul wrote to encourage and exhort churches and fellow brethren so they would wholly seek God, not because he wanted to be a renowned author. And the story of Jacob in no way sanctions us to fight God for our creativity. If anyone is doing that, it would behoove them to scrutinize themselves for selfishness and rebellion against God, for God calls us disciples to crucify our flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24), something this book sidesteps entirely.

Additionally, some comparisons are atrocious. Creative dry seasons compared to wounded warriors and Florence Nightingale’s life and death ministry cheapens their precious sacrifices. Some comparisons should never be used.

There is much wrong with this book theologically. For example, Williams says, “If we cultivate our faith and our craft, then Presence will honor us.” Rather, if we cultivate our love and fear of God, resulting in obedience to Him no matter our personal cost, even forsaking our creative endeavors should he ask it, then God will honor us.

He also says, “Dedicate your craft to Presence. That changes everything when the spark fades. You won’t create for glory … you’ll create for His grace.” Having been in creative circles for many years I’ve seen numerous Christians dedicate their craft to God when really they’re just doing their own thing without input from him at all, and they expect that because they’ve dedicated their work to him, he will bless it. That is not how God operates. That’s how idols form and run undetected.

“Spiritual opposition confirms spiritual assignment. Resistance validates calling. If we’re facing a tough season in the margins,” says the author, “then we’re on the verge of a breakthrough. But we’re going to have to fight in the suffering.” On the contrary, there are numerous reasons for opposition, including our own sin and selfish desires, and any opposition deserves investigation to learn the source. The Open Door, Closed Door belief is false.

The message I do find sound herein is to seek humility and draw close to “Presence” (if Presence be the one true God) in the quietness outside notoriety and accomplishment, “in the margins” and “around the campfire with fellow creatives.”

The author’s continual use of Presence instead of God unnecessarily confuses. He sounds like he either doesn’t worship the God he grew up with or he is hiding Him behind a moniker to make him more palatable to others. Note that finally, in the end, he gives strong allusion to Presence, Revelation, and Creativity as being the triune godhead of Father, Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

Only one time outside scripture did the author name Jesus in the pursuit of creativity and using creativity to reach the lost. This should have been the focus of the book, but it was not.

At 85% in, I found the idol revealed in full description by what it looks like in a person life, minus the devastating ramifications to marriages and families. So the idol of creativity clearly leads the author’s train whereas Christ and reaching the lost are merely the caboose, if the caboose is included at all.

Plain and simple, this entire book is devoted to maintaining and feeding the idol of creativity at all costs, and it is using scripture to do it.

And so I’ve come to the conclusion that Presence, as Williams speaks of it, is usually not the presence of God he surmises. It is a demonic influence designed to distract the Christian from devotion to the only One who can save his or her soul, and it uses Scripture to avoid detection and make it seem like it is of God, and its works noble.

Reader, beware. Something sinister has hijacked God’s name and place and wants to capture your soul. Don’t let it. Crucify your flesh with its passions and desires and pick up your cross and follow Christ Jesus. You may create along the way, and if you do, the work will then be truly, and not counterfeit, to the glory of God.

I received an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest, unbiased review.

[Eleanore · Rating 2 out of 5]

In any undertaking, there's the standard bell curve, and the majority fall in the eighty percent that make up the middle. Art of the Margins by DJ Williams is about the outskirts of that bell curve, the places where people who live beyond the standard eighty percent fall: the margins. The book is a combination memoir/self-help/how-to guide to the creative process (any creative process, though the author recounts and focuses most specifically on his own writing as creative process) wherein Williams explores the edges of the margins: the ways we creative types end up there, the kinds of obstacles to our processes we find there, and, in essence, what it's like to be generative from a place many might presume to be the antithesis of that kind of creative spirit, energy, and effort.

