Write from the Deep

Many writers are sabotaging their ability to focus without even knowing it. They continue in one certain habit—a habit that almost everyone has—that derails and obstructs their ability to focus. What habit is that? Allowing distractions to steal your focus and direct it away from where you want it! What can we do to steel ourselves against the habit of being distracted? Join us to find out!

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

In our previous episodes in this focus series, we talked about focus on a life scale, a career scale, and on a day-to-day scale. Today we want to get all the way down to the moment-by-moment scale. 

Some of us, and we’re including ourselves here, have every intention of being focused in our thoughts and activities, but our brains don’t always cooperate. Our minds skitter from thing to thing to thing to thing. Erin and Karen have had more than one meeting where one of us is talking and the other is like, “Oh look! A butterfly!”

That’s not a picture of great focus. We recognize the challenges. We live them. 

It’s not just us. We as a society seem to be getting more and more distractible—the internet and phone apps daily encourage it with their constant flashing of ads and notifications. We have trouble keeping our attention on what we truly want to focus on. 

That becomes a question of attention span. There was an article in Newsweek about this. The article defined attention span as “the amount of time we can stay focused on something.” 

It goes on to make the case that technology is making us accustomed to distraction, to the point where distraction becomes a habit. Because it’s a habit that is continually reinforced, it becomes a very strong habit.

Then, once we’ve developed a habit of distraction, our attention span decreases, and that leads to impatience. A short attention span combined with impatience leads us to feeling like anything that requires time and thought is unpleasant. So we tend to want to do quick easy tasks rather than dive into those bigger tasks which we think will be more difficult, because we assume they’ll be unpleasant. 

But that’s not necessarily reality. That’s our “habit” speaking. Many times completing a difficult task creates the opposite feeling. It might be a hard task, but we feel a great sense of accomplishment when we finish, and that feels great, not unpleasant. 

But habits are strong, so it’s no wonder we’re struggling with having short attention spans. And we’ll likely continue to struggle. The Newsweek article goes on to say, “Society now supports this downward spiral. Expectations of constant availability and the pressure to participate in social media and a variety of other communication channels keep us tethered to our devices.”

What can we do to change things? We’ve done some research and found some ideas to help increase our attention span and encourage moment-by-moment focus. 

The first thing the Newsweek article suggests is to “recognize that distraction is a bad habit.” In other words, it’s not a good thing. It’s something we should work to change. 

The next thing we can do is to stop multitasking. We talked about this at length in the last episode on focus, so you can check that out for more of the research. But the bottom line is that our brains are not designed to multitask. They’re designed to do one cognitive task at a time. What we’re really doing when we think we’re multitasking is switching back and forth between cognitive tasks and that is scientifically proven to be inefficient and slower.

Another idea to help increase our  attention spa, is to practice mindfulness. An article on the George Washington University website defined mindfulness as “basic, intentional focus on the present moment.” 

The article goes on to say, “[Mindfulness] can be a powerful tool in training your mind to settle on the immediate tasks at hand.” 

You can practice mindfulness by doing something like taking a walk while keeping your phone and other technology distractions out of sight and sound, and focus on your senses. Use your powers of observation and pay attention to what you can see, hear, touch, smell. Focus on only that.

Another way to practice mindfulness might be to pay attention to only whatever small task you’re doing at that moment. For example, maybe you’re making your bed. Don’t let your mind skitter around or think about the next task. Focus only on those blankets you’re putting in order. Tucking the sheet in or whatever. Practice being in the now. You can use little chores—doing the dishes, folding laundry, whatever—as an opportunity to practice and hone your ability to focus. 

Another idea the Newsweek article mentions to help increase attention span is to practice active listening. 

This is surely something we all need anyway, whether we think we have focus issues or not. When you’re having a conversation with someone, stop whatever else you’re doing, or whatever you’re tempted to do, and focus solely on listening. Put down your phone, close your laptop, turn off the TV or your music or whatever. Focus on what other people are saying, on where they’re coming from, rather than on what you want to say next or on what that ding on your phone just meant.

Be curious about other people and their point of view. Listen to learn. Don’t interrupt. This is much harder than it sounds.

Another idea related to listening is to choose one thing to listen to, maybe a selection of music or a podcast. Listen without your tv on, without scrolling on your phone or tablet. The idea is to ONLY listen. A lot of us like to do other tasks while we listen to a podcast or something. We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with that. We’re only saying that you can also use that podcast or musical selection as a chance to increase your attention span.

Another practice that can increase attention span is meditation. The Newsweek article quoted Dr Susan Albers, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. She said that meditation “taps right into the skill needed to increase attention span.”

She goes on to say that the reason why meditation can help is that it “requires you to quiet your mind and focus on what is happening in the moment.”

Basically you’re training your focus. Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center say that “meditation can change the structure and function of the brain through relaxation, which can improve memory and attention span, in addition to offering other health benefits.”

Even people new to the practice of meditation can see a benefit, so you don’t have to be some seasoned veteran at it or anything.

There are many different ways to practice mediation. A few are:

Mindfulness Meditation

We talked about mindfulness meditation earlier when we suggested taking a walk and paying attention to your sensory input. But mindfulness meditation can also be just sitting and focusing on breathing, or focusing on your thoughts, paying attention to them as they go through your mind.

Scripture Meditation

Scripture meditation is a concentrative type of meditation. There are lots of ways to meditate on Scripture, but one way is that you might read a verse through a few times to get the flow, and then slow down and focus on it word by word, contemplating the meaning of each word and the implications of each word, then taking time to listen to what God may be saying to you through all that.

Movement Meditation

Movement meditation is another type of meditation. It might be through something like walking or gardening or practicing yoga. It typically involves doing slow repetitive movements, focusing on your body, your breathing, and staying connected to the present moment to help you relax your mind and body.

Another activity that can improve your attention span is getting some exercise! The University of New Hampshire mentioned a study on their website that linked participating in a physical activity with longer attention spans.

Another way to help foster focus is to use the pomodoro technique throughout your workday. This article gives a full description of this, but basically in the pomodoro technique, you alternate between sprints of focused work and short breaks. 

For example, you set your timer for twenty minutes, then you work solidly for that time, then you get a five minute break. Or you could start with a fifteen minute work session, or thirty minutes, or whatever works for you. The goal is to encourage yourself to focus by knowing you have that break coming as a reward. The breaks serve as both reward and rest after the fatigue of focusing.

One of the nice things about the pomodoro technique is that it helps you break the habit of multitasking. Which again, increases attention span.

Another way to grow your attention span is to be sure you’re getting the sleep you need. Lack of sleep can hinder your ability to focus. Erin suffers from chronic insomnia and can testify that this is true! But even if you do get enough sleep at night, you still want to be sure you also take breaks throughout your day and your week. You need rest. You can’t focus 24/7 so don’t try. You need off time. Rest is actually necessary for productivity. 

We also encourage you to consider an occasional fast from screens: phones, computers, TV, whatever. You could try doing this one day a week, or maybe it’s an hour every day, or whatever. It’s an opportunity to unplug from the constant noise and distraction. To let your brain have a break from incessant flashing and pinging and the decision-making that every notification forces you to make. Take a break from constant input.

Another way you can foster better moment by moment focus is to Monitor Your Mind Wandering.

An article on entrepreneur.com said:

“We spend nearly fifty percent of our waking time thinking about something other than what we’re supposed to be doing, according to one Harvard study. We are on autopilot, and our mind is wandering, in part to avoid the effort of focusing on something. The key to heightened productivity is to notice when your mind is distracted and bring your attention back on task.”

The article goes on to say:

“This means paying attention to your thoughts and recognizing when your mind starts drifting. This allows you to manage what you focus on and redirect your thoughts when you slip up. Instead of allowing yourself to keep meandering over to social media to check out your newsfeed, you actively put the brakes on this distraction.”

This is an area we all can be praying about: that God would help us pay attention to our mind wandering. Not all mind wandering is bad—in fact, sometimes it’s necessary and good. It helps with creativity, for one thing. As writers, we need that. 

However, mind wandering can cross the line to being problematic if it derails our ability to focus. It can also become sinful if our mind wandering becomes fantasizing. Protecting our minds is something God cares deeply about, and we can trust him to answer earnest prayer and help us.

The next idea to help encourage focus is to create a distraction free environment in your workspace. How do you do that?  

Another idea to encourage better focus is to create a ritual that helps your mind settle, a ritual that signals your brain that it’s time to focus. Creating a routine will help set your body and mind’s expectation of what comes next. It’s like creating a habit. Your ritual might be just one minute or it might be much longer. It needs to be tailored to what works for you. 

As you’re thinking about creating a ritual, some things to consider including are: prayer, deep breathing, meditating on a Scripture verse, sitting in a favorite chair, Bible reading, doing a short set of exercises, drinking a cup of coffee, playing a worship song or some other specific type of music, taking a walk. Experiment to find what works best for you. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. Repetition and consistency is the key. Do the same ritual every time.

One last thing we want to mention. There are situations where a short attention span can be caused by physical and psychological conditions. For example, the article in Newsweek listed: ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, depression, learning disabilities, and head injuries as a few of the things that can affect our ability to focus.

Medication, therapy, and other treatments may be appropriate for people who deal with those types of conditions. If that might be you, it’s definitely worth having a conversation with your doctor about. 

Giving in to the habit of distraction ruins our ability to focus. In Scripture, God tells us to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Start there. Start with a habit of focusing on God. Start with prayer, even though it’s hard not to let our minds wander. But there’s no better way to establish a longer attention span and gain focus that will help us in every aspect of our lives.

Many writers sabotage their ability to focus without even knowing it. We’ll show you how and why! You CAN achieve better moment-by-moment focus! #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

What distractions tempt you most and what helps you fight them?

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

A big thank you to our March sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the second book of the series!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 186 – Get Focused! Part 4 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

One of the biggest challenges writers face is a blizzard of busyness and distraction, which can keep us from accomplishing what we need to do in the course of the day. We need tools to help us focus on what’s most important. In our previous podcasts on focus, we’ve explored ways to focus on the big picture. Now it’s time to tackle the day-to-day!

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

One of the biggest challenges we face in this world of busyness, technology, and relentless stimulation is maintaining focus on what truly matters to us. In the two previous episodes in this series on focus (episode 177 and 178) we discussed some ways to focus your life and career around your values and to prune your activities and commitments accordingly.

Today we want to discuss focus on a smaller scale. A daily, and even a moment-by-moment scale. When push comes to shove, we still need to be able to focus on our tasks today or they won’t get done. And we want those tasks to be the right tasks to keep us on track with our career and life focus.

Since we’ve talked so much about how creating focus is, in essence, making a decision about what we will and won’t spend time on, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that focus on a smaller scale also requires a decision. On a daily basis, we have to choose what to say yes to and what to say no to. How do we do that? How do we prioritize the best activity for each day? Remember the goal isn’t just to get stuff done, it’s to get the right stuff done.

First, and most important, this is a question that needs to be bathed in prayer. Not only can you be praying about this, but when we interviewed Shadia Hrichi in episodes 181 & 182, we talked about how to build a prayer team. A simple yet critical thing that you can be asking a prayer team to pray for is a sensitivity to God’s leading as you order your tasks for each day, as you consider what needs to happen each day.

There’s also some practical business wisdom we can use.

James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits, which we’ve discussed in the past, wrote an interesting article that helps address the question of prioritizing tasks. His article is about the Lee Ivy method for achieving peak productivity—which is not just getting things done, but getting the right things done.

The steps of the Lee Ivy method, as he lists them in his article, are:

1. At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow.

Do not write down more than six tasks.

You could just as easily choose five or four, or whatever number works best for you. There’s nothing magical about six items. You don’t want to have so many things on the list that it’s stressful and unrealistic, or so few things on the list that you finish everything and waste productive time because you don’t know what to do next.

If you have too few items, another danger is that the tasks expand to take up the time allotted. You end up taking far longer than necessary on any given task. Also realize that this method is about daily goals. So if, for example, you’re in the middle of writing or editing your manuscript, obviously that can’t be done in one day. The solution is to break that big project down into daily goals. A daily goal could be to write 1000 words, or maybe a time goal works better for you. So the task might be to write for one hour.

2. Prioritize those six items (or the number that works for you) in order of their true importance.

How do you do that? Prayer can help you discern the order.

Another idea that can help you determine order of importance is a question we discussed in part 2 of our focus series. It’s from a book by Gary Keller called The One Thing. Ask yourself, “What is the one thing I can do, that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Or, it might be easier to phrase it: “What’s the best thing I can do to make everything else easier or unnecessary.”

What comes out of this question might surprise you. For example, I suffer from fibromyalgia, which is now affecting my ribs. My hubby and I have a golden retriever who sheds a lot, creating a need for vacuuming, lest we be kicking up dog hair with every step we take. Vacuuming needs to happen for life to be functional.

However, vacuuming inflames my ribs, which affects my ability to write and edit. That makes my work harder. I ask myself, “What’s the one thing I can do to make my work less painful and therefore easier?”

The answer turns out to be that I need to find a vacuuming solution such that vacuuming will be easier or unnecessary. I think we can all agree that the dog stays, so that’s not a solution. Having my hubby vacuum has been a short term solution, but he doesn’t always have the time, and frankly he’s not great at it.

The next idea? Get a robot vacuum like a Roomba or whatever. Putting off this task of finding a robot vacuum, or making this task less important, ultimately makes all my work harder. Prioritizing this task makes my work going forward easier and more efficient. 

3. When you start work tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task.

You work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task. Now if this first task happens to be a three hour project, we’re not saying you can’t take a bathroom break, or stand up and stretch, or get a second cup of coffee, or take a ten-minute break to play with your dog, or whatever to freshen your mind. Those things are good and often necessary.

What we are saying is that if this is what you’ve identified as the most important task of the day, stick with it. The temptation will be to skip to another project when this one gets difficult or tiring or boring. Instead, that’s the time for a short little break.

As soon as we give in to the temptation to switch tasks, we’re in danger of not finishing the most important thing on our agenda for the day, because we don’t know what will come up that will end our work day. It could be a health issue that rears its ugly head, or an emergency with your family, or even some type of fantastic opportunity you don’t want to miss out on. So, finish that first and most important task of the day before moving on to the second task on the list.

4. Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion.

At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.

5. Repeat this process every working day.

Sounds simple, right? But few people actually do this, let alone adhere to it strictly or do it consistently. But this method has proven highly effective for several reasons, which James Clear also discusses in his article.

First, it’s not complicated: Do what’s most important first. 

Sometimes we overcomplicate our lives and our decisions, when we often just need to pray about it and move on. We need to trust that God is guiding us. When life happens, when our day gets messed up, an emergency happens, or whatever, we can’t beat ourselves up. We can simply deal with those situations as best we can and then get back to the tasks we listed.

Second, the Lee Ivy method forces us to make difficult decisions and commit to them. 

Remember what we’ve been saying over and over: focus is about making decisions. Waffling back and forth wastes time—time we could spend getting important tasks done. 

Third, we can start our day with no friction over having to decide what to do. We already know what we need to do, so there’s no reason not to plunge in. That said, getting started on anything requires that we overcome inertia: the tendency to do nothing. If we’re naturally a slow starter, or not a morning person, or whatever, overcoming inertia can be more of a challenge. Knowing what the plan is can help push us forward into motion.

It’s also nice that we don’t have to be thinking or worrying the night before about what we need to get done the next day. It’s already written down, there’s already a plan. That frees our minds for relaxation.

Fourth, the Lee Ivy method forbids multitasking. 

While our modern culture may idolize this ability to multitask, the truth is that busyness—doing many things—is not the same as doing the right thing well. Furthermore, our brains aren’t physically wired to multitask. Here’s a great quote from an article on Psychology Today’s website:

“The research shows that people can attend to only one cognitive task at a time. You can only be thinking about one thing at a time. You can only be conducting one mental activity at a time.”

Because we can’t actually multitask, what we’re really doing is switching between tasks rather than performing them simultaneously. Sadly, we don’t even do that well. Worse, research has also shown that we think we do it better than we do. We aren’t capable of realizing just how inefficient we are. So if you’re out there thinking, “That can’t be true. I’m great at multitasking,” well, you’ve just proven the point of that research result.

Bottom line? Our. Brains. Can’t. Do. It. God did not make us that way.

Why is switching back and forth between tasks a problem? There’s a mental cost to it. Research shows that it creates a reduction of accuracy and speed. While we may think we’re doing so well at “multitasking” or switching back and forth, really we’re going more slowly than we would if we focus on one thing at a time, and we’re making more mistakes. 

We didn’t even mention the time loss involved in diving back into each task after a switch, nor the brain energy all this eats up. Bottom line, don’t do it.

We’ve listed several reasons why the Lee Ivy method is often successful, but it does have at least one possible drawback: If the key to the method is to do the most important task first everyday, what happens if writing is your most important task, but your creative brain doesn’t wake up until noon? That would mean you’re trying to do your most important task in the morning, at a time that’s least suitable for that task, which doesn’t exactly set you up for quality focus. 

Now, some people can, over time, train their creativity to happen whenever they need it to. That’s great. But if that’s not you, then the solution is to adjust the Lee Ivy system, or any other system that you want to use, to suit who you are. Maybe you need to coordinate your most important tasks with your highest level of mental or creative energy instead.

The goal is still to figure out how to structure your day in a way that allows you to successfully accomplish your most important tasks each day. Accomplishing those tasks means your day has been focused on what matters most to you.

One other thing we want to say about the Lee Ivy method, or any other strategy that utilizes a task list, is that if a task keeps showing up as number five or six on your list of important tasks for the day, and you never get to it— it just keeps showing up on the next day’s tasks and never seems to move higher than five or six on that list either, it may be a sign that it shouldn’t be on the list at all. A “complete or kill” mentality might be helpful for you. 

If it truly needs to be completed, make yourself get it done. 

It might be hanging around on the list because you’re simply procrastinating. Maybe it’s a difficult or tedious task. We all have tasks like that, and we need a “just do it” mentality. It can be helpful to plan a nice reward for ourselves when we do get it done. 

Or maybe the problem with trying to get that pesky task done is that it’s overwhelming because it’s too big. We can help ourselves by breaking it down into smaller tasks that we can then put on our list in order of importance.

Or maybe how to do that task needs to be researched first, so we should put that on our list.

If none of those things apply, it’s possible that this task simply doesn’t need to get done at all, and we just haven’t recognized it or haven’t admitted it or haven’t wanted to let it go. If we want to achieve focus in our days, we need to make those tough choices. Face the fact that we’re not going to complete it, and kill it instead. Just delete it. Or perhaps we can put it on a “not now” list so we’ll stop being distracted by it today. 

Another tactic we can use to help us create focus on a daily, and even moment-by-moment basis is something Gary Keller talks about in his book The One Thing.

Gary Keller describes a process he calls Goal Setting to the Now. I loved this idea because it’s another way to connect our large scale goals with small scale focus. To put this in practice, you ask yourself:

What is the big goal I want to achieve?

Gary Keller phrases the question as, “What’s the one thing I want to do someday.” We’re modifying it because when I hear, “What do I want to do someday?” I always think, “I want to take a cruise to Alaska and see whales.” But that doesn’t mean my whole life or career is focused on that. Everyone needs to feel free to phrase the question in whatever way works for them. 

This big goal, or this “someday thing,” can be an overall career goal such as, “I want to be able to quit my day job and be a full time writer.” Or it can be a goal you want to achieve this year or whatever. If it’s a lifetime goal, then go to this question next:

What’s the ONE thing I can do in the next five years to be on track to achieve that lifetime goal?

Once you have that answer, then you ask:

What’s the ONE thing I can do this year to be on track to achieve that five-year goal, so that I’m on track to achieve my big lifetime goal?

That answer gives you a one year goal. Then you ask:

What’s the ONE thing I can do this month to be on track to meet my one-year goal, to be on track to achieve that five-year goal, so that I’m on track to achieve my big lifetime goal?

Then you move on to the next question:

What’s the ONE thing I can do this week to be on track to meet my goal for the month, so that I can meet my goal for the year…and so on. 

Then once you know your weekly goal, ask:

What’s the ONE thing I can do today to be on track to meet my weekly goal, so that I can be on track to meet my monthly goal, so that I can meet my goal for the year…and so on.

Lastly, and hopefully you’ve been hanging in there with us on this, when you know your daily goal, you would ask:

What’s the ONE thing I can do right now to be on track to meet my daily goal, so that I can be on track to meet my weekly goal, so that I can be on track to meet my monthly goal, so that I can be on track to meet my one-year goal, so that I can be on track to meet my five-year goal, so that I can be on track to meet my lifetime goal?

That’s a lot to go through, but for some of us, the power of connecting what we’re doing right now, in this moment, to what we want in our lifetime is a powerful motivator, as well as a source of clarification for what matters to us. This can help us justify why we’re making the choice we are, and it can create focus on a daily scale as well as a moment-by-moment scale.

One more thing we want to clarify. While Gary Keller’s system of questioning can work brilliantly for many folks, that doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone. Some people may feel overwhelmed just trying to get through it all. That’s okay! If it’s overwhelming or too complicated for you, don’t use it. We’re all made in God’s image, but we’re all unique as well. Find the system that works for you.

Erin loves Gary Keller’s system, and the Lee Ivy method, and her Omnifocus to-do list program. She has lots of obligations and tasks to manage, and using those tools prayerfully works for her.

Karen prefers a very different and simple system. She prays at the beginning of each day, “Okay, God, what do you want me to do today?” That’s how she prioritizes. She takes it to him and simply does what he impresses on her to do that day, trusting that God is guiding her. It’s a no frills method that works for her.

There are many different systems and many different types of people, but there’s only one God. He knows us inside and out, and he knows exactly what we need in order to accomplish the tasks he’s given us in the timeframe he wants us to accomplish them. Trust him, honor him, and be obedient. That’s success!

The One Thing by Gary Keller

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear

What helps you decide what to focus on each day?

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

A big thank you to our March sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the second book of the series!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 185 – Get Focused! Part 3 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Every writer struggles, but not all writers struggle with the same things. Does anyone share our particular struggle, or are we just odd? Even weak? Guest Heather Iseminger, a chaplain at writers’ conferences, is here to share her insights on writers’ struggles and how to find help and understanding in the midst of them.

About Heather Iseminger

Heather Iseminger is a self-proclaimed hoarder of words and caffeine. She holds a BA in English Writing from FSU and an MA in Christian Education from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. She and her Prince Charming, Mike, have been married for almost 25 years and have two children, Ella and Caleb. Five days a week Heather’s in her high school English classroom with coffee in hand, surrounded by the students she adores. When she’s not juggling family and teaching, she’s a local photographer and an award-winning freelance author. Her deepest passion lies in teaching others biblical truths, so they understand how to pursue a radical, Jesus-loving life. 

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

Karen: Hey, guys, welcome to the deep. We’re so delighted to have you here. I’m just so excited about spending another year with you, cheering about God and our writing journey. So, welcome, welcome today, and Erin gets to introduce our guest.

Erin: Yes, we have a guest. It’s Heather Iseminger, and I’m so excited. Heather is another very cool person I had the pleasure of meeting at the Florida Christian Writers Conference where she served as the conference chaplain. That’s going to be fun to talk about today. Now Heather is a self-proclaimed hoarder of words and caffeine, so she’s a sister of my heart there.

Heather: Amen. 

Erin: She holds a BA in English writing from FSU and an MA in Christian education from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. She and her Prince Charming, Mike, have been married for over twenty years and have two children. Five days a week Heather’s in her high school English classroom with coffee in hand, surrounded by the students she adores. 

When she’s not juggling family and teaching, she’s a local photographer—another woman-after-my-own-heart thing—and an award-winning freelance author. Her deepest passion lies in teaching others biblical truths so they understand how to pursue a radical Jesus-loving life. Don’t you love that?

Welcome, Heather. 

Heather: It’s so good to be here. I’ve been so excited about this. 

Erin: Me too. We had some great chats at the conference, y’all. Again, you gotta go to conferences. You meet cool people.

Heather: Yeah. I got the benefit from meeting you as well.  

Erin: Well, thank you. 

Karen: You know, I want to just share a quick anecdote here about you being a teacher with coffee in hand. I didn’t drink coffee until I was out of college, and I taught Montessori for a year, five years old through fifth grade. I taught them French and music. That’s when I started drinking coffee. That’s when I started not being able to face the day or those lovely little monsters without massive amounts of caffeine.

Heather: I think I would need more than caffeine if I had an elementary school classroom. Those teachers deserve triple medals. It’s unbelievable. 

Karen: I watched the other teachers almost mainlining their coffee and I thought, what’s that about? It didn’t take me long to know. I was in line. Gimme, gimme!

Heather: It’s necessary. 

Erin: Well, Heather, what does the deep mean to you? 

Heather: I have thought a lot about this, Erin. I was born and raised in Florida, so the ocean has definitely been a part of my life and who I am. But as I think about the deep, I am terrified of deep sea scuba diving and even getting to a place where I can no longer see my feet. There’s a real fear there. 

I think that when I began to kind of pair that with writing from the deep and being deep with my relationships with others and my relationships with my Jesus, I think that even carries over. I tend to put up walls. I tend to be scared of going too deep with someone because what if they really see me and don’t like me?

I think the deep can kind of go along the way of like the need that I have to formulate deep connections, not only with the people that I’m around, but also with the Holy Spirit and to not be afraid of what that might look like. Or to not be afraid of how that might impact my life in the long run. Because sometimes the deeper we go with Jesus, the more he asks us to do, and that can be scary.

But I also realize that there is great beauty in the deep. Beautiful fish, beautiful undersea life that is there. It reminds me to really be unafraid of going deep, even though my first reaction is to do just that. To be afraid. 

Erin: Yeah, totally understandable. I’m wondering if you’ve ever been out on the ocean? 

Heather: I have. I have been on a cruise, but I didn’t have to think about it. I have not done scuba diving. I’ve done snorkeling and in all of those snorkeling kinds of events, I could see the ground. I can see my feet. So I have not actually been scuba diving.

I had plenty of opportunities to learn, growing up here in Florida, but it has just always been one of those things where I’ve been like, “Oh, I’d rather jump out of a plane, thank you very much.” Which I promised to do with my son when he turns eighteen. He’s twelve, so I have six more years. 

Erin: You have some time, you have six more years, and possibly six years to think of a good excuse! Or not. 

Heather: Who knows? 

Erin: I agree with you, though, about not being able to see what’s in the deep. We want to know what’s coming. We want to be able to prepare because somehow we think it’ll make it all okay if we can prepare. We don’t trust that God is the one who needs to prepare us and that he’s the one who can do it. So, yeah, I get that. 

Karen: It started in the garden when Satan came to Eve and said, “Has God really said…?” And suddenly she started to doubt what she knew. She knew what God had said. Yet Satan put just enough of a suggestion there for her that rebellion and fear started inside of her. “What’s God keeping away from me? What’s he holding back?”

Too many of us on our writing journeys, we have it fixed in our minds where these journeys are going to go. And when they don’t follow that plan, suddenly this journey that we’ve put ourselves and our finances and our energy and our heart and our life’s blood on the page to, becomes an unknown. 

We start second guessing and we start wondering. And if we get around a community of writers like you do at writer’s conferences, it’s so easy to fall into comparison and into fear and envy. Talk to us about, in your work as a chaplain at these writer’s conferences, talk to us about some of the struggles that you’ve seen. Obviously not giving specifics, but just in general, what are some of the struggles that you’ve seen? 

Heather: When I begin to really think about the deep struggles that are facing a lot of writers today, I would say they don’t stray very far from what humanity itself faces. At the last writers’ conference that I was at, I had several women and men that I prayed with who were struggling with cancer, past suicidal kinds of attempts, and deep, dark depressive thoughts. 

Several women struggling with: How do I balance a writing life and a home life? How do I take what I’m doing here and what I know, this part of my life that God’s called me to, how do I take that and still be the wife and mom that I’m supposed to be?

One of the biggest things that I see with writers, because we are artistic people, is that we oftentimes tap into those emotions and our emotions can overwhelm us. They can drive us. Sometimes for great things and sometimes not so great things. So I think the mental health aspect of being a writer can significantly be affected by the evil one and his attacks.

