Write from the Deep

Listening to God is vital for our writing and our faith, but HOW do you listen to Him? Many of us wish we could do it better! We’ve asked some of the writers we know to share their thoughts and tips on ways to listen to God—REALLY listen. Come join in and learn!

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

One of the struggles writers often express is knowing God’s will for their writing, hearing his voice, and knowing his direction. We’ve done some podcasts about that: 58 Did God Really Ask You to Write, 110 Hearing God Part 1, 111 Hearing God Part 2.

But today we want to focus on one aspect that we all need to work on. It’s something every relationship can benefit from, perhaps even the most important thing, and it seems to be a skill the hostile social media environment proves is lacking in many (or all) of us: Listening. 

Merriam-Webster has this to say about what it means to listen:

1: to pay attention to sound

2: to hear something with thoughtful attention : give consideration

3: to be alert to catch an expected sound

My (Erin’s) church recently posted a thoughtful article about listening to God. Here’s a quote:

“In part, listening is an act of submission. When we listen we release control over a conversation, submitting to the terms and direction set by our conversation partner. When we listen to God we submit to our limitations by acknowledging it is only God who can cross the divide between Divinity and humanity. Therefore we wait for God to start the conversation.”  Joseph Luigs

We can see two principles in that:

Luigs’s article goes on to say:

“Sometimes he speaks. Sometimes he listens back. But however he moves, it is always in love. Like all forms of submission, listening is vulnerable. We open ourselves up to God having to trust that he will move toward us in a way of love.”  

We need to trust that God will and does speak, in his time, in his way.

Since there are many ways for God to speak and many ways we can listen, we decided to enlist the help of you, our listeners, to gain new insights and ideas. We sent out an email to various writers’ groups to get feedback to share with you. Thanks for your thoughtful replies!

“I refuse to go on to the next thought when I ask Him a question. I just wait. Sometimes He answers. Sometimes He doesn’t. When that happens I don’t forge mightily ahead until He directs. Sometimes He wants to talk about something else. I’m the kind of person they put crash bars on doors for. It’s important and difficult for me to listen before I move, whether I’m writing or pursuing something else. However, I’ve learned that the result of roaring down the road, looking back over my shoulder, asking, ‘What do you think God?’ produces less than optimum results.”  Jane Baker 

“[Mark Batterson] has really taught me about prayer, how to pray and how to listen to God. I listen. Sometimes I think I have heard the Lord’s voice – not loud and clear, but a whisper…I’ve learned immense patience and trust. I believe God gives us answers to the promises He gives by constantly reassuring our faith in those promises. God does not tease! He does not treat our desires lightly. But He gives us the strength and trust and patience to prevail. Many times I’ve ‘felt’ Him say, ‘In my time. Please be patient.'” Bonnie Engstrom

“I use a finger labyrinth to talk with God. I lay my cares or prayers before God on the way in and then in the middle I wait until I hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, then I walk my finger back out and listen and let the Spirit transform me. I do the same for my characters as well, especially when they get stuck in situations only God can get them out of.”  Jessica White    

“I listen to God by practicing silence in His creation. Our world is loud and heavy with distractions, and I struggle to quiet my mind. But when I can surround myself with the creative works of God and center my thoughts on Him, I’ve found my heart is in the best place to listen for His voice. It’s not easy, but God is good and patient and He is always there, waiting for me to listen.” Becca Wierwille

I (Erin) agree. Sometimes listening in my heart works best because in my head, my own words can get in the way. Sometimes I just take time to focus wordlessly on listening with my heart. It’s one of the best ways I sense God’s love for me. Paul prays in Ephesians 3:18-19 for us as Christians to be able to comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love for us. But this love, he says, surpasses knowledge, so to me, one of the ways I can hear it and feel it is wordlessly in my heart.

“How do I listen to God? I’ve learned to be still. Just be still and calm, even when my life seems to be unraveling. I walk on the beach a lot. This is where I truly feel God. The ocean is an amazing creation that brings both joy and danger, excitement and tragedy. I respect the ocean as a gift God created. My creativity is also a gift from God. Sometimes, I can see the signs, such as when I came up with an idea for a new book while walking on the beach, fearing I’d run out of good ideas. I knew the lead character would be named Jeremiah. When I got home, anxious to write down my idea, my inbox prayer for that day was from the book of Jeremiah. ‘And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart’ (Jeremiah 29:13 NKJV). I have always found God in times of isolation. And God has always given me exactly what I need in times of isolation. When I walk alone on the shore and marvel at God’s amazing creations, He in turn reminds me I am one of his creations. He gives me exactly what I need if I only stay still and wait for him, if I only seek Him. Because when I do this, HE seeks me and shows me the way with each step I make on that glistening white sand.” Lenora Worth

“Something about taking a walk increases my receptivity, or a message comes to me early in the morning when I’ve been puzzling over a knotty question.”  Gail Kittleson

“Lately I’ve learned how important it is to pay attention immediately after I pray and throughout the day. Ask, and you shall receive, the Bible says, yet I so often ask and run off. Rushing into the day, mind heavy with plans and focus and determination, I’ll miss it. I’ll miss the Holy Spirit speaking to me through an impression, scripture, circumstance, or another believer unless I’m paying attention. The Lord is not limited in the ways He communicates with me, but I often act as if I don’t expect Him to. Yes, sometimes He is silent, but since I know He is faithful and His timing is perfect, I’m learning to wait. Oh, that four-letter word! Paying attention has become the account I want to keep most current in my life. It pays the biggest dividends.”  Davalynn Spencer

“In mulling over the answer, I found I don’t so much listen to God as I listen for Him. I continue a running dialogue with him throughout my day and sometimes well into that place between waking and sleep. While sometimes this dialogue is in-the-moment prayers, other times my mind just gravitates toward Him. It’s in those moments more than any other that I will hear Him. To be clear, I have never heard God speak to me in an audible voice and yet I can tell you without hesitation that He has indeed spoken to me. Sometimes this comes in the form of a nudge to say or do something—or to NOT say or do something. Other times it might be a little whisper in my heart about something I have been praying about. Rarely do I get an immediate answer from Him. Most times the answer comes when I least expect it.” Kathleen Y’Barbo

“I come from a health science background so I’ve always viewed God as working in and through my body’s tension and energy. When I pause long enough to engage in more than small-talk with Him, I find my body is one of the first ways He clues me into his intentions and plans for my future (both near and far-reaching). There is this release in physical tension and a renewed energy and purpose when my plans align with his intended purposes. If I’m pushing my own agenda, the tension (and back pain and break-outs) continue, whereas if I consider His Word and act accordingly, I feel rejuvenated and inspired to dig into those areas of my life.” Tara K. Ross 

“I listen to God by watching carefully for a sense of God’s wonder in my writing, in my work and in everyday life. I find that God speaks most clearly to me when I see something in way I’ve never seen before and catch my breath with a quiet wow! That’s God. Or when he shows me something beautiful in the midst of ugliness or pain … in a place where I’d least expect to find God and his beauty. That’s when I hear God the most clearly. So, watching for him in everyday things, and in difficult, ugly things … that’s how I listen to God.” Marlo Schalesky

“…My days were busy and passed by so quickly, that when evening arrived I was too tired to consider sitting down to write. Gradually, I found myself awakening around 5:30 a.m. and feeling pushed to get up and write. Most days I did just that, because I believed the “push” was from the Holy Spirit and I didn’t really want to get up. Time continued on and I was trying regularly to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. One morning when I was into my second book of the series and moving along quickly with the story progressing, I abruptly stopped. I couldn’t go any further. I had no idea where the story was going—how was this going to be resolved? I just couldn’t think of anything. Then like a jolt to my mind, the whole rest of the book was in my brain. I offered up a prayer of thanksgiving! I knew without a doubt that this was from God.”  Janet L Walker  

“For me, I believe that the most important way we listen to God is by reading and studying His word regularly. With the help of the Holy Spirit, I learn more about His love and His ways of caring for me. I see more clearly my own sins and my need for forgiveness in Christ and find compassion in my heart for others. When I start my day with prayer and Bible reading, I’m more aware of  His presence throughout my day, and much more likely to recognize and act upon the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit. I also more readily recognize when I’m speaking or acting in a way contrary to Scripture and hopefully make quicker efforts to repent. When I read God’s Word, I find strength for each day’s tasks, help with my fears, and hope for the future, even in difficult times!” Kathy O’Neill

“By reading and studying His Word.” Stephanie Whitson

“Mostly God speaks to me through his Word. I feel confident if I have Scripture to back up something I write. Also, I am moved often by praise songs.” Kathy McKinsey  

“I adamantly want follow God’s call in my life. Making sure I am doing what God wants me to do requires me to revisit the topic on a regular basis. God’s still, small voice can be hard to hear, and unfortunately, He’s never taken me by the hand and guided me while yelling, ‘KRISTIN, I WANT YOU OVER HERE, WRITING YOUNG ADULT FICTION ABOUT DOGS!’ Instead, I often feel the heavens are brass, and God’s voice is inaudible. But eventually, after much prayer, I hear him, usually in one of two places: scripture or the words of another Christian. Being immersed in scripture dials up the volume on God’s voice. It centers me, allowing me to focus on the core of our faith, not on the distractions of life. That helps me hear Him. I have also heard Him in the counsel of other believers. This is a powerful experience when it happens. We are His church—His people. If we’re doing it right, others can see God in us and even hear God through us. It’s a humbling event when you discover you have been that conduit for another, and it’s inspiring to see God speaking to you through a Christian friend.”  Kristin Kaldahl

Bonnie Engstrom also mentions hearing God through prayers and words from prayer partners.

“God speaks to me through His written word (the Bible) primarily, but also through sermons, through times of worship, through books, and through other Christians. On a rare occasion, He’s spoken to me through a dream. There is something about being attuned to God that causes a person to hear and understand His voice even when nothing seems related. For example, the pastor is speaking about Topic A, but suddenly God whispers into my heart about Topic B that needs addressed in my life.”  Robin Lee Hatcher  

“For me it’s not very complicated. When I need the Lord’s leading or wisdom or help, I pray. Lord, what should I do? What should I say? How can I best honor You? Sometime in the next little bit–minutes, hours, days–a thought appears or a comment is made that answers my prayer. The big challenge is recognizing it as God’s answer, especially if it differs from my human inclination.” Gayle Roper

 “I like to write out my prayers and journal my thoughts and record what the Lord is saying to me. I often copy out a verse that is meaningful to me and ask Him to show me what it says and what it means for me…” Carrie Turansky

Carrie also mentions reading God’s Word, doing Bible study, reading devotionals, being married to a spiritually mature pastor who helps her hear from God, taking walks and listening to God as she sees his work in nature. But then Carrie adds this:

“This has been encouraging to think of all the ways I can listen to God and hear from Him. How does this apply to my writing . . . what I write comes out of who I am. Who I am comes out of who I listen to and what I take into my heart and mind.”

There’s nothing better to take into our hearts and minds than God speaking to us. How do you listen to God? Think about that for a moment. How do you make sure you’re attuned to the voice of God? What is it for you that opens your heart and mind to hear his truth as he whispers to you? God is so good to us all. He speaks to us in the way that we need. Take the time. Sit in his presence. Open yourself up to him and let him respond, not just for your writing but for every aspect of your life. Give him your thoughtful focus. I guarantee you, you will be blessed. 

How do you listen to God? #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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How do YOU listen to God?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our February sponsor of the month, Wendy L. MacDonald. Not only is Wendy a writer, she also produces a weekly, short, inspirational podcast called Hope Walking with Wendy. You can find it on Spotify and at her website.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 136 – How Do You Listen to God? appeared first on Write from the Deep.

There are a number of things you have to do to be a writer, and a number of attributes you need to develop. Chief among them? Courage. Without it, your writing will never touch hearts. Let guest Thomas Umstattd Jr. help you develop this essential attribute in your life.

About Thomas Umstattd Jr.

Thomas Umstattd Jr. is a speaker, author, podcaster, WordPress guru, and Christ follower. In 2009 he started AuthorTechTips.com, now AuthorMedia.com, a website to help authors build their platforms and sell more books. The site was twice featured in Writers Digest as one of the 101 most helpful websites for authors. As a podcaster, Thomas hosts the popular Novel Marketing Podcast as well as The Christian Publishing Show. He’s the author of Courtship in Crisis, a book which came about through a viral blog post he wrote. Thomas is also an award-winning speaker who teaches all over the world, and he currently serves as the CEO of Author Media.

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Karen: Hey there, we’re venturing into the deep again. We are so glad that you’re here with us, especially because yes, it’s true, we have a guest. Not just any guest! We have the amazing Thomas Umstattd Jr., and I’ll let Erin introduce him. Like he needs it. But I’ll let Erin introduce it.

Erin: I will tell you, it feels like I’ve known Thomas almost as long as I’ve been writing, because I met him at one of my very first writing conferences that I went to. Back then he was building websites, and very well I might say, and helping authors connect with their audiences.

Since then he has become an award-winning speaker. He’s been teaching creative people all over the world how to build their platforms, sell more books, and change the world with writing worth talking about. He’s also authored a book, Courtship in Crisis, and he’s had experience as a literary agent with the Steve Laube Agency.

If that’s not enough, as a podcaster he hosts the Novel Marketing Podcast, which we’ll have a link to, and we recommend that for everyone. He also hosts the Christian Publishing Show, another great show. Right now he serves as the CEO of Author Media. We’re just delighted to have you with us, Thomas. Welcome.

Karen: Welcome!

Thomas: Thanks for having me here. I’m excited.

Erin: Yes, we are too. As we always like to start, what does the deep mean to you today? As things come and go, it might have a different meaning every day. So today, Thomas, what does the deep mean to you?

Thomas: I think it’s anchoring. How deep your roots are. I think about a palm tree, there’s not a whole lot going on above the surface. It’s just a single branch. But underneath, palm trees go about as deep into the sand as they go up. They’re very different from redwoods in that way. Redwood trees don’t go very deep, but they connect to each other. They rely on community for their strength.

Palm trees are able to stand on their own, even in a hurricane. You’ll see a palm tree bent, you know, almost flat with the ground. Then when the wind stops blowing, it pops right back up. Because it’s got that deep root system, even though it’s planted in the sand, which you wouldn’t think of as a strong foundation, but its roots are deep enough to make it work.

Right now life is kind of crazy. Crazy in the world. It’s crazy in my personal life. We’re moving right now, and I’m moving my office. What is deep is what remains when the wind is done blowing.

Karen: Amen.

Erin: I love that. I’ll just say that Thomas has been very brave because he’s moving with his family, little kids. It’s tough to move with little kids, even when you’re not outnumbered yet. You and your wife have two kids, so you’re not outnumbered, but it is still so hard with them being so young.

You’re brave, Thomas, and of course that’s good. I mentioned brave ’cause that’s kind of what we want to talk about with you today, Thomas. We want to talk about courage, and courage for writers. Let’s just start with what do you think courage is? How would you define courage?

Thomas: Courage is being afraid. You can’t be courageous without first being afraid. And there’s a distinction between courage and boldness. Boldness, which you see often in the Bible, the Holy Spirit will come on somebody and they will do something without any fear at all.

There are times in our life when we experience boldness, and some people are bolder than others.

Erin: Karen!

Thomas: Right? Some people are incapable of really experiencing fear. It’s just not a thing that they experience, and that can be its own risk. But other people experience a lot of fear and courage is doing the right thing anyway. It’s not letting the fear control you.

There’s something really special about courage because the easiest way to be bold is to be ignorant of the risk. You have no idea that there was a chasm there, and so you’re walking without fear. Whereas courage is that you know there’s a chasm there, but you’re walking there anyway.

Karen: There’s a terrific book out there that I read a number of years ago called The Courage to Write. The subtitle is How Writers Transcend Fear.

I absolutely loved that book when I read it, because I can tell you probably every single writer that I have worked with has that element of fear and insecurity, and they want to make it better. Yet they feel like they can’t make it better. And how did they beat their last success?

The author, Keys, tells the story of E.B. White, who was an amazing writer. He says that E.B. was a consummate rewriter. He would rewrite things five, ten, twenty, thirty times, and never wanted to let them go. In fact, he wanted to rewrite so much that often after he had mailed the manuscript, he would return so that he could go to the postmaster and ask that they would give him his book back so that he could rewrite some more.

But in addition to being a consummate rewriter, he was a gifted procrastinator. He often managed to avoid the trauma of writing altogether until he had to do it, and he didn’t have any choice. He said that he was the most frightened person in the world. He wrote, “the old emptiness and dizziness and vapors seized hold of me,” when he was trying to write. “Nobody who has never suffered my peculiar kind of disability can understand the sheer hell of such moments.”

All of that is talking about fear and the necessity for courage as we write and share what God has asked us to share.

Thomas: Yeah, procrastination really is often just fear. Sometimes it’s a time management technique that we use to determine if something really needs to be done. Because often we procrastinate things that we never end up doing. We deep down know this task doesn’t need to be done, so we put it off.

