Meeting God in Every Plot Twist

Photo by SIphotography from Deposit Photos

When I was a relatively new Christian, one of my favourite books was Meeting God at Every Turn, by Catherine Marshall. This book is the author’s very personal account of how God met her at every major turning point in her life. Every time something was confusing, troubling, heart-wrenching, or scary, God met Catherine with his incredible grace—even when her husband, renowned preacher, Rev Peter Marshall, died. The book had a profound effect on me at the time and encouraged me to trust God as I followed him in life and ministry.

 

But… It turns out I’m not great at trusting. I forget sometimes… God has always been there for me but nearly all the big mistakes I’ve made in my life come from my failure to trust him. Is that the case with you?

 

As writers, we love creating ‘plot twists’ in our stories, but we don’t like the plot twists life throws at us. When hard, horrible, or crazy stuff happens, do we believe God will help and strengthen us, or do we get in a flap like the hens in the Chicken Run film? 

via GIPHY

I confess I’m often like those hens. I tell myself not to panic, then I panic. But I’d like to share something that happened last year—something that reminds me of God’s faithfulness and my own struggle to trust.

 

I’d been unemployed for a while and our finances were low. I was plodding along working on my writing and doing a little editing. I was trying to polish and publish my YA book, Running Scared, work on my website, and write the first book of a series (new genre). But I kept on thinking I had to do more to earn a living! 

 

I tried. I made enquiries about work, but no doors opened. I couldn’t do veterinary work because of my bad back. My home business wasn’t earning much. My foray into NDIS support (and art teaching) had ended when my client’s funding was slashed. 

 

And our funds were bottoming out.

 

A wise response to this would have been to trust God and rest in him. It would have been to focus on writing and thank him for every spare moment he’d given me to focus on my creative call. I could have trusted he had everything under control, rather than letting worry pull me away from this call.

 

I still wrote and was creative, but I would have been a lot more productive if I had just TRUSTED.

 

Because something happened.

 

Late November last year God spoke in that still small voice while I was praying. He said, ‘Why are you praying for provision when my word says I will give that to you. Pray instead that you can write your book.’

 

I thought it was a strange thing for God to say, until three weeks later, he gave me a job. For some reason—and for some time—I’d been thinking a lot about copywriting. While I love writing fiction, I also love how words—in short form—have power to encourage and compel. I took a short copywriting course which helped me write the copy for my website, and I began exploring what it would mean to work in this area.

 

Then, suddenly, I had a copywriting job. Not just any copywriting job, but one at marketing  company with a Christian ethos. One that used both my writing skills and my background ministry training and experience. I was thrown in the deep end while everyone else had their Christmas holidays but somehow, I didn’t drown. Probably because I have the loveliest line-manager (you know who you are 😊).

 

It was hugely tough. I’d been used to working to my own rhythm but now I had to work to other people’s timetable in a shared corporate space. It was overwhelming and my body wasn’t used to me doing that level of work. It still rebels some days. But I’ve gradually learned to swim. 

 

Thing is, I’ve found it really, really, really hard to do any of my own writing. 

 

Guess what I’m praying for 😁.

Feel free to pray too, if you like...

 

Through his word to me last November, the Lord showed me he still values my fiction writing. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth me persevering even if it takes me all year to finish a first draft. I’m believing this.

 

I look back at the time and space I had to write last year, and I groan at the energy I gave to worry. 

 

There have been more plot twists since then—some affecting the day-to-day of life, health and work—others potentially affecting the bigger picture. The truth is, there will always be plot twists, but the author and perfecter of our faith says he will work all things to our good. Even the hard and crappy stuff.

 

The best encouragement I can bring today is to say if you are facing any plot twists in your life, delve deep into what God says in his word about these things, and believe it. 

Don't believe your own fears or the fears of other people. Write out the relevant verses and trust they are true. Bad stuff can happen, challenges can occur, health can fail, but Jesus is faithful, and he doesn’t give up on us. 

 

He doesn’t give up on our writing, either. He’s really into creating things 😃.

Image by beate bachmann from Pixabay 

Don’t waste energy on worry. God’s word is true. Worry doesn’t accomplish anything. Instead, give everything to him and do what you can. 

 

Trust him and let him surprise you!

 

And when he does come through for you, please tell us all about it so we can be encouraged too.

 

Has God ever met you during a plot twist in your life? What did he do? Let us know in the comments 😊.