As we try to write God’s word and as we try to understand what it is he wants us to write, we can get caught up in all the things that contribute to an unstable mental experience. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Heather: From depression and anxiety and so on. It’s a big weight. It’s a big weight because we’re taking God’s truth in his word out, and that’s the last thing Satan wants from us. So he’s going to attack us in a thousand different ways. 

Karen: My husband likes to call it being nibbled to death by ducks. All these little things just nibbling at you and chewing on you and chipping away at that certainty that this is the task that God has given me to do. And you know, like you said, doubting yourself and second guessing. 

I absolutely love Psalm 42. In fact, maybe we’ll do a whole podcast on all of Psalm 42. I think that this is the perfect psalm for creatives and for writers because, you know, David goes from, “As the dear longs for streams of water, so I long for you, oh God.” And then, “Day and night, I have only tears for food.” 

How often have we felt that way? And, “My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be.” And then, “Why am I discouraged? Why am I so sad?” Then, “I will put my hope in God” and then, “Now I am deeply discouraged…”

Heather: That’s one of the reasons I love David and I love the Psalms. It’s because we see the realness and the humanity in him. 

Karen: Yes. 

Heather: As someone who ministers to writers, I think that that’s something we need to consistently be reminded of. Just because we experience the highs and lows of life, or just because we may have seasons that we may not be producing what we think we should, does not mean that God’s not going to use us. 

Karen: Right!

Heather: It does not mean that we just shut the door and we decide, “Well, writing’s not for me because I haven’t published anything in five years. Therefore, I’m not a writer.”

I think that we get caught up in thinking that everything’s got to be perfect for us to be able to write about it. No, God wants us to write from the deep. He wants us to write from the scary and from the places where we are impacted. A lot of times he’ll allow us to walk through it so that we can empathize with those who would also struggle. 

Karen: Right. I think that in those struggles, in that up and down and back and forth, we learn just as a child. They talk about the terrible twos, well, there’s so much stimuli coming into that kid, and he is absorbing it all and trying to figure it all out without the capacity to do so. Emotions explode in tantrums and all those kinds of things. It’s not until they start to grow and mature a little that they learn how to manage all that. 

And we learn that sometimes the struggle is exactly what we need to be refined. In our faith, we go through those same steps. Those same tantrums and, “Well, you told me I was supposed to write and my book, nobody wants it.”

God’s just like a loving parent. He’s just listening and nodding and waiting for us to vent and spew all that stuff, and then he talks to us in a voice of peace and a voice of truth. 

it’s so important for us to realize, and we’ve said this quite a number of times, emotions are a very poor measuring stick of reality. Now emotions are valid. We need to feel them and acknowledge them and own them, but we don’t use them to determine what is and isn’t biblical truth.

Heather: Right. I tell my students that quite often. Reminding them, you know, God gave us emotions. Emotions are great. It’s what we do with those emotions that become right or wrong. 

Karen: Yes. 

Heather: Are you going to harbor anger and become bitter? Are you going to act out in violence? So emotions are great, they’re wonderful. It’s the actions that breed from those emotions that they can make or break us. 

I think one emotion, going back to just what I continue to see with so many at writer’s conferences, is oftentimes overall discouragement. Like, if I had to boil it down to what’s at the very bottom of so many of the things that people come to talk to me about, it would be just discouragement. Discouraged in their writing journey and discouraged about what to do next.

“Oh, God can’t use me in this because I have failed so many times.” Or, ” I’m never gonna be able to write that book because I’ve got a thousand other things I have to do. I’ve gotta make money to help my family.”

It’s just this constant discouragement that rears its ugly head, and we allow it to then create emotions in us that don’t drive us to seek God, but rather we turn inside and go, “Yeah, I guess this isn’t the right time. Maybe I’m not supposed to do this at all.” Things like that. 

Karen: That’s the most dangerous detour you can take—turning inside with those emotions. 

Erin: Rather than just turning inside, what we need to be doing is turning and saying, “Okay, God, how do you want to make this happen? What do you want to happen?”

Heather: Right. 

Erin: Karen and I were talking before this podcast, and there was a situation where I wanted two different things. Like, I was the perfect character in conflict between two things that are both very important to me and I could not meet an obligation for both of them at the same time. It was not possible. 

Karen’s like, “Yeah, see God already has this figured out. He’s gonna put you where he wants you and allow you to do what he wants you to do. And you know, you gotta give it up.” 

Karen: it’s not like God is looking at that and saying, “Oh! I didn’t know those two things were gonna happen at the same time. Now what do I do?” 

Erin: But that’s how writers can feel. They’re like, “I need to do this and this and this…” Then they feel like they can’t do it all, and it’s true. 

Heather: They can’t do it all. 

Erin: We can’t. But we can do what God wants us to do if he’s the one that we’re trusting to empower us to do it.

There’s a verse I love about how God is able to make all grace abound to us, so that we can have everything we need to have in order to do everything we need to do. We need to hang on to God’s sufficiency, to God’s grace, and that definitely is something that we struggle with. 

I think, too, when you were talking about how the artistic nature of writers is, it really does make us swing more emotionally. One of the things that I think is nice to realize about that is to know that upfront. There’s a medication I have to take sometimes. I have various issue with fibromyalgia and insomnia, and there’s a medication I have to take sometimes and it depresses me. If I have to take it two days in a row, I am quite depressed and it’s awful. I say, “Why am I so depressed today?” 

But the times when I back up and say, “You know what? This medication is the reason why I’m depressed, and it’ll be okay.”

Heather: Right. 

Erin: I think as creatives we can just be like, “You know what? This is the reason why we’re swinging right now, but it’ll be okay. God made me this way. It’ll be okay.” There’s great comfort in just knowing it’ll be okay. 

Heather: Absolutely. I think so many of us are created to react intensely and emotionally to things that happen to us so that we can then take that reaction and take those things that we’ve experienced so intensely and be able to empathize with the lost world. 

If we aren’t able to empathize with a lost world, then what are we doing here? If we aren’t able to show care and compassion, and hurt for people, with people, then we’re missing the boat on the ministry that God has called us all to, and that’s to know him and make him known to the world. I think that that’s a huge part. 

One thing that has helped me, I think, when I’m in those places of stagnation in writing or when I’m talking to somebody, especially students—I teach seniors and they’re making some crazy-big life decisions their senior year—God has helped me boil it down in my head to: “What is the next yes that God is asking of you?” 

For a writer, it could be saying yes to writing this article. It could be to get out of bed. 

Karen: Or it could be to get into bed. Get some sleep. Get some rest.

Heather: That, too.

It’s so important. In fact, I was literally telling a student this today. “What’s your next yes to Jesus? What is he asking you to do next? What is he asking you to do right now?”

Maybe it’s, you know, get off your phone and get in a book or whatever it is. Ten years from now, you’re going to look back and if you’ve been obedient to the 10 million yeses, you’re going to be exactly where God wants you, doing exactly what he wants you to do, with the people around you that are supposed to be there. 

Erin: There’s a Bible verse, Luke 16:10, that says, “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much.” That’s the way you do it. You say yes to the next yes that God wants. I absolutely love that 

Karen: In these kinds of situations, I want to be sure to say, and I know I said this jokingly, but I want to be sure to say that sometimes that yes means you sit on the sideline for a while. It means you step out of trying and struggling and doing what you do. Sometimes it means you step back and step into God and take time just with him and you’re silent.

I just saw something the other day that said: The letters that spell listen also spell silent. Listen to God. Listen and take your struggles and everything to him. You don’t have to do to please God. He will tell you when to do. 

I liken it to being in the military. We foot soldiers don’t decide what hills to take. Those above us who are doing the strategies and who are our commanders, they tell us which hill to attack and what to take and what the next strategic move is. If we are not in some kind of assault, some kind of moving forward, then we are resting and recovering and building our strength and our skills. 

We’re in God’s army as we lead the attacks on the world and the attacks on the lies that have penetrated the world. We need to let God tell us whether we’re supposed to do or whether some days we’re supposed to just be in him. 

Heather: That’s right. Those seasons of waiting, saying yes to those seasons of waiting, sometimes those seasons are years. 

Karen: Yes. 

Heather: They’re not days, they’re not weeks. They’re years. That’s when it can be really hard, and we go, “Are you sure God? Are you sure?” 

I’ve been in that situation at different points in my life, where it has not been just, “I want you to take a break for a couple of months.” It’s, “I want you to take a break for a couple of years because you are not ready for what’s next.” 

Karen: Exactly. God is spending that time refining us and preparing us. All runners run a race, but not everyone receives the prize. The one who continues, the one who stays the course, who follows God’s leading is the one who wins the prize. 

Whatever God’s leading is, you’ve got to follow it. You’ve just got to. 

Heather: Absolutely. 

Karen: I think you all know, as you listen, that these struggles are more or less universal. Now, there may be some things that I struggle with that you don’t struggle with and vice versa, but the enemy is trying to sidetrack us all.

The enemy is doing his best to come into this amazing task that God has given us to write. And remember, God may have asked you to write for yourself. Maybe nobody else will read it, but that’s okay because you’re doing what God has asked you to do. Or maybe he’s called you to write because your book is going to take off and change the world.

Whatever God has chosen for you is perfect for you. Perfect for your impact on the world. I read another quote the other day that said, “You will never know the depth of your influence in this world.” 

Well, the nice thing about being believers is we will know because God will tell us as he gives us that, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” He will tell us the influence we’ve been for him. 

I think that you, Heather, have been an incredible influence in your chaplaincy at writers’ conferences and in the things that you have done to help people dealing with these struggles. I’m grateful for the work that you’re doing for writers, and I’m grateful for the fact that we get to encounter each other and play together in this amazing task that God has given us and that God will use us for his good purposes in his perfect way. 

Erin: Yes! Thanks, Heather, for being here. 

Heather: Thank you so much, both of you, for what you do for writers in this podcast and just the honor and privilege it is to be here and hang out today. It’s been good for my soul. 

Guest @HIseminger, a chaplain at writers’ conferences, is here to share her insights on writers’ struggles and how to find help and understanding in the midst of them. #amwriting #ChristianWriter
Share on X

What is your next yes to Jesus?

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. She’s a writer, poet, podcaster, photographer, and nature lover, and she’s offering a free gift we can all use: 10 Good Habits to Help You Become a Great Listener!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 184 – Cures for Common Writers’ Struggles with Guest Heather Iseminger appeared first on Write from the Deep.

How often have you sat down to write, stared at your page, and realized you have…nothing. No ideas, no words. Could it be the dreaded writer’s block? Don’t let it stop you in your writer’s tracks! Guest Tina Yeager is here to help you blast that block to smithereens!

About Tina Yeager

Award-winning author, speaker, and life coach, Tina Yeager hosts the Flourish-Meant podcast and Flourish Today on Christian Mix 106 and publishes Inkspirations Online, a weekly writers’ devotional. She has been licensed as a counselor since 2005. Yeager serves as director of traditional groups with Word Weavers International and as an active member of the Christian Women in Media Association. For life coaching tips or to book her as an event speaker, visit tinayeager.com. Look for her books, Beautiful Warrior: Finding Victory Over the Lies Formed Against You and Upcycled: Crafted for a Purpose.

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

Karen: Hey, guys, and happy February. We’re so glad that you’re here to spend time with us and to hear the things that God has given us to share with you. We are so delighted that we have a guest, Tina Yeager, and Erin is going to introduce her. 

Erin: I’m so excited because I got to know this lovely person at the Florida Christian Writers Conference. It was just a delight to get to meet her and get to know her. And, guys, just a side note, if you’ve never been to a conference, that’s one of the big benefits of going to a conference. You meet cool people!

I met Tina there and we had lots of time to just chat and talk, and I want to tell you about her. She is an award-winning author. She’s an inspirational speaker and a life coach, and she hosts the Flourish-Meant podcast. She publishes Inkspirations Online, which is a weekly devotional for writers.

She has won over thirty writing awards, including a 2020 Golden Scroll award. She’s been licensed as a counselor since 2005 and has over twenty years of experience teaching parenting and writing skills and communications and inner healing and spiritual growth. The list goes on. She specializes in ADHD, stress management, purpose definition, abuse recovery, and esteem building, and she currently runs an online life coaching practice called Divine Encouragement, LLC. 

If that’s not enough, Tina holds a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Counseling, and she serves on the board of the Christian Authors Network and as a mentor with Word Weavers International. She’s also an active member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, and Christian Women in Media. We’re just delighted to have her here today, bringing her wisdom and experience. Welcome, Tina. 

Tina: Thank you so much, Erin and Karen. 

Erin: Tina, let’s jump in. What does the deep mean to you? 

Tina: I feel like all of us have places within us that feel like they sink deep, where we just get lost sometimes in our own darkness and get lost within ourselves. But the good thing is that God is deeper than our deepest depths and he can reach us there. And when you asked me this question right before the podcast—

Erin: Yeah, little late. Sorry! We put her on the spot, you guys. 

Tina: Immediately I thought about a specific psalm that I really love, and it’s always just kind of echoed in my mind. It’s Psalm 42:7: “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” 

The psalmist actually meant this as God kind of leaving him to be drenched and almost drowned in the waterfalls. But when I think of waterfalls, I think of the beauty and the tranquility and the rejuvenation you experience when you see a waterfall. So there’s two ways that you can experience the drenching presence of God and his depths, and I love the verse that follows it that reminds that psalmist that he’s not abandoned by God in that deep place: “By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.”

That’s what the deep means to me. It means that God meets us in the deepest places that we are, whether those places are dark, or whether they’re receiving that rejuvenating presence of the Holy Spirit. 

Erin: I love that. That’s one of my favorite verses as well. I love the way you explained that and described that. Very cool.

Well, you guys know, if you’ve listened to the podcast now and again, that we often talk about being vulnerable and being authentic on the page. That writers need to go to those deep places and pour that out on the page. 

But one of the things that we really haven’t covered is: what do you do if you can’t access those feelings? If it’s so traumatic that you have blocked it? Or you want to avoid it? Or you just can’t go there? 

When I heard about all of Tina’s experience, I thought that this would be is a great topic to pick her brain about. As a mental health professional, what are your thoughts? What do writers do when they can’t access those feelings and those emotions? What are some thoughts? 