Throughout the book, Williams intersperses vignettes from his own life and experience with what one might call quick-and-dirty Bible "studies," of a sort, as a means of added support for his talking points and as a source of potential encouragement for readers who might share his Christian worldview. Readers should be aware that Bible verses and what are often considered better-known Bible "stories" are in general removed from their original contexts in the Old or New Testaments and not explicated here with formal exegesis, so if one were interested in the actual Biblical passages and accounts themselves, one might wish to find a structured and well-researched book on theology instead. While I don't believe, based on my own years of Bible study, that this book includes anything close to heresy, it's possible that in some cases meaning is read into certain Biblical accounts used, rather than exegeted out of them in a scholarly manner, as a means to further certain points. Readers may also want to be aware that the worldview of the book looks and feels like it's fairly conservative both theologically and culturally, with recurring passages that emphasize, for example, concepts like self-discipline and effortfulness and using creativity as a weapon against normal human emotional experiences like doubt and fear; this worldview may be off-putting to people looking to move away from or looking not to engage with war imagery, sports metaphors, or sentiments about "just" doing better or working more or trying harder. (There's also what feels like a firm nod to complementarianism with the way the author's wife is referred to: as, simply and literally, "the wife," throughout, that some readers may find off-putting in more egalitarian circles.)

The book is written in a repetitive style, with much of the content gone over from several different angles but essentially delivering the same information. Consider a sample section of one paragraph: "In a world obsessed with certainty, wonder chooses awe. Wonder walks slower. Wonder listens longer. Wonder dreams deeper" (Williams, Loc 1640 of the e-book). Some passages, such as the aforementioned example, are particularly artful and even poetic in choice of diction. With a sparer style of writing, the true content of the book might have been fifty or a hundred pages shorter in length.

Art of the Margins: Unearthing Your Creativity in Obscurity sets out with a valid and viable premise: that the creative process for any artist (by any definition of the word) can and frequently does (or has to) flourish in less-than-optimal conditions, which is a premise that has proven true throughout history. Artists have frequently, or even always, created under various forms of duress. What Williams found in the Christian scriptures to shore himself up on his own creative journey is equally valid and may speak to a certain kind of reader. Others might find the writing too religious, too conservative, or too pedantic to engage with, though they would miss the occasional gem of a line that will, I can honestly say, stay with me in perpetuity.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest, though not necessarily positive, review. The opinions expressed herein are my own.

[Tiffany Sealey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to gleaning some insight from this book as a creative person who struggles with finding her calling in the creative world.
Frankly, it didnt feel like I was getting any information other than the authors life story.
Now thats not to say that is a bad thing in and of itself, unfortunately its just not what is expected from the title or descrIption of the book.
The author seemed overly excited and trying to cram what felt like, many multiple sets of thoughts, into short motivational chapters. Im loathe to give bad reviews because I know everyone has off days, and encouragement will carry someone further than criticism, but it was like reading a run on sentence for several chapters. The idea behind the book started fantastic, but just never seemed to truly flesh out. As a Christian, the authors continued use of “Presence” rather than God, really threw me off. In spots it made total sense but in other places it felt like an avoidance of His actual name.
I really wanted to love this book, but I just couldn’t find my way to any form of enjoyment during it at all. Nor do I feel as if I received anything from it. To the author, I feel deeply like your heart was in the encouragement you were trying to give, but it just falls flat amongst the constant stories of self and no real direction in any of the chapters.

[Jaime Jo Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

For every creative soul struggling with purpose, disappointment, disillusionment, ego, and even overconfidence, Art of the Margins is for you. This isn't an exegetical book or a theology tome. It's a book of testimony, featuring various creatives in different fields and their stories as they pursued using the creative gifts God graced them with. It's a book that identifies the reality of creativity not being an instant road to success (or even a road to success at all), but being a place where a person meets Christ in the margins of life. The place where the well-ordered world of lines and edits and mathematics of logic fall away, and we're left to just BE in the PRESENCE of Jesus. God used so many people in Scripture whose lives were marked, bent, broken, and crafted in the margins. I believe that is what the author intends with this book. For it to be an encouragement to seek the stillness of the creative places, to breathe deep of the presence of God, and to allow Him to use our gifts and talents to create for His glory and to point back to Him as the ultimate Creator.