 

 

Bible verses to ponder:

Matthew 6:25-34

2 Timothy 2:13

Proverbs 3:5-6

Hebrews 12:2(a)

Deuteronomy 31:8

Romans 8:28-32

Matthew 28:20(b)

Psalm 23

Isaiah 55

Susan J Bruce is an author, artist and animal addict who writes mystery and suspense books—with heart. Susan is a former veterinarian and animals often run, jump, fly or crawl through her tales. Her writing group once challenged her to write a story without mentioning any animals—she failed! Susan lives in sunny South Australia with her husband, Marc, and their furred and feathered family. This currently includes a fat tortoiseshell cat, a rescue cockatiel, and an irrepressible ShiChi (Shih Tzu x Chihuahua) who thinks her mission in life is to stop Susan writing.

Running Scared is Susan’s first novel and was awarded the 2018 Caleb Prize for an unpublished manuscript.
Visit Susan at www.susanjbruce.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Reaching for our creative goals in 2021

 

Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash

2020 was a bad year for most of us: The COVID outbreak, the restrictions, loss of work, weeks of being focused on the news, pondering our mortality, some even losing friends and family to the awful thing... We’ve done okay in Australia compared with many countries but still COVID took its toll on life as a whole including our finances, mental health and especially on our creativity. My friends in Victoria have done it especially tough, with three months in hard lockdown. I spent much of the year ghostwriting a non-fiction book and even with deadlines there were weeks when I couldn’t write. When I was done I wanted to get straight into a project for myself but I couldn’t. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.

 

But 2021 is a new year. We have hope of a vaccine program for COVID and we’ve (hopefully) had some kind of break or holiday over Christmas. It feels, at least for me, that it’s time to start running again. A new year brings new hope and new purpose as we reach for our goals. 

 

You may already be doing this. If you’ve stayed focused and super-productive through 2020, I applaud you. In the comments, please share some of the things that have helped you do this. For the rest of us – those wanting to pick up again and get going afresh in their creative journey – let’s take a quick look at some things we can do to help us rock our creative goals in 2021.

 

Define your goals

 

I've never been a huge fan of the goal-setting gurus and their five-year plans. Especially not when they recommend the hyper-organised break-everything-down-into-the-minutia approach to goal setting. Maybe I should be. I know some people thrive with that level of organisation and they are a lot more productive than I am. But I get exhausted even thinking that way.

 

My writing ‘muse’ doesn’t like too much pressure. She’s sometimes like a frightened kitten – only sneaking out of her hiding place when everything is quiet to lap from a saucer of fresh milk and nibble at juicy chunks of topside steak. The pressure of high-powered goal setting immediately sends the poor thing hissing and spitting back into its dark corner under a cupboard. 

 

Having said that, I don’t work well without any goals, either. If we don’t aim toward a target, we are unlikely to hit it, right? I think it’s all about balance: having clear goals that guide our focus but don’t put so much pressure on us that we become creatively catatonic.

 

Have you thought about your goals for 2021? What's your definition of success?

 

I recently read Stop Worrying; Start Writing by Sarah R Painter. It’s a lovely book about overcoming your fears and neuroses as a writer (hint: I have lots ;)). Some books on productivity make you feel guilty – and exhausted before you get started. But Painter is so encouraging... like having a good friend grab your hand and say, 'It’s okay, keep going. You can do this!' 

 

One of the things she encouraged writers to do was to consider their own definition of success. For some it might be to one day win a literary prize, for others it could be having a book published for their family and friends to read. Others could have the goal of becoming a high-earning independent author. Success is a very individual thing and that’s okay. We shouldn’t feel pressured to have the same goals as our author friends.  

 

This is how Painter defines her own success:

 

 

Wouldn't this be fantastic? I had to copy this because her words echoed my own long-term desires – except I would have thrown in ‘and honouring God’ at the end of the last sentence. The problem is that for me you’d need an earth-bound version of the Hubble telescope to see that far into the future. I earned freelance income last year but nothing from my fiction writing.

 

It’s generally held that good goals should be both measurable and achievable. I also think that if we are to succeed in reaching our goals, they need to reflect our deepest motivations, otherwise, we’ll start out okay but fall away quickly. The ghostwriting experience I mentioned at the beginning of the post taught me a lot. I gained valuable experience, but it also showed me I don’t want to spend my writing life crafting someone else’s words. I gave it everything I had, but it didn’t satisfy my deeper desire to have my own words set loose to scurry around the universe and dive into readers’ hearts.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

 

While there are many facets to creative success for me in 2021 the most important is to get my own words down on paper. 

 

Success for me involves planning a series of books and writing at least one new novel to a publishable standard in 2021 (ideally, I’d like to write two – or three – I'm greedy). 