But for writers, we know the writing needs to happen. So when we procrastinate, it’s fear and writer’s block, which is a new term. You know what they used to call writer’s block back in the day? Fear.

That’s all it is. Just a fancy term for somebody who’s ashamed of being afraid. They’re like, “Oh, it’s not that I’m afraid to move forward or afraid to write bad words. I just have writer’s block. It’s unique to me and Ernest Hemingway.”

No, it’s just fear. If you want to write, you have to write. No other profession has, you know, dentist’s block or doctor’s block or brick layer’s block, because in those other professions, they have something that casts out their fear, which is another fear: the fear of the boss.

That’s why journalists don’t get writer’s block, right? Because they have real deadlines. The paper is going out. There’s a printing press. It’s going to print the paper at five o’clock. You have to have your article in by four-thirty to get it printed. If not, there are consequences, and that greater fear casts out the lesser fear of writing something terrible.

I’ve noticed something working with authors. Journalists, or people with a journalism background, a real one, where they actually worked at a journalistic outlet, not just a degree, they are faster with writing, and they complain far less about writer’s block because they’ve learned to overcome that fear, because they have a bigger fear of missing the deal.

Erin: What else do you think writers fear? I mean, I’m sure there are lots of things that you could come up with that they fear. Rejection, maybe. I don’t know. But in your working with writers, what do you hear most?

Thomas: There’s two places I see fear really getting in the way for writers. The first is in the writing, which we’ve already talked about. It’s the procrastination.

But it’s more than that. It actually affects the craft itself. There is a fear of offense. Of giving offense and making people mad. Authors who are writing with that fear often fill their writing with so many qualifications and fluff words, or they speak so indirectly that no one understands what they’re saying. They end up taking all of the power out of their craft because they’re afraid. Deep down, they’re afraid to be understood.

If you’re afraid to be understood, you’ll never make it as a writer. The act of writing is all about being understood. You have to be willing to be understood. That requires courage because you will make people angry.

The act of writing is all about being understood. That requires courage because you will make people angry. #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1 @thomasumstattd
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Especially nowadays, it doesn’t take much for somebody to be like, “Oh, I’m offended.” Okay. That’s nice for you. How is that my problem? You have to eventually get to that point where you’re not letting someone else’s offense control your life.

It does take wisdom. Sometimes there’s some good feedback that comes in. But nowadays, being offended is such a powerful tool of manipulation. Of somebody to manipulate you into being more like them by anything that you do that’s different. Any element of diversity you have that breaks from their way of thinking offends them, and they’re trying to control you. It takes courage to stand up to that.

Erin: What about, when you say that they’re afraid to be understood, isn’t there an element also of rejection there? If they understood me and this is what I truly believe, they can reject that?

Thomas: Yeah. Especially if somebody really identifies with their ideas, where they see them as part of themselves rather than as a separate entity. Some people think of their ideas as this thing that exists. It’s like, “Hey, what do you think of this idea?” And it gets criticism, and they’re like, “Oh, I’ll come up with a better idea.”

Other people it’s like, “This idea is me. If you insult my ideas, you’re insulting me.” It can be really scary to put your ideas out there if that’s how you view your ideas as an extension of yourself. You have to decide, “Where do I get my value? Does my value come from having good ideas or does my value come from something else that’s more substantive?”

Because I’ll tell you, you have some really bad ideas. I have really bad ideas. We all have really bad ideas.

Erin: That’s good to know.

Thomas: If that’s your source of psychological validation, it’s going to be a really tough road ahead because one, you’ll either refuse to let your ideas change as you learn, and now you’re not maturing. You’re not gaining wisdom. You’re staying just as stupid and ignorant as you were. And that’s really a terrible way to live, right? ‘Cause we were hopefully gaining wisdom as we grow older.

Or, you’re just feeling terrible because you’re like, “Oh my gosh, everything I knew is wrong,” and you throw it all out and you start over from scratch, which again is not gaining in wisdom.

Erin: Right. Well, and also if somebody is going to reject your writing, at least it forces you to look at those ideas and decide, you know, and think about your ideas again and reconsider them in light of somebody else’s argument. I think those are good things.

What would you say then to the writer who has trouble not necessarily separating themselves from their ideas, but separating themselves from their ability to write? So they’re afraid that they stink at writing. How do you help them with that?

Thomas: Well, you do stink at your writing. If you have that fear, you do. Most people aren’t very good writers. It takes a lot of work to get good. There’s a meme going around TikTok and Instagram right now. It’s like the one wholesome meme of 2021. It’s this: to get good at something, you must practice that thing. Or something along those lines. Then the person’s like, “I tried it once and I was terrible, so I’m quitting.”

No, no. To get good at something, you must practice that thing. The reality is you’re not good at writing, and the way to get better is through practice and through training. You get a mentorship, you read books, and you do the work. It takes a long time to get good at writing. Just embrace it and see it as a thing that you do rather than an identity that you take on.

And evaluate why you got into this in the first place. I notice a lot of people are writing because they want a legacy. They write it because they want to be somebody. Those are often the ones who struggle the most with insecurity.

Whereas if you’re writing because you want to do something, because you want to reach a group of people and you want to minister to those people, you want to get as good as you possibly can so you can minister to your readers as well as you possibly can.

You welcome feedback, and you welcome that criticism because it allows you to minister better. That mindset of “Am I in this for me or am I in this for others?” really affects how you handle feedback.

Karen: I see it a lot also with people who get into it thinking that it’s a good way to make fast money, which shows an unbelievable misunderstanding of what writing and publishing are. But they get into it to make money.

When the contracts don’t come in and agents say no, and editors say no, they then get angry, based on their fear and say, “These people don’t know what they’re doing. I’m just going to self publish.”

Then they jump into self publishing and it doesn’t go anywhere. Then they get angry and discouraged and blame it on everybody else. So it’s about motivation, like you said, “Am I doing this for me or am I doing this for others?” But also what is the purpose from the standpoint of, are you doing this so that you can make money and be famous? If that’s the case, then forget it. It’s not gonna work out that way because if you’re doing that, you’re not going to be willing to be vulnerable. And if you’re not vulnerable, your writing will not touch anybody.

Thomas: There are easier ways to become famous than writing. Writing is a really hard way to be famous.

Karen: It is. It’s a devastating career. It’s one where rejection is part and parcel of the work. In any other career, there is no surgeon that will come and stand next to another surgeon and say, “I really don’t think you should have done that with that particular vein. Now, if I were doing that surgery, this is what I would do,” and come in and change the surgery.

But lots of people will read your book and say, “I could’ve written that better.” So it’s a tough career. It’s tough on your heart and your spirit.

Thomas: Yeah, it’s kind of like being an offensive coordinator in football. Everyone thinks that they can pick good plays, right? On Monday morning, everyone’s criticizing the offensive coordinator for picking the wrong plays. Going back to your example, you know, it is possible that another surgeon might give another surgeon feedback. Like, “Oh, you should’ve done the vein over here.”

But what’s different is that in writing, it’s not the other surgeon that’s giving you feedback, it’s the patient who doesn’t know anything. It’s like, “Hey, I think you did this…” and they’re wrong. They don’t know, and yet they’re the ones who are giving you the feedback, and it’s really easy to judge yourself based off of what they’re saying.

Erin: What would you want to tell to a writer that just, they feel like they want to write, they feel like God’s called them to write, and then they struggle with the self-doubt of, “Oh, I don’t have anything to say,” or “What could someone possibly want to hear from me?”

Thomas: Well, there’s two things that cast out fear, and I want to share those with you. But first I want to go back. If you don’t know what you’re going to say, you’re not ready to start writing.

You’re ready to start practicing your craft, but you’re not really ready to start writing. I really believe you have to have a message. You have to have a story in your heart, and that’s before you’re ready to actually do the work.

It’s kind of like, “I don’t know what sport I want to do in the Olympics.” Okay, you’re not ready for the Olympics yet. But you are ready to start training, right? All Olympians run. All Olympians do weights. So you can do kind of basic training.

But the kind of writer you need to be if you’re wanting to write mysteries is very different than the kind of writer you need to be if you’re writing theological breakdowns of the book of Romans. It’s kind of like on a football team, you have the guys who are skinny and fast and you have the really big guys that are really hard to run around.

Karen: The refrigerator, you remember him? William Perry.

Thomas: The human walls. They serve a different role. As a writer, you need to know if you’re trying to be a human wall or the skinny fast guy, because you train differently depending on what that role is going to be.

If you don’t know what you’re wanting to say, you’re not ready to start writing something for publication. What I would say is write for practice, write short stories, get to know what a good sentence is. Get to know what a good paragraph is. Purge passive voice. Purge adverbs and adjectives.

Karen: Oh, bless you!

Thomas: Really learn how to write well. That’s the first thing I’d say. Now, when it comes to how do you find your courage, how do you cast out fear? The first way I already alluded to: one fear can cast out another fear. You’re on the high dive and you’re afraid to jump off, and then someone cocks a shotgun behind you and says, “Jump or I’ll shoot.” Suddenly jumping isn’t too scary anymore because your assessment of the overall danger has shifted.

Obviously that’s an extreme example, but you know, that is what deadlines mean. In some industries like journalism, deadlines are real. There are real consequences for missing a deadline. In book publishing, there are not real consequences for missing deadlines, at least not any major ones. Often they’re like, they expect the deadline to be missed. I heard a stat that 90% of authors miss their book deadlines.

Karen: I want to stop you for a second. People, don’t hear that as saying, it’s okay to miss deadlines. It’s not. I just want to stress that it’s not okay to miss those deadlines.

Thomas: Yeah, and what I was going to say was that the authors who make a living at their writing, they’re in that 10% who hit their deadlines.

Karen: Yes.

Thomas: When you miss your deadline, you’re subtracting your pay. Let’s say you got a $10,000 advance and your deadline is in two months. That means you’re getting paid $5,000 a month to write your book. You miss your deadline, and now it takes you four months to write your book instead of two months. The amount of money you’re now making per book has been cut by you from $5,000 a month to $2,500 a month.

A consequence of missing a deadline, and part of the reason why your publisher is fine with you missing their deadline is that it may mean that they don’t have to pay you quite as quickly. They get to pay you with next month’s money instead of this month’s money.

If you really want to be a professional, if you want to be able to provide for your family, it means hitting your deadlines. Once you get really good and really popular, there’s a whole series of things that need to happen.

I was talking to Jerry Jenkins and he was talking about how, when he was doing the Left Behind books, they had trucks that had been reserved to take shipments of books from the printer to the warehouse. If he missed his deadline, there were truck drivers who were getting paid to do nothing. There were real consequences to him missing his deadline. If you want to get to that level, you have to be faithful in the little things.

So, fear is one way of casting out the other fear. It’s probably the most common way amongst authors, where the fear of the deadline or fear of something else, creates some consequences for them.

But in the Bible we’re given something else that can cast out fear. You know what it is. It’s love. The better that you love, the less fear you will have. If you can fall in love with your readers, if you can write your book out of love for your reader, it will make the fear go away.

I don’t know if you can love perfectly. I don’t think I can love perfectly. Maybe you can with supernatural help. But if you can, the Bible tells us it casts out all fear. Then suddenly it’s no longer courage, it’s boldness. You’re not having to work in the midst of fear, you’re having to work without fear.

Love is a really powerful thing. Loving your reader, but also loving God. If you feel like God has called you to do this, then do this. Do your writing as an act of worship and as an act of love.

Karen: I’m going to take us back to the causes of fear. I think there’s an extra added cause nowadays, and that’s the whole idea of being canceled. I don’t want to get into politics, but we are seeing it in social media, we’re seeing it in publishers who are canceling contracts with authors because the books that they want to write have a conservative focus to them.

I’ve been hearing writers talking recently about, “Yes, but how can I write that now? Because if I write that, no publisher will ever want to touch me, or the readers will come after me, or it’ll get my name on some list and the government will come after me.”

We used to look at those as conspiracy theories, but those kinds of things are actually happening now. I understand the source of that fear, but Isaiah 43:1 has this to say:

“But now this is what the Lord says, he who created you, Jacob–he created you as a writer, he created you to do the task he gave you–He who formed you, Israel. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name. You are mine.”

If that fear comes and it hits you when you think about writing God’s truth in the crazy world that we’re in today, remember that God doesn’t call you to back away from the hard things. He calls you to speak his truth however he is moving you to do it. Don’t pull away from doing that. Don’t let fear stop you from serving God and writing something that can change people’s lives and help them as they face their own fears.

Remember, he has summoned you by name and you belong to him.

Thomas: That’s really good. And remember that our love for God can cast out fear, but also our fear of God can cast out fear.

Karen: Amen.

Thomas: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and it also can become an all consuming fire.

Erin: Yeah. I agree with you, Thomas. I think sometimes we have a God that’s just a little too friendly in our mind, you know? And we’ve forgotten that he’s holy, and that he’s righteous, and that he has the whole world in his hand and the whole universe. Sometimes we forget to fear. We forget to reverence that. I totally agree.

Karen: Deuteronomy 31:6 is a great scripture to close out this segment. It’s about remembering where your fear belongs. I love the scripture that you shared Thomas about the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but Deuteronomy 31:6 was what he said to those building the temple.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them,”–whatever that them is for you in your life, don’t be afraid or terrified of them–“for the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.”

He hasn’t put you on this path to write, and then he’s not going to say, “Oh, you’re afraid? Okay, well, never mind. I’ll find something else for you because I didn’t realize how scary this would be for you.”

God knows every aspect of what’s happening in your life, in your career, in your writing. He knows every aspect of what’s happening in your heart and your spirit, and he tells you to be strong and courageous in him.

Fear him with wisdom, but don’t be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Friends, you can write. You can do anything that God asks you to do because he’s right there with you. He’s right there beside you. He’s breathing his courage into you and you can rest in that.

Erin: Amen.

Thomas: Amen.

What aspects of being a writer require the most courage from you?

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The post 135 – Developing Courage as a Writer with Guest Thomas Umstattd Jr. appeared first on Write from the Deep.

How do you know if God is opening a door for you? How can you tell if going through, and even changing directions, is exactly what God wants for you? Guest Mary DeMuth shares keys to understanding new opportunities—even when we feel insecure—and to following God’s path boldly in this constantly changing world of writing.

About Mary DeMuth

Mary DeMuth is an international speaker, literary agent, podcaster, and she’s the novelist and nonfiction author of over forty books, including Pray Every Day (Harvest House Publishers 2020). She loves to help people re-story their lives. She lives in Texas with her husband of 30 years and is the mom to three adult children. Find out more at marydemuth.com. Be prayed for on her daily prayer podcast with over one million downloads: prayeveryday.show. For sexual abuse resources, visit wetoo.org.  For cards, prints, and artsy fun go to marydemuth.com/art. Find out what she’s looking for as a literary agent at Mary DeMuth Literary.

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Erin: Welcome, listeners, to the deep. We’re excited to have you here, and we are excited to have a guest with us, Mary DeMuth. Yay! Karen will introduce her.

Karen: Mary DeMuth is an amazing person. She does so many things and does them all so well. Her most recent thing is the Pray Every Day podcast, which, in only three years has 1.5 million downloads. You can find that at prayeveryday.show and it’s in 150 countries and who knows how many languages. She’s just really remarkable.

She also is an amazing artist. You can find her artwork at marydemuth.com/art. That will take you to her Etsy shop. But the most important thing about Mary is how much she loves Jesus and how much she trusts him and how, when the unexpected things come to her, she follows him even if it’s difficult.

So that’s the most important thing about Mary. The depth of her love for Jesus and the depth of her faith in him is just so inspiring, and that’s what we want to share with you today because she has experienced yet another change and detour on her journey in the deep.

Erin: That’s right. Welcome, Mary.

Mary: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Erin: All right. We are excited to have you here. Some of you may or may not know we’ve had Mary on in the past for one of her books. She’s written so many, but one of them that we talked about way back when. I think that was episode 25 when we talked about God’s Wild Love, but we always ask our guests what the deep means to them.

Mary may have answered that way back when, but that changes for us. That changes according to what we’re going through in our lives. So today, Mary, what does the deep mean to you?

Mary: Today, it means fostering a very strong adherence and love for the Word of God. I’ve been making the spiritual practice, over the past two years, I’ve been choosing to rapid read the Bible in two our three month increments from beginning to end, and it’s been one of the best spiritual practices I’ve ever done. It’s caused me to have really great connections between the Old and the New Testaments, and a really strong understanding of the storytelling of God.

So, to be deep is to steep myself in the Word of God, so that I know it well enough to be able to rattle it off at any moment and to recall it at any time.

Karen: Wow. That’s impressive.

Erin: It is. How long did you say you’ve been rapid reading? Like how many times now do you think you’ve done that?

Mary: I think probably eight to ten times over the past year and a half to two years.

Karen: Wow.

Erin: That’ll get you a lot of insight. I love that. That’s a great idea.