Tina: If it is related to a trauma that you experienced—and I’m not just saying this because I’m a therapist, I’m saying this from my experience as a therapist and as a person—you should access someone who is a professional, a mentor, someone of great experience in the area who can lead you with Christian expertise to find healing. 

If it is something you’ve blocked, then you probably are in need of professional assistance to work through those feelings and find healing. It’s very difficult to do that on your own. I would recommend that everybody deserves healing and your readers deserve to benefit from the healing that you’ll receive and what you’ll be able to offer after you have gone through that healing process. 

It’s painful. Nobody likes to take a broken bone and hand it over to the doctor and say, “Here, reset it,” because it hurts. The resetting of the bone is painful. When they go in to take out an infection that’s gotten embedded deeply beneath your skin and in your tissues, it’s a painful process to get that infection out. 

So, many of us are reluctant to go seek help and to address those feelings. We cover it up and we bury it deeper. Yet the wound is still there. It’s still a sore place and we don’t want anybody else to touch it. But that is exactly what is needed for you to be effective in your writing. You need to work through those feelings, get to the other side, so that you can benefit others. 

Erin: You’re absolutely right. That’s great counsel right there. 

I think sometimes we don’t realize what we’re doing. I’ve been watching somebody deal with this in my life lately. I’m watching another person go through this and they’re just so weighed down with issues that haven’t been addressed. I don’t think they realize the weight on their shoulders. I don’t think they realize how exhausting it is to keep carrying that heavy load. So I’m right there with you encouraging people to get professional help, especially if they don’t realize how weighed down they are.

Karen: It’s interesting, too, how the church has historically been resistant to people going to counselors. Don and I, you listeners who are regular, you know Don and I have had a lot of struggles in our marriage. Don has had a lot of struggles from his childhood, the abuse that he suffered. 

We were married in 1979, and we would talk to people at the church, looking even for older couples to help us. They would tell us that we just needed to pray more. Which I understand, yes, of course, the most powerful thing we can do is pray. Yet the deeply embedded dysfunctions taking place there needed professional counseling. 

I came from a Leave it to Beaver childhood and background. Don came from Nightmare on Elm Street. You marry those two together, pun intended, and you’re gonna have issues. So we needed somebody who could help us sort through those issues. We were in professional counseling for twenty years, all total out of the forty-three years that we’ve been married. 

We would not have survived without the man that God brought into our life. Not only was he able to help us as a counselor, but he was also a believer and he could use his learning and his skill and the grace that God had given him to confront us and to do what was needed. People in the church are so afraid of confrontation. There’s no way they can do what is necessary when you need somebody to really help you dig in to those deep, sometimes ugly, places.

Erin: What do you think, then, if you’ve been through counseling and you’re feeling like you’ve worked your way through it and maybe you’ve already done some journaling and now you want to write about it, but now it’s like, it’s difficult to go there, even though you feel God pushing you that direction? What are your thoughts or tips that might help a writer to deal with that? 

Tina: I think you want to look at whether you’ve really worked through it. That’s the first question because sometimes we can work through layers of those things, and you may still need somebody to mentor you through that writing process. Somebody who has walked through writing from trauma or writing from pain to be your writing coach or your writing accountability partner. Somebody to help you a little bit at a time go through those steps. 

I think every step that you take needs to be prefaced by prayer and meditation and asking the Holy Spirit to come alongside you. Even if you have to physically reach out and grab Jesus’ hand as if you are grabbing a physical hand in the air and say, “Jesus, come with me on this journey.” Ask him to lead you word by word through every page, every scene, whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, to help you direct this in a way that’s going to benefit readers. 

There are two types of writing. First of all, there’s writing that’s cathartic. That’s for your own benefit. Then there’s writing that is to benefit the reader. If you’re doing it to be cathartic, it is not for your reader. It is for you and for your therapist. 

So you need to know which thing you’re doing. Either one is fine. Just know which one you are doing and be targeting that process in that direction. If you are writing a cathartic piece, don’t mistake it and try to get it published because oftentimes a cathartic piece can be too graphic. It can be too wrought with things that will trigger trauma issues in your readers, and that won’t be beneficial to them. 

But if you’re writing from a place of healing, to bring your readers along on that process of healing in their journey, then that is a benefit to the reader. So you can write, after you’ve done the cathartic part and edited all of that and made it so that you could be of benefit to that reader, then you could do that prayer for leading specifically as you write for readers. 

That’s where the Holy Spirit is extremely helpful. Because he knows what your readers need. He knows every person that he intends to read that piece. Visualizing the person that’s going to receive this and praying for your reader as you write, as if you are writing to bring healing to someone else, also helps you get out of yourself and have the courage to address the things that are hard. 

Erin: You know, if I’m remembering right, Karen Ball, author over there, you wrote a novel called The Breaking Point, and I know that was challenging, where you had to dig into the difficulties of your marriage. What kind of things helped you as you were trying to go there again?

Karen: It was interesting when I knew that I was going to be writing about it. It was the book that was based on the struggles we’d been through in our marriage. It was obviously fictionalized. Not everything that happened in the book happened to us, but a lot of it did.

I used my actual journal. The journal that the protagonist, the woman, is writing, all of it is from my personal journal in our struggles. The very first scene that the couple goes through actually happened to Don and me, all except the end where they go off the mountain. They’re in a blizzard in Oregon, driving through a blizzard, and all she can think about is how much she hates her husband.

It was a scary place to go because Don and I had gotten past that and we had reached a point where we were not only married, but we were friends and we enjoyed being together. I was so afraid that going back into the emotions—which I had to do—going back into the emotions would send me in a tailspin in our relationship.

I prayed about it and God gave me the idea to take pictures of Don when he’s happy. When you have the kind of childhood that Don had, seeing real joy on his face is kind of a rarity. So I found all these pictures of him, and I put them all around my computer, on the walls, and on my desk. When I would go into the really intense part of the writing, if I started to feel myself getting sucked into the anger again, I could look at the pictures.

One of the issues we dealt with was his coming from a family of generational abuse. From as far back as any of them can remember, the men abused their kids, except for Don’s generation. They have stopped it with their children. But Don was subjected to just ungodly abuse. So when it came time to write, and I was so afraid of what would happen, I could lean back and I could look at those pictures. I could look at the computer and say, “That was then, this is now. That was then, this is now.” 

The other thing that helped a lot was I had Don read everything that I wrote so that he could see whether I was representing his side of it in the male protagonist view, if I was representing it accurately. I didn’t want to paint it through my filter. I also wanted to make sure that what I was saying from the female’s viewpoint didn’t dishonor him in any way.

So there was all of that. Then I had a weekly group of women, all of whom loved writing, and we prayed together. So I had a lot of undergirding from the pictures of Don, from God’s presence, from my friends, from Don himself. It got me through it. By the time I finished writing that book, it was just a miraculous thing because I found myself more in love with, and with more respect for, Don than I had had even when I began.

Erin: I love that because that matches what Tina said as this just being a Holy Spirit thing. 

Karen: Right. 

Erin: It’s a God thing. God took you by the hand and led you through that. 

Karen: Yeah. 

Erin: From a mental health perspective, what about if writers are just feeling down or discouraged? What are some things that they might be able to address or to do to help deal with that type of thing? 

Tina: I think having other writers in community with you is essential. Whether you struggle with mental health issues or not, we are a very isolated profession. 

Karen: Yeah. 

Tina: It is very difficult to stay encouraged. We face more discouragement as creatives than any other industry that I can think of, other than other creative industries.  

Erin: Yes! 

Tina: It’s very hard not to get discouraged, even if you don’t face mental health issues. Then if you do, you have that additional organic complication of not having enough serotonin and dopamine to begin with.

Some things that can help are making sure that you’re doing things that get you energized, that get you connected with other people. You’re going to have to do things that are hard that you don’t feel like doing. One of those might be getting in community with people when you don’t feel like it . 

Another thing is to make sure that you get some exercise. Believe it or not, the serotonin levels will go up when you get a little exercise. We can sit at our computers all day and write and write and write, but then our mood can drop because we are in that blue screen environment, which is not necessarily good for the brain for all day long. 

Then we’re also not getting that oxygenation of our bloodstream and our brain. We need that for our brain, the organ that allows us to be able to do our job, to function. We need to be able to get some cardiovascular exercise in. Just, you know, fifteen or twenty minutes. It doesn’t have to be “I’m training for a marathon” kind of exercise. Just something to get your serotonin and dopamine up. 

Also make sure you expose yourself to something that’s going to help you laugh. That’s going to give you joy. That’s going to make you smile. Don’t make your whole life centered on obligation. If we are working out of obligation when we’re writing, our writing will suffer, and we will suffer, and we won’t be able to continue. We need to do things that make us laugh. We need to play. 

We also need to see our work as worship, so that when we don’t feel like it anymore, we are giving it as an offering. When we don’t see the results that we want to see, and how often does that happen? I think all of us have been through those periods, or we just continually are in that period, where we don’t feel like it’s having impact and we get discouraged by that.

Writing as worship can help you redirect your purpose for writing toward God and not towards some kind of tangible result you think you’re going to get that really is not standardized. We don’t know what success looks like under God’s design for our lives, and we may be reaching people that we don’t realize with our lives, with our writing, with our writing community. So remembering to do our work as worship is really important. 

Then also just taking care of yourself. Self-care is essential when you are dealing with low mood, and that goes with sleeping, making sure you’re getting enough sleep. Making sure that you’re nourishing your brain. Your brain needs to be fed omega-3 fatty acids. Your brain needs to be fed certain things for it to work properly, especially if you struggle with mental illness, that is critical. 

There are things that are great about people being particularly sensitive as creatives. About having that gamut of emotion that you can pour into your writing. But it could also generate a sense of struggle if you’re not on top of taking care of yourself in the midst of that profession.

Karen: I especially like where you say to do things that give you joy. I find that one of the best things I can do is get down on the floor and play with or pet my two corgis. You know, just snuggle with them, or bring them up on the recliner with me and pet ’em. I find that the physical connection with them is rejuvenating and it definitely brings me joy to do that. Even something as simple as playing with your dog can help to get that flowing. 

Erin: I think that’s great too because joy brings hope, and hope is like the antidote to discouragement, I think. As Christians, we have that ultimate hope. We should be the most hopeful people in the world, even though it’s not always easy to maintain that perspective. 

But that’s something I think we can also be praying for, that God would help us to experience that hope in our hearts, both for what happens in this life and what happens after that. I mean, this is just a warmup show for heaven.

Well, we’re pretty much at the end of our time, Tina. Do you have any last words of encouragement or advice that you’d want to give to our listeners? 

Tina: I would love for everyone to realize that you matter, and the words that the Lord has placed deep within you are important. He has created you on purpose, for a purpose. He shines his message through you. It’s not all up to you. All you need to do is make sure that you show up and stay dwelling and centered in his Spirit so that he can keep you sustained by his energy, and his hope, and his joy, and his truth. Remember that you’re the vessel and you matter because you are the vessel that he created.

Karen: I love that. That whole idea that it doesn’t rest on us. The responsibility that we have is obedience. What happens from there is up to God. We have no control over where our writing goes, where our career goes. But God does and he will do what he will do. We just need to make ourselves available to him.

Tina, thank you so much for your words of wisdom and encouragement. I know that our listeners have been blessed by this conversation, so God bless you. 

Tina: Bless you, too. 

Erin: Thanks, Tina.

Got writer’s block? Guest @teagerwrites has terrific guidance to help you blast that block to smithereens! #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

What do you do for self-care?

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. She’s a writer, poet, podcaster, photographer, and nature lover, and she’s offering a free gift we can all use: 10 Good Habits to Help You Become a Great Listener!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 183 – Got Writer’s Block? Guest Tina Yeager Is Here to Help! appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Everyone knows that writing is a solitary endeavor. We sit at our computers, lost in our heads and imaginations, trusting God to guide our fingers on the keyboard. And with God at our side, we can do anything. But sometimes we need a little in-person help. And guest Shadia Hrichi is here to show how a prayer team can be exactly what writers need.

About Shadia Hrichi

Shadia Hrichi is a passionate Bible teacher who loves seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word. She holds a master’s in biblical and theological studies and a master’s in criminal justice. Her Bible studies include TAMAR, HAGAR, LEGION, and WORTHY OF LOVE, endorsed by Francine Rivers, Liz Curtis-Higgs, Chris Tiegreen, Bible Study Magazine, and others. Shadia enjoys speaking at retreats and events, and loves to visit the ocean each week for “a date with Jesus.”

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 that you’re joining us today, and we’re excited to be continuing our conversation with our guest Shadia Hrichi (find part 1 of the interview here).  Join our conversation about plugging into the power of prayer teams. We’re diving in midstream like we usually do.

Shadia, how often would you say that you communicate with your prayer team? I’m sure it’s probably individual for each writer, or will be, but what’s been your experience? 

Shadia: It’s always been once a month. I don’t really know why. Sounded like a good plan, so we just started there, and it’s always been there.

Originally, as I said, I was doing in-person meetings as well as email. As the numbers grew, obviously I couldn’t keep doing it that way since the people were all over the country. So that’s how it’s been, and now it’s all been email for the last couple of years.

Lately, I’ve been including short video messages because sometimes things happen and I’m like, “I really have to share this story, but I feel like I need to just say it instead of trying to write it out.” 

You forget that personal connection, how much it means. I got so many people responding, saying things like, “I just love seeing your face and hearing the passion and the excitement of what it is that God is doing.”

Erin: How did you share that video? Was it a link from YouTube or what did you do to share that? 

Shadia: I put it in Vimeo and then I just put the link in the email. But you could probably do that from YouTube, too. 

For me, my prayer team gets information about things that I don’t make public. Not everything is made public, that’s why they’re on the prayer team. These are things that I don’t always share or I can’t share yet. You know, things like that. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Shadia: Now that we’re kind of past most of this covid stuff, and I’m currently on a book deadline until January, starting in January or February, I’ll be doing prayer team meetings at home again for the local friends who can come. 

That’ll be nice because one of the things that you had said, Karen, about when your team meets, your gals, the Spirit is moving in the center of you and he’s speaking and he might say something through them. That’s difficult to do through email correspondence. 