 

There are other parts to my creative journey. I want to encourage others, so I’ll still do some freelance editing work. I also have a YA novel that needs a publishing home (or to be published independently). I'd also like to develop the animal art side of my creative business. However, the priority is getting new words of my own ‘out there’.  

 

What about you? What is your definition of success in 2021?

 

What changes are needed to reach your goals?

 

One of the things many of us are guilty of, is saying we want something but then not counting the cost and doing what it takes to get there. If we are to reach our goals, we’ll need to make some changes. Here are some things to think about:

 

Make your creative goals a priority. 

 

As a society we often devalue creativity, but I reckon that if it's important to God, it needs to be important to us. If creativity wasn't valued by God we'd be living in a flat monochrome world, where everything functioned but there was little beauty. Instead, he gave us a world with soaring mountains, azure oceans and brilliant blue butterflies. 

 

Not only does creativity make our life more meaningful, our creativity can help and heal others. Books and poetry are powerful. Wouldn't it be fantastic if the book we wrote made someone's life better for a few hours and gave them the hope they needed to keep going in hard times? 

 

Even if we are convinced that our creative goals are important, it's easy for life to subvert them. How much do we want this? Very few of us can do everything we'd like to do, so we need to set priorities. If we're going to write fresh words this year, we need to allow time and energy for this. 

 

Make your wellbeing (and the wellbeing of others) a priority too. 

 

On the other hand, there's no point reaching our goals if we make ourselves sick or neglect our family and friends. It's important to look after ourselves and others as we go. This may mean moving more slowly than we would like or doing things differently. 

 

Make changes with both your goals and wellbeing in mind. 

 

I hurt my back badly last year working under pressure with a less than ideal desk set-up, so it's important for me to make changes that help protect my health. For me this means trying to lose some weight, moving more (hydro-exercises are my friend), learning Dragon dictation and hopefully increasing my hours of non-writing part-time work so I can afford to spend my desk-time on my fiction. This will hopefully help me reach my creative goals 😃.

 

I also need to develop regular quality time for creative flow that fits in with the rest of my life. I do my best and most focused work between 10 pm and 2 am, which is okay if you never have appointments in the real world, don’t need to work a part time job, don't have a husband to encourage and don’t suffer from a fatigue-inducing chronic illness. The late night/ late mornings are not conducive to my health and the rest of the flow of my life. If I’m to accomplish my goals, I need to change. Will it be hard? Yes. Will it be worth it? Definitely!

 

I could say a lot more here but I’m out of time and well out of word count. Now it’s over to you.

 

What are your creative goals for 2021? What steps are you taking to get there? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you are reaching for this year. 

 

 

 

Susan J Bruce, aka Sue Jeffrey, spent her childhood reading, drawing, and collecting stray animals. Now she’s grown up, she does the same kinds of things. Susan has worked for many years as a veterinarian, and writes stories filled with themes of suspense, adventure, romance and overcoming. Susan also loves to paint animals. Susan won the ‘Short’ section of the inaugural Stories of Life writing competition and won the 'Unpublished Manuscript' section of the 2018 Caleb prize. Susan is the editor of'If They Could Talk: Bible Stories Told By the Animals' (Morning Star Publishing) and her stories and poems have appeared in multiple anthologies. Her e-book, 'Ruthless The Killer: A Short Story' is available on Amazon.com. You can check out some of Susan’s art work on her website https://www.susanjbruce.com.

 

 

Aiming to deliver excellence

Last week, I took my daughter, mother and sister to a local cafe. I don't often eat out but this was a special occasion, because my sister was visiting all the way down from Cairns and even my mum hadn't been up into the Adelaide Hills to visit me for several years. We wanted to give them a good day out.

Our cafe experience began well. My mum and sister had frothy lattes and cappucinos brought out piping hot and straight away. I suggested to Emma, my daughter, that we ought to start using the cafe's vouchers whenever we find them in our letter-box, as it was such a lovely place.

However, time began to drag. The hot drinks were finished and still they hadn't brought out my soup or the bowl of wedges we'd ordered. Eventually, my sister went over to remind them. In another ten minutes, we had our wedges, which were obviously the type tipped straight from a plastic bag and deep fried. The question, "What took them so long?" hung between us. They obviously didn't have to peel the potatoes.