Let’s talk about just the most recent change that’s happened in your life. Because we’ve talked about a few things and we want to cover all of them, but this most recent thing that you are doing now after writing and doing all of these other things, training writers, you are now an agent. How did that happen?

Mary: I don’t know, but it just did!

It’s interesting because growing up, I never thought, “Oh, someday I want to be a literary agent.” It’s just been part of this journey that God has brought me on. This last fall, I had to let go of my literary agent and was looking for a new one. During that time, my husband and I, and our adult kids were hiking in the mountains of Colorado.

We climbed a fourteener, which was crazy. But while we were doing that and I’d lost an agent, my husband said, “You should become an agent.” Of course I told him that I can’t be my own agent, but that kind of stuck in my mind, like, “Gosh, that sounds interesting.”

I have been mentoring writers for decades. The moment I learned something I would teach it. It’s just kind of in my blood. I’ve been masterminding, I’ve been doing intensives. I’ve been training, coaching. I mean, I’ve just been doing it forever.

Well, what an interesting way to use that skillset, but to mentor writers toward traditional publishing. I have a lot of affection for traditional publishing. I know it like the back of my hand, and I’ve been through the sanctification process that is publishing, which is all the sadness and all the joy and all the things thrown in. So I feel like I can be a really good empathetic agent who understands both sides of the industry.

Erin: What made you think, though, like from his suggesting this, how did that suddenly come to be as, “Yeah, that’s really what I should do”? Lead us through that decision-making process and how you came to feel more sure that that was the next move for you.

Mary: Well, my first reaction was, “That’s dumb. I don’t want to do that.”

But the second reaction was to pray. My very first Mount Herman that I went to, Randy Alcorn was the speaker, and he encouraged us to have a prayer team. And so even before I was published, I gathered this prayer team. So the first thing I did was I went to my prayer team and some of my counselors and just sent them that idea and asked them to pray.

About a month of praying, and then Cynthia Ruchti became my agent. She’s from Books & Such Literary Management. I said to her when she signed me, “Hey, I just want to let you know, I’m actually thinking of becoming an agent. Would there be like a possibility for me to do that here?”

The answer was yes. So then that opened up some conversations between myself and Janet Grant, and we had several conversations. Then I prayed some more. I just had so much peace about it, and we just went forward. I started January 4th.

Erin: As we’re recording this, that’s just a few days ago. So what has been your impression after all of one week on the job?

Mary: Oh my goodness. My impression is that a lot of writers who want to be traditionally published have not done their homework. They don’t understand what it takes and they sadly, naively believe that if they have a good idea, that that is enough.

While that can be true, there can be good ideas with no platform, that can happen, but it has to be a pretty stupendous idea with stellar writing and all of that. I typically, this is very sad and I wish that wasn’t the case, but the way I’m weeding out my yeses and nos, and mostly nos is just asking, “What’s your platform?”

I’m taking mostly nonfiction, so it matters more. If I were taking more fiction, that number and that thing doesn’t matter as much, but on nonfiction, if I’m going to take a project to a publisher, it’s one of the first things they’re going to ask. So it’s gotta be the first thing I asked to.

Karen: Right. Yeah, it’s funny, my first month agenting with all the proposals that came to me, probably 98% of them were exactly what you say. They hadn’t done their homework. When I was working as the managing editor for publishing houses, heading up fiction lines, I had readers who did the first pass read on proposals.

I didn’t have that as an agent and so I went to Steve Laube, and I said, “Who are these people? And how do they keep finding me?”

Please, listeners, don’t think that we’re making fun of you. It’s simply the fact that I had not realized, naively, I had not realized how many people just don’t understand what’s involved in seeking a traditional publishing contract.

Erin: Right. So aside from platform, what else would attract you, Mary, to working with a specific person? Because there may be lots of people who might meet some of those criteria. What would sway you in one direction over the other?

Mary: I’ve had the privilege of working with authors for about 15 years now, and so of course, one of the answers is relationship.

Karen: Right.

Mary: Relationship really matters. If I know someone well, and I know their writing, and I know their heart, and I know what they do to promote, and I know all that already, I can take what they say at face value. So that helps, of course.

The other thing is if it kind of hits a very strong pain point in the culture today. We’ve got lots of pain points thanks to COVID. So, I’m also looking for something to speak into what’s going on in our world. That could trump, to use, you know, a president’s name, but that would trump, some other things. That would maybe cancel out the need for a bigger platform if there’s something theological to say.

I’m also really, really interested in theologically sound voices. People who know their Bible very well. I have to be able to stand before God someday with the things that I champion and be able to say that this is good for the Kingdom. If it’s slipshod theology or it’s playing loosey goosey with the word of God, I don’t care if it’s going to make me a million dollars. I just flat out don’t care. I would not put it out there.

Erin: Right.

Karen: That’s integrity in what you’re doing. That’s far too lacking in our world today.

Erin: Let’s switch gears a little bit. We led with this whole idea of your podcast, Pray Every Day. That surely was a change from being a writer. How did that podcast come about?

Mary: You know, it launched three years ago in the midst of some pretty extreme spiritual warfare. That always makes me realize that God’s up to something when there’s a bunch of, you know, hoopla around it.

I was actually launching the book Jesus Every Day, which is a 365 day devotional, where it’s like the opposite of Jesus Calling. In Jesus Calling, Jesus says stuff to you. In Jesus Every Day, you get a Scripture, and you pray that Scripture back to God. So it’s a prayer that you say, or that you read back to God.

I was meeting with my mastermind group. I have my own author marketing mastermind group that I’m a part of, and we were on our retreat. I said, “I want to think of something that would be creative to launch this book.” My friend Thomas Umstattd said, “You should do a podcast where you read Scripture and pray according to the Scripture.”

I was like, “Wow, that’s brilliant.” It was not my idea. But that’s how it came about. It started on February 1st, three years ago, and it’s just that simple. It’s about five minutes long. I’m reading through books of the Bible. Right now, I’m reading a chapter of Isaiah every day. I read it and then I pray according to what I’ve read, and I pray for my audience. That’s all it was.

Karen: That’s amazing. The Word of God reaching out and touching people all over the world. That’s exactly what we need. I’m delighted that it has had the reach and the success that it’s had, because it’s the Word of God. That’s outstanding. That’s using social media the way it should be used.

Mary: Yeah. Definitely.

Erin: Actually I love this, Mary, because this idea, the podcast, you were like, “Oh, first reaction, brilliant idea.” And that moves forward. But the agent, you know, “First reaction, dumb idea.” But that still moved forward.

I mean, to me, it’s that when you go and you continue to explore, and when you see the path that God is putting you on, maybe some of us out there might have that same reaction: Oh, that’s not a good idea. But when we are open to it or continue to explore, and especially when we are willing to pray about it, I love how that opens doors that we would not have gone through.

Mary: Yeah. When authors come to me and say, “Well, what’s the best thing I can do for my career?” I always echo Randy  Alcorn’s advice: Get yourself a prayer team. Have them walk you through your entire career.

I would not be where I am today without prayer.

Erin: Right. Well, let’s talk about another change or maybe it’s just an addition. You’ve got this art shop. Talk a little bit about how you can be a writer and still do all these other things. Because I think some people feel maybe pigeonholed as if they can only write, but look at all these other things you’re doing.

Mary: Yeah, I think about, you know, some people are made “Renaissance-y” that way. Like that’s just to use it, to coin a word, and I’m that way.

I just have a lot of interests. If I had listened to folks way back at the beginning of my career, I wouldn’t be where I am today, because I did write fiction, and I wrote nonfiction, and I wrote memoir, and I wrote devotionals, and I’ve done historical fiction. I’ve done everything.

I don’t know why the Lord has allowed it, but it’s been great. But in terms of the art, that was a fluke. This is why I think it’s really fun. About five or six, maybe seven years ago, I had a friend of mine who, instead of not eating chocolate for Lent, or whatever, he would create a piece of art every day.

I just loved that idea, so for about three or four years during Lent, I would just create a piece of art every day. Sometimes I’d throw it up on social media. Not often, but sometimes, and I would send it to my newsletter list and whatever. I just started having all these people ask me for it.

For years I resisted. I was like, “That’s dumb.”

I was insecure about my art. I’m not insecure about my writing. I have been working on it for decades. I’m very good at it, and I know that. I’m not saying that to be prideful, but I have confidence in all of that work that I’ve done. But I haven’t studied art. I don’t have any of those decades behind me, so I’m super insecure.

Finally I just thought, “Well, I’ll just throw a couple of things up on this Etsy shop and see what happens. It’s ended up being what helped me during the pandemic to make money. It was surprising. It’s actually been very sweet.

The thing that sells the most on that shop are 31 Scripture cards. That was an idea from my friend Susan, who is an amazing author in Austin. She said, “You really ought to make little cards of Scripture with art on them.” And I was like, “That’s cool.” She was brilliant.

I guess one of the things I’ll say is listen to your readers. Listen to the people around you. Listen to people who know you. They actually may see things in you that you don’t see in yourself.

Listen to your readers. Listen to the people around you. Listen to people who know you. They actually may see things in you that you don't see in yourself. #amwriting @MaryDeMuth
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Karen: That’s interesting because that plays into your responses to these ideas. When your response to Thomas’ idea of the Scripture and all that was, “Wow. That’s brilliant,” it was because it was Scripture. Yeah, it was you praying what you learned from that Scripture, but it was still Scripture.

But when it was the idea of you being an agent and the idea of you doing your art, your response was, “Well, that’s dumb,” because we’re so insecure about the abilities that we have to share. Creativity in other ways beyond writing. So I think it’s a good lesson to us that if our first response is something like, “That’s dumb,” stop and evaluate why you think it’s dumb. Why are you thinking that this is not something you should be doing?

It could be God saying, “Well, that’s dumb.” Or it could be your inner voice and tapes saying to you, “No, don’t do that because it’s too scary, and you’ll be putting yourself on the line, and you just really don’t want to do that. You don’t need any more rejection, you’re an author!”

We need to be aware of how our own inner tapes impact our ability to step out and try something.

Erin: Yeah.

Mary: Karen, that is brilliant. I have never thought of it that way. I’m serious. You get five gold stars. I had never thought of it that way, but you are so right. I think a lot of us as artists, and I’ll just say it as, you know, vocalists, artists, graphic artists, whatever, we are quick to discount what God has put inside of us.

I said I’m rapid reading the Bible again. I just got through the temple and all of the people that God had imbued with these talents. Some of them were the jack-of-all-trades. Some of them were Renaissance-y. They were like doing bronze and then they were doing weaving and so on.

The Bible has precedent for you to be able to be you. To do the things that he calls you to do. He’s also very gracious to place people in your life to encourage you when you’re freaked out about it.

Karen: Yes. I love that. He takes care of all of it. Why can’t we just rest in that and trust in that?

Erin: Mary, as we’re starting to come to the end of our time, is there anything else you would want writers to know about change?

Mary: Well, of course, it’s the one thing we can count on.

Karen: Right! The only thing that never changes is change.

Mary: That’s right. It reminds me of a discussion on the Books & Such Facebook page, that’s the literary agency I’m with. Someone brought up new social media platforms, in light of just recent events, and should we jump onto those as well?

My first hunch was well, you know, of course we need to be flexible and nimble and go where our readers are. So I won’t say you have to go here, or go there. Just find your readers and go where they are.

But the other thing we talked about was thinking of some of those long-term things that cannot be taken away from you. Social media platforms can be, but your email list typically cannot be. My thought is, yes, there’s going to be change in the industry. There’s going to be change in our world, but building your tribe on platforms that you own is really important. On your website, your email distribution lists, those are things you own, and that’s where we should place our concentration.

There are so many stressed out authors. They’re spreading themselves thin. My advice in that way is to find one thing first. Do it well, and then venture after. You can put yourself out in all the places just don’t deal with them for awhile. Become great at one and then venture after that.

Karen: Yeah. That’s very true.

We can also hold fast to the fact that the one thing that will never change is God. He is speaking into our hearts and our lives. He’s leading, he’s directing. He is who he is now and forever, and we can trust him.

It’s clear that you’ve done that. It’s clear that you have grown and learned that when he plants an idea in your mind, yes, let’s explore this and see if this is a door he’s gonna open.  I love that kind of confidence and that kind of freedom because we can just rest in the fact that he has the very best in mind for us. We can never tell how he wants to use us.

Mary, thank you for being an example of that. Thank you for looking to God and to prayer, to guide you and to lead you in the decisions you make. And thank you for reminding us that the most powerful thing we can do for not just our careers and our writing, but for our lives and our witness is to steep ourselves in the Word and to steep ourselves in prayer.

It’s been a delight. You’ve been a delight, and we just wish you every good thing in this new venture God has led you to.

Mary: Thank you so much. It’s such a blessing to be on, and I really appreciate your hearts for this need in our industry and in our writings for the deeper things of God.

I think a lot of us, we look with earthly eyes on earthly success. We forget that on the other side: new heavens, new earth. I have a feeling that the first are going to be last and the last are going to be first and the best sellers are going to be the least sellers and the least sellers are going to be the best sellers.

We are not tasked with success. We are tasked with obedience, so we have to look beyond what we see here with our eyes.

Erin: Amen. Thanks, Mary.

Jesus Every Day: A Journey Through the Bible in One Year by Mary DeMuth

Has there been a time in your life when God opened an unusual, unexpected door for you?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our January sponsor of the month, Stacy McLain! She’s been working on her first book, a Christian speculative novel titled Make Known His Path.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 134 – When God Opens Doors with Guest Mary DeMuth appeared first on Write from the Deep.

We’ve all been there. You’re cruising along on your writing journey, powered by motivation and excited about the work, when WHAM! A detour comes out of nowhere and clobbers you. Everything screams to a halt, and you’re left reeling. But as bad as a detour can feel, we’re here to tell you that more often than not, detours are God’s ways of getting you to HIS destination for you!

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

My (Karen’s) husband, Don, is a see-the-hill, take-the-hill kind of guy. Me? I’m happy to amble along, stopping wherever we feel like stopping. As you can imagine, Don and I have polar opposite feelings about detours. He sees them as utterly frustrating obstacles that HAVE to be overcome. But what I’ve discovered is that more often than not, the detours are the best part of the journey. If you just relax and trust you’ll eventually get where you need to be. 

I (Erin) have to say I’m more like Don. I’m directional and goal oriented. Yet for me, becoming a writer seemed to happen through one giant decade-long (or two decades-long) detour. So I’ve gained a healthy respect for detours. That doesn’t mean they don’t still frustrate me sometimes.

When it comes to our writing and our publishing journeys, lots of us hate when we smash into detours. We react with frustration, even anger. And that seems reasonable. I mean, we’ve been working so hard to accomplish what we need to, and wham. Something over which we have zero control blocks us. Why would God allow that to happen? 

Well before we answer that, let’s take a deeper look at detours.

Webster defines a detour as “a deviation from a direct course or the usual procedure…a roundabout way temporarily replacing part of a route.”

A deviation. That sounds negative, and considering Webster’s definition of deviation, that’s a reasonable deduction: 

Departure from what’s established? Departure from accepted norms? Detours are sounding worse all the time. 

Then there’s the other definition in Webster’s, where a detour is “a roundabout way…replacing part of a route.” Meaning you’re going to go all over the place just to get back to where you should have been before the detour showed up!

Lots of us react in similar ways when detours stop us in our tracks and send us off on some unknown path to God only knows where. We’re like:

I can’t believe this! 

This will take forever!

I was just starting to make some progress!

I’ll never reach my destination!

AAARRRRGGGGHHH!

So yeah, detours are hard. And frustrating. 

But we want to suggest something a little different. To do so, we’re going to consider several different kinds of detours: 

Let’s admit it. Some detours are just bad. 

When I (Karen) was traveling with my editor friend Julee, we somehow ended up on a detour on our way to San Francisco. We ended up in a really bad part of Oakland. At night. How did I know it was a bad part? Houses were all boarded up or had bars on the windows. There was a stop sign riddled with gun shots, and a group of shady-looking guys stood on the sidewalk. I was scared to death!

Julee reached up to turn on the map light, and the guys saw right into our car. They started toward us, and I heard crude comments and saw the looks on their faces. Understand, Julee was young and beautiful and as blond as it gets. I shut off the map light and floored the car, watching in my rearview mirror as the guys ran into the street and yelled after us. Julee asked if I knew where I was going. I said, “Away from there. That’s all I need to know.” 

That’s a bad detour.

I (Erin) had a bad detour, too. I’d just gotten my drivers’ license. I was young and had gotten my first job at a department store near home, but I needed to go to training a half hour away. I thought I knew where I was going. I’d gotten directions, and I stayed on the road I was told. But there’s a section where that road gets a different name, so I turned to stay on the road with the same actual street name.