For me, I became a Christian as an adult. I was thirty years old. I wasn’t even raised in a church. I knew nothing. I mean, how God called me to seminary just makes me laugh. Like, really? I know nothing. 

Do you want to hear a funny story? I wasn’t planning on sharing this, but when I went to seminary, I was walking through the break room and there was a little discussion going on amongst some students about Calvin.

Erin: Ha! You were wondering where he is in the Bible?  

Shadia: No, it’s worse than that. The only Calvin—and I knew they weren’t talking about this Calvin—but the only Calvin I had ever heard of was the designer jeans. 

Karen: Oh, I thought you were going to say Calvin and Hobbs!

Erin: Me too!  

Shadia: Well, yeah, I’d heard of them, too, I guess. But I’m like, “I know they’re not talking about the designer jeans, so like, wow, what am I doing here?” But yeah, just so funny. All right, where was I going with that? I forgot. 

Karen: About meeting in person.

Erin: But wait, let me say that what I love is that you went anyway. You didn’t let that intimidate you. You were obedient, and I bet those people would have been gracious had you wanted to ask. But how many people whine, “I feel called to writing and I don’t know how…” And they don’t do it.

I mean, that’s where we all start, right? Not knowing how? But you weren’t so intimidated that you didn’t go. And after that conversation you heard about Calvin, you weren’t so intimidated that you didn’t go back.

Shadia: Yes. 

Erin: I love that!  

Shadia: I appreciate that. For me, I didn’t realize it at the time when I began writing, but I was just doing what most writers do to begin. Most, not all, Christian nonfiction writers would typically do a devotional blog, right? That’s kind of how you get started. 

I was just doing that naturally because I just felt like doing that. But the more I was doing it, the more I found myself holding back because I didn’t know that God made me to be a teacher—like a teacher, teacher, you know? So I was like, “Well, what if I’m teaching wrong? What don’t I know that I don’t know?” 

I ended up talking to my pastor and he was the one who said, “I think you should definitely consider going to seminary. That would be perfect for you. You’re called to teach, and it’ll give you the confidence to teach correctly.”

I don’t want to teach incorrectly, so I went. Four years later, and blood, sweat, and tears, and I finished. 

Erin: What do the meetings at your house look like? If there are writers out there who might want to invite people over, what would be the format that you do that they might want to think about doing?

Shadia: Well, it’s still also sort of an informal thing. Most of the people who do come to my house are generally people that I know well. You know what I mean? I usually don’t have strangers showing, so like people that live close by, that I’ve known, and so it’s not very different from any other prayer meeting.

If I’ve already communicated through the email some prayers and praises, I’ll have copies with me. Like, here’s the latest one so that they can pray off of those things or celebrate with me those things. But they don’t have to. That’s just there if they want that. It’s very informal.

I’ll make some decaf coffee if it’s evening and put out water and some snacks, you know, and we’ll chit chat as well because these are people that I love and they love me. Then we’ll get to pray for an hour or whatever. I mean, the whole time we’re there has been hour, or an hour and a half at the most. So not very different, I think, from an average prayer a meeting. 

Karen: Right.

Erin: That’s neat. Well, I almost hate to ask this, but we probably should. Have you ever needed to ask someone to leave your team? Would there be a reason for that to happen, or what would be a reason that might happen? 

Shadia: Thankfully, I’ve not had to take anyone off of my prayer team, but I have had to take people off my email list. This actually happened very recently. I was getting this person who, initially, I was like, “Do they need my help?” 

But it was just very toxic communication that didn’t go anywhere, like a person that was not connected. I felt bad, but I’m not called to be a counselor. That’s not my calling. Reaching out to me with those issues is not the right connection. I’m not the right person to reach out to if you need therapy. That happened several times and I thought, “This person’s just confused and this is not where they need to be.”

Because I did respond once or twice trying to be helpful, but I ended up just taking them off the list because the intent was not to get help. The intent was just to be toxic. I felt like it was just something to trip me up or something. 

If it’s an email list, I mean, that’s easy. You just go in and hit delete. If you have a prayer team and a person who for some reason they were not who you thought they were or something and they’re causing disruptions or so forth, if it’s someone you know personally, I would probably reach out personally and try to have a conversation with them.

I wouldn’t do that by email. I would do it at a minimum by a zoom call, or in person if you can. I think it’s just like any other kind of relationship within group dynamics. If there’s one person that’s disrupting the group in some form, they’re not feeding into the group, but they’re hindering the work of the group, whatever it is, you need to have the conversation. 

If that doesn’t work, the Bible says to bring another person along and hopefully that helps. If not, at the end of the day, it’s your house and it’s your email list. At some point they’re just not invited. 

Karen: The other situation could be a break of trust. You say that you share things with your prayer team that don’t get shared publicly, so if you find out that someone has breached the confidentiality or the trust, then that’s something that needs to be confronted and addressed.

Shadia: Absolutely. 

Karen: You give an opportunity for them to reestablish trust if you feel that that’s what God is leading you to do. But sometimes the enemy just brings people who seem on the surface perfectly suited and a great fit, and it just isn’t, because when they come in, they bring their own—we all do—we bring our own issues and our own struggles and our own weaknesses. 

And there are some that each one of us, in the people that we meet, there are some things that just isn’t iron sharpening iron. It’s acid on skin, so it needs to be addressed in that context. Unless God is saying, “No, don’t say anything.” But when there was something that was damaging the group, I’ve never experienced that God has said, “Leave it alone.” Either they have left or I’ve had to confront. 

Shadia: Yeah, sometimes God will fix it for you. The person will move on. 

Karen: Oh look, she’s moving to outer Mongolia. So sad!

Erin: The thing that I love about this conversation still is that, circling back to something you said, Shadia, God was in the center. He was in the center of the relationship you developed with Francine, and the relationship with you and your prayer team, and the relationship with people who you just meet and maybe they’re not on your prayer team, that’s fine. But God is in the center and that’s the thing that we need to trust.

Shadia: He’s always working. 

Karen: Amen. 

Shadia: And he’s on our side. Prayer is important to him or it wouldn’t be, you know, on every page in the Bible almost. 

Erin: That’s a really important point. This is something we can pray that God will bring about, because clearly having people pray for us is something he would absolutely want. So yeah, we can trust him with that. We can put that over in his lap and be like, “Help me.” 

Karen: I think one element of this, too, is that if we go this route, if we try to establish a prayer team, we have to be willing to hear what they have to say to us. We have to be teachable. We have to be humble. We have to not get defensive if they come to us and say, “I just want to express a concern. I’ve prayed about this, and I feel God wants me to bring it up.”

I can’t say that I’m a hundred percent always able to accept it when people say hard things to me, but it’s happened often enough in my life because I tend to be a little bit of a rebel. I also tend to be a little bit of a Tasmanian devil that mows people down without even realizing it.

So there’s been times when people have come to me and expressed those concerns. Unless they come in with an attitude of glee where they get to say this thing to me, most of the time when people come in, it’s with fear and trembling, not of me, but of what God has asked them to do. 

People in the church just don’t do well with confrontation. They’re afraid of it. And they’re afraid that people will think they’re judging, when what they’re doing is being obedient in speaking a truth to someone that God has given them to speak. 

When that happens, and knowing the cost to the person who’s doing that out of obedience, we really need to listen. We really need to keep our mouths shut and take it in and then take it to prayer ourselves, and even offer it to the prayer group and say, “Please pray about this, and if God gives the amen to it for you, please tell me that because I need to know what I need to do about this.” 

Shadia: Absolutely. If we really do think about our prayer team as, well I use the word foundation, it might be a different visual for somebody else. But I think of it that way, and we don’t want a foundation that’s crumbling. 

Karen: Right. 

Shadia: We want a foundation that’s strong and firm and unified together. The Bible says, I don’t remember the verse, but in the proverbs it says that the wise leader has many counselors.

Well, in a sense, your prayer team, they’re listening from God, the Counselor, so it’s wise for us, like you said, Karen, to hear what they have to say. If there is confusion or doubt or whatever, bring it to the team as you said. I love that because if we really do believe they are our support and foundation, we would want to hear what God has given them to tell us.

Karen: Yes. 

Erin: One of my biggest regrets, it was early when I had become a Christian in college and I was tasked with leading something in a group, and I thought I knew the way to do it, and somebody older than me came to me and said, “You know, I think you need to think about the way you’re doing this.” 

I didn’t take it to heart. I still remember that and I regret it. It’s taken me a lot of years to understand that, but he was right. What he was saying was right. I wish that I would’ve had the openness to listen or to even know what to do with that. 

I wasn’t very skilled at this Christian thing, and I certainly wasn’t super skilled at interpersonal communication at the time, but that’s not an excuse. I wish that had gone differently. So, there you go. Everybody out there, don’t let my story be yours. 

Karen: I’ll tell you something, Don and I have had a very difficult marriage and we were in marriage counseling for twenty years. Barely survived it. If I learned anything from years of being in both marriage and individual counseling, it’s how to deal with confrontation.

It’s how to be constructive when you’re the one confronting, and it’s how to listen when someone confronts you, because people just aren’t good at it. People in the church, especially like I said before, are not good at it, and they need to be because we are called to some very difficult things.

Shadia: Yes.

Erin: Because we are the church. We are one body, and we’re not good at communicating like one big team. That is an unfortunate thing. 

As we’re coming to the end of our time here, Shadia, do you have any final words of wisdom or encouragement about this or anything else you feel led to tell us?

Shadia: I was just listening to what you were just sharing about the body, and I think it’s so true that we can have the disconnect. But because Christ is the head of the body, the more we individually and collectively seek him, go to him, try to do everything through his leading, the more united the body will become. 

That’s Christ’s heart. You read that in the New Testament, especially in Paul’s writing. Unity is such a burden on God’s heart. I think this whole topic of prayer and prayer team is one of the ways that we do stay connected. As long as we’re listening to him honestly, the body will work and come together.

Karen: Amen. I really love that. 

Okay, guys, you’ve got your marching orders. Get out there and set up a prayer team. 

Shadia: Yes. You will not be disappointed, I promise. 

Erin: That’s our New Year’s resolution—well, resolution might not be the right word. That’s our New Year’s thought of something to accomplish.

Shadia: Yeah. It’ll only make you stronger. 

Erin: Amen!

Guest @ShadiaHrichi shares how a prayer team may be exactly what you need! #amwriting #ChristianWriter
Share on X

Have you ever considered the idea of a prayer team? Do you have one? Are you on someone else’s prayer team?

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

Thanks so much to our January sponsor of the month, Priscilla Sharrow! She’s working on her memoir called Bonked! Life, Love, and Laughter with Traumatic Brain Injury, which will come out with 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 P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 182 – Plugging into the Power of Prayer Teams with Guest Shadia Hrichi, Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

There are partners out there that you, as a writer who is serving God, MUST have. They’re prayer partners! Guest Shadia Hrichi shares her experiences and guidance for putting together your own power team of prayers to help ensure you stay on the path God has for you.

About Shadia Hrichi

Shadia Hrichi is a passionate Bible teacher who loves seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word. She holds a master’s in biblical and theological studies and a master’s in criminal justice. Her Bible studies include TAMAR, HAGAR, LEGION, and WORTHY OF LOVE, endorsed by Francine Rivers, Liz Curtis-Higgs, Chris Tiegreen, Bible Study Magazine, and others. Shadia enjoys speaking at retreats and events, and loves to visit the ocean each week for “a date with Jesus.”

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

Erin: Welcome, listeners. We’re glad that you’re joining us here today in the deep, and we’re excited to have an interview! A guest! Hurray! I’ll let Karen introduce her. 

Karen: Shadia Hrichi is a passionate Bible teacher who has a heart for seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word, as we all do. I love that that’s something that excites us all. She’s the author of several Bible studies, including Hagar, Legion, and Tamar from her Behind the Seen series, and she often speaks at churches, conferences, and other events.

She received an MA in Biblical and Theological Studies, I so envy her for that, from Western Seminary, as well as an MA in Criminal Justice from the State University of New York. She resides in Northern California and she loves to visit the ocean each week for a date with Jesus. Shadia is a past guest on 168 and 169 about sharing the depths of God.

Welcome, Shadia.

Shadia: Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me again. This is so fun!

Erin: We are delighted again! We had such a fun time last time. 

Karen: Yeah, that’s just it. It was like, alright, we have to have her on again. That was great . 

Erin: Let’s start our journey today with what does the deep mean to you? It may or may not mean the same thing as it did last time. 

Shadia: You know, I don’t remember what I said last time. When I think of the deep now where I’m at, I’m thinking a little bit more of a personal sharing of deep connections with God. Sometimes I feel like I miss that in seasons where I feel like I don’t hear God’s voice as clearly.

Lately, I’m just trying to make room for him more so I can hear from him a little bit more deeply in my heart. So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. 

Erin: I love what you said about making room because it’s so easy to get drowned out by everything else vying for our time and attention. If we don’t choose to make room, how are we going to keep any relationship going? So I love what you said. 

We want to talk, as the new year starts, about prayer teams. Shadia has experience with this, and I would love for us to be thinking about this as writers as we start this new year.

But let’s start with a simple question: What is a prayer team? 

Shadia: The way I think of a prayer team, ultimately, it’s a group of people praying in sync with you for your ministry. But when I think of a prayer team for any ministry, I think of it as a foundation.

Christ is the foundation of our salvation, and I think of a prayer team as sort of another aspect of foundation where they’re the ones that are providing the support for the ministry by lifting and holding it up. So that’s how I think of a prayer team. It’s going to impact the strength of the ministry because it serves as the foundation.

Karen: The thing I like about prayer teams, too, is that they serve you as the person who’s writing, as the person who has asked them to come together. They serve you, but they serve you in truth, and in understanding. 

Sometimes what your prayer team comes to tell you is not something you’re expecting or that you’re really all that excited about hearing. But you need to hear it because God has made that clear to them as your partners. 

Shadia: Yes, that’s beautiful. 

Erin: It’s interesting to me that the Apostle Paul, well, here’s this giant, and he says in the letters that he writes to the churches, “Pray for me. Pray for us.”

He certainly prays for others and he mentions that he does, but he also knows that he needs prayer. If he needs prayer, how much more do we? 

