Writers Write

Wow, where to even begin? The past few days have been awesome (if tiring) and even more awesome stuff is coming up. My mind is in a bit of a whirl, really. :-)

First off, on Saturday, one of my favorite artists/writers, the esteemed Andrew Peterson, came to my church to do a talk on songwriting (which obviously related to storytelling as well) and then a concert that night.

Oh, what a day that was.

I could really go on about how amazing that was, but I am trying my best not to bore you. So I'll just let Andrew speak for himself through his music--one of my favorite songs of all time, and the one he finished the concert with, and then I shall move on to the point of my post.

In fact, if you listen to that while you read the remainder of the post, it'll probably make my words seem awesome. Either that or really lame. -_- ;-)

 

So.

 

Writing.

 

You know, I've found that the more that I write, the harder it is. Not to scare all you wannabe writers off, but, well, it's true. Writing is a bit of a step of faith, every single time you sit down to the computer.

 

Andrew Peterson compared it to gardening. It's a lot of work, a lot of dirty work. And most the time it's not fun.

 

But writing, like a garden, bears fruit.

 

As we sat down at the lunch table with a girl we didn't know (this creating community thing is sometimes super hard for us introverts, but yet, so worth it) we bungled through conversation until I realized that we had connected. We were writers. True, she was a historical fiction and time travel kinda gal while I've got myself buried in a Steampunk book, but that didn't matter one bit.

 

She laughed at our shared, current problem of writer's block and said, "My sister keeps sending me memes about how writers are supposed to WRITE, ya know? And I just say, 'I AM GOING TO!'" I chuckled over my glass of sparkly pink liquid (not sure what it was but it was tasty) and replied, "I feel ya."

 

But those memes have a deep truth in their rather irritating message. Writers write. Just as gardeners garden.

 

Andrew said (because he says things so much better than I do), "If you want to grow weeds, do nothing."

 

But I don't want to grow weeds with my writing. I don't want to wrangle through a mess of untrimmed plots and choked out characters when I occasionally do sit down to write because I've caught some sort of "Spring Garden Fever" as it were.

 

Writers write.

 

Every day.

 

Most of it will probably be rubbish. But gardens don't bear fruit overnight. They don't even sprout in one day. You tend that tender shoot day after day, through rain and hail and big boots and children's fingers digging where they shouldn't dig, through every voice in your head that causes this terrifying unbelief that someday something tasty or beautiful will grow.

 

It takes daily work to cultivate our stories.

 

Now, this is the part of the post where I pledge that I will write every day or challenge you to do the same.......

 

But I am suddenly overtaken by a strange beast and am swept off to an adventure beyond imagination!

 

(Eh, I'm stalling this because no matter how inspired I am to be a writer, it's still hard to write and I'm also a lazy bum ;-))

 

 

 

But yet...

 

Here's to writer's writing. I know there are going to be days where I don't write. But I'm going to give it my best shot. I am going to write Beyond the Burning Sky (my current WIP) and to the best of my ability, I am going to write every day, whether it be BtBS or poetry or random observations or whatever.

 

But more than that, I am going to constantly turn my work over to the best Gardener of them all--for God is my stronghold, my strength, and all my words and without His grace I wouldn't be a writer at all.

 

Soli Deo Gloria!