Turns out that road became an interstate, and pretty soon this young, inexperienced driver was on her way to Chicago. Not a good place for a new driver. This was all before GPS, so I didn’t know how to get off the expressway and back where I was going. Worse, it was dark outside and difficult to see. I tried to get off the interstate, and ended up on another expressway, this time the signs said I was headed for O’Hare International Airport. In a panic, I exited yet again and finally found civilization. I stopped at a gas station and called on a pay phone (because this was before cell phones) to get directions once again. I finally made it to the training, but I was very late and still shaking when I got there.

Those kinds of bad detours, the detours that stop you in your writing journey, DO take you all over the map. They leave you feeling powerless and lost. Confused. Deflated. Discouraged. And they never seem to take you back to where you want to be. You find yourself unsure of your next step. Or if you’re even supposed to take a next step. 

Uncertainty like that is never fun. It can make you start to doubt yourself and doubt that you ever heard from God: Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten on this path to begin with?

Then you start to doubt your purpose: Why am I even trying to do this? What made me think I could? And now those questions are a whole new detour taking you from trust in God to doubt and fear and all kinds of things you just don’t have to go through. Why not? Because there is one thing you can always, always trust about those bad detours: 

God will use them.  

He’ll use them to refine you in your walk with him. To develop a spirit of praise no matter what happens to you.

1 Peter 1:6-7 tells us, “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

Psalm 66:8-12 says, “Let the whole world bless our God and loudly sing his praises. Our lives are in his hands, and he keeps our feet from stumbling. You have tested us, O God; you have purified us like silver. You captured us in your net and laid the burden of slavery on our backs. Then you put a leader over us. We went through fire and flood, but you brought us to a place of great abundance.”

God will also use the bad detours to deepen your trust in him and his control over your life and career. To help you believe he WILL complete his work in you, no matter how things look. To remind you that trust in him isn’t about what’s happening in your life, it’s about HIM being who he says he is. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “To trust God in the light is nothing, but trust him in the dark—that is faith.” 

Listen to Psalm 111:2-8. “How amazing are the deeds of the Lord! All who delight in him should ponder them. Everything he does (even detours!) reveals his glory and majesty. His righteousness never fails. He causes us to remember his wonderful works. How gracious and merciful is our Lord!…He always remembers his covenant. He has shown his great power to his people…All he does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy. They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.”

Then there’s this wisdom from Deuteronomy 7:9: “Know therefore that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and his lovingkindness to a thousandth generation.” 

So the next time one of those rotten, painful, just plain bad detours slams you to a halt, use it. Purpose to keep your focus on the Lord your God, not on the path you were so sure you needed to follow. Remember he is God, and he will accomplish HIS purposes for you and your writing. No detour in creation can ever change that. 

Remember Romans 8: 5-9, 14, 18: “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires [on the path or route we think is right]; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

And here’s the good news, especially in the face of detours:

“You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit…For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God…I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Some detours are God demonstrating his power.

On another cross country trip with Julee, we tried to go visit a place where there was going to be some type of Native American event. On the way there, we had to follow a detour that led us all over the place, to the middle of nowhere in a desert area. There were no signs, so we ended up just guessing where to go. Then we realized we were running out of gas. We were praying like crazy, and our car was on fumes, when we finally spotted a gas station. We stopped for fuel, and asked the attendant about the place we were trying to visit.

He looked at us, frowned, and said, “You girls don’t want to go there. That’s not a good place. It’s not safe for you.” He gave us directions back to the freeway, which were surprisingly simple. We agreed as we got back on the freeway that the detour, and bringing us to that gas station in the middle of nowhere, was God’s way of keeping us safe. 

That was a power detour. Power detours teach us to be grateful, and remind us that God is there, watching over us. Julee and I were stunned at the way God protected us. Shoot, we both said we wouldn’t be surprised if we drove back to the station and it wasn’t even there. That God had given us a heavenly pit stop when we needed it. Whether that’s true or not, I do know that God protected us. 

I (Erin) experienced a power detour as well. Some of you know my hubby’s job went away a couple years ago. That’s pretty much always some type of road block or detour. We knew God had another place for us, but we didn’t know why it was taking so long for him to tell us where. We waited a year. Alan was looking for a job the whole time.

It turned out that the job God had for Alan wasn’t available until after the year we had waited was over. The person whose position Alan took had yet to leave. But all that time, God sustained us. He showed us he’d take care of us, and he did. Alan had wondered if God was bringing him into a different career. We got that answer: no. Out of the multiple jobs he applied for (dozens and dozens and dozens), and for which he was qualified, God brought Alan right back to teaching, but in a different place. Which was good, because there were a lot of frustrations at his other job, and he was never going to quit. 

This road block felt like it was just a holding pattern. But it was God’s sovereign hand. It was God showing his power over time. He orchestrates the universe. It was God telling us he’d sustain us and put us where he wanted us when he wanted us there. These detours help us understand that and glorify God for it. “There is no one like God to help…” 2 Chronicles 14:11.

Psalm 9:1-2, 9-10, says, “I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing the praises of your name, O Most High. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.”

Opportunity detours are when God steps in to take us off of one path and plant us on another of HIS choosing for HIS purposes. Sometimes those detours lead to a different destination, sometimes not. But always in a different way than we thought we’d be going because he knows what is best for us.

We call these opportunity detours because with each one, we have the opportunity to see these detours as coming from God’s hand, which means we explore them with a sense of confidence and anticipation. 

I (Karen) was in charge of fiction at Multnomah. A detour happened, one that stopped me cold in my career tracks. One that both Don and I knew meant God was leading me to leave Multnomah. I was shocked. I loved working at Multnomah. I was frightened, too. I made good money. How would we survive financially? But God was clear, so I left.

Within days of leaving, I had freelance editing work lined up for a year. People just called me out of the blue. Then I was called by Zondervan to come head up their fiction line. I loved working there, too. Then wham. Another detour hit.

This time, though I really didn’t want to leave that job, I was able to accept the detour and go with confidence. I went back to freelance editing. Then another publisher called, and I worked for them. Then…another detour. So I went into agenting.

Then another detour. All of which led me to where I am now, doing things I always dreamed of doing, but was too afraid, for the longest time, to do. My “trust” was in my bank balance, not in God’s provision. So I was always worried about “what if?” What if I get sick? What if I can’t work? 

It took all those detours, and moments of God refining and providing and teaching me, for me to finally do what God wanted me to do: Trust Him. For everything. Now I leave it all to God. Editing, speaking, podcasting, writing…whatever door He opens, I go through and see if that’s where he wants me.

The beauty is that we’ve never been without. I had the freedom to focus on my dad as he battled stomach cancer that last year of his life. I have no regrets about spending that time with him. When I struggled with stomach issues for a year and couldn’t work, God provided. When I was hospitalized and almost died from lung disease, God was there. It took me months to recover and be able to work again, but we were fine. Because…God. 

I (Erin) had opportunity detours, too. Some of you know that I have a masters degree in music theory and composition. That was part of my detour on the way to becoming a writing!

I had written a one-act opera for my recital for my degree. Most often composers play in their own recital, but I hated performing, so I didn’t write a part of an instrument I play. Or composers conduct at their recital, but I wasn’t very good at conducting, and this opera was not going to be easy to conduct. And I wanted to see the opera acted out, not just with singers standing there singing in concert, so I asked if my contribution to the performance could be stage directing. 

The school agreed, but I had to take a couple classes in directing. Now typically the last thing you want to do when you’re trying to finish your degree is sign up for yet more classes. But I ended up studying directing with a visiting professor who had amazing credentials (his mentor had been John Houseman), and he was only there for that one year I needed to study directing. It was in those directing classes that I ended up learning a stunning amount about writing. I learned about goals and motivation and conflict, and action beats, and you name it. It was amazing, and this detour was probably the biggest contributor to why I ended up as a writer. God had that planned all along.

Conclusion

Yes, detours can be hard. They can be stinky and bad. But God will still use them. Yes, detours can be opportunities for God to demonstrate his power, when we didn’t even realize we needed those demonstrations. But he does it because he loves us. And yes, detours are opportunities for us to trust God. To trust that our God is the God of everything. The God of our careers. The God of our families. We don’t have to be afraid.

For every detour I’ve faced, I can tell you God has been faithful to His promises to guide and sustain, to provide for me, to refine me. I can honestly say that when detours hit now, I find myself getting a little excited and asking God what He’s up to now. 

So the next time you slam into a detour on your writing journey, or if you’re in a detour right now, meet it with determination and confidence, because you’ve just encountered Almighty God and his will for you. Your journey, your career, and your heart are all firmly in His hands. There’s no need to be afraid or upset. Instead, focus on God and see where he’s taking you. I guarantee your final destination will overflow with God’s provision and blessings. As it says in Isaiah 48:17, “I am the Lord your God…who leads you in the way you should go.”

Have you encountered a detour on your writing journey? Meet it with confidence and grace! #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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How has God used detours in your life and writing journey?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our January sponsor of the month, Stacy McLain! She’s been working on her first book, a Christian speculative novel titled Make Known His Path.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 133 – Detours on Your Writing Journey appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Why is it so easy for writers who follow Christ to be derailed? Why do we, who are made in God’s image, forget that and find ourselves worn out, tempted to quit, or even angry and frustrated? Part of the answer is that we’re human and fallible. But the biggest reason is that we don’t ask ourselves the right questions to help us avoid, or escape, burnout. Come learn what to ask and when!

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

We’ve spent two earlier episodes talking about strategies to avoid writer’s burnout. It may feel like a lot of time to devote to this one topic, but God doesn’t mean for his children, made in his image, to live tired, rushed, stressed, burned-out lives. That’s not an effective way to, as it says in Philippians 2:15-16, “…shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.”

And it’s not an effective way to, like it says in Hebrews 12:1, “…run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” We don’t want you to set a pace that you can’t maintain, or set a pace that leads to you giving up before you’ve run the whole race.

With that in mind, let’s get to the last few tips we have for you.

If you’ve ever heard flight attendants give the safety procedures before a flight, you’ll know that when they’re talking about the unlikely event that the aircraft should lose cabin pressure and you need to put on an oxygen mask, which will hopefully drop out of the ceiling like it’s supposed to, you’re to put on your own mask first before helping anyone else. That might seem selfish at first, but then it becomes obvious: You can’t help anyone if you aren’t breathing yourself.

We’ve talked about this before but it’s worth repeating. Make sure you’re eating, sleeping, resting, rejuvenating, and getting the exercise you need. We have to plan time for self-care. It’s not a luxury, it’s an imperative.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “You are not your own; for you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” It’s not selfish to take care of yourself. It’s God-honoring. So don’t stick self-care on the “maybe” list, or the “if I have time after everything else” list. There’s only so long you can get away with mistreating your body, heart, and spirit before something breaks down.

This tip gives you another way to take a few things off your plate. Take a look at everything on your to-do list and ask whether you’re the best person to do it. Sometimes you’re at a point where it makes sense to hire a virtual assistant, or some help with childcare, or other household tasks, etc.

For example, it’s not just okay, but healthy to give kids responsibilities. Yes, there’s some extra time involved in teaching kids a new task, but that should pay off in the long run.

Women in particular can sometimes have trouble delegating. We feel guilty for, say, hiring someone to do housekeeping. Where do we get this idea that WE have to clean our houses? Don’t give in to an “I can and should do it all” attitude. That’s dangerous, especially since it far too often has roots in pride. Or comparison. Delegation of the tasks that someone other than you can do is an opportunity to develop a team mentality in your household and career.

This tip can help maintain and even grow your ability to be creative. I was reading a book by Todd Henry called The Accidental Creative (affiliate link). One of the things he suggests for people in creative careers is to dedicate some time in your week to what he calls “unnecessary creativity.” This is anything you consider a creative task that doesn’t have any pressure. You have nothing at stake. It’s just fun. This technique, he says, helps build your creative muscle so you can be more creative during your work times. You become more able to be creative on demand.

One of the things that does this for me, Karen, is feeding, caring for, and photographing the birds in my backyard. I’ve rebuilt our bird-feeding station any number of times because I’ve realized I could do something better, or even something prettier. I looked for pretty teacups and saucers to use as feeders for the finches and mourning doves. I mix different types of food together, and build different types of feeders, to draw a greater number of different birds. Just recently I added bark butter as a menu option for the birds, and it’s been such a treat for me to see new birds coming to partake. It all lets me be creative just for the fun of it, and that brings me joy.

For me, Erin, I love photography. It’s completely unrelated to writing. There’s no pressure. I just like to take pictures out in nature and look at them. I love closeups of birds and other animals so I can see the amazing details God put into each bit of his creation. I try to make interesting compositions. Sometimes I succeed, but often I don’t. Especially when the bird I was photographing flew away right before I snapped the picture. No worries, though. I simply delete those pictures. I’m just stretching my creative muscles.

Think about the creative things, aside from writing, that you enjoy: baking, quilting, working with your hands, building things, landscaping, making music. Whatever it is, don’t see it as a waste of time that you could’ve used writing. These are ways to improve your brain’s capacity for creative work.

Yes, we’ve been telling you to do fewer things, so don’t make this something that feels piled on. But if there’s something you’d like to do to stretch your creativity into other activities, do it. Chances are it will be a relaxing break, so it does double duty as a part of self-care.

Burnout is a slow road we travel without realizing it. You have to assess your load on a regular basis. Things change. Seasons change. Activities that used to energize you may now drain you. And things that used to drain you might start to energize you. You might need to shuffle your daily schedule, or re-evaluate your deadlines.

Schedule regular times to ask yourself:

Yeah, when my (Erin’s) husband’s job went away a couple years ago, we were dealing with his unemployment for a year, while we were trying to get our house ready to sell. Meanwhile, I was trying to write and edit and produce new episodes of the podcast, and our dog got cancer and died. Then Alan got a job suddenly and had to relocate without me, while I packed up the house to move. Then the house sold fast and shrank my packing time. Then the sale fell through 5 hours after the moving truck drove away, and we had a weekend to find another place to live.

I couldn’t figure out why I was dealing with terrible bouts of fatigue, worse than I’d ever had in the past. Someone asked me if I was feeling stressed, and I said, “Well, I don’t think so.” Then I started listing everything going on in my life… Um, YES, I was stressed and I didn’t even know it.

Responsibilities can pile up and simply become part of your new normal. The last year, when my (Karen’s) hubby, Don, was so incapacitated by the pain in his hip, I had to take on his chores as well as mine. So when I started to find myself resenting all I had to do, I knew it was time to stop and evaluate, to find out what could change. You have to stop and ask yourself if that’s happening.

 Ask:

For example, if you’ve recently gotten a contract, it may be a very different life now than just a few months ago.

Or, if you have something new you want to take on, ask what you’re going to take off your plate in order to make room.

Also, make a habit of asking yourself:

If you’ve planned more white space in your life, that will help give you the time to evaluate as you’re going through your day. You can ask yourself:

For example, some tasks that you may have systemized got easier or faster, and you can anticipate those taking less time in the future.

Also make sure to evaluate your mental, physical, emotional, and creative health after finishing big projects. Ask:

Plan specific times for broader evaluation into your schedule. Check in with yourself weekly, or at least monthly, and even quarterly and yearly. We’re not saying that you have to spend every waking moment navel-gazing. But we are saying that evaluation needs to be regular and specific.

And don’t hear us saying that you’ll never be tired or feel like you’re too busy. We live in a fallen world and things do happen. But what we’re trying to do is promote a lifestyle conducive to mental, emotional, and spiritual health. You want a pace that is overall sustainable even if you have some sprints now and then.

This last tip can help us keep our heads and hearts in the right place. As writers, we’re not here to be served but to serve. One of the most unattractive and unhelpful traits a writer can have is entitlement and pride. The world does not owe us. Our readers don’t owe us. God doesn’t owe us. Our task is to communicate God’s truth through words on a page. But also through our actions and responses everyday.

Why are we talking about this as a way to avoid burnout? Because the wrong attitude stirs up negative emotions that drain us. We can not feel rested when we’re feeling resentful or angry. We cannot effectively create from a place of hope when we’re frustrated and bitter.

Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.” God is the one who judges our writing, our actions, our intentions and attitudes. And God is the one who rewards us. We may never see “earthly rewards” for our writing. We have to be okay with that because it’s God we serve and God who has reserved a priceless inheritance in heaven for us.

Because it’s God we serve, it’s also God who makes us able to serve. It’s God who gives us the creativity, the passion, the joy, and the strength. And God’s supply is inexhaustible. When we’re creating hand in hand with God, we’re connected to the source of life and creativity that never runs out. But he’s also the source of true rest and true peace.

Ultimate peace doesn’t come in completed tasks. It comes from being with God throughout our tasks. Yes, there’s a certain satisfaction we feel in completing tasks, and that’s fine, but that’s not the source of our worth. Because there will always be more tasks and more projects. If completing them were the source of our worth, we’d feel lousy for never getting there. And some of us do feel lousy, but that’s false guilt. 

We need to remember that the abundant life God created us for comes from being focused on him, from being obedient to him. It comes from remembering there’s only one whom we serve, a mighty one who loves us beyond anything we can imagine and who is calling us to partake in creativity with him not because he needs us but because of how very much he loves us!

