A Writer's Resilience

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.

Claire Bell writes as Claire Belberg, and has published two short YA novels in a genre she calls ‘speculative realism’. She also writes poetry and is currently working towards industry engagement with her poems about the impact of her parents’ dementia (Unravelling: A story of dementia), yet to be published. She has had poems and short stories included in various anthologies, including inScribe, and in the independent Adelaide news service inDaily. She writes an occasional blog called The Character Forge loosely exploring the development of personal character through the act of writing. Claire lives in the Adelaide Hills and loves to watch birds wherever she can find them.

Meet Our Members - Rita Stella Galieh

1.Who are you & where do you come from?

 My husband would be the best person to answer that as he knows the real me. A Sydneysider, I always wanted to be an artist so I studied art and joined the family ceramics studio and enjoyed etching Australian flora and fauna exclusively for Prouds in Sydney. I met my violinist husband at a YFC meeting and he challenged me to use my gift for God. After our marriage we attended Emmaus Bible College and then joined Dr Gene Jeffries and American evangelist as his music team. We spent two years in America and then answered the call to be involved in missions in Australia. Each year in December, we minister throughout Thailand with a Thai interpreter, Somchai Soothornturasuk. He arranges for us to use our art and music in schools, prisons, orphanages, hospitals and churches where we explain the real meaning of Christmas. During our many years of travelling over countries in SE Asia, I began to write seriously. Though looking back, I used to spin stories with my grandma and I think the seeds were sown then.

 

 2. Tell us about your writing. What do I write?

I love reading historicals. I also love the extensive research involved in writing these. So my chosen genre is Historical Romance. I have had two published by a Sydney publisher. My next was a trilogy: Signed Sealed Delivered, The Tie That Binds, A Parcel of Promises were Indie published.

3. Tell us about your program, what challenges you most and what helps you most?

As I also write and record radio programs with my husband, I'm always challenged to find the time to write my novels.(I wish I had a maid  and a cook like those in my historicals!) However I can tune out even with the TV on, because when I write, I am not in my room, not in my suburb and not in my time. I read my Bible study and notes each morning and ask the Lord to guide me in whatever I write as I want it to honour Him. My Thesaurus helps me most of all when I am searching for just the right word.

4. What are your writing goals?

I am now writing 3 synopses for a Book proposal of another series I have just completed under the series name: Daughters of Resilience: Book 1.  Speechless, Breaking Miss Sophie's Silence, Book 2. Defenseless, Miss Dengate's Deliverance, Book 3. Heartless, Miss Kate's Great Expectations.( I use US spelling.) The setting is the Edwardian Era. So my goal is to find an agent who likes my work and who will find a publisher who in turn will actually snap up my trilogy! Easy? Nooooo. I'd value your prayers about this.

5. How does my faith impact my writing?

To answer this I'll share what I have written in my Book Proposal:

Resilience - a combination of perseverance and hope - is a universal theme in my novels. When facing difficult issues, today’s Christian woman can relate when facing hard decisions between making a God honouring choice or whatever is expedient at the time. 

I truly want to share my faith in a practical way. Just as Jesus used stories to illustrate a spiritual truth, so I really want my readers to gain something that might help them in their own life.

Rita has learned her craft by making every mistake in the book!  But perseverance is the key. Besides reading fiction and nonfiction,  read plenty of books in the genre you write. Then write your heart out. Write all your doubts and struggles into your characters. And have fun creating your nasty antagonists.

If you feel the Lord has called you to write, just keep at it whatever it is articles, scripts, Sunday school lessons, women's devotionals, there's a need for all of these.
And never give up.

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.