What do you think about writers particularly? How do you think they might be benefited? Do they need a prayer team?

Shadia: I would say absolutely. Words have power. As Christians, anything that God entrusts to us to do, whether it’s a ministry or a secular job, whatever it is he’s entrusted us to do, we’re serving him. 

Words have power. It’s essential for writers to have prayer support because we’re acting as a steward of the gifts and the talents, of the words that he gives us, and it’s a ministry. Because if you’re planning on sharing these words, whether you’re published or unpublished, if you’re planning to sharing these words, you’re representing Christ. Whether you see it that way or not, regardless of the genre, you’re representing Christ as a Christian. 

The enemy, he doesn’t want Christ to get out in any form, indirect, direct, through your words. He is fighting you whether you see it or not. So like any other ministry, you want a prayer team to pray against the enemy attack. 

As writers, all of us know that we have those seasons where it’s just plain hard. I mean, I know I’m not the only one who literally just throws my hands up in the air, gets up from the computer, goes in the living room, and paces in circles like, “God, I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. It’s too hard.”

I mean, how many times have we said that? That it’s just too hard?  

But that prayer team behind you, whether you’re aware of it at that moment or not, having that prayer support, if God has called you to it, he’s going to use them and provide support and encouragement for you.

Another thing is that you want a group of people to celebrate with you because you might not always have someone with you when you hit those milestones. You know, I live alone. I write alone. I’m alone a lot. I hit a milestone and I’m like, “Um…yay…” But where’s the confetti and celebration? With a prayer team, you can get right on your email, or however you connect with them. You can get right on that list and share right then. If you wanted to do an impromptu email or video, you could. 

I have a little bit more structured of an outlet, but I’ll make a note in that moment that I want to share this with my prayer team. Then you get feedback from them. They’re celebrating with you. 

One of the most important things about having a prayer team is that it reminds you that you’re not alone. 

Erin: Yeah, definitely, and that’s a good thing. But how do you find people for this? What kind of people do you want to look for? 

Shadia: When I started my prayer team, and I probably should have looked up to see how long it’s been, but it’s been at least five years and probably quite a bit longer because Covid messed me all up. I don’t know what years are what anymore!  

Erin: It’s been a mess for everybody!

Shadia: But yeah, it’s been quite a number of years. When I first started the prayer team, it was very informal. It was smaller. It was the people that were already praying for me: my close friends from church, my bible study group, my intimate church family and the closer friends. Initially, I basically just said, “Hey, I think I want to make this a little bit more structured.”

We would meet at my house once a month. I would schedule a meeting once a month at my house and whoever could come, could come. It was out of these people. This wasn’t that many people. I’d invite nine or ten, something like that. Maybe three or four or five would come.

So initially, it was really the people who were already praying for me. They were already invested. They were my people, my friends. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Shadia: From there, the next step that I took was when I was teaching one of my Bible studies at my own church. There was maybe a few hundred women in the women’s Bible study group. Most of them knew a little bit about me, and by the end of the ten weeks, they knew me very well.

At the end I did the normal thing. I said, “Hey, who wants to get on the email list?”

But I also had a place on the signup form that said, “If you want to keep up with me and you want to pray alongside me, check this little box and I’ll put you on the prayer team.”

A lot of the women from that group joined the prayer team. After that it was more like just people that I knew were already supporting me. If I got an email from somebody that said something like, “God just put you on my heart. I’ve been praying for your ministry,” then I’d reply, ” Hey, would you like to be on the prayer team?”

I never did a big thing to my whole email list asking who wanted to be on my prayer team. I’ve never done that. Now, maybe somebody wants to do that. Maybe if you have a smaller list that would be a good a place to start. 

Ultimately I feel like if God has put this on their heart, because you know, well, one of the things I share sometimes is that none of us can pray for every conceivable ministry you cross paths with.

Erin: Yeah. 

Shadia: You just can’t. You can’t effectively, and God has not necessarily put all of those on your heart. Some needs are only just in the moment for something specific. But there are other certain things that he has called each one of us to, saying, “You’re going to partner in this ministry in prayer.” 

I present it that way. In other words, “You’re not hurting my feelings. If you’re not called to this, then it should not be a connection. But if you are, then please join.” That’s it. 

Right now I have about 85 people. 

Erin: Wow! 

Shadia: It’s been pretty much the same all that time. That’s kinda where it stays. Like I said, if I get an email from someone specifically, even if I don’t know them very well, and they feel like they’re really wanting to pray and be a part of it, I’ll say, “Hey, I do have a prayer team that gets different updates. Would you like to join?” And that’s it. 

Erin: That’s super low key, and I like that because, I mean, it can feel like a big favor if it’s presented wrong, you know? 

Shadia: Yeah. Like I was saying, we can’t all pray for everything that people would like us to pray for on a regular basis. We have jobs, we have families, and God knows that. We’re limited. He’s not. But he’s got lots of people and he can put on our hearts those to pray for. Wherever it is. Whatever it is. He’s the one to put it on your heart. 

So I always want to say it that way. You’re not really asking for a favor if they’re already feeling the nudge to be a part of it. They want to know what’s happening with your ministry. They care about you. They’re excited about what you’re doing, whatever that is, and that is tugging on their hearts. 

You’re not asking a favor. You’re basically just providing an opportunity to stay better connected and continue doing what God’s already asking them to.

Karen: I have a group of women, all writers, who I consider my sisterhood in writing. We meet once a year at one of the writer’s homes and we brainstorm together and pray together and have a lot of fun together. But anytime any of us has a prayer request, we come in—and we do this all the time—we come in and we make the prayer request.

But one of the things that I like about it is they’ll say, “Pray as God leads. If you have something that he nudges you to share, then please share that.”

Nobody feels as though, “Okay, I have to sit down and I have to really pray about this until I hear what God says.”

It’s because we love each other so much, and so we go to prayer asking God to show us if there’s something that we should share. Again, it’s about serving each other and loving each other, and it’s because we care. When any of us are struggling, it matters that we can enter in to prayer and express our concern and our love for each other in that way. 

Shadia: That’s beautiful. It really is. I especially like how you said where it’s always a two-way street. You’re supporting one another and serving one another. 

Erin: I think, too, Shadia, this comes about because you’re putting yourself out there and you’re developing relationships with people. You never know where a relationship is going to lead. You never know who you’re going to meet when you put yourself out there.

Some people will be friends. Some people will be great friends. Some people will be encouragers. And some people will be on your prayer team. I know you were saying you had a fun story about meeting Francine Rivers, of all people, who’s become a great friend? 

Shadia: Yes! My goodness, that really is a fun story. I met her, I believe it was 2015, at a Christian Writer’s conference. I’ve always been a non-fiction reader. Well, I’m no longer only that, but I’m more a non-fiction reader than a fiction reader. 

As a Christian, I certainly knew her name. I knew that she was a well-known, well-loved fiction Christian author. But I had never seen her face because I’d never read her books. None of her things. I was probably the only person in the conference who didn’t know anything about her. 

I was in a mentoring group and the leader said, “By the way, friends, I heard a rumor that Francine Rivers is at the conference.” 

Everybody was all excited, and I was just like, “Oh, that’s cool. I’m so happy for all of you. I hope you get to meet her.” That kind of thing. Because I didn’t know her. That was my brain. 

At dinner the next evening, or whenever it was, I got to the dining room a little bit late. I’m scrambling, and I got my meal and so forth, and I’m looking around and there was not a chair anywhere. There was just nothing. I was like, “Am I going to have to sit on the floor?” It was so full. 

Then I saw, back way in the corner kind of tucked up against the wall, there was a table with several people and a two or three empty chairs. I’m like, “Well that’s where I’m going, I guess.”

I go over there and I just said to the ladies, “Hi, may I join you?” 

Very graciously a woman—I didn’t know it was Francine—said, “Yes, please.”

I sat down right next to her and she was not wearing a name badge. I’m thinking—I know it’s a podcast and listeners can’t see my body language, but I’m sort of straightening up—I’m thinking, “I’ve been to this conference several times. I know my way around this thing now. I know what you’re supposed to ask at dinner. You introduce yourself and you ask, ‘So what do you write?'”

So I turned to Francine Rivers and I said, “Hi, my name is Shadia Hrichi. It’s so nice to meet you. What’s your name and what do you write?”

She had the most gracious response. She said, “Well my name is Frannie and I write Christian fiction.” I forgot exactly how she said it, but basically Christian Fiction.

Then she started describing one of her books or something and I turned to her, because then I finally figured it out, you know, lame! I’m like, “You’re Francine Rivers!”

I think the entire table behind us turned around because I said it so loud. 

She said, “Yes.” She’s very gracious and humble.

Anyway, we had this great conversation. Then she, of course, wanted to know what I was writing because we all knew what Francine wrote! I did not need to ask her that! And she just was excited to hear about a Bible study at that time that I was writing on Hagar.

She said, “That sounds so intriguing.”

Then there was like sort of this pause in the conversation and I was thinking, “Oh, this would be the great moment to ask if she’d read it.” But you know, everybody in the room wants to ask, “Would you be willing to read this?” 

So I thought, “I can’t ask her that. Everybody here probably asks her that.” So I didn’t say anything. 

But she turned to me and said, “I’d like to give you my email. I really would like to read the first chapters that you wrote.” 

I just gasped and I’m like, “You’re kidding me.”

From there, God just blessed me with her kindness and her gracious, gracious heart and her tremendous encouragement. I mean, thankfully it was good writing. I can’t imagine what she would’ve said afterwards. Like, “Oh, well thanks for sharing.”

Obviously God was in the center of all of that. She ended up endorsing the study and so forth. She’s been a tremendous blessing, and like you were saying, Karen, she’s become a friend. Truly, truly a dear encouragement. 

Karen: I’ve been to a lot of Christian writers conferences, and I’ve been to a lot of secular writers conferences. The thing that has always struck me is how the people at secular writers conferences often try to lift themselves up as greater and bigger and better than they are.

If you don’t know their name, they look at you and scoff like, “Well, don’t you know who I am?” 

I remember meeting Nora Roberts once, and she clearly did not have the time to spend with this young, inexperienced Christian fiction editor. It’s just a very different attitude and world. It’s about receiving the accolades, you “deserve.” 

Yet at the Christian conferences, you meet people who have every right to expect to receive their due accolades. And they don’t. They don’t put themselves up on a pedestal. Like Francine will say, “God does the writing, but my hands are on the keyboard.”

I know so many other well-known, bestselling writers who come in with the attitude that what they do is obey God. That doesn’t make them special, it just makes them believers. And I love that. I love that about who God has made us to be in the context of writing for him and with him.

I think that’s why it’s so important to have a prayer team. Because in doing this, in accepting the task to write whatever he tells us to write and to share the truths that he gives us to share, we have to be so careful. 

Shadia: Yes. 

Karen: There are so many temptations. So many pitfalls. So many ways to believe your own press. So many ways to compare yourself to others and feel totally inadequate and afraid and depressed. The enemy loves it when we start to give in to those voices.

Our prayer team members become the warriors who step up and unleash the armies of heaven upon us when we start to lose our way. They’re the ones who step up and celebrate when things go well. And they’re the ones who will say things that we need to hear whether we want to hear them or not. 

I’ve always looked on prayer teams as a kind of power pack that you plug in to and it surges into you. Their prayers, their love, their service surges into you and grants you clarity and a better understanding of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and who is this God that has given me this horrible, awful, terrible, no good, very bad career that I have to do where I have to put everything on the line and then listen to every wannabe writer and editor tell me how I used commas incorrectly in my 142,000 word manuscript!

Shadia: Yes!

Karen: There is so much that we’ve talked about and so much to think about. Because of that, we’re going to finish this up on our next episode instead of trying to blow your brain with even more information. Join us in our next episode for the second half of Plugging into the Power of Prayer Teams.

No writer should be without a powerful foundation of prayer. Guest @ShadiaHrichi shares her experiences and guidance for how to build your very own prayer team. #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

Do you have people who pray for you and your writing?

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

Thanks so much to our January sponsor of the month, Priscilla Sharrow! She’s working on her memoir called Bonked! Life, Love, and Laughter with Traumatic Brain Injury, which will come out with 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 P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 181 – Plugging into the Power of Prayer Teams with Guest Shadia Hrichi, Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

One of the best ways to develop a deeper and more intimate relationship with God is to go on the journey he invites us on—the path of questioning. Guest Eva Marie Everson shares how by exploring—and answering—the profound questions God has for us will change our lives and writing.

About Eva Marie Everson

Eva Marie Everson is the CEO of Word Weavers International, a CBA bestselling author of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, and multiple award-winning author and speaker. She is the director of Florida Christian Writers Conference and a frequent speaker at writers conferences and women’s events. Eva Marie and her husband make their home in Central Florida where they are owned by a cat named Vanessa.

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 glad that you’re here with us in this Christmas season. We’re going to be continuing our very cool interview with Eva Marie Everson, and we’re just gonna jump right in. So come with us!  

Eva Marie: The question “Where did you come from and where are you going?” which was the Genesis 16 question to Hagar, took me weeks to answer. I would write a little bit, put my journal away, write a little bit, and put my journal away. 

Because when it comes to the “Where did you come from?” question, that’s an answer that you can start with, well, this is me: “I come from a small town along the low country of Georgia called Sylvania, right outside of Savannah.” And that could be my answer. 

But then I started looking into who my parents were, what my home life was like, my teachers at school, my Sunday school teachers. My friends, activities, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all the people who poured into my life, who made me who I am, and who helped shape some of the decisions that I made along the way. Some of the choices that I made along the way, the good ones and the not so good ones, you know? 

It took me a long time to answer that and this is the conclusion I came to. Here I was like, you know, in my late fifties, early sixties at this point, and I was like, “My whole life I have flown by the seat of my pants. I never made a logical choice in my life.”

I didn’t realize that until I answered that question. Then here I am now with the “And where are you going?” part of the question. Well, now I know where I’m going. I’m going to sit down and make some logical decisions. That’s where I’m going. 

It truly changed the way I responded, or acted instead of reacted, to things. It changed my ability to make decisions, and to make decisions not just for the betterment of myself, but for the betterment of everybody around me, so that everyone else wasn’t getting caught up in my train wreck. That was a hard question to answer. 