Writers, you’re made in God’s image. Live like it! #amwriting #Christianwriter @karenball1
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How often do you evaluate your load? What helps you remember to do that?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our December sponsor of the month, Priscilla Sharrow! She’s working on her memoir called Bonked! Life, Love, and Laughter with Traumatic Brain Injury, which should come out soon from Redemption Press. Learn more about Priscilla at her website priscillasharrow.com and follow her blog for the TBI/PTSD community.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 132 – How to Avoid Writer’s Burnout, Part 3 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Burnout is a thief. It steals creativity, robs us of joy, and pilfers our ability to write what God has given us to write. So what’s a writer to do when burnout shows up on the horizon? Stop it dead! Come listen in as we discuss simple, effective steps for heading burnout off at the pass.

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

First, let’s start with something practical that helps you implement a slower, relaxed day and a more sustainable lifestyle. The idea is simple: Plan “white space” in your life. This means when you’re planning any kind of timetable you don’t put events right on top of each other. Create a margin around every event, so that when things run long or go wrong—because stuff happens, you know it does—you don’t end up overbooked.

You want to think about this on a small scale—the things you plan everyday, your errands, or your writing time, daily tasks like cooking, or whatever. You don’t want to cram your daily schedule with one event right on top of another. That grocery trip might take longer because your store is out of toilet paper and you need to go to several places, or whatever. These delays mean everything gets behind and rushed and by the time you get to your writing time, say, later that evening, you’re crabby and exhausted.

You also want to think about white space on a large scale—the things you plan throughout the year like your contract deadlines, book launches, major projects in your day job, home renovation projects, or whatever. All these types of activities need white space around them. Don’t plan one deadline right up against another. Rushing to meet one deadline after another is a recipe for burnout. If it takes you six months to write a book, give yourself seven months in case something goes wrong—like you get sick, or a relative passes away. 

Even consider scheduling a few days after a book deadline for plain old down time. Nurture your body, soul, and spirit. Give yourself time to get excited about the next book project so you’re itching to write it, not forcing yourself to write it.

Now, practically speaking, if you’re going to plan white space, there’s an important prerequisite: You have to have a pretty good idea of how long different tasks are going to take you. The most important thing we can tell you here is don’t be a “time optimist.” Be realistic about how long that task is going to take. If you have to, keep a time log. You might be surprised at the difference between how much time you think you’re spending on something and how much time you actually are. 

There are some apps you can put on your phone and computer to help you track this. You don’t want to just plan white space around work events, though, but also simple life tasks like meal preparation and running errands. Be as realistic as possible, and then add a buffer. Now, doing this, you’ve probably realized that planning white space is another way to force you to do fewer things. See what we’re doing here?

You’d be amazed at how different life feels when you’re not rushing from one task to the next. It’s a stress reducer. Your body doesn’t feel like it’s in flight or fight mode through one hurried day after another. Your whole schedule isn’t going to fall apart if one phone call goes long. 

But there’s another benefit to white space: it gives you time to transition into the next task you have. Your brain gets a break. You can reset and refocus on whatever the next task is, rather than feeling like you’re just flying headlong into it.

Transition time allows you to implement the next tip we have: Be fully present in every task. Give it your full attention. That’s how our minds work best, especially in difficult tasks where we need self-discipline. Our brains aren’t built for multitasking with anything that requires concentrated mental effort. I mentioned a book in part one of this series, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and it talks extensively about this.

Kahneman mentions an experiment where participants are shown a video of two teams playing basketball. Participants are told to count the passes the team in white uniforms make. This task is so absorbing that most participants miss seeing a gorilla visible for nine seconds that walks across the floor, thumps its chest at center court, and then walks off. Multitasking is not realistic.

Doing fewer things well, means giving your best effort, and you can’t do that without being fully present. Think about this too: If you’ve been able to give your full attention, let’s say to your kids, or spouse when you’re spending time with them, you know you’ve given them your best. You’re giving them you. Then when you’re doing your writing time later, be fully present there, without feeling guilty, like you’re a terrible wife or parent for taking time away from others to write. 

Be fully present not just in your work, but in your nurturing times, too. Let yourself relax, which you can do better if you know you’ve planned this time for relaxing. If you’re feeling stressed when you’re supposed to be relaxing or nurturing your creativity, that’s counterproductive. 

Another thing to help you fully engage in each task is to schedule activities for the time of day when your brain and body are most suited to that task. What time of the day are you most creative? Schedule writing or brainstorming for that time.

What activities drain you? Spread them out. Give yourself plenty of time to recharge. Try to avoid scheduling creative tasks right after draining tasks. For Erin, somehow, I always come home from the grocery store in a bad mood. Maybe because they never seem to have everything I need. So I never schedule creative time for after I get home from the grocery store. Strategically pick your times for answering email, doing marketing tasks, or anything else, based on how draining or energizing they are.

One thing that helps Erin fully engage in my daily tasks is a timer. I can set it and then focus fully on my task without worrying that I’ll forget some important appointment or forget to do the next important thing on my list. When I was in graduate school and my kids were in a Montessori preschool for a couple hours, I’d always set my alarm so I’d be able to lose myself in whatever composition I was working on without fearing I’d forget to pick up the kids. 

We’ve talked about fully engaging on a smaller scale, by paying attention to what times of the day work best for your various tasks, but it also applies on a large scale. You have to take into consideration the seasons of your life. If your day job is, say, preparing taxes, don’t give yourself a book deadline or even a book launch in April, because it’ll be challenging to fully engage. Or what happens in your life during holiday seasons? Do you need to back off on other obligations during that time? Give yourself time to savor the joy of the season and savor your connection to others.

And think about the different kinds of energy required for various aspects of book writing. Planning or outlining is different than the actual writing of the book. Editing is different than revising. Starting energy is different from finishing energy. And all of that is different than promoting a new book launch. Look at what’s going to be happening in your life as a whole when you’re scheduling the starting and finishing points of your books. Respect your rhythms.

Let’s move on to the next tip we have for avoiding burnout. It’s related to being fully present: Reduce worry in every way possible. What we mean by that is: stop worrying altogether, because that’s what God calls us to as believers. Philippians 4:6 says, “Do not be anxious about anything.” It doesn’t say, “Do not be anxious about most things” or “Don’t be very anxious.” But erasing worry from our lives is a process we need to continually practice. 

The problem with worry is that it’s not innocuous. Worry is stressful, and it saps our mental, emotional, and physical energy. It sucks it up, and then we can’t devote our full and best energy and attention to whatever our task at hand is. 

What’s worse is that, all (or nearly all) of the terrible things we worry about never happen, so it’s like spending all our energy on something fake or imaginary. It’s wasted creative energy. As writers, we’re far better off focusing on what terrible things can happen to the characters in our novels, and how they can recover and learn from those things.

Worry is a sign that we’re not trusting God. That we’re holding something too tightly and we’re afraid we’re going to lose it. Or that we want something so much, and we’re afraid we won’t get it. The bottom line is that we don’t want to face that pain of loss or disappointment. As fallen people in a fallen world, we want to live lives free of heartache and trial, and we want to have everything we think will make us happy. We don’t want negative experiences, we don’t want struggles.

But that is not the world we live in. God’s plan is for us to bring our prayers, petitions, and problems to him and trust him for answers and give him the glory as he takes care of us. 

We did a whole episode on worry (Episode 24, Worry is Not Your Friend) that you can refer to if you want to dive deeper into its causes and solutions, especially solutions. But the point we want to make here is that by stealing our energy, our thoughts, and our focus, worry makes us less effective in everything we do. Which means we have to work harder for the same results, if it’s even possible to get the same results, and that, combined with the added burden of the stress that worry creates, is another recipe for burnout. 

Our next tip for avoiding burnout is something that also helps us overcome worry: cultivate wonder.

Merriam Webster defines wonder as:

– a cause of astonishment or admiration

– rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience

Why would this help avoid burnout? Wonder is pleasant and refreshing. It feeds our minds and hearts with new insight, and that sparks ideas and creative flow. 

God knows we need wonder in our lives. Psalm 114:2-4 says, “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and compassionate.”

We have a God who we can marvel and wonder at all the time. And we have his amazing creation all around us. We just forget to take the time to look, to absorb, to wonder. Make an effort to marvel. To give time and space in our lives for it. 

This is why, again, we encouraged you in part one to make one of those fewer things you do well be to keep your spiritual life healthy and vibrant. Set aside time specifically to just look at God in all his infiniteness. Read Scripture, or meditate on just a few words at a time. 

For example, Nahum 1:7 starts out, “The Lord is good…” Just camp there for a while. What does it mean to be good? To be wholly good? There is no bad, no evil, no fallenness in God. No lack of care or concern. How does that change our view of him when we’re tempted to worry? Or when we think he’s not seeing us? 

Psalm 33:6 says, “The Lord merely spoke and the heavens were created.” Camp there for a while. What kind of a God can speak things into existence? What kind of power does he have that a word can bring the universe, trillions and trillions of stars, planets, people, animals, trees, water, all of it, into being? Aside from meditating on that, get out in God’s creation and delight in it.

Also take time to specifically remember God’s past works in your life. Psalm 77:11-15 says, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds. Your ways, God, are holy. What god is as great as our God? You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples. With your mighty arm you redeemed your people…”

God is the author of creativity. He’s the source of every bit of imagination we have. We don’t just manufacture creativity on our own. It’s a gift from him, because we’re made in his image. Stay connected to the source. It’s his creativity that keeps ours from burning out. Savor him and his presence and enter into creativity with his guidance and his presence.

Stop burnout from stealing your creativity and the joy of writing! #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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What’s your best tip for avoiding writer’s burnout?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our December sponsor of the month, Priscilla Sharrow! She’s working on her memoir called Bonked! Life, Love, and Laughter with Traumatic Brain Injury, which should come out soon from Redemption Press. Learn more about Priscilla at her website priscillasharrow.com and follow her blog for the TBI/PTSD community.

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The post 131 – How to Avoid Writer’s Burnout, Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Publishing is a tough career. Writers have to work so hard and learn so much to maintain a successful career. So what would you do if everything was going great and then wham! You’re asked to make a choice between truth and your career? Guest Tamera Alexander shares her experience.

About Tamera Alexander

Tamera Alexander is a USA Today bestselling novelist and one of today’s most beloved authors of inspirational historical romance. Her works have been awarded numerous industry-leading honors—among them the Christy Award, the RITA Award, and the Carol Award—and have earned the distinction of Publisher’s Weekly Starred Reviews. Tamera and her husband reside in Nashville, Tennessee, not far from the Southern mansions that serve as the backdrop for many of her critically-acclaimed novels. Learn more about Tamera at her website tameraalexander.com.

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Erin: Welcome listeners. We are so glad you have joined us today in the deep. We have a guest, Tamera Alexander! Yay! Of course, we’ll let Karen do the introductions.

Karen: As many of you know, Tamera Alexander is a bestselling, award-winning author of wonderful Southern historical novels. Many of her Southern works are based on true stories, such as the families who built and lived at two of the most popular Southern plantations in Tennessee, Carnton and Belle Meade.

Both plantations are popular tourist attractions, and Tammy has had the great joy and honor of conducting reader weekends and tours in both places. Someday, I’m going to go get me on one of them thar tours. As a true Southerner, Tammy writes what she knows, and that authenticity shines in her work, as does her faith in God.

Her greatest hope is that when a reader turns that final page, she prays, they will have taken a step closer to Christ. Tammy and her husband and their two rambunctious, Australian terriers, who really are as adorable as it gets, make their home in Nashville. So, Tammy, welcome.

Tamera: Hey, gals! Thank you so much, Karen and Erin. This is wonderful to be with y’all again. I’m just grateful. I’m grateful for all you do and grateful to be with you.

Karen: Thank you.

Erin: We’re thankful to have you again. And so, what we want to know now, today, what does that mean to you?

Tamera: It means something quite different and maybe even deeper than it was when we talked earlier this year. When we talked earlier this year, I had no idea what was coming, which is quite, you know, that is normal in the Christian walk. You don’t know what’s coming, but God does.

That truth was a real buoying factor for me. What happened was my book Colors of Truth was scheduled to release this spring. And it was delayed until July of 2020. Then on shipment date, when all the books were supposed to ship, they’d already been printed and all that, I get a call from my publisher and they have decided to delay the book yet again.

There were concerns over the Southern setting. Which it is. It is about Carnton, an antebellum mansion. The story ranges from the mid Civil War to the end of the Civil War, and then 10 years after. So definitely within the Civil War and the antebellum era.

You may remember back during the summer, not so much now, but during the summer, there was a lot of rioting and Civil War sites were being attacked and all the statutes torn down.

Karen: Right.

Tamera: So there was a lot of concern about that. The Colors of Truth, the actual title was also a concern. That wasn’t my original title, but that’s the one that we came to to settle upon.

Long story short, they delay. I try to talk them out of it. I look at this and I think, you know, history is history. We do not need to try to pussyfoot around it. A lot of history is sinful, because guess what? We are sinful. Our ancestors were sinful. Our descendants will be sinful. We are sinful creatures at our core.

Karen: Right.

Tamera: So I thought, “Don’t try to whitewash it. Don’t try to make it what it’s not.” Which is their right. They said no. And they decided to delay it again. But then I got a call probably not three weeks later. They called with a specific request for me to change portions of the history of the book.

I tell you what, God had done a work in me last year that I am not proud of. I was just at Carnton this past Sunday and shared this story. I’ve shared it with readers before, but it really ended up being a wonderful conversation at Carnton on Sunday.

So what they did was they asked me to change, and I’ll get back to what happened a year ago in just a second, but they asked me to change the history. We were on a zoom call, and it lasted for probably a couple of hours, but nothing within me really wavered. I listened, and I truly thought, “Okay, Lord, if there’s really something here that I need to address, show me. Show me, show me, show me.”

I had already camped in Psalm 139, praying about God showing me my wicked way, and saying, “If there’s anything in my book that needs to be changed, let me know. Reveal that to me.”

So long story short, I decided I could not. I just said, “I cannot change the history.”

I worked with the curators. I worked with historians to get the history right, to tell the right history. It wouldn’t be historically accurate to take away the struggle of some of the freedmen and women from that era and make them agents of their story six months after the civil war, for a 74 year old woman, who’d been a slave all of her life. And asking me to do things to her and for her and change her character—and keep in mind, there were already two books in the series that were published—I just couldn’t do it.

So I said, “I’m sorry. I just cannot do this.”

And that’s when they said, “Well, we cannot take this book. We will not take this book.” So, there was an odd pause. An awkward pause.

Erin: ‘Cause what does that really mean?

Tamera: Right. What does that mean? They said, “We just don’t think this book will sell. Not in this current culture.”

I said, “Okay.” So bottom line is they canceled it. So what does that mean? That means the book is canceled. It’s like they never took it. It’s just canceled. And I had book three already that I had signed with them, but they let me know that book three was also canceled.

It definitely left me a little bit spinning. I mean, literally, you just feel the rug kind of pulled out.

Karen: Right.

Tamera: I’m close to a lot of writers, but there’s a specific group of women, some of y’all may know, I call it the Coeur d’Alene group. Karen, you’re part of that. We meet every summer and share, but throughout the year we also have an email loop. They are really my prayer warriors.

I did not share with writer groups widely about this at all, but I shared with that group for them to come alongside me and to give me wisdom. So as I was going through this, cause what I told you in like three or four minutes, was really months. It was several, several weeks of going through this and working through it.

They really helped me to stay grounded, but I tell you, it did leave me reeling. If you go back, I made a video for my readers. I made one as soon as I found out about the delay, and it was really odd because, you know, you’ll make notes before you make a video. I did little bullet points: Okay, I want to cover this, cover this, cover this. I had not intended in that video to say anything about, you know, “Some of you are writing, asking me, are you frantically having to change the novel and rewrite it?”

Of course I said, “No, no.” Which, I’d planned to say that. What I didn’t plan on saying, but what came up, was my publisher was not even asking me to make that change. At the time, they hadn’t.

Honestly, it blew me away, just blew me away that this would even happen. But it did. So the next video I made, I think I was a little bit shell shocked. I was still processing it quite honestly, gals. I was still processing it myself. And I don’t name my publisher by name. It’s not hard to find out. They published the first two books in the series.

Karen: Right.

Tamera: But this is not about them. It’s truly not any more. For a while there, of course, it was just sorting out all of the details with them.

Karen: I’ve got to let you guys know that several of us in the group of writers offered to go beat people up for Tammy, and she wouldn’t let us do it.

Tamera: Not even. No. But anyway, it was a real faith building experience for me. I am way better now, you know, when we’re speaking now, than I was then. It’s not that I didn’t think God was in the midst of it. I just didn’t know what he was doing. I had no idea what he was doing.

So I had a very quick indie publishing crash course because I was determined to meet the October date. I found out about this, it was right at the first of September. So I had roughly a month to learn how to indie publish and to do all of that.

