Writing Services2023-03-07T16:33:41+00:00
Diane Robin Lee

Writing Services

Diane is a professional member of The Word Guild.

Writing services include:

  • Editing
  • Articles
  • Research
  • Brochures
  • Newsletters
  • Letter writing
  • Proofreading
  • Speech writing
  • Website content
  • Video script writing
  • Desktop Publishing
  • Family history books
  • Editing
  • Articles
  • Research
  • Brochures
  • Newsletters
  • Letter writing
  • Proofreading
  • Speech writing
  • Website content
  • Video script writing
  • Desktop Publishing
  • Family history books

Diane’s award-winning writing skills give the advantage edge to anyone requiring the services of a graphic designer – for such applications as newsletters, fliers, magazines and book interiors – anywhere where words and graphics intertwine.

Diane wrote her first book, My Father’s Child, a Canadian bestseller, in 1980. An autobiographical / research study on ministers and their families, it was immediately picked up for publishing by Mainroads, a subsidiary of Crossroads Christian Communications, and sold 12,000 copies in Canada. Encouraged to share more insight with her readers, Diane wrote Growing in the Spirit in 1982. Again, Diane was amazed when GR Welch, the first publisher who saw it, accepted her work for publication. It was obvious that God was at work. Since then, Diane has gone on to write over 30 other books and booklets, some of which she has co-authored. In 2005, Diane was honored with her first national writing award, placing first in The Word Guild Awards for her extensive history of The Peoples Church – Into All theWorld. In 2009, her legacy journal, To My Family…My Life, published by Castle Quay, was featured on 100 Huntley Street as the ministry offer for the month of June. Over 6,000 copies were sold. The Journal is now available on CD for anyone wishing to complete it on the computer. Also in 2009, Diane became the Director of Communications for Plan to Protect. and, having committed her life to the protection of children, wrote the Predator-Proof Your Family series of booklets as well as the complete book on the topic, A Different World. In the intervening years, numerous of the books Diane has designed or co-written for clients have won national awards.

Video Scripting Awards

Diane has won many awards for her video scripting, particularly in the field of commercials and municipal videos. Her one-minute commercial for the Town of Richmond Hill won first place in the EDCO Commercials for Municipalities category and was shown on every Air Canada flight for a month. Her winning municipal videos (produced through Praise Productions which she co-owned 1986-2006) include Parry Sound, Peterborough, Orillia and Richmond Hill.

Family History Books

Because of the highly confidential nature of family photographs and records of influential families, samples of Diane’s family histories are not available. Suffice it to say that she has produced some fine family history books. The attention to detail, exquisite hard cover binding, and magnificent presentation are second to none. Her commitment to confidentiality is treasured by those concerned about their personal interests getting into the public domain.

A few online articles by Diane:

How to Get Your Dentist to Pay Your Bills

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For about 30 years, I’ve been having interesting discussions with my agnostic dentist about the reality of God—sometimes particularly interesting when I’m trying to make a point with his drill in my mouth! He always does that to me – says something he knows I’ll take exception to and then starts drilling away! We’ve had a lot of fun jousting back and forth over the years.

Every time I have a new book published, I take a copy in to him in hopes that something in my writing will ring a bell.

I recently had a Legacy Journal published called, To My Family…My Life. Along with sections for the recording of values, reflections and family history, there are scriptures at the bottom of each page.

I owed my publisher $1220.00 for copies I had purchased and needed to pay the bill before Christmas—just over a month away! In my present circumstances, that was a real challenge.

Last Tuesday, I sold a journal to a fellow in the morning for $20.00. Then I proceeded up to my dentist’s office to get my teeth cleaned. When I gave him a copy of my new journal, he flipped though it and said, “This is fantastic. What a marvelous idea!”

“You know,” I said, “this would make a fabulous Christmas gift for everyone on your list!”

He stared at me and said, “You’re right! I’ll take twenty.”

“Twenty journals,” I exclaimed! “You want twenty??”

“Yes,” he said, whereupon I, without a thought, took his face in my hands and gave him a great big kiss (not something I usually do!)