[Kathleen Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book about the creative journey in life. Although I would not consider myself a true creative necessarily, I did relate to this book at many levels. It spoke to my heart as a believer in Christ to not loose sight of the calling we each have. To stay the course and not give up even though the direction of our life changes DJ Williams is a skillful writer, and this book, through his use of sharing his own experiences; some using humor and some very vulnerable and heart breaking, made his point that life is full of challenges and struggles, adventures and successes. In the times of transition, where we don’t know exactly where God is taking us, we can live in His Presence, seeking Him and knowing His peace. His stories have a way of piercing the heart and challenging the reader to delve deeper into that place of safety, knowing that the Lord has not abandoned us, but is taking us to a new dimension of creativity if we are willing to trust Him to take us there in His timing not ours.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of encouragement for those called to creativity. Williams shares his own experiences as he explores those forgotten places, the margins. He reminds us God often starts with the unseen, the overlooked, giving examples from the Bible. Jesus was born in the margins. He writes about facing fear and being willing to venture into the unknown. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have certainty. Just take a step.

“Creativity is worship,” Williams writes. (181) My favorite saying from this book is “We weren't made to follow someone else's path.” (120) Each of us was made to be an original. If you are called to journey the creative path, your own original creative path, this book will give you much encouragement along the way. You were made to be an original. It is time to step out, even if the outcome is unknown.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent review.

[Kyle J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art of the Margins was an inspiring read and a great reminder that the vast majority of the important work happens before you ever see the spotlight.  The author opens up honestly about the perspective shifts that turn waiting around as an unknown creative into developing work patiently, despite our uncertainty.  It's very encouraging for future authors or creatives to pay close attention and dive deeper when in those moments "in the margins" instead of dreading or shying away from them.  D.J. wants all of us to trust that these unknown seasons have purpose, even if we can't see it in the moment.  The message is thoughtful and delivered in a very poetic way.  Great motivation for any creator that hasn't yet reached the center stage.

[Meagan | The Chapter House · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited about this read, and hoped it would be something like Jared C. Wilson's _The Storied Life_. Alas, the book and I weren't meant to be!

Williams's ongoing use of "Presence" was nebulous and jarring. Did he mean God? Jesus? I assume and hope so. But one could just as easily insert anyone or anything they want into that. It read very New Age, only pointing to Christianity with the occasional Scripture references (which themselves were sometimes stretched to illustrate the point).

I'd definitely recommend _The Storied Life_ as an alternative.

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

[Jeri Purdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not expect to see myself so clearly in this book. Art of the Margins is about the hidden seasons, the obscurity where creative work and calling actually get formed, and DJ Williams writes about them with the honesty of someone who has lived there rather than just theorized about it.

There were chapters where I finally felt seen. He put language to things I have carried quietly through years of leadership and never quite been able to name: the stretches with no audience, the work that mattered most when no one was watching, the quiet questions about whether any of it was counting for something. Reading it felt less like being taught and more like being understood.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a depth and understanding about the hidden obscurities regarding the margins of creativity that only those who rigorously battle those lonely terrains and persevere can find the hope and joy in those very sacred spaces. This book illuminates how to find endurance and creative energy when the rest of the world might give up. As a creative I found myself inspired to pick up my craft once again and discover how the margins may not be signs to quit but rather the very moments of life that I’ve been chasing. Thank you for that!!!

[Mitch Kruse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have known D.J. Williams for twenty-five years. As a missionary kid, D.J. grew up in Hong Kong where he experienced the life of another culture that is continually revealed in his amazing books. His private ministry impact in a who’s who of Christian leaders, not to mention those who had yet to believe, is almost unparalleled. He has done it again! “Art of the Margins” is riveting! D.J. tells a story unlike any other author I have read. This book is a must-read for any creative!

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art of the Margins is a vulnerable, well-written story of creativity, calling, and moving forward. It is relatable and inspirational. Changing direction from something solid and known to something wild and directionless could seem irresponsible to many, but tempting to the creative. Williams' book is a road map for any creative looking to make a risky change knowing there are others finding their way in the wilderness.

[Marc Wax · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who reads hundreds of screenplays and novels per year, to have the opportunity to gain insight as to how creative people work on a daily, monthly, yearly basis to craft a piece of work that can entertain, educate, inspire or provide a view you agree or disagree with is truly worth reading!

[Melissa Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book definitely makes you take a step back and look at things from a different perspective. Everything was very well said and made me realize that it would be nice to live in the margins more myself. Not put so much pressure on myself and just go with the flow.

[Aaron Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derek is vulnerable about his own artistic process, encouraging people to embrace the difficult and obscure aspects of the creative process, being suspicious of the pursuit of personal glory and accolades. My favorite quote was, “Greatness grows in the margins where no one is watching me."