Erin: This is the awkward thing. You are in the middle of this contract with a publisher. You’re trying to meet, you know, you’re trying to keep an open mind to do what they see is the best thing for the book. At the same time, you’re trying to do what you see as the best thing for the book. And then you’ve got your readers that you’re trying to deal with because you want to meet their expectations.

I’m just sitting here trying to picture you on a video call to tell your readers that they don’t want the book that they want. That’s a very tricky place for an author to be in. You don’t want to bad mouth anybody, but how did you sort that out and be true to what you thought was right, and honor everyone you could?

Tamera: This is where I think I’ll take us back to last year. This is what happened last year, latter March of 2019. I had already been writing the book and my dad, he had had dementia for about a decade, and he was entering his last months. We knew they were his last months, but you know, with dementia, you never know. We had had false alarms: This is it…well, no, it’s really not.

In March, Kelsey and I were going to go on a trip. I knew I was going to have a two week chunk where I would not be writing. My agent called and she said, “Your publisher is wanting to know where you are on the book.”

It would have been due in December, and Dad ended up passing in August. That’s another whole part of this book was that I was writing this book in the midst of that last year with him, which was just full of so many blessings. So many of our moments ended up making it into the book, which was just, again, it’s just such a God thing. So they called and they asked, “Where are you in the book?”

I was very much behind. I was not where my personal writing schedule needed to be, and I said, “I’m at 15,000 words.”

My agent said, “You’re at 50,000 words? You’ve only got 50,000 words?”

I knew in that moment I should say, “No, you misheard me. It’s even worse.” But what I did, gals, is I said yes. I said, “Yes, that’s what I’ve got.”

Because in my mind, I thought, “I’m going to count my notes, and all the notes, thats adds up to it, too.”

No, no. It’s a lie. I only had 15,000 words. To make matters worse, literally, I’m packing to go on this trip, I’ll be headed to the airport in about six hours.

She said, “Go ahead and send it to me. We’ll see what you’ve got, and we’ll share it with the publisher.”

The publisher wanted to see what I had. Well, at that point I knew. I thought, oh, and I just felt horrible. I already felt horrible.

I’d already confessed to my family. I was in tears, and I’ll be honest. I hated to leave Dad. I’m thinking, “What if he dies while I’m gone on this trip? I don’t need to be going on this trip.”

The trip, as God would have it, was to the Holy Land. I lie to my agent about how much I have done on this book. And little do I know, and this doesn’t excuse me at all so don’t hear me saying that, but another author had done that the previous year.

Karen: Oh dear.

Tamera: They were attuned to this and they said, “We have found that you authors sometimes give the truth scope.”

I said, “I think that’s a nice definition for the term lie.” And it is. I heard someone this morning in BSF, we were talking about Abram and Sarai at the time before God changed their names. Do you remember when Abram lied about Sarai? He said, “Oh, she’s my sister. She’s my sister.”

Well, she was his half sister. So he based the lie in truth. But someone said, “Well, it was a half-truth.”

And I said, “The thing is with the Lord God, you go back.” And that’s what I did as I finished writing Colors of Truth. Colors of truth. I looked at every Scripture in the Word of God, both Old and New Testament that dealt with truth, that dealt with honesty and authenticity. There is no half anything.

Karen: That’s right.

Tamera: There’s no half lie. There’s no half truth. There is falsehood. There is lying, and there is truth, and there is authenticity and realness.

So, I called my publisher. I called my agent. I asked their forgiveness, but I’m on my way to the airport. They’re like, “You know, we get it, we get it. You were stressed. Just go on the trip and we’ll sort it all out. And we know that you’re good for it as far as the book and everything.”

But I needed with my personal schedule to be much farther ahead than I was. So, I go on the trip and don’t you know that every turn, it felt like in that trip, God met me with justice and righteousness and truth and falsehood. I mean, there were so many times during that trip that I was just on my knees. At En Gedi, on the field where David slew Goliath, near the tomb of Jesus.

I thought, “Oh my word, Lord, you are just tilling my heart.” But it needed to be tilled because in that moment, when I decided—and it’s all a decision. I’ve heard myself, say it, you know, I didn’t intend to lie, or I didn’t really mean to do it.

Yeah, I did. And, yes, you did.

I know Paul says, “The things that I know I should do, I don’t do. And the things that I don’t want to do are the things I do.” I so get that. I lived it.

So, speed ahead. Now God is dealing with me. In this book Colors of Truth, it’s all about lies we tell ourselves, lies we tell to each other, and lies we tell to God. Good luck with that last one, by the way.

Erin: Right.

Tamera: But I tell you, my mind was kind of blown. This was fall now. I had already said goodbye to Dad. We walked him home. God was so good in that he let me be by Dad’s bedside with my brother and my step-mom, Esta. We were with him when Dad breathed his last, and I was able to be with Mom when she breathed her last. That was just such a blessing. I’ll tell you what, you see blessings.

Sometimes part of this whole experience at times—I know we are washed and we are clothed with Christ when we come to Christ and in Romans it says we are baptized into his death and raised to newness of life, and we are new creatures. And when God looks at us, he no longer sees us in our sin, but he sees Jesus Christ. But there are moments, ladies, when God lifts the veil, I think, and I see myself and who I would be without him. And that was one of those moments.

All I thought about in that moment—and this is how Satan can come in and twist our thoughts—was, “I don’t want to upset them with where I am. Because I know I can get it done. I just need to get through. I need to go to Israel and get back and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

So I thought, “I don’t want to make them feel badly, and I don’t want to upset everything. So I’ll just do this.”

That’s why he is called the father of lies. When we lie in that split moment, we are following his lead.

Erin: Right.

Tamera: So now, a lot of people ask how I had the courage to say, “I’m not going to change anything in this book. I will not rewrite history.” Oh, literally, for the love of God. He has taken me this last year, and he has drilled and engraved truth on my heart. To tell the truth. To tell the truth. Do not stray from the truth.

He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” Not a truth, not a way, not a life. The truth.

So when that came to me, it was a balancing in that moment because I thought, “Okay, I just have a great admiration, esteem, for historians and for the history, for the real history. And yet, I don’t know everything. So you think, “Okay, let’s look through this. Let’s sift it like the wheat from the chaff.”

But once we got done I thought it would take out the heart of the truth of the story and the truth of this woman, this character who is based on the real cook, the real housekeeper who worked for the McGavocks, who was a slave most of her life, who in 1866 was now a freed woman.

Yes, she had been emancipated. But this is roughly in January of 1866. We’re talking six to seven months after the Civil War. Yes, the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863 and all that. But this woman was still very much enslaved. Very much enslaved. And to say that she could strike out and just do this and go looking for this thing—this part of the plot of the book that I don’t want to give away—was not realistic.

They were saying it would make it a more exciting book. And I thought, “Perhaps in some ways, but it wouldn’t be truthful. It would not be truthful. And specifically to the history at Carnton.”

So all of that is a long story to show why, when it came to, “Would you change the history in this story and change these things?” it was not a hard decision because God had already been dealing with me on a personal level on speaking truth and telling the truth.

I’ll tell you, there’ve been countless times since, socially, where you’re…someone said recently, “Well, if you say you have another appointment and you don’t really have another appointment, you just don’t need to go, that’s not really a lie.”

Yeah. That’s actually, what you just said right there, is the definition of lying. What you don’t have, you’re saying you do have. That is a lie.

Yes, we want to spare other people’s feelings and all that, but there is a way to be a more truthful person. Just say, “Listen, I would love to come. I have had a killer of a week. I love you dearly. Let’s get coffee in the next the month or so, but I just cannot. I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now.

What I found was everyone has understood, as far as those social things that you try to skirt by, that often we skate very close to “non-truth.” As we call it, we like to dress up what we do.

I just find it is freeing. It is so freeing to be truthful.

Move on now to the publishing and all that, as far as the readers. I loved what you said, Erin, about how you’re walking kind of a balance with being true to history, being true to your readers, and wanting to please your publisher. And I did want to please them.

I just found out very quickly when you’re at the throne of Christ and you truly feel like, okay, here are your choices: you be true to what God has called you to do, or you do this.

I think for all of us, the or? You lost me at or.

Karen: Yeah.

Tamera: You lost me at or. The or is not a choice any anymore. So anyway, indie publishing was actually kind of fun. Yes, it was insane at moments. I tried to learn Photoshop, which has a steep  learning curve, to fix the covers and stuff because the covers needed some zhuzhing, as we say. I couldn’t do that, so I hired that out. I’m so grateful to Angie Hunt and to Ken Raney who came to my rescue and helped me with the covers.

Then everything else, you know, it really came together. It was a fun experience. And the book, thank you to readers, was number one in American historical, I believe, and American historical romance, religious historical romance, and Christian historical romance.

That’s a God thing, and those are readers who came alongside and who are helping to promote the book even now with word of mouth. I’ve got to tell ya, I’ve never been so grateful for word of mouth, because no longer is there a publicist behind you. But as I’ve learned, and as I shared with y’all just a little bit ago before we came on, God is the best publicist. He really is.

Erin: Right. And let’s be clear here for a minute. We want to be clear. Publishers have the right to publish what they see fit to publish.

Tamera: Absolutely, they do.

Erin: They have the right, let’s just put it that way. And, Tammy, you have the right to follow your heart and what you feel is true. Also let’s be clear, they weren’t asking you to be like, oh, you know, let’s change this fictional bit from red to orange. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about, they wanted you to say something, create something in history that wasn’t true for history.

Tamera: Those circumstances, yeah.

Karen: Hang on a minute. I do want to say something as someone who has worked in a number of publishing houses.

Erin: Yeah, do.

Karen: They do not have the right to ask you to rewrite history.

Erin: Right.

Karen: I don’t care what the reason is. I don’t care if they say that it’s going to sell better. They do not have the right to ask you, especially as a believer, as a Christian author, to lie.

Erin: Right.

Karen: That is something that I believe they will be held accountable for. That was a huge misstep on their part.

Tamera: Karen, you know, since you’re part of the Coeur d’Alene group, with which I said I shared extensively. But I have not shared extensively publicly about the detailed letters, and I won’t, because my goal is not to paint them in a horrible light. They had the right to not publish the book.

Erin: That’s what I’m saying.

Tamera: They have the right to change their mind and say, “You know, we’ve changed our minds.” That’s why you have contracts. And that’s why you have attorneys to work out all those contracts.

Erin: Exactly.

Tamera: One more thing. I can almost guarantee you, they did not believe what they were asking me to do would have been a lie. They thought it would have been giving it depth or a different spin. But to me, I could not do that because that would not be truthful to the history that I know happened at Carnton in 1866. That would not have happened there. It would not, especially with a 74 year old woman. I just don’t want to say like they’re over here just making up lies. Not at all.

When I see my publisher, well, we won’t see each other at the Christy Awards this year. But when we see each other, I will hug. I will not shoot daggers across the room because, guys, we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and that bond goes beyond this one.

Was it uncomfortable? Yeah. Was it pleasant? No. But God had it from start to finish. I’m just very, very grateful for the world that we live in now that does enable an author to indie publish. I really am grateful for that.

Someone asked me today, “Are you going to do this indie pub now and never published with another publisher?”

I’m not saying that either. But for these two books, I just need to go ahead and do those definitely with an indie pub, which is Fountain Creek Press, which is my own press.

Other people have asked, “So are you taking books to publish now?” No, I can barely write mine.

If you need a smaller imprint, write me through my website, and I can point you to some really good ones. But that is not what this press is for.

Erin: I feel like your whole story is showing that not only do we do missteps personally, but companies misstep. For writers out there who may be involved with a company, have a publishing company, it might all go great. Or one or both of you might make a misstep. That’s just people, and learning how to deal with it in grace, I love your attitude, Tammy. I love the way that you were able to forgive and move ahead and still understand that these people are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Karen: You do have to be sure as a writer, though, that you don’t publish at all costs.

Erin: Right.

Karen: I mean, it was hard for you as someone who was established, who was a lead author. That was very difficult.

But for someone who’s just starting out, if the publisher comes to them and says, “Sure, we want to do your book. But you have to make these changes.” And you know as the writer that that’s the wrong thing to do from an integrity standpoint, maybe from a history standpoint, like was the case with you, we have to remember that God is the one in control of our publishing career. Not the publisher, not even us.

Whatever we do has to be steeped in prayer and steeped in his integrity and truth. If you try to fudge that so that you can have a publisher and be a published writer, that’s not a career that God is going to be able to bless.

Tamera: No, I totally agree. Something about that, Karen, that has resonated with me for years is to run the race that God has set before me, like it says in Hebrews 12:1-2. I’ve often pictured this, especially because we know a lot of writers, and we are writers, and we start looking over here, especially these younger writers coming up and they’re just so dang cute.

They’re just so perky, you know? Sometimes I find myself looking down at lane four, and oh, she’s so cute. She’s wearing the cutest little yoga pants and her little running pants, and she’s just so cute. She’s just hurdling over those hurdles and just having a great time. And I’m thinking, “Yeah, I fell on that first hurdle about ten years ago. She’s just zooming.”

But you know what? We need to be careful. The rest of that verse is, “Keep your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.” We need to cheer for each other. Yes, absolutely. But keep your eyes on Christ. Don’t start comparing my track and the race that God has me on with the cute little blonde in lane four or even the writer who is ten years my senior who’s writing over there in the lane next to me, or two over.

Karen: Right.

Tamera: Don’t compare. Run the race that God has set before me.

Erin, something that you said, Joe and I learned this long ago, my husband and I, early in our marriage. We were working for a Christian university. We learned very early on that businesses can never be Christian.

Erin: Right.

Tamera: There are no such things as Christian businesses. People are Christians. The Holy Spirit inhabits people, not businesses. I think it’s very important knowing going in and just having a clear understanding of what this partnership is, certainly with a publisher, but with any business, especially with publishing. Publishing is a business, and you need to look at it as a business.

Yes. I hope we’re family, and we’re part of the same publishing family. But the fact of the matter is, if my numbers dip, and if I am not a profitable margin for them, they’re going to kindly and lovingly lead me to the door.

Karen: That’s right.

Tamera: I mean, seriously, because it is a business. Yes, it’s a ministry. Absolutely, it is. But it’s also a business.

Karen: The time has gone by so fast. I know that you have so many other things to share, but let’s do it this way. What’s the last thought that you want to leave with our listeners?

Tamera: Hmm. A last thought to leave. Erin, what you said, “What an attitude of forgiveness,” that was God that has developed that. That is nothing from Tamera Alexander. That is God. I tell you, he deepened my love for his Word over this past year. He gave me a thirst for his Word.

We recently moved and are in a different house. It’s got a lovely view. I get up in the morning at five o’clock, and for the first hour and a half, I just steep myself in his Word. He was prepping me. He knew all along, and that’s the difference.

Karen: Amen. So we never have to worry about what’s going to come in the future. We never have to worry about what we’re going to do as long as we keep our eyes on Christ.

Erin: Amen.

Tamera: And amen.

Author @tameraalexander shares what to do in the face of a possible career ending decision. #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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Colors of Truth by Tamera Alexander (Affiliate link)

What’s the toughest decision you’ve faced in your writing career? What helped you make your decision?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thank you so much to our November sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow. She’s a writer and speaker at women’s retreats. Her book, Blood Beneath the Pines is a tale of prevailing justice, set mostly in the Deep South. Learn more about Tammy at her website: tammypartlow.com

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 130 – Facing Decisions That Could End Your Career with Guest Tamera Alexander appeared first on Write from the Deep.

No writer plans to get burned out. Yet so many of us end up there. We wake up one day to find we’ve lost our passion. Our vision. Our hope. We’re weighed down and weary, drowning in a tsunami of life’s demands, not to mention the writerly tasks we can never catch up with. And we’re supposed to be creative on top of that? If you’re in the midst of burnout or want to learn to avoid it altogether, come listen in for hope and help.

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

We don’t live in an easy world. It’s complicated, difficult, and frequently confusing. And most of us writers have busy lives, not just trying to cope with things like a global pandemic and natural disasters, but also trying to keep up with our daily responsibilities: our family, a home—you’ve got to clean and cook and fix stuff that breaks, and then there’s our writing, and then marketing on top of that, and trying to learn new things in our craft, and probably juggling some type of a day job to boot. 

Through all that, we’re under the gun to be endlessly and effortlessly creative. Cheerful. Competent. It’s no wonder we feel drained, exhausted, and teetering on the edge of burnout, if we’re not already there. 

Today we want to talk about an antidote to burnout. We want to give you some tips to avoid burnout and help you stay creatively and spiritually fresh. There are lots of tips, so we’re going to be breaking this up into a series, because you probably don’t have time to listen to a three-hour podcast right now, especially if you have 800 things to do today.

Stop spending every day in one giant hurry to do everything. We know, we know. You wanted some genius new strategy to somehow be able to “do it all.” But the very best thing we can tell you is to STOP trying to do it all. Allen Arnold once gave Erin a great piece of advice: Do fewer things and do them well. If you’re able to take this to heart, it will change your life. You have to make a conscious decision about what’s most important to you and then, you have to give some things up. But that’s SO hard.