He was so shocked that he said, “Give me sixty!”

“Sixty journals??? Are you serious?”

“Yes. Give me sixty.” He smiled.

I wasn’t sure that I had that many with me, but when I checked, I had exactly sixty journals in boxes in my car!

As soon as we took them inside, he happily began to pass them out to his patients. My agnostic dentist was passing out scripture and paid me for the pleasure of doing it!

On the way home, I started doing the math. Sixty journals times $20.00 each = $1200.00. $1200.00 plus the $20.00 in the morning = $1220.00. My publisher’s bill was paid in full.

I think God had some fun with that one, too!

God is in the Car Business!

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I bought a brand new car last week. It wasn’t the car I had originally planned to buy. Here’s what happened.

My little Honda has served me well, but I felt that the Lord was nudging me to trade. My speedometer was about to go into 200,000 km. neverland and the car would soon be another year older. I needed new tires and who knew what else was around the corner?

So I thought I’d trade up from my 2001 to a 2004 Honda I found with only 46,000 km on it. It seemed like the perfect solution. I didn’t anticipate any problem with the financing since I would just be extending my Bank of Montreal car loan. I’d never missed a payment and had never been late. Sounds easy? Uh-uh.

Because I’d recently gotten divorced and my circumstances had changed, the bank wanted three years of company statements (which was a little difficult since I just registered byDesign Media last year). So, okay, they said, give us three months of bank statements showing the amount you’ve claimed to bring in. When I submitted those (showing more than I had claimed) they wanted invoices to prove my income. So okay, I produced the invoices. When I submitted those, they wanted something else.

I gave up. I said, “Lord, I’m pretty sure you wanted me to trade my car, but I’m giving up trying because this is too frustrating. If you’ve got a different plan for me, I’ll just wait to see it.” I’ve been around the block enough times that I know God might have a better idea.

Saturday morning, I had coffee with my friends, Nina and Lori. Lori said, “Why don’t you examine your other options—like a new car. Hmmmm. Hadn’t thought of that. Because I’m not quite back on my feet yet, I had thought that I’d have to get a used car.

So off we went to the Saturn dealership. They took my social insurance number, checked my credit rating and gave me the keys to a brand new white Saturn! (Well, not quite. That last line was a lie because I had to wait until Tuesday to pick the car up—but the drama was better the other way. 🙂

A brand new car with 0% financing and full warranty for five years! I would be paying only about $20.00 per month more than I was already paying for my old car that was out of warranty long ago!! Obviously, God didn’t think I should have to pay interest! What a plan!

As though that wasn’t enough, Saturn gives free weekly car washes for the life of the car and a picnic every year!!!!

In the process of doing the deal, the salesman asked what I do for a living.

“I’m a writer,” I said.

“What do you write?”

“Books.”

“What kind of books?”

“Christian books. Are you a Christian?” I asked.

“No.” He shook his head a little uncertainly.

“Well, what’s your plan for after you die?” I asked.

“Um…I guess I really hadn’t thought about that,” he said.

“What?” I asked. “Do you mean that I have spent all this money for extra warranty just to make sure I don’t have a problem with my car — and you don’t even have a plan for eternity?” I smiled, shook my head, signed the paper and left.

When I returned on Tuesday to pick up my brand new car, I gave the salesman a copy of my first book, My Father’s Child,” in which the plan of salvation is clearly laid out. I inscribed it, “Thanks for all your help. I thought you might be up for a little fire insurance!”

What an awesome God.

By the way, the salesman’s name is Luke. If you’re looking for a great little car, go and see Luke at the Whitby Saturn dealership. He’ll look after you real fine. Tell him Diane sent you – by design.

No Bull

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When we were in the process of buying our last home, I stood with the realtor and my (then) husband on the back deck gazing out at the magnificence of the fields and woods all around us. It was a pastoral scene, utterly peaceful.

Until I looked down and saw one of the biggest, fattest, blackest, leggiest spiders I have ever seen. Jumping to the side, out of the corner of my eye I saw something else move. It was another gross spider. Looking a little closer at the deck, I was horrified to see that the two creatures had a big family.

