by Claire Bell
I said to a fellow writer recently that creative writing is
my counselling room. As a long-time counsellor and a new writer, he got my
analogy straight away. It’s not that I have had an especially hard life or a
history of trauma. I considered myself a relatively even-tempered person, with
some good coping strategies and a great God who is the foundation of all the
wonderful support I receive from others. So how do I end up in this unexpected
counselling room?
I've not had to work as hard at any other role in my life as I do in professional writing. I love writing; the act of writing is the easy part. Words flow out of my fingertips with ease. I was the student who had to learn editing early because my essays were always thousands of words too long, not because of waffle but all the ideas I wanted to include after extensive literature research.
The hard work of writing for me has been largely emotional. I have plenty to learn in the way of craft but I find that can be fun. It’s the emotional roller coaster that throws me. That was the inspiration behind my blog, The Character Forge – as I develop characters in story, I am having to develop character in myself. And I have a suspicion this might be one of God’s reasons for calling me to write…
It’s ironic, really. My first degree was in Psychology but my intention to become a counsellor faded as motherhood took my attention. When I took up writing in my 40s, having had a lifelong interest in it, I thought it was a creative channelling of my earlier desire to help others with their emotional challenges. But here I am, dealing with mine more obviously than anyone else’s!
Perhaps you don’t suffer the emotional reversals that accompany my writing journey. I know I am not alone, but I also recognise there are all sorts of people who write, each with their unique personal make-up. So let me list the triggers for my emotional flip-flops:
- plotting. I love the internal experience of characters but working out how to make the external story work does not come naturally. It’s like opening a treasure chest and finding it empty.
- finding beta readers. I don’t have good networks of readers who I feel I could ask to help me this way, especially the target audience of my YA novels.
- finding publishers who are interested in what I write. I can’t even find suitable ones to attempt submission. All of us are discouraged when we submit and get no response or a rejection, and we have all had to find ways to manage those. It’s the battle to find someone to submit my manuscript to in the first place that stresses me more.
- promoting my published work. This is the biggest trigger. It registers as an existential threat! With each book, I have pushed myself to try a new promotional platform (blogging, book talks, newsletters, Goodreads, reading and commenting on others’ blogs and reviewing their books). It’s exhausting, and takes so much of the time I set aside for writing. Putting myself out there is not something I feel at all equipped for.
What’s this all about? For me, the biggest answer is that God is teaching me resilience. I am having to learn to do what we learn in prayer: to ask and keep on asking, to trust when the answers don’t come or they come differently from what we had hoped, to be patient for however long it takes, to not lose sight of the goal (which is ultimately our relationship with God and serving his purposes). I am learning (slowly!) to dream big and manage disappointments; to keep on writing, submitting and promoting; to turn my sorrows, my fears and my sense of failure over to Jesus and to let him comfort and re-energise me; to step up to activities that stretch and threaten to overwhelm me.
When I let go of the dreams or shrink them to something that looks more achievable, it’s God who eggs me on to think big. He hasn’t given up on me in this writing gig even when I have given up on myself. I think he’s plotting something I haven’t seen yet!
We all face challenges as writers and, while you may not fall apart emotionally as I do, we’re all growing in craft and character as we pursue this crazy writing life. If you have a particular encouragement that helps you in your times of struggle, please share it in the comments.
Hey Claire – thanks for posting. I can relate to a lot of what you say, especially the stuff about self-promotion. Not just the way it pushes me into uncomfortable territory but the fact it’s needed at all. It seems like so much effort for so little pay-off at times. Why can’t my work succeed under its own steam? Maybe because I’m just not that good! But isn’t that what I’m aiming for - to be a financially secure, critically acclaimed and influential writer? I wrestle with this stuff a lot, but that’s often when I realise (and speaking just for myself here), those doubts and aspirations reflect the part of me that most needs to change. I understand what God wants of me in theory pretty well, but in practice I’ve a long way to go! How like God to cast me as a character with high hopes and big dreams motivated at times by all the wrong reasons, only to lead me through a bizarre mixture of occasional success and repeated setbacks (seemingly) to a fuller understanding of his love for me and my true self. It seems like a lot of effort on His part, just for little ol’ me. But that’s God for you! Sometimes I need to see my writing journey, with all its ups and downs, as part of God’s larger story. And maybe in time something of that will work its way into something I write. Maybe even into the mind of a reader. But my daily challenge is to trust what God is doing for me in all of this, preparing my soul for a reward that cannot corrupt, and for treasure that will never perish. Thanks for your post, which has helped bring this to my attention again
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your struggles too. It's good that writers should be aware of their mixed motives and wrestle with doubts - after all, that's grist for our writing mills! And in the end, as you said so well, when I come back to the assurance that God values me and my writing and that He has good plans and purposes in and beyond my own small life. I'm glad to have fellow travellers like you on this journey!
Delete