1. Loss Aversion Makes it Hard to “Give Things Up”

We’re what Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, describes as loss averse. To be loss averse means that in our minds, losses loom larger than gains, so we try to avoid them. And when we do suffer a loss, it feels terrible. Now, being way too busy and burned out also feels terrible, but it’s something we know. We’d rather clutch everything we have in our tight little hands and feel lousy than suffer through something we perceive as a loss. In our minds, we actually weigh losses about twice as much as gains. Which is fascinating. So how do we overcome this loss aversion? 

2. We Have Trouble Deciding Which Few Things We Should Focus On

The second reason why it’s hard to do fewer things and do them well is that we don’t know which things we should choose as “the fewer things” that we should do. That can only come through prayerful decision making. Let us suggest that one of the fewer things you might choose to do is to spend more time with God.

The better you know God, and the better you understand who you are in him, the more your identity and self-worth comes not from the things you accomplish but from the worth he gives to you. And from simply enjoying him everyday. God created us to enjoy him and glorify him. That’s really the sum of it. We did a 2 part series on Hearing God in episodes 110-111. I encourage you to go back and listen to those if you struggle with this.

The better you know God, and the better you understand who you are in him, the more your identity and self-worth comes not from the things you accomplish but from the worth he gives to you. #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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3. We Have Trouble Saying No

The third reason why it’s hard to do fewer things is that we have trouble saying no. Even if we have managed to pare down our list of responsibilities and activities, we’re still going to face constant challenges to that short list. There are appeals for our time and attention coming to us left and right. Multiple times a day. The church nursery puts out a call for volunteers. Or some local cause you believe in needs help. Or you get an invitation to speak somewhere, which means prep time and maybe travel time. These can add up to you not doing fewer things anymore.

We talked about the need to stop rushing and to do fewer things in order to help avoid burnout. But, another aspect of the idea of not rushing, is to stop rushing in your writing career. We all want to finish that book, or get that series finished, or get that agent, or get that contract, or learn that new technique, or get those sales, or that bestseller title, or whatever, and we want to do it now. Or, if not right now, then as soon as possible.

This mentality is tempting for every writer. But the problem is, being in a hurry to get somewhere else makes us discontent with where we are right now. That makes it impossible to enjoy the journey. 

Being in a hurry to get somewhere else on our writing journey makes us discontent with where we are right now, which makes it impossible to ever enjoy the journey. #amwriting @karenball1
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We did a whole podcast about the dangers of discontent, episode 94, so we encourage you to check that out. 

Erin heard a quote somewhere that went something like: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery.” All you really know you have is right now, and if you can’t enjoy it, how can you ever be happy? 

If we’re only happy when we hit some specific milestone, the trouble is, that happiness is short lived, because there’s always another milestone, and that thing we want always comes with its own challenges and difficulties. 

So how do we do this? How do we stop rushing in our writing career?

1. Take Pleasure In Where We Are Now

Take pleasure in the simple fact that we are on the path God has for us, and our job is to glorify him and delight in him on the path right now, not somewhere down the road.

What can you thank God for right now? What can you glorify him for right now? What lessons does he have for you right now, that you can only learn by being fully present right now? Maybe you’re in a great place, or maybe you’re in a lousy place, but it’s the place God has you. There’s a reason why patience and self control are fruits of the Spirit. Focus on how you can cultivate a Christ-mindedness and a Christ-likeness here in this particular place on your journey.

2. Take Your Time Learning and Incorporating New Ideas

As you think about improving your writing craft, and marketing, and everything else that goes along with it, remember that you don’t have to rush to learn everything right now. Take your time. Chew on it. Absorb it. Implement new ideas over time rather than feeling pressured to do everything in a giant bulk dump. 

3. Delight In Being Faithful In Each Task

Living our lives at top speed is stressful, and we don’t see any of the scenery. Instead of racking up milestones, value faithfulness, value diligence. Value sowing well so you can reap in the proper time. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever look forward to a harvest, but it means that you don’t put so much focus on rewards down the road that you fail to reward your own hard work right now. 

Work is God-given. Even when all was perfect in the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve the job of caretaking, of working. Work is good. Yes, we live in a fallen world, filled with futility, but our work with God, our creating with him, our imitating him, our delighting in him each day as we’re faithful to little tasks is still meant to be fulfilling now, while we’re here on earth.

You don’t need to rush. You don’t need to stress to write 5,000 words a day when 500 words a day, or 50, will still get the book written. Pray about how much time you should be writing, pray about how much time you should be doing other writing related tasks, and be satisfied with the speed limit God gives you. It’s fine. We promise. Because it’s your speed. Not your neighbor’s speed, not your critique partner’s, not that latest new best-selling author’s speed, and not that person’s speed who took 30 years to write her book. Go your own, perfect, God-given speed.

The Bottom Line

Love yourself enough to do for yourself what you would do for your spouse, or your child, or a good friend. Love your neighbor as yourself. Give yourself a break. God didn’t give you this task to leave you burned out and exhausted. He gave you this task not because he needs you to do it, but to bless you. To draw you into his creativity. To draw you to his side so that you can savor time with him as he creates through you. 

Know that you’re in the center of God’s will. And when you’re in that place, you’re not ahead. You’re not behind. You’re exactly where you need to be, with no reason to rush anywhere.

Have you suffered writer’s burnout? What helped you recover?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thank you so much to our November sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow. She’s a writer and speaker at women’s retreats. Her book, Blood Beneath the Pines is a tale of prevailing justice, set mostly in the Deep South. Learn more about Tammy at her website: tammypartlow.com

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post How to Avoid Writer’s Burnout, Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Guest Nick Harrison has done it all: librarian, bookstore owner, editor, writer, and agent. And through it all, he’s learned so much about what it takes to succeed, not just in publishing, but in being obedient to the God who asked him to write. Listen in as he shares keys to understanding God’s purposes in your writing.

About Nick Harrison

Nick Harrison is a literary agent with WordServe Literary and the author of more than a dozen  books. Nick graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in English and a minor in journalism. For fifteen years Nick served as a senior editor at Harvest House Publishers, acquiring both fiction and non-fiction. You can find out more about Nick at his website is nickharrisonbooks.com.

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Erin: Welcome everybody. Welcome to the deep. I’m glad you’re here with us today. We have a guest and we’ll let Karen introduce him. 

Karen: Nick Harris! I’ve known him for lo these many years. He’s worked in the book industry for more than 30 years. He’s an old man, like we’re old ladies. 

Erin: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you calling me old? 

Karen: He’s owned or managed both Christian and children’s bookstores. He’s written articles for several prominent publications, and he’s authored 10 books, including Magnificent Prayer, which I love, and Power in the Promises: Praying God’s Word to Change Your Life. For 15 years, he served as senior editor at Harvest House Publishers, where he worked with several well-known fiction and nonfiction authors. Now he’s a literary agent with Wordserve Literary.

He’s a popular speaker and teacher at writer’s conferences where I love to meet him when we’re together at the conferences. He loves to discover promising new writers. He and his wife, Beverly, and avid quilter live in Oregon. Yay, Oregon! And they’re the parents of three adult daughters and grandparents of two boys and two girls.

Nick, welcome. Welcome to the deep. 

Nick: Oh, thanks. It’s great to be here. 

Erin: Yes, and let me just say, if you guys have never met Nick personally, he’s just one of my favorite people. He’s just the sweetest man ever. If you’re ever at a conference and you just need a father figure who’s going to be sweet and kind, find Nick. 

Karen: Yes.

Erin: All right. So, Nick, our first question for you: What does the deep mean to you? 

Nick: Well, I love that word. Especially because the way I interpret it is deep writers from the past, like even a hundred years ago, have had such an effect on my own spiritual life. One of my goals as a writer is to take some of the deep truths, just to go deeper than what most people are doing, and try to translate Andrew Murray, Hannah Whitall Smith, etc., Take what they said for their generation and make it fresh and new for our present generation.

Because if you just tell somebody, “I’m writing a book that’s really deep,” it scares them off. That’s not something you want to do. But if you present the deep truths in a way that people can understand how that will change their life, then you’re on to something. 

So that’s my goal when I think about writing from the deep. Writing from the deep that I’ve received from some of the people I mentioned and many others. You should see my library of some of the deep writers of the past, many of whom I honestly wonder if they could be published today. So that what it means to me. 

Erin: Wow. I love it. Karen and I were just talking about Charles Spurgeon because in our reading from Streams in the Desert he was in there, and we were talking about that. Deep thinkers and deep writers.

Nick: Yeah, he’s great. One reason I don’t use him when I say he might not be able to be published today is that he had the P-word: he had the platform. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Nick: Even back then platform was an issue. So much of what he accomplished was because of his tremendous popularity in his church and in England. So he had the platform.

Nowadays, some of the writers that don’t have the platform, I wonder, you know, how they’ll make it. When I do go to conferences, one of my most popular workshops is what to do when you don’t have a platform and that’s getting increasingly hard to teach, but there are still ways.

God makes a way when he’s in it. When he’s compelling writers to write what he’s put on their heart, there’ll be a way. 

God makes a way when he's in it. When he's compelling writers to write what he's put on their heart, there'll be a way. #amwriting @karenball1
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Karen: I have a good friend I saw on Facebook who was dealing with discouragement. “Sometimes this publishing gig is hard,” she’d said. I thought, the thing we always need to keep our focus on is the fact that if God has given us this task to write, he’ll prepare the way and he’ll accomplish what he wants to accomplish, whether that means getting published or not. 

He’ll accomplish his purposes in what we do in obedience to what he’s given us to do. It is hard, and it’s crushing, and it can take you out with your ego, but if you keep your focus on the master, then it means that what you need to be careful about and focused on is being obedient, and that’s pretty much the extent of your responsibility there. 

Nick: Yes. And you know, when you mentioned the word focus, it reminded me that some writers are all over the map with what they want to write. To be focused as a writer is a big help. A lot of people cringe at the idea of having a mission statement for their writing, but, you know, a while back, I just thought, “Well now, who do I write to? Who’s my audience?”

At first I thought, “Well, okay, I know it’s hurting Christians. I write for hurting Christians.” Then God reminded me: Wait a minute. He edited me. He said, “No, you write for hurting people.” So that’s my focus. I think being a writer with focus helps you stay on the track. At least you know where you’re going. 

Karen: Right. 

Erin: Let’s dig a little deeper into that, Nick. You personally, because here you are, you’re an editor, you’ve worked at bookstores and that kind of thing, but you’re also a writer. What has driven you personally? What has called you personally to write.

Nick:  Well, like so many writers, I can go back to my childhood. I remember at age eight, I wrote my first short story. Very unpublishable. 

Then in fifth grade, a bunch of friends and I got together, and we all decided that we were going to write a book. So we each wrote a chapter. Of course now they’d have to flow together…it was awful. 

In high school, I continued to prefer English classes to some of the other classes I took. Especially math and science classes. 

Karen: Amen. 

Nick: In college, one of my first jobs was in the county library. I worked for the library as I worked my way through college. I stayed with that for quite a while after I graduated and into married life. Then I started working for Zondervan Family Bookstores. That was one more than forty years ago. So it’s just been a chain of events. 

I feel like in retrospect, when I look at what God has done, it’s sort of amazing to me how open doors happened when I would not have expected them. Many times when I prayed for a specific thing to happen, it didn’t happen. I would be discouraged. “Where are you, God? Why aren’t you answering a prayer?”

Then six months later, unexpectedly, an opportunity would arise that just blew me away. It’s sort of been that way for most of my life. Even my wonderful years at Harvest House came about not because I applied for a job there, but because there was an opening and Terry Glaspey, good old Terry, asked me if I’d be interested in applying. It was just out of the blue.

Karen:  Right.

Nick: God opens doors. We just have to believe that if we’re going to pursue writing. We have to believe that God sees the future. He uses the past. And don’t be discouraged if the present doesn’t look as glowing as you wish it did. 

Karen: I was just telling Erin that I was working on something and a quote that Francine Rivers said, that I’m sure she got from another source because that quote itself has been around for a long time, the quote is: don’t doubt in the darkness, what God has done in the light.

We’re like my dogs. My husband was just talking to my dogs. He had just fed them. They had had their breakfast, and they’re right over trying to convince him that he didn’t feed them, that they are starving to death.  

Our other little dog brought the ball to him to play with them while I’d been here in the office. He said, “I played with you for a half hour. Are you kidding me?”

I looked at him and said, “Yeah, but what have you done for me now?”

Too many of us are like that with God. “Okay. Yes. You’ve opened all these doors, but what are you going to do for me now, God?” 

Erin: I love though the idea of the patience for the six months. I think it’s really easy to give up if you don’t see what you want to see in the next day or the next week. I think about, even in the Bible, there was a point in time where Jeremiah the prophet was praying to God and saying, “Here’s all these exiles, after the governor gets executed, and they want to go to Egypt. But they asked me to ask you, should we be going to Egypt? Should we be fleeing basically from the Babylonians coming for repercussion?”

It takes 10 days for that answer. And you have to be like, well, God knew the answer right away, but why didn’t he tell him? 

Well, because he’s God. And because that answer was supposed to come in 10 days, for whatever reason.

I think it’s easy to question God’s timing and God’s purposes in that. And really, he just wants us to be faithful and to wait expectantly. 

Nick: Exactly.

Karen: You know, Erin, you went through that yourself in looking for your home there in Kansas City. 

Erin: Yes. Looking and looking and waiting and waiting and feeling like, “Why is this taking so long?” Feeling like, “Why doesn’t this seem like the right house? What is going on?” And wondering if there was a right house. Wondering if we’re being too picky. And yet there was something in my spirit that just…we just couldn’t bid on certain houses and on other ones that we were close on, there was already three other bids. So it’s like, “Well, that went away.”

And now, this particular house that we ended up with has had its challenges, but oh my goodness. It’s right here in nature. I tell Alan, my husband, I keep telling him, “I can’t believe I get to live here.”  So it was months. 

And by the way, we were supposed to move months earlier. We were supposed to…we had a different house and it all fell through when our home sale in Oklahoma fell through.

So you wonder, you know, that was quite the hardship. And you think God isn’t leading you. But he is. Even through difficult, difficult circumstances. 

I’m much happier in this house than I would have been in the house that we thought we needed to buy because we thought our house was sold. But unbeknownst to us, God knew that it was going to fall through. We didn’t. So there you go. Wait and wait, and be patient. 

Nick: Yep. That’s true. My next book is coming out in 2022. It’s a book that I’ve been praying about and knew was from the Lord two years ago. But it’s taken at least a year and a half to find an interested publisher and be offered a contract for it. So all that time, of course, like any writer, I was thinking, “God, did I hear you right?” So yeah. Now it’s finally coming to pass. So just be patient. 

Erin: Those are the times when we question our marching orders. We get these marching orders, and then if we don’t hear this constant reinforcement, we question it. When really God’s like, “I told you.” 

Karen: Don and I, for a long time, our mantra was: God’s in control. I don’t get it. I may not like the way that things are going, but God’s in control. 

That came out of so many things pulling the rug out right from under us. So many things we thought we could rely on. It’s like, all these things that we knew were leading us where God wanted us, but then they wouldn’t work out the way that we wanted them to.

I’ve come to the place now, when things don’t work out, Erin would call me and say, “You’re not going to believe this. The house sale fell through and we can’t get this house.”

I just kept saying, “God knows. God has the right place for you, and you just need to lean into him in the midst of it.”

Nick: Yep. Amen.

Erin: Nick, what do you think, I mean, as a former editor for the publishing company for so long and as an agent now, we’ve already kind of talked about some advice, but what other specific advice might you have for writers? I would want to know both spiritually and professionally, so you can start with one or the other. This is obviously a difficult publishing climate. So, what would you want to say to writers right now? 

Nick: To be successful as a writer, it seems like there are three things you have to do. You have to have good ideas for books that will meet the needs of people. You have to be able to promote that book. And you have to have writing ability. Oftentimes writers may have one or two of these things going for them, but they lack the third, whatever it is.

For me, and looking at manuscripts, the hardest one of the three, I think, is actually being a really good writer. That takes practice. For me, it took classes, even though in college, I majored in English. I minored in journalism. I learned how to write economically through my journalism classes.

In my twenties and thirties, I would take just single classes from adult ed or at the community college. Just learning over and over again. Every month, reading The Writer or Writer’s Digest, just immersing myself in trying to become a better writer.

I think of the three that I mentioned, if a person can concentrate on their writing, always…you know, I’m in my seventies. I know that I will be trying to perfect my writing until my dying day. It’s something that you never have arrived at. You just keep going at it.

If marketing is your weak point, and that is my weak point, you just do what you know to do. There’s always a next step, and I believe God reveals the next step. The next thing you’re supposed to do.

