Confessions of a published non-writer by Jo Wanmer

I'm not a writer. I didn't dream about writing books when I was a kid. There are no old notebooks filled with amazing pieces of brilliance. I preferred Maths to English in upper high school and failed at creative writing. I've not heard of lots of the classics,  much less read them. My spelling is atrocious. My vocabulary is limited. I’m a people person. By nature I love working on projects with people.

So why, oh why do I spend countless hours, sitting at a keyboard, hitting all the wrong keys in an effort to produce a great novel?

On the weekend, I realised most of my life expectations have never eventuated. They weren't big things, just normal Aussie dreams. God has been pulling them out of my dream closet and making me look at them. He seems to think it is time they were discarded, in the same way my sewing materials and knitting needles should be. They belong to a former life. In a way I'm sad, but in my heart I know they won't be used again. The grey nomad crawl around Australia went years ago. Now God is shaking the dust off worldly financial security, perfect family and eternal youth.

Really Jo, do these need to be taking room in your dream closet?

Old life expectations must be discarded to make way for new visions. Yesterday at the beach I buried them and worshipped my King. Now I wait to see what he is going to add to the dream closet.

Over the last ten years, God has been planting new dreams within me. They are much bigger and not as comfortable as the old ones. The others were possible. The new appear impossible, but so full of promise.

I never purposed to be an author, yet about ten years ago, pushed by the Holy Spirit, I set a goal to write ten books. I assumed they would be solid non-fiction, Christian life books. I knew the first one would be about our victory through the horror of abuse. Yet every effort to write was disastrous until I tried fiction. Now I must face the evidence. I am not a writer and yet my name is on a published book, a faction.

After its publication, I started another novel. But my self-opinions stalled it.

‘You can’t make up plots. What do you know about writing? Your characters are pathetic. You should do research (I hate it!) and the big one – who do you think you are to write what God thinks and feels? I filed it under ‘vain attempts’ and turned my thoughts to a non-fiction which hasn’t progressed past the title.

After the Caleb conference last year, the Lord pushed me back to the book He had named El Shaddai in 2012. With the momentum of NaNoWriMo I found my creative brain pumping and discovered I could write a novel, well together  with God, I could. One memorable day I found my protagonist locked in a hut in the bush. As the book is written entirely from her point of view, the story ground to a sudden halt. I left the manuscript overnight, flummoxed.

The next morning I told God I’d remove her from the hut with the delete button because we must have made a mistake. But He pushed me to continue and we found important plot clues hidden in the hut. I didn’t know they were there, but He did.

Living God’s dreams is exciting, if challenging. Sometimes I look at the life I thought I'd have and compare it with the one I find I'm living. One is comfortable and predictable. The other is challenging, demanding and surprising. I will admit I sometimes yearn for the former, where things were tidy and organised, but I laid it down years ago. So forgetting what lies behind (buried it in the sand) I press forward into my calling. I guess that means the third booking is coming! I know the theme, the protagonists, the settings. It is all overwhelming, but my co-writer seems to know what He’s doing and is pulling me forward with great excitement.

My final confessions - now, I love writing novels.

Jo and Steve Wanmer live in beautiful South East Queensland. Today they are celebrating forty-three years of marriage. Jo loves to read books that deal with the tough, personal issues of life, where the protagonist learns to overcome her weaknesses and difficulties. He first book, Though the Bud be Bruised, has bought insight and healing to many.

Greater Expectations

Each day starts off with certain expectations but what of our expectations of others. Do we have greater expectations of Christians than we do of other people? I think so. Just recently I have found the behaviour of some Christians hard to understand.  

In one case, a Christian friend and I had a difference of opinion that ultimately resulted in severing the friendship. That argument and what was said, was something between us and no-one else. To me it was something between the two of us and it went no further.  It didn’t concern anyone else. However she chose to relate details of the argument to others.  As we know the person telling the story invariably tells it from their point of view, so it looks like they are the one wronged.  Listen to anyone tell the story of an argument and you’ll see what I mean.

In another situation another Christian related a couple of incidents to me.  What struck me as she related the tale was the bitterness and resentment towards the other party involved in the dispute.   The situation had happened many years ago but she had not let go of it. Looking at it from the outside, it is often easy to see there was probably right and wrong on both sides.

Even though in each case the people involved were mature Christians, they struggled with their emotions and behaved in a manner that I found disappointing. The truth is we have greater expectations of Christians. Then I realised how often my actions and behaviour are also disappointing to God, to others and to myself.  How often I let Christ down and do not live up to those greater expectations.

When you look at the bible it never shies away from showing us people’s faults and times when they fail Jesus. Think of some of the disputes we see in the New Testament. There is Paul when he challenges Peter over his attitudes and hypocrisy regarding Gentiles, Galatians 2:11-21. Or Paul and Barnabas when they disagree over John Mark and his role in ministry and so go their separate ways, Acts 15:36-41. Yet no one would deny Paul was a mighty servant of Jesus.  God is always able to use any situation, even disputes, to further His kingdom.

So what does this have to do with writing? Whether we are writing fiction or nonfiction we need to show complex characters not stereotypes. Characters who struggle to make decisions, who struggle to get it right, characters that disagree and make unwise choices. As readers we need to see that even when Christians do not act as we might expect, when they harbour grudges and resentment or gossip about others, His plans are not thwarted. He can still use those imperfect people to further His kingdom.

A minister once told me and the rest of his congregation ‘if you are not having struggles sin your Christian life, then there is something wrong. Satan doesn’t think you're worth bothering with because you’re not an effective Christian.’  Let’s come back to Paul. How often did he struggle between the human nature and the godly nature and do things he didn’t want to do? Don’t believe me? Have a look at his words in Romans 7: 14-25.

In some Christian books I have read in the past, making the right decision and behaving in a godly manner comes too easily to the Christian. That makes it hard for a lot of our readers to identify with if they don’t find the Christian life and making the right choice that easy. The truth is the Christian life can be a struggle at times. So it is important we show the conflict and struggles that go on within, the time when characters doubt and make wrong decisions as well as the ultimate triumphs. I’d love to hear examples of recent books where you have found the main character has made unwise decisions and struggled with doing the right thing, while still being able to be used by God or changed by God.

 

Dale writes fiction and poetry and had recently submitted a 365 day devotional /commentary  tentatively titled A Day at a Time to a publisher. Now she's working on another novel. You can find out more about Dale at www.daleharcombe.com and you might like to follow her blog at Write and Read with Dale http://orangedale.livejournal.com/