There was still no sign of my bowl of soup. We'd finished the wedges. My sister and daughter decided to keep shopping. I went up to the counter and the girl cried out over her shoulder, "Yeah, your soup's coming," in a flustered manner. At long last, they brought out a shallow, luke-warm bowl. I decided it was just OK. Perhaps if I'd had it as a starter before the potato wedges, when soup is meant to be enjoyed, I might have said it was yummy. I guess the cafe thought they'd delivered what we'd ordered but by the time I left, my mind had done a sharp turn-around. I won't be going back there again, no matter how many vouchers they shove in my mail. They didn't realize they'd lost a potential regular customer.

I am well aware that the same thing can happen to authors of books. Readers, like customers, have put aside valuable time with the hope of enjoying what we have to offer. They deserve for their reading experience to be as great as it possibly can. When I write a novel, I like to think of it as a 'service' as well as a 'good.' I know that if it's slipshod and rough around the edges, readers have a perfect right to say, "I'm never going to read anything else by her." Knowing that a lot of the excellence is in the finishing touches, I try to do the following.

* Go through paragraphs to make sure I don't use the same word more than once in the same cluster of sentences. If I can't think of an alternative word, I get out my Thesaurus to find one. It's worth the extra time taken.
* Make sure there are no unnecessary tags such as, 'he said' or 'she asked' when it's obvious from the context who is talking.
* Carefully evaluate every sentence to make sure the story actually requires it to help carry it along. If it doesn't, out it goes. In writing, less is definitely more.
* Weed out extraneous words such as most adverbs, and also lots of waffle such as, "When he got out of bed..." or "he nodded his head" (what else would he nod?)
* Change the syntax every so often, when the order or arrangement of words in sentences may make even the slightest difference. Even in this blog post, I changed, "perhaps if I'd had it before the potato wedges as a starter when soup is meant to be enjoyed" to "perhaps if I'd it as a starter before the potato wedges, when soup is meant to be enjoyed." Isn't that just being pedantic? No, I really think such fine tuning makes a difference to the reading experience.
* Try to make sure not too much about a character is being revealed before it should.
* When it comes to descriptions, use all five senses wherever possible without making the slabs thick enough to disrupt the flow of the story.
* Make sure an editor gives it another thorough going-over (and if I've done all the above, which is really only the tip of the ice berg, I know editors and publishers appreciate it.)

I'm sure I could think of more, but that's enough for the point I'm making today. None of us want to be perfectionists, as we can't be perfect anyway. There are always things in a manuscript we may miss, but this cafe experience reminded me how important it is when we commit ourselves to writing with an attitude of pursuing excellence. When I say that I want my readers to get the enjoyable reading experience they hope for, I really mean it. There have been many half-hearted people who say that they'd love to read my books but never get around to it. When people actually do choose to invest the time, I want to do all in my power to make sure they won't regret it.

Paula Vince is the award-winning author of 7 novels. She is a homeschooling mother who lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills with her husband and three children.

Resilient Heroes

After a wonderful four days in Brisbane, I'm home again. Having taken in the CALEB Awards dinner, Writers Fair and presented a Masterclass on my first three days there, I had a bit of down time to spend on Monday and decided to visit the city. I caught the bus in to the CBD and covered so much of Brisbane on foot, my toes were blistered. I explored the Queen Street Mall and strolled along the river bank watching ferries, river cats and a couple of paddle steamers. I found a great mangrove boardwalk which brought me close to the Botanic Gardens.

As I did all this walking, I couldn't help thinking about the horrific floods that swept through last January, devastating the ground I was stepping on. The river-front Jelly Fish restaurant had a spiel on their window about how they needed to put on flippers and snorkels to get to work and had to battle with octopuses and squid in their kitchen. I found it awesome that they were able to recover from a catastrophe of such magnitude and resume business with their senses of humour intact.

I remembered how I'd watched the TV coverage with disbelief, and when Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, had addressed the nation with tears in her eyes, assuring viewers that they would all recover and bravely build their lives back again 'because they were Queenslanders'. With all of this in mind, and coming from South Australia, I found my walk deeply moving. God has filled human nature with heroism and resilience.

It doesn't take a natural disaster of this scope to draw the quality out of people. As writers, drawing on reserves of grit and determination is a way of life. We sit at our computers, we devote hours to honing our craft, determined to use our written words as an art form to bless others with what we find in our hearts. Some authors paper their walls with rejection slips from publishers, but keep plugging on.

We take on board feedback from editors, often starting all over again. We slash out entire scenes, we shuffle events in our stories around hoping to increase the tension, we groan at the sight of red marks all over our work but get stuck in to making changes. We pore over Thesauruses in the attempt to find that elusive word which is even more perfect than the one we've originally chosen. We ruthlessly pluck out extraneous words and scan each line carefully for those subtle 'point of view' violations within scenes. We re-phrase huge sections because we realise we've been 'telling' rather than 'showing' in our stories. Then when it's all polished to our satisfaction, we venture out trying to promote our work, often cringing at public places while folk give our books cursory glances, shrug their shoulders, wish us luck and move on.