If you’re really called to be a writer, I think getting great ideas for books is something that will almost come naturally. One of the quotes I use in my workshops at conferences is the Wayne Gretzky quote. He was a great hockey player. Somebody asked him why he was so successful. He said, “Well, other hockey players go where the puck is. I go where the puck is going next.” 

I think if writers can visualize a year or two ahead, what’s happening that will be impacting people a year or two from now, that’s ideal. If a writer two years ago could say, “Hmm, I wonder what would happen if there were a pandemic to come along” or, you know, just whatever.

The ideas are out there. If you’re going to be a writer, be a catcher of ideas.

The ideas are out there. If you're going to be a writer, be a catcher of ideas. #amwriting @karenball1
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Not every idea will be one that has your name on it, but a lot of them will. Those are the ones you need to follow up on and say, “Can I write this? Is there a market for this?” And then go for it. 

Don’t be discouraged if you get some nos along the way. Be willing to pull the plug on the idea if you come to the place where you say, “I’m losing my interest in this.” Or, “I can see that the public is not going to be looking for this in the next year or two.” Don’t be discouraged when you have to cut loose some ideas and go to the next one.

I have a list on my computer of fifty-four book ideas. If I get to do five of them before I leave the planet, I’ll be happy. Those ideas, almost every month I shift. Idea number five, I think, “Oh gosh, that’s really timely. I’m going to move that up to number two.” All the time I’m working on the proposals for the ones that are, say, on my top five or 10.

Sometimes something will happen and then I’ll say, “Oh man, that’s a lousy idea after all.” And it’ll go from number five to number 54 really quick. But just trying to be proactive as a writer.

A lot of people who don’t succeed as writers do it as a hobby. Maybe that’ll work for you, but I think it lessens your chances. You really need to think of your writing as your calling. As an assignment from God. As your mission from God and be serious about it. Plow ahead and do what’s necessary. Improve your writing craft, learn marketing skills, and go to conferences when they start up again.

Nowadays, there are conferences that are online mostly, but there are still good Christian writers’ conferences to be had. Listen to podcasts, like Write from the Deep. And I encourage writers to check out the blogs of agents and other successful writers and editors. Immerse yourself in the industry. Know what’s out there. Those are all the things that I think are ingredients for success as a writer.

Karen: Professionally.

Erin: Yeah. 

Karen: So how about spiritually? 

Nick: Spiritually, that’s sort of the key. I think you’ve gotta be called. You’ve got to know and be sensitive. Let me give you an example. The book I’m working on now is a devotional for Christians in recovery from substance abuse or whatever. It’s like my One-Minute Prayers for Those with Cancer. It’s a book that I wish there was no market for, but unfortunately there’s a huge market for it. Let me tell you briefly how that began. 

I had been at OCW––Oregon Christian Writers Conference. It’s in Portland. On my way home, I stopped to see my daughter who lives in Portland. We went to Starbucks. It was a walkup Starbucks. And the fellow in front of me was a young man in his early twenties. He was obviously on some drug. He made his order and then he turned around to me, and he handed me his Starbucks gift card.

He said, “Here, do you want this? It’s got a couple of dollars left on it?” I thanked him and said, “No, you go ahead. Use it next time you’re here.”

He said, “No, if you don’t take it, I’m going to throw it away.” So I took it and thanked him. It was at that moment that I just felt such a well of compassion for this young man.

Within the next 48 hours, there were two or three other instances where I came across somebody who obviously was under the influence of some sort of substance. There was some substance abuse in their life. 

Putting two and two together, and combining it with this compassion that I felt for that young man, I thought, “How can these people be helped? How can God help these people? God, would you let me try to write a book on that?” Out of that has come the proposal and now the offer from Tyndale house, so I’m doing it. It’s like a year and a half later, two years later, and I’m excited about it. 

As far as the spiritual aspect of it, I pray now for those future readers of that book. I still pray for the readers of the One-Minute Prayers for Those with Cancer every day. I try to pray for my readers, wherever they are, that God would bless them.

I just posted on Facebook yesterday: One-Minute Prayers When You Need a Miracle. A lady had sent into my publisher Harvest House that a nurse had given her that book when her husband was in the hospital for a heart condition. Unfortunately he passed away just last Sunday, but she was so blessed by the book that she ordered twelve more copies.

They forwarded that message to me and it’s like, “Thank you, Lord.” It’s validation. It’s confirmation. It’s motivation to write more and just to believe God for greater impact. I’m not a household name, and I never will be, but God seems to be able to cover that. To make sure that the right people get my books.

That’s my prayer daily, too, is that my books would get into the hands of people that really need them, and their lives would be changed because of them. 

Erin: I love that.

Karen:  That’s having the right motivation. That’s having the motivation of writing to serve and to help and to bless, rather than writing with the motivation of “I’m going to make lots of money at this.”

Erin: Right. 

Karen: Because that doesn’t happen that often in publishing. But yeah, that’s powerful.

Erin: It’s nice because this is something that writers can do every day, even if they’re not published yet. You can pray for future readers. You can pray for people you want to reach. You can pray for, maybe you have seven books out there, you can pray for people who are getting those books. I think it keeps you connected with your passion for people. It keeps you connected to the whole point. 

I want to circle back just for a minute and say I like what you said, Nick, that it’s okay to also give up ideas. Maybe we had a passion for a particular idea, and that doesn’t mean that that’s the book that has to be your path to publication or even published at all.

You can be like, “You know what? I’ve kind of lost my passion for that particular topic.” But some people may feel a little bit trapped like that. Like, “Oh no, I have to keep doing this book because that’s what God called me to.” Well, maybe that was just how you got into writing. Maybe that was just the idea that sparked you. So it’s okay. If you’ve prayed about it, it’s okay to let go of some of those ideas and move on to something else that might be a new passion. I love that freedom that you give to writers to do that. 

Nick: Well, I do. But you know, honestly, when I cut loose of an idea, I don’t totally cut loose. What I do is I move it to the bottom of the list. It becomes number fifty-four, because I’ve discovered that two or three years later something might happen either within me or circumstantially in the world. Then I think, “Wait a minute, maybe it’s time to give that another go.”

So I never really fully kill off an idea, but I just say this is on the back burner for now. Maybe forever it’ll be on the back burner, but be willing to just put it aside for now. There have been a few times where God has told me, “No. You’re not going to write that book. It’s not going to happen.” So I have to be obedient to that. No matter how much I may want to, I just know that that’s not for me.

Karen: Well, Nick, it’s been such a delight to have you here with us, and clearly you’ve got more to say, so clearly we need to have you come visit us again some time. Do you have any final words of wisdom or encouragement for our listeners today?

Nick: I guess I would just say, be persistent in prayer and persistent in your writing. Be willing to say, “God, if you do not want me to be a writer, make that plain,” just as if you were praying, “God, if you want me to be a writer, make that plain.”

I think there are people who would like to write, but honestly, God may have something else for them to do. Just be very confident of your assignment from God.

If it is writing, praise the Lord and just do the things that you know to do. Go to online conferences or in person conferences, when they happen. Read the blogs. Improve your craft the best way you can, either by taking local classes, reading books, etc. I hope aspiring writers or even successful writers have––you probably both do––at least a bookshelf full of your favorite writing books.

Karen: Yeah. 

Nick: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, or Stephen King’s On Writing. They’re just some excellent resources out there. Fall in love with your assignment from God if you’re called to be a writer, because it’s a great, great calling. 

Erin: Right. 

Karen: Amen. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. 

Erin: Thanks, Nick. 

Nick: Happy to do it. I enjoyed it very much.

(All book links on this website are affiliate links. Using our links if you’re interested in buying one of these books is another way you can help support the podcast.)

One-Minute Prayers for Those with Cancer by Nick Harrison

One-Minute Prayers When You Need a Miracle by Nick Harrison

What do you think of the idea of having a writing assignment from God?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our October sponsor of the month, Bobbi Updegraff! You can find out more about another important cause she sponsors at friendsofrenacer.com.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 128 – God’s Purposes in Our Writing with Guest Nick Harrison appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Devastation: Wildfires. Rioting. Looting. Floods. One terrible thing after another seems to be happening nowadays. Some just unpleasant, but some have leveled people’s lives. They’ve lost everything but the clothes on their backs. How does anyone, writers included, move forward after losing everything? Come join us to find out.

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

In a community just seven miles from where Karen lives, it looks like a nuclear bomb went off—that’s the scope of devastation on the town. There’s nothing left. People have their lives, and that’s a lot, but everything else is gone. In the wake of all the destruction from wildfires in the Northwest, where many folks have lost everything, how do they even begin to start over?

As terrible as that is, this isn’t the first time people have had their lives turned upside down. It’s happened all throughout history.

In 1900 a tropical cyclone hit Galveston, leaving between 8,000 and 12,000 dead. Galveston rebuilt and its beaches are considered one of the most desirable vacation spots in the US today.

In 1931 floods devastated China, leaving 4 million dead. Those left behind rebuilt and recovered. In 1951, a flood in Manchuria left 4,800 dead and thousands more displaced.

And you all remember September 11, 2001, when the most deadly terrorist attack in history left 2,977 people dead, including hundreds of firefighters and policemen and emergency personnel. But New York rebuilt. 

In November of 2019, the Corona virus hit, devastating much of our world. In our own county, over 200,000 are dead, damaging our economy and so much more.

Then came the tragic death of George Floyd, and the ensuing rioting, looting, and murders.

The hits just keep coming, like the wildfires we just had in Oregon. Leaving us reeling and wondering so many things…

“Why did my house survive when so many others’ homes are nothing but ashes.”

“How can I go forward when I don’t have anything left?” 

“What has happened to my country?”

“What do we do now?”

Karen went to God’s Word and found the greatest solace in Psalm 27:

The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the Lord.

Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, God my Savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.

Teach me your way, Lord; lead me in a straight path…I remain confident of this:  I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

The word wait doesn’t mean just sit on your hands and wait for God to deal with it all. The sense is more “to expect,” “to await,” “to hope in or hope for.” There’s even an eagerness implied: God is our hope and He will be working on our behalf.

As Karen was thinking about what to share with you all in this podcast, that verse sent her looking for something else: stories of people who have come back from devastation. So here are a few of the stories she found. Our prayer is that they will encourage and bless you in whatever you face today. 

Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland, where it was the custom to take children born in slavery away from their mothers. Frederick was separated from his mother at a very early age. When he was twelve, though, his master’s wife started teaching him. That is, until the master made it clear this was not to continue. Undaunted, Frederick learned to read and write in secret.

When Frederick was bought by yet another master, he started teaching slaves from his and other plantations. When his activities were discovered, he was severely beaten. Finally, he was able to escape the plantation, and started attending abolitionist meetings. Before long, he was giving speeches that moved and changed the hearts of the listeners. His powerful speeches drew huge crowds and helped end the practice of slavery.

In one of his writings, Frederick Douglass had this to say about facing devastation: “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of the acclaimed French “Elle” magazine. He was known for being charming and flamboyant. Then, in December 1995, a massive stroke left him deep in a coma. When he awoke twenty days later, he was fully aware, fully himself, but the only thing he could move was his left eyelid. He had “locked-in syndrome.” His brain was fine, but his body was completely incapacitated. Except for that eyebrow. 

Bauby refused to give up. He communicated by blinking his eye for the number of a letter in the alphabet: one blink, a, two, b, and so on. Eventually, he not only was able to communicate with his family, but he dictated an entire book about his life and the experience of being trapped in his own body. His book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, was made into an award winning movie. Karen watched it one day by chance, and wept and cheered as she watched.  

Proverbs 3:21-26 gives us this wisdom about despair in disaster:

My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion; they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck. Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble.

When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be at your side and will keep your foot from being snared.

This isn’t saying we won’t see devastation or disaster, but it’s promising that we won’t face it on our own. God is at our side and will keep us safe. He will keep us from getting snared in anger and despair, in a spirit of bitterness and futility. His promises in the light will stand solid in the darkness. All we have to do is hold fast to Him and His truth. 

Wilma Rudolph had a lot to overcome before she turned four years old: double pneumonia, scarlet fever, and then, at 4 years old, polio left her with infantile paralysis. The small girl had to wear a brace on her left leg. But even at that tender age, she refused to be defeated and learned to walk normally again. 

While in high school, she competed in the 1956 Summer Olympic Games and brought home a bronze medal in the 400-meter relay. Four years later, at the 1960 Olympics, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.

When asked how it felt to win like that, Wilma replied, “Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.”

“Colonel Sanders,” of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, lost his father at the age of six. Because his mother had to work to support the family, Harland cooked and looked after his siblings. His life seemed to follow a normal path: he got jobs, lost jobs, got married, and they had children.

Then his son died of infected tonsils, followed quickly by losing his job. Again. Followed not long after by his wife leaving him. When Sanders was forty, he was running a service station in Kentucky and selling fried chicken. Despite its popularity, when he was sixty-five Sanders had to sell his business. All he had left was his savings and $105 per month from Social Security.

Lots of people would have given up. After all, what’s the point when you’ve lost everything? Why even try to come back. But Harlan Sanders tried. He borrowed money and sold his chicken door to door.

Eventually, in 1959, he opened a new restaurant: K.F.C. The company took off, and in 1962 Colonel Sanders sold it for 2 million dollars. When asked about his success after so many obstacles, Sanders replied, “I only had two rules: Do all you can and do it the best you can. It’s the only way you get that feeling of accomplishing something.” 

The prophet Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones:

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’” Ezekiel 37:1-14

God is the one who breathes life into us in the face of devastation. He creates miraculous new beginnings when there seems to be no hope. We don’t have to rely on ourselves or our own strength.

Francine Rivers and her book Redeeming Love

When Francine became a believer, she had fourteen romance books published in the general market. Those books had some pretty risque material. After becoming a believer, she didn’t want to write those type of books anymore. Everything she put down on the page after that, she says, “was total garbage.” Her agent even said she couldn’t sell any of what Francine was writing.

For three years, Francine tried to write, but couldn’t. First she was angry about it. Then she moved into acceptance, and finally, surrender. God took her to the point of giving up her career for him.

After that, she was involved in a Bible study on Hosea. It struck her that this was the love she wanted to write about. She wrote a book called Redeeming Love. Bantam, her publisher, didn’t know what to do with it because it had so much about God in it. They did go ahead and publish it, but it didn’t do very well.

Afterwards, Francine decided to come over to the Christian market. She brought a book to Tyndale, where Karen was working at the time. That book ultimately became a series: Mark of the Lion. Karen and Francine worked together on all Francine’s books through Leota’s Garden. They tried to bring Redeeming Love to Tyndale, but Dr. Taylor wasn’t comfortable with the main focus of the story. Francine had rewritten the story of Hosea to be set in California during the gold rush, and to be about a prostitute and the man God sends to redeem her.

When Karen went to be an editor at Multnomah, they acquired, with Tyndale’s approval, Redeeming Love. Francine, after finally being able to take out all the parts Bantam had wanted her to add, felt she “redeemed it.” Published in May 1997, Redeeming Love has been on the either the top 10 fiction or top 25 bestseller fiction list since it came out. It sold over 3 million copies, has been translated to 30 languages, and has been made into a major movie which will release in 2021. 

We love what Francine says in this quote: “Love the Lord your God, and love one another. Love one another as He loves. Love with strength and purpose and passion and no matter what comes against you. Don’t weaken. Stand against the darkness, and love. That’s the way back into Eden. That’s the way back to life.” 

There are so many ways we as writers face devastation. Times like Francine experienced, where she finally had to give up the idea of ever writing again. Times like our friend, novelist Bonnie Leon, is facing right now, with the fires destroying so much of her property.

Bonnie Leon has put pictures on Facebook of their outbuildings, their truck and Jeep, their chicken coop (yes, they lost all their laying hens), the forest around them, reduced to ashes. Yet, there in the middle of it all, their home is left standing. Untouched. She wrote a beautiful blog about all the conflicting emotions: despair, hope, gratitude, guilt.

Many of us who share God’s truth in writing face the unexpected devastations of health, finances, family, even faith. Times when we can’t see God, can’t even feel Him. When we wonder where He went and how He could have allowed this terrible thing into our lives.

There are so many things to discourage us and leave us in despair, hopeless and unable to create. If you’re in a place like that, know that you’re not alone. Many of us have been there. Are there even now.

But God is there at your side. Walking with you every step of the way. Meeting you in your deep darkness, and uplifting you. You are never alone. And you can embrace His promise in Isaiah 41 to those He loves and has called:

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

…For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst.

But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.

I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set junipers in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it. Isaiah 41:10-13, 17-20

When disaster levels our lives, or the lives of those we love, how do we, as writers, move forward? #amwriting @karenball1 #christianwriter
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What helps you realize God’s presence and hope in the midst of difficulties and devastating events in your life?

Thanks to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Thanks so much to our October sponsor of the month, Bobbi Updegraff! You can find out more about another important cause she sponsors at friendsofrenacer.com.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast Production Services for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 127 – The Cure for Devastation appeared first on Write from the Deep.