Now, you have to understand how I feel about spiders. I was the child at the cottage who used to make my mother sweep out the entire outhouse and clean around the underside of the plywood-sided hole before I would tentatively enter, afraid that some creepy crawler would suddenly appear from under a two by four. Then, I would make her or my sister wait outside the door until I was finished, all the time calling, “Are you still there? Are you still there?”

I loved the house my husband and I were about to buy, but how could I possibly relax in a place infested with huge spiders? When I got home that day, I remembered the scripture about man being given dominion over all the animals and determined to put my position to the test.

I prayed, “Lord, you know I can’t live in a place with all those enormous spiders. I just can’t do it, so I’m taking you at your word that they have to come under my authority.”

Then, I pictured that deck in my mind and spoke to the spiders. I can’t remember whether I spoke out loud or just in my mind. I said, “Spiders at our new house, I command you to crawl away from the house, go out into the fields at the back and never return.”

You’re probably thinking, “She’s not really going to say they left, chuckle chuckle.” But that’s exactly what I’m going to say! I never saw another of those spiders in the 26 years we lived in that house. Sure, there were spiders here and there—but never a ginormous fat black one.

I suppose it would have been possible to think that was just a fluke—until the day my neighbour’s bull and twenty-seven cows broke some fences and wandered onto my front lawn. I had just planted some new little shrubs and made new flower gardens.

Now, you have to understand how I feel about bulls. I was the child at my uncle’s farm who quaked in fright every day that I had to walk past a fenced field where a bull lived on my way to school. I would never, ever consider wearing red, knowing that that old bull would come snorting after me for sure!

So here we were—this humungous bull and his twenty-seven wives having lunch on my newly planted lawn—and me, home alone. I did everything I could to scare them away (without venturing further than my porch). I yelled at them, threatened what I was going to do if they didn’t get out of there, banged pots, even took one of my son’s drums out and beat on it as loudly as I could.

That old bull looked up, stared me straight in the eye, continued to chew his cud and telepathically thanked me for the dinner entertainment.

Now I was getting mad. Flowers weren’t cheap and it hadn’t been easy planting those shrubs.

Then I remembered the spiders. I stared back at the bull, pointed towards the broken down fences and said, “In the Name of Jesus, I command you to turn around and march right back over those fences you broke and go back to your own fields. And take the girls with you!”

You’re probably thinking, “She’s not really going to say they left, chuckle chuckle.” But that’s exactly what I’m going to say!

That big old bull looked up at me one last time. He looked at me for a couple of minutes without moving. I wondered what he was going to do. A fleeting thought crossed my mind. Was I wearing anything red?

But then, almost disdainfully, the bull turned away from me and began to amble off towards the broken fences. Kicking the white planks as he lifted his clumsy hoofs over the wreckage, he shook his head. The girls all turned from their lunch and began their retreat behind him.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Or was it by design?

It makes one wonder what is really available to us if we were to believe God and take Him at His word!

From out of Africa

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This business of divorce is not all it’s cracked up to be — not that I ever wanted one in the first place.

Sometimes I love the independence and the surety that if I leave the portable phone somewhere, it will be right where I left it when I want it next, but coming home to the silence of an empty apartment can be very difficult after 38 years of noisy co-habitation with a spouse and family members who made their way into the world, one by one.

Recently, I went through three very dark days when I hardly knew how to hang on. Life really didn’t seem worth living without anyone to intimately care. My little Lola (dog) is a priceless companion, but sometimes a person needs more than wet kisses and a wagging tail.

On the third evening, I arrived home late. Emptiness filled my world. I was very sad. Taking an envelope out of my purse that I had picked up from the mail at noon, I saw that it was from Alice, the little Ugandan girl who I have been supporting for the last four years through Compassion Canada. It has been gratifying to see her progress from primitive drawings to increasingly tidy handwriting.

Alice’s letter read, “Thank God that we are still alive here in Mbale. We are hoeing and preparing and planting crops of maize and brans. I have a memory verse I got from the Book of Proverbs 3:5,6. It says trust in the Lord with all your strength and never rely on what you think or you know.”