Erin: It takes a lot of courage to wrestle with this. You know, you think of Jacob wrestling with God all night long. That’s the kind of wrestling that we’re talking about here. Wrestling to answer these things and to go into these questions. I think it’s so valuable. Just reading through some of the questions you have in the book, you can just see the potential. 

I love the question, “Who do you say I am?” If writers struggled and wrestled over that question, what a difference it would make in the peace they have on their journey. 

Eva Marie: That’s right. And on that story of Jacob wrestling, at the end of the wrestling, there was a question. God asked him a question. He said, “What is your name?”

Erin: Yes!

Eva Marie: Because at the beginning of this whole brouhaha, he passed himself off as Esau. “I am Esau.” Back when Isaac said, before he gave his blessing, “Who are you? Who is this?”

“I am Esau,” Jacob said.

Now, oh, this makes me cry every time I think about it. Now, God is saying, “What is your name?” 

And Jacob says, “I’m Jacob.” 

Erin: He admits to being the usurper. 

Eva Marie: Exactly. He admits it. “I’m the usurper. I’m the conman. I’m the scoundrel.”

And God says, “Yeah, you are, but I’m going to give you a new name. Israel. Because you wrestle with God and man, and you overcame.”

That’s so powerful. My eyes tear up, my nose clogs up because I just cannot imagine that moment with him. You know that when God said, “What is your name?” that Jacob surely thought, “Oooh… that’s what this is about.”

Erin: Yep. I like that. I like, too, when God says to Moses, “What is that in your hand?” That’s powerful because what does Moses have? He’s just been given this commission, to go tell Pharaoh to let the people go, and here’s what you got. You’ve got God. But also, you’ve got this staff.

Eva Marie: You’ve got a staff. But that was the tool of his trade, right? And he was going to shepherd these people. And that’s why I said that a pen is the tool of our trade. Or our keyboard. Are you willing to throw it down and pick it up in a new and different way? In a way that might be dangerous?

Erin: Yeah. 

Eva Marie: You know, pick up a snake by its tail, and it’s gonna bite you. 

Erin: Right?  

Eva Marie: But that’s what Moses was supposed to do. And if you do it in a way that you’ve never done it before, then God’s like, “Watch what I’m going to do with it. I’m going to bring it back to its original purpose and it’s going to be powerful. It’s going to lead people out of slavery.”

That’s what I want my pen to do. I want my pen, whether I’m writing fiction or nonfiction, to lead people out of the slavery of sin. That’s what I want. 

Karen: In response to these questions, the first reaction is fear. The enemy has got us so tied up in fear about exposing ourselves, about speaking the truth of who we are. About saying what we have, and fearing that what we have will be taken away.

We all need to go back and get solid in our minds the answer to “Who do you say that I am?” Because this God is not a God who’s trying to trick us. He’s not a God who’s trying to take away the best thing in our lives. He’s trying to give us the best, if we will let go of what is less than. 

Erin: Right. And the question, “Where is your faith?” We need to ask ourselves that. When we’ve got the God of the universe with us as he promises to be, how does our faith slide? Where does it go? These are questions that we need to be pondering. They need to be secure in our heart.

I love the way you’ve been talking, Eva, about that deeper intimacy and going deeper. The answers need to be deep in our hearts. The whole idea that God is asking us these things is so that can happen. 

Eva Marie: And about the time that you think you’ve answered the question, you realize there’s more. That’s why I love the journaling. It’s because I get to come back to it and come back to it and come back to it until I’ve just literally poured myself out.

Then there are times when, I don’t know, months could go by. Then all of a sudden something in that question from three months ago will rise up, and it will niggle at my heart, like there’s more to answer. There’s more to this, and I gotta go back to it, and that’s okay. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Karen: First time I did a prayer labyrinth, I was on a silent retreat. As I walked the path and was meditating and praying, it struck me so hard that I was far from the first person to walk this path. That I was walking in the footsteps of countless others who had come to the same place to walk and contemplate and pray and seek God. 

I thought of the history, the legacy, both of the prayer labyrinth, and of the family of faith. And that we never have to face these things alone. We have God, of course, but there are so many others that God puts in our path.

As I put my feet down with each of the changes in each of the angles and the turns, I thought, “People have been here before. People will come behind. I’m a part of something that draws us closer to God.”

Eva Marie: The thing about the prayer labyrinth is you do have to watch your feet. Otherwise, you’re gonna go off course. Then I think about the verse that says, “Your word is a light unto my path and a lamp unto my feet.” But it’s only right where I’m walking. Only right where I’m stepping. I can’t look beyond right where I am. I’ve gotta be in that moment, and that’s what’s so beautiful about a prayer labyrinth. 

Erin: Yeah, and I think the silence. We touched on that a little bit before, but it’s so hard to come by. Not just is it hard to come by, but I think our culture is becoming more and more afraid of silence. For some it’s, “Well, I don’t wanna hear what I’m gonna hear when I’m silent.” 

For others, noise is just the constant in their lives. It’s a distraction. But I feel like it’s almost become the great numbing drug, this constant noise.

So I really like the idea of having that focused silence where you’re not getting input from your phone or news or whatever. You’re specifically focusing on just getting input from God and that’s all. I think that’s a real challenge for us. 

Eva Marie: I say in the book to take your phone and turn it to silent and then put it in another room. Get away from the darn thing because you will inevitably go, when your brain starts thinking about something, “Huh, I wonder where that is…” And now I’m over here checking. 

Karen: Take it off of vibrate, too. Don’t let it vibrate because you still hear that. 

Eva Marie: It could be someone who needs me!

Erin: It’s just a testimony to how our brains really are being rewired by things like the Internet and social media. All kinds of things like that where our brains are expecting that constant new thing to stimulate us. That’s a difficulty we need to overcome. 

I think you’re right, Eva, that literally putting the phone in another room on silent is a good call. Or going outside. We will actually feel discomfort with being away from our phone because we’re so used to being so connected to it. I know Karen had to go without Internet for a while at her house, and that must have been terrible.

Karen: It was brutal.   

Eva Marie: Yeah, we experienced that during Hurricane Ian. I live here in Florida. I picked my fifteen-year-old grandson up from school, maybe a week after Ian, and I asked him, “How did you guys do? That was a pretty intense storm.”

He said, “We didn’t lose electricity, but we lost Internet.”

I said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you lost Internet.” 

He said, “Oh my gosh, I thought I was gonna lose my mind.” 

Erin: Yeah. It’s just that we’re trained. 

As we’re starting to run out of time here, Eva, do you have some final words of wisdom or encouragement that you want to give writers, especially as we’re pretty much in the Christmas season?

Eva Marie: Not a single word.

Karen: Okay, then thanks! Good having you here. 

Eva Marie: Words. I need a word. I just posted this picture of a Shakespearean-era writer with his quill, and you can tell he’s just so intense. I wrote, “What caption would you put under this?”

My caption was, “Word! Half my kingdom for a word!” 

We’re going into the Christmas season and one of the nice things for those of us who are writers not just, you know, for a hobby but are professional writers, is that this is kind of the season where everything slows down and it’s nice. It’s nice to get away from the frenzy of it all and just to take some time and be quiet and reflect.

That’s what the whole Advent calendar is about. To think about who came. It was the Word. The Word came. And the Word was God and the Word was with God. I love that because it’s all about the spoken Word and then the written Word. 

Just take some time to breathe and not get caught up in the frenzy. Take some time to be silent. Take some time to ponder the questions that God asked. Not just in the Bible, but the questions he’s speaking to your heart during this time as to why he came. And the beautiful way he came. And who he wants to be in your life. 

The question that I’m working on right now, and have been working on for a little over a week, actually comes from the Easter story. It was when Jesus was in the garden, and the Roman soldiers and the temple guards came with Judas into the garden of Gethsemene. Jesus asked them this question, “Who is it that you seek?”

They said, “Jesus, the Nazarene.”

Now, most of our translations say that Jesus said, “I am He.” 

But the original transcript says, “I Am.” 

And they fell. They stumbled back and fell on the ground because he had just declared the holy name of God: I Am. 

Erin: Right. 

Eva Marie: When they stood up, Jesus asked them again, “Who is it that you seek?”

They said it again, “Jesus, the Nazarene.”

He said, “I told you, I Am.” In other words, why are you still looking? But the question led me to who I Am is, and who do I want I Am to be in my life. Am I just seeking all that I Am can give to me? That part of the I Am? I Am, the Creator? I Am, the all sufficient one. I Am, the all-encompassing one. I Am, the all-giving one. Is that what I want?

Or do I want more of what Paul said? I want to know Christ and I want to know his sufferings. I want to know the power of his resurrection, but I want to know his sufferings and be like him in his death. So what part of God am I seeking? Is it just the easy part or is it the hard part? 

And then look at what came on that first Christmas morning, or as we celebrate it, that morning of his birth. Who came? What came? What are you seeking? Just like the shepherd. The little drummer boy. 

Who is it that you seek? That’s a good question. It’s a hard question. 

Karen: It is. Well, I hope that everybody who’s listening, I hope that all of us, even the three of us here will take all of this to heart and to seek within ourselves, “Who is the I Am to me ? How do I know him better? How do I come into a place where I accept all of who he is and not just the parts that are easy?”

Thank you, Eva. It’s been wonderful.

Eva Marie: Thank you. 

What are the most powerful questions God has for you? Join guest @EversonAuthor as she shares the deep questions that will change your life and writing journey. #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

Who is the I Am to you?

The Third Path: Finding Intimacy with God on the Path of Questioning by Eva Marie Everson

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

This month we want to give YOU a gift: a discount on one of our online Going Deeper Workshops called PREPARE YOUR HEART TO BE A WRITER. We want you to have a foundation of trust and truth so solid that nothing will shake you on your writing journey—and nothing will derail you from the task God’s given you. For the month of December, instead of $49, you can get this course for $20! That discount is our gift to you for all your support in listening. Who doesn’t love a sale with all the inflation happening around us? So if you have a writer on your Christmas list, or maybe you want to gift yourself, check out the course at https://writefromthedeep.teachable.com/

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 180 – God’s Questions for You! with Guest Eva Marie Everson, Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

We often talk about the questions we have for God, but do you realize God has questions for you? Questions that will rock your faith and world. Questions that will draw you into a more intimate relationship with the God of the universe. Join us and Guest Eva Marie Everson, who discovered this amazing journey of questions as she researched prayer labyrinths. God is inviting you to walk the path of questioning with him, and you’ll never be the same…

About Eva Marie Everson

Eva Marie Everson is the CEO of Word Weavers International, a CBA bestselling author of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, and multiple award-winning author and speaker. She is the director of Florida Christian Writers Conference and a frequent speaker at writers conferences and women’s events. Eva Marie and her husband make their home in Central Florida where they are owned by a cat named Vanessa.

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

Karen: Hey, guys, welcome to the deep today. We’re just delighted to have you here because we have a guest: Eva Marie Anderson. We’re so happy to have you here, Eva!

Erin: I get to introduce her! Eva Marie Everson is a CBA bestselling and multiple award-winning author and speaker, and she’s got stuff like being a Christie Award finalist, a Silver Medallion winner, a Carol, several Maggies, Golden Scroll Awards. The list goes on and on. Inspirational retailer’s choice, on and on, you guys. 

She also is one of the original five Word Weavers members, which began way back in 1997. Now she’s the CEO of Word Weavers International, and that serves writers primarily as a national and international group of critique and educational chapters.

Eva Marie also serves as director of the Florida Christian Writers Conference, which I know you’ve heard us talking about before. In 2022, Eva Marie was awarded the Yvonne Layman Legacy Award and the AWSA Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a graduate of Andersonville Theological Seminary and the Tzemach Institute, and we are just delighted to have her with us today. Welcome, welcome, Eva!

Eva: Thank you, thank you!  

Erin: Of course we’re going to start with our favorite question. What does the deep mean to you, Eva? 

Eva: Hmm. I’m so glad you asked me that. One of my favorite Scriptures, and I think this answers the question, one of my favorite Scriptures comes from Philippians when Paul said, “I want to know Christ.” Then he goes on into this explanation. He says, “Yes, to know the power of his resurrection. And to participate in his sufferings…” And then he says, “Becoming like him in his death.” 

For me, that is so multilayered, but that is about going deeper and deeper and deeper into your relationship and in love with Christ. When you want to know everything about him, not just the good stuff, you know, the power of his resurrection. That’s good, we like the power. But then also to participate in the sufferings and to be like him in his death. That’s getting down to the nitty gritty, and for me, that’s going deep. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Karen: Amen. 

Erin: What you said made me think of Philippians 1:29, “So it’s been granted to you, Philippians, to not only suffer for him…” You know, it’s like, this is a privilege. You get to suffer. Not only do you get to know him, but you get to suffer with him. And what was your verse reference? 

Eva: Philippians 3:10. 

Erin: I love it. Very cool. All right, so here’s the thing, you guys. I have been reading this book called The Third Path: Finding intimacy with God on the Path of Questioning, and it just so happens to be written by our favorite award-winning author here that we’re talking to.

I have really been enjoying this book because it talks about finding intimacy with God. Here we are in December, thinking about Emmanuel, thinking about God with us. That’s all about intimacy and all about relationship. 

I think this is just such an interesting book, and we’re going to talk talk more about it, but let’s just start here at the very beginning. This book is talking about prayer labyrinths. Explain to our listeners what in the world a prayer labyrinth is and why are you interested in them? 

Eva: Why am I so interested? Well, one of the things that I read some time ago was that a labyrinth is a path with a purpose, and I thought that was really cool. You know, it’s different than a maze. A maze is designed to confound and confuse you. You take a path in and then all of a sudden there’s a wall and you’ve got to turn around and go back and figure out which way to go to get to the center. But not with a labyrinth. It’s a clear path.

It is a curved path, but it is a straight path, if that makes any sense. It’s leading you straight into the center and then right back out again. I say straight, not really literally straight, but there are no barriers. You don’t have to concentrate on, “Uh oh, did I just make a wrong turn there?”

There are no wrong turns. There are just curves. It keeps curving into the center and then curving back out. But how I got interested in prayer labyrinths, it happened I think maybe in 2016 or 2017. Somewhere in there I was at the Blue Lake Christian Writers Retreat in Andalusia, Alabama. It’s held in a Methodist camp that is rustic, to say the least. They have indoor plumbing, but… 

Erin: That’s good!