I was overwhelmed last Friday night to be presented with the CALEB Award for my novel, Best Forgotten. My knees were knocking together so hard, I could barely stand. I'd be surprised if I got a wink of sleep that night. For me, this honour was the culmination of years of hard work during which I often felt like a complete duffer. Writing was a sacrifice in both time and finances. Even earlier this year, I found myself wondering if I should stop, but decided to keep going because I have so much passion and emotion tied up in it. Like many others who read this blog, I'm prepared to accept the uphill climb because I'm a writer.

Thanks to everyone who has congratulated me, and I'm delighted to especially thank my publisher, Rochelle Manners, because Best Forgotten wouldn't even be available without her, of course. She has been too awesome for words, and we all know that coming from somebody who works with words every day, that is saying a lot.

To my fellow writers, keep being resilient. I appreciate you all.

Paula Vince is an award winning fiction novelist and homeschooling mum who lives in the Adelaide Hills with her husband and children. She believes that stories are a particularly powerful medium to touch hearts and help change lives.

Brave Little Flame

I've always been a bookworm. I thrive on the adrenaline rush a good story give me, and how I can be reduced to tears one moment and begin cheering when I turn the page. I enjoy daydreaming new events for characters I grow to love. After finishing a great novel one evening when I was very young, I sensed a clear question deep in my spirit, prompting me, Why don't you give it a go?

Immediately, I knew I wanted to do that more than anything. My kitchen stove has old fashioned gas jets for its hot plates, which we need to ignite with matches. With a powerful sounding WHOOSH, a beautiful ring of flame shoots up. That was the same effect this question had on my spirit. I quietly responded, Yes, I will, and felt that I was being obedient to God's prompting.

For year after year, that's exactly what I've tried to do. A novelist or author is what I'd tell school teachers I wanted to be. Now I have seven fiction titles circulating out there. Like the Olympic Torch, that flame kept burning strong. But recently, I noticed it beginning to dwindle. Trying to fan it back, I identified several extinguishers.

Financial hardship is a big one, especially as my husband studies, we struggle to make ends meet and I wonder whether I ought to cave in, place my homeschooled children in 'the system' and seek a 'proper' job - meaning one with a steady income. That one is like throwing a damp towel on my flame.

Indifference I face is another extinguisher. A small part of my fire dies whenever booksellers remain aloof or seem to snub me, whenever family or friends disappoint me by giving me the NOT INTERESTED message, whenever I find that people aren't leaving comments on my blog or even bothering to click LIKE when I've placed a link, announcement or review on Face Book. That one feels like dry ash being shoveled right over my flame.

Perhaps the biggest deterrent of all is the undesirable change I perceive in my attitude and personality. I become this praise-junkie, approval seeking, self-promoting bundle of raw nerves who feels uncomfortable every time I try to thrust myself into the spotlight, but understand that this is the way the world dictates it needs to be done if I'm to get anywhere. This is the blast that almost killed my flame; like a harsh jet of icy-cold foam.

I felt that if I have to make myself an unauthentic person who needs to thrive on pride and ambition to get my name known, I'd be far better off dousing the dream. It just didn't seem worth the price I had to pay. I began considering other paths instead. Therapist of some sort, dietician, pastor, masseuse? They all sound like good, helpful possibilities but I have no heart to pursue them for one simple reason. I never sense that same convincing voice, urging me, Why don't you give this a go?

I can't deny that my little flame is still burning steadily. Sometimes it shoots up through the piles of ash and debris and ignites the hot plate in my heart. An analogy between the great outdoors and human nature may occur to me, and the voice will whisper, Write that down, record the beauty. A throw-away remark on the News may fill me with the thought, You could easily get into the head of a character like that. Some hilarious irony may set me off laughing, and the voice is back again, telling me, That'll make a good blog post.

So while the brave little flame continues to burn, I continue to honour it. I know the gentle voice which whispers these things to my heart is good and worth heeding. Whenever I do obey the promptings, I enjoy myself tremendously, like putting all this into words for this blog post. I guess you haven't heard the last of me after all.

Paula Vince is a homeschooling mother and award-winning author of fiction. She lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills of South Australia with her husband and three children. She keeps a wise and witty blog, It Just Occurred to Me, which aims to refresh readers with optimism and encouragement. If you'd like to check out her published fiction novels, please visit her website.