Tears began to run down my face. There is no way that little girl could have known that Proverbs 3:5,6 has been my signature verse ever since I returned to the Lord in 1978. Over and over again, He has brought it to me in difficult times in remarkable ways.

What blew me away was God’s timing. That letter was probably written about a month before I got it. It had to cross the ocean, go through Canada Post and be delivered to my mailbox. It had been in my purse since noon, waiting for the exact moment God knew I would need to see that He really cares.

The other thing that blew me away was the gift of caring that Alice gave. There she was, a little 12-year-old girl, living in a mud hut, sending me the very best thing she had to give – the love of God.

And so I wrote back, thanking Alice for her wonderful letter, telling her how beautifully God had used her to cheer me.

Yesterday, another letter arrived from Mbale. Alice wrote, “God will send victory to you from the sky like rain. I love you and God bless you.”

I am blessed — very, very blessed — by design.

Doctor God

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At the age of 13, my eldest son, Timothy, was already showing signs of the determined adventurer he would become.

I had the boys in swimming lessons for the summer at a pristine little lake in Central Ontario. One day, as the lesson time drew to a close, the instructor said, “OK – we’ve got a few minutes left until the end of the class. Let’s see who can swim the furthest under water. Naturally, Tim won, but came out of the water with a whopper of a headache. For a boy who was not prone to headaches, it was cause for concern. Little did we know that he had broken a blood vessel in his head.

With Tim in such agony that he “just wanted to die,” I rushed him to the Orilia hospital. “Just give him a couple of Tylenol, Mrs. Lee,” the doctor said. “Bring him back tomorrow if he still has a problem.”

“No!” I said. “This is not like Tim! You need to do some tests right now and find out what’s going on!”

The doctor did a bit of a double take, and realized that he needed to listen to mama bear. When the nuclear brain scans came back, they showed a patch of blood in the right quadrant. (See photo.) A helicopter was summoned to fly Tim to St. Mike’s in Toronto for microsurgery to relieve some of the pressure on the brain. He was not given the weekend to live.

The head of Radiology in Orillia was a Christian by the name of Andre Lussier. When I was not allowed to go in the air ambulance with Tim, Andre took me into the chapel where we prayed desperately for God to heal Tim.

From there, I drove to meet my husband for the two hour drive to Toronto. I could not speak. I had no words. I remember staring out the car window as the scenery passed, thinking, “It’s your move, God.” I knew there was nothing I could do for my precious, precious son. Little did I know that God had already answered those desperate prayers in the hospital chapel and had already healed Tim in the air ambulance.

When we arrived in Toronto, the doctor came out and met us, saying, “We’re not sure what happened, but we can’t find the bleeding. It’s there on the scans, but we’ve done a lumbar puncture and a catscan and can’t find a thing. The only test left is a neural angiogram and that’s way too dangerous a test. Your son could be left a vegetable for life if anything went wrong with that test. You might as well take him home.”

We were stunned – but thrilled to be able to drive home with our son in the car. He told us about how his headache had suddenly left up in the air.

That was Friday of the long weekend. When Tuesday morning rolled around, Dr. Baer, Chief of Neurology at St. Mike’s (who had not been on duty on the weekend), called me. “Mrs. Lee – you’ve got to get your son right down here. I don’t know why the tests didn’t show anything, but these things don’t just go away. Your son could be dead in five minutes – that’s how critical this is. You’ve got to get him down here for a neural angiogram. That’s the only way we’re going to know what’s going on!”

Well, I thought, if God healed Tim, He’s got to have a special reason and He’s not going to let him become a vegetable through a test. Besides, I believed that if God really does a miracle, it should be open to scientific investigation. And so, Tim and I got in the car and drove down to St. Mikes, where we met my husband. We were conscious of the possibility that Tim could suddenly die and it was very scary—in a normal kind of a way—but deep down, we all knew that God was at work and we could trust Him.

After completing the dangerous test, Dr. Baer met us in the hallway, shaking his head. He couldn’t explain why there was no bleeding. He only knew that, “these things just don’t go away.” When I pushed him to admit to the possibility of a miracle, he simply said that he’d never seen anything like that and didn’t have an answer.

Long story short, Tim entered Grade Nine that fall and played High School football. In later years, he went on to become a fire fighter and thought nothing of running up the steps to the top of the CN Tower in full gear, wearing a Scott Pack as a fund raiser for United Way. Now he lives in BC where he’s an avid rock climber and adventurer. If there had been any weakness where the blood vessel ruptured, we would have certainly known it by now!

Thank God! He is awesome—by design.

A Hibiscus, a Grandma and a Ballerina

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My firstborn granddaughter will be eighteen years old tomorrow. She’s somewhere in France, working on a variety of organic farms, taking a gap year before the grind of university.

I miss her terribly, but have wonderful memories of that extraordinary girl and can hardly wait to see her again. Until then, let me share the miracle of the Hibiscus…

Bethany lived with me for odd chunks of her growing-up years. One day when I picked her up from school, she informed me that she needed a dress for ballet photos which were to be taken the next morning at eight a.m.!

“And, Grandma, it needs to be the dress for my ballet solo!”

It was a great honor to have a solo, but I didn’t realize that I was supposed to supply the dress!

With no ballet costume stores in our little town, there was no alternative but to go to the fabric store, find a pattern and some fabric and hope to create something that would work! While I used to love designing my own things as a young mom, my sewing machine had been gathering dust for a long time.

The first challenge was finding fabric that would move and feel comfortable — and a pattern to turn it into something worthy for my beautiful solo ballerina. Finally, bags in tow, we made it home, ready for me to begin at 8:30 p.m.

While the others got dinner on the table, I carefully laid out the pattern pieces on the fabric — and realized that the salesgirl had not given me enough fabric! Stuffing everything back into the bags, I rushed back to town, hoping to beat the 9 p.m. closing! But there was no more fabric! She had given me all they had! I had to make the critical choice all over again!

Finally, by 10:30 p.m., I was back at home, laying pattern pieces on two shades of soft green fabric.

Setting my sewing machine up on the dining-room table, I glanced at the Hibiscus plant sitting on a nearby table. Its dark green leaves were shiny and healthy, but the beautiful pink flowers of summer were just a memory. I had hoped that it would continue to blossom after bringing it in in the fall — but it seemed totally disinterested in sharing any of its beauty inside. It had been several months since the last blossom had curled up and died.

Soon, everyone was in bed and I had begun to sew. About midnight, I noticed that a bud had formed on the Hibiscus. All through the watches of the night, it grew, began to show its pink, and gradually began to unfurl.

I sewed, and sewed, finally getting the bodice together and attached properly to the rest of the body-suit. Before attaching the skirt, about three a.m., I took it upstairs and woke Bethany for a groggy fitting. It was perfect!

By the time she got back into bed and I returned to the sewing machine, I was astounded to see that the bud had half unfolded and was becoming a beautiful flower. As I continued to sew, attaching the skirt, inserting the zipper, crisscrossing the ribbons, the flower continued to reveal its magnificence.

When the morning light began to dispel the darkness of night, I put the final touches on the shoulders and went upstairs to awaken Bethany. “Sweetheart, I have something very special to show you!”

“Is the dress finished?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Yes—but something even more special than that! Come and see!”
Running down to the sewing machine, she saw the dress. “Ohhh—Grandma, it’s beautiful!”

“But Bethany,” I said, pointing to the flower, “here’s the really special thing. God has given us a special sign that He will be with you as you dance for Him. This plant has not bloomed for months, but a bud began to form as soon as I began to sew. It has been unfolding all night and I believe that it tells the story of your life. As you allow God to unfold His plan for you, just like the flower, your life will become a thing of exquisite beauty. All it takes is staying in harmony with Him. He loves you very much—and so do I.”

Well, the photos were taken and Bethany danced beautifully and now she is so far away.

That Hibiscus never bloomed again. It had already communicated it’s greatest message — the message of how precious Bethany is to God’s heart.

Somewhere, a Hibiscus blooms for you — by design.

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