Eva: Of course my idea of roughing it is sleeping on the sofa at The Ritz. But it’s just, you know, very plain, ordinary. You walk in, here’s your room. It’s got a bed, it’s got a desk. It’s got, I don’t think any dresser or anything. It has an open closet and a tiny little bathroom with a shower stall and that’s it.

It’s cement block. It’s just very plain and ordinary, so there wasn’t anything about it that stood out to me. And I noticed while I was there at this conference, spending very little time in my room, I noticed that there was a folded eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper on the desk. Didn’t pay any attention to what it was, not at all.

At the end of the conference, I’d packed my bags and was rolling them out of the door, and I looked behind me to make sure I hadn’t left anything. 

Erin: Good plan.

Eva: I see that piece of paper and the Holy Spirit said, “Pick it up.” 

I mean, I heard it as clearly as I hear myself speaking right now. “Pick it up. Take it home.”

I didn’t know what it was, but okay, I picked it up and brought it home. About three days later, I was emptying out my purse and I found that piece of paper. Apparently, it was about a prayer labyrinth that was at the conference center. One that I didn’t know anything about simply because I hadn’t taken the time to look at the piece of paper.

But this particular prayer labyrinth had four paths. My first thought was, “Well, I’ve heard of prayer labyrinths but I don’t really know what they are.”

When I don’t know what something is, I’m a research hound. I love to research. So I began to look them up. I grabbed my journal and a pen and started writing what prayer labyrinths are and really how far back they go.

In fact, I’ve had several people say to me, “Aren’t they very new age?”

No, actually they’re very old age. They go way, way back to the earliest mothers and fathers of our faith. They were designed to not just center you, but to recenter you. To give you that moment of just concentrating on walking the path and being specific about what you’re thinking about and meditating on as you’re heading toward the center. 

So this particular labyrinth had four paths. The first was the path of silence, which is very important and not something that is easily grasped in our day and time. The second path, as we’re circling around toward the center, was the path of memory. The third path in this particular labyrinth was the path of prayer, followed by the path of questioning. 

Again, as I kept researching this and journaling what I was researching, I did enormous research into silence. Then, you know, kind of figured out what the path of memory is, just kind of when you’re talking about, like, “This is what’s going on in my world, God…” And then for the path of prayer, “These are the things that I need to chat with you about.”

I felt that, I hate to say this, but I felt they did it wrong. 

Erin: All those ancient people, they messed up…

Eva: The prayer should always be the last thing. I felt that the questioning should come third. So I did a little flip flop on that. I just assumed, and I wrote in my journal, well, I’m assuming this is questions that I have for God. 

Now I had at that time three questions for God that I don’t believe will ever be answered this side of glory. My number one question, just to give you an example of what I’m talking about, is, “Why me?”

Erin: Yeah. 

Eva: “Why did you love me so much that you pursued me?” I was a mess. I didn’t deserve to have him die for me. Which leads me to the second question, “Why did it have to be so violent? Why did it have to be so horrific? Why couldn’t you just have eaten a bad apple or something? Why did it have to be under this Roman persecution and be a Roman crucifixion?”

It was just so brutal. I’m just in awe that God would do that for us. That he would pursue that. First of all, that he would send his Son to die in that brutal way. But then secondly, that having done that, as if that’s not enough, he pursues us relentlessly. That he pursued me, as big a mess as I was, just will always be a question. It’s gonna be hard for me to understand my own value in his eyes.

There was one other question that’s just really maybe too intimate for me to go into. But I wanted a prayer labyrinth after all that research. I wanted my own labyrinth. But, I live in Florida and I live in a part of Florida where we have zero property line, so there is nowhere to build a labyrinth.

Now, I actually live up against a conservation area, so technically I’m thinking that, well, my husband could probably go out there and design a prayer labyrinth in the backyard. But we also have alligators, snakes, and so on. 

Erin: You do not want to meet an alligator along the path of questioning!

Karen: Well, those are things to contemplate as you’re walking. “Why, Lord, did you create alligators?” 

Eva: Right? It’s like, don’t let your small animals out the back door, kind of thing. You’ve got fox and bear and other animals. So I’m thinking, “No. No on this.” Because the last thing I want is to be walking and meditating with the Lord and have a black racer slither across my my path. That would not be good. 

Then I thought, “Hmm, we live in a cul-de-sac and there’s a tree in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and I could just walk around the tree a couple of times per path.”

But then I pictured my neighbors calling the authorities.

Karen: “She’s lost her mind…” 

Eva: “She’s just walking in a circle and every so often her mouth moves…”

Karen: “I think it’s witchcraft…”

Eva: “Send the men with the white jacket…”

Then I just continued writing and I thought, “While I’m writing this, why can’t I journal the labyrinth? Why can’t I sit down every day, and have my time of silence, grab a Scripture and meditate on that. And then my path of memory is kind of like, ‘This is what’s going on inside me today. This is what’s happening, this is how I feel about it, God.'”

Then I can go into the path of questioning, and I’ll write my three questions down for the Lord, and then move on to prayer. 

Well, we got to day two of this, and I was very excited until I got to the path of questioning. I thought, “This is going to be very monotonous because these are not going to be answered this side of glory. I’m not going to sit here and write the questions every day. I’m just going to end up going, “Ditto.” You know, like, “You know what they are…” and just leave it at that. 

But as I was writing all of this, I heard the Holy Spirit again speak to my heart and say, “Not your questions. My questions.”

I wrote, “What questions do you have? You’re omniscient. You’re all knowing. What questions could you possibly ask?”

Then I heard the answers. “Where are you? What is this thing you have done? Where did you come from and where are you going? What you want? What do you want me to do for you? Where is your faith? Why were you afraid?”

The questions go on and on and on. 

I grabbed my Bible and a ruler, and I began to go down the columns, looking for the question marks. I spent a year, maybe a year and a half, just poring over questions and writing my answers back to God and growing deeper and deeper in love with him. And my relationship became more and more intimate.

As it was getting about to a year and a half of doing this and not mentioning it to anyone, just doing it, it was about time for me to teach at the Blue Ridge Writers Conference. This is up in North Carolina. I was talking to Edie Melson, the director, and I said, “This has changed my life as a writer and I would love to be able to take this and teach this.”

She said, “Let’s do it.” 

So we did a continuing class, and I only allowed twelve people in. I thought I would be lucky if I had five. I ended up with a wait list. Every year, I have a wait list. I’ve taught this all over now. One of my greatest joys was teaching it at Mount Hermon, teaching it at Blue Lake, where the whole thing started, of course. Teaching it at women’s retreats and things like that.

I was having lunch with Rachel Hauck one day, a New York Times bestseller, and one of my dearest friends, and she said, “Where’s the book?” 

I said, “Where’s the book?” 

She said, “You’ve gotta be kidding! You’ve gotta share this!”

And I said, “Okay.” But that meant I was going to have to pick out the questions I thought would lead to a new path and that was a path that people could walk and then start their own journey. So I pulled twenty-six questions out of the Bible, out of the hundreds of questions that God asked, and I wrote The Third Path. 

Erin: You said that this specifically changed your life as a writer. Can you give us some examples? What has that done for you as a writer? 

Eva: Well, it changed me as a writer because it forced me to go deeper and to think differently. To see myself differently. To understand in ways that I had never understood before that God gave me this talent for a reason and that he didn’t give it to everyone.

You know, we can all sing, but we can’t sing well. We can all draw, but we’re not artists, right? We can draw a stick figure, but we’re not necessarily going to draw a Monet or a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh. And we can all write words, but we’re not all writers. We’re not all publishable. 

For whatever reason, my whole life, looking back on it, I realized I always saw in word pictures. I realized I always thought in word pictures, and I thought in story, and that that was a gift and that it was not to be taken lightly, nor was it to be abused. But in order for me to fully understand that, I had to go to some really deep places and sometimes some dark places, because some of the questions are hard. They’re not easy.

Even some of the easier questions hit hard. For example, the question “What do you want?” or “What do you want me to do for you?” which are two separate questions that Jesus asked. I’m like, “Mmm, you want me to be honest?”

Erin: Yeah. 

Eva: I got to that question and I’m writing it down as if it’s coming from God to me: “What do you want me to do for you?”

My first response is, “Do you want me to be honest? I mean, you know, that? Can I tell you that?” 

Karen: As if God didn’t already know! “I’m God!” 

Eva: Even like we see each other, and we say, “How are you doing?”

“I’m good. How are you?” And actually the answer is, “It’s horrible. My life is horrible. Thank you for asking.” But we don’t say that, right? We don’t answer truthfully.

Erin: Yeah. 

Eva: We just put on these fronts, these airs. We have these pat answers. But when God says, “How are you?” like he asks Hagar, in his second meeting with Hagar that we know of, I think it’s in Genesis 18—first one’s in Genesis 16, but in Genesis 18, Ishmael is dying under a bush, and he comes to Hagar and he says, “What’s the matter Hagar?”

“Oh, nothing.” You know…

Karen: She was a Christian in church. “Oh, nothing. Do you need help with food today or…?”

Eva: “Doing fine, doing fine. My son’s over there dying under a tree, but other than that, everything’s great…”

But what I love about that question is not only did he care, but he called her by name. So when I wrote that, I wrote, “What’s the matter, Eva Marie? What’s the matter?”

Because every day of our lives, something is the matter. There’s something that’s weighing heavy on our hearts every single day. And God’s like, “Well, tell me.” 

Erin: What do you think is the barrier? Obviously we struggle with this. Why do we struggle? Why do people struggle to know what they really want or to admit it? Especially writers. 

Eva: Yeah, well, you know, we certainly don’t wanna reach for the stars for heaven sakes. But isn’t that what happened with blind Bartimaeus when Jesus said, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Blind Bartimaeus could have said, “I want enough money to get through the week. I want people to quit picking on me. I want enough money to get through the month, the year.”

But he went for broke. “I want to see.” 

Because if he could see, everything else could be given to him. So he went absolutely for the stars. “What’s the best you got for me, Jesus? That’s what I want. I want to be able to see.” 

Jesus healed him and he could see.

Karen: We’re so conditioned to not tell people what we really want. 

Eva: That’s right. 

Karen: We’re afraid that we’ll seem prideful. We’re afraid that we’ll seem ungrateful. There are fears, and I think those fears come from the enemy. He plants them inside of us because he doesn’t want us to recognize that when the God of the universe is coming to us and saying, “What do you want me to do for you?” it’s not a trick question. It’s not like he’s waiting for us to give the wrong answer and then he’s gonna pull the rug out from under us. 

God doesn’t work that way. He knows what we want before he even asks the question. But what he wants from us is our honesty. Our gut level, transparent honesty. 

Eva: And maybe a little conversation, you know? 

The interesting thing is, I have my “What do you want me to do for you?” answer. I was teaching this in Northern Arizona at a writer’s group and I said, you know, this is what I want. And this man sitting way in the back called out, “Why?”

Well, I hadn’t explored that yet. So I had to go back and kind of re-journal, and say this is what I want and this is why I want it. Now let me be honest about that. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Eva: And not just, “Well, it’d be kinda cool.” 

But more like: “What do you want me to do for you? I wanna be able to see.” 

“Why.”

“Because I’m blind. Because if I could see, I wouldn’t have to beg on the side of the road every day of my life. If I could see…”

I mean, do you remember that when Bartimaeus first was calling out, “Son of David…”? He was literally saying, “You’re the Messiah. Messiah, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

What were the disciples and all the people around him saying? “Hush! You’re bothering the Rabbi. You’re bothering the Master.” 

Karen: “You’re bothering the rabbi. Stop it. Don’t do this!” 

Eva: “What are you thinking?”

Erin: What’s so interesting is that they were trying to shame him, really. “You don’t deserve to talk to him.”

Karen: Right. 

Erin: I think that still sneaks in. Like we still have that shame that came way back in the Garden of Eden. Like, why do we still think God’s gonna pull the rug out from under us? Because somewhere, way back when, even Eve thought that. You know, “Oh, God’s holding out on me. I can’t eat that fruit because then I’ll be like God…” 

How can we get rid of that shame? I think one of the great things about asking these questions, going through this and being honest, is that it really helps us take a look at that. “Why do I feel ashamed? Why do I think God’s going to think this or that about me? Why am I so afraid?”

Eva: Like he doesn’t already know. 

Erin: And he does. But the key is we don’t. 

Eva: That’s it. That’s it. I mean, until somebody said to me, “Why?” I had never explored the reason why I want this. 

When I did explore the reason, it opened up a whole new room of other questions and future answers and more conversation with God on this. You know, it’s like, “Okay, yeah, we got the surface down here. But now let’s go a little bit deeper. Let’s go on. We’re gonna go a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper.”

Karen: Wow, guys, I don’t know about you, but this conversation has been amazing and inspirational. The good news is we’re going to continue it in our next episode, so make sure that you tune in. You don’t want to miss what else Eva has to share with us. 

Erin: That’s right! 

Guest @EversonAuthor helps us explore the questions God has for us––questions designed to draw us into a deeper relationship with the God of the universe. #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

What question is God asking you today?

The Third Path: Finding Intimacy with God on the Path of Questioning by Eva Marie Everson

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

This month we want to give YOU a gift: a discount on one of our online Going Deeper Workshops called PREPARE YOUR HEART TO BE A WRITER. We want you to have a foundation of trust and truth so solid that nothing will shake you on your writing journey—and nothing will derail you from the task God’s given you. For the month of December, instead of $49, you can get this course for $20! That discount is our gift to you for all your support in listening. Who doesn’t love a sale with all the inflation happening around us? So if you have a writer on your Christmas list, or maybe you want to gift yourself, check out the course at https://writefromthedeep.teachable.com/

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 179 – God’s Questions for You! with Guest Eva Marie Everson, Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Focus is something we do on a number of levels. From the overall picture to the daily minutiae of life and our writing journeys, we are constantly deciding what to focus on. How do you know what is most important in your writing career and what is just a distraction or poor use of your time? We’ll help you figure that out!

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

In the first episode of this series, we talked about how to achieve focus at the highest level—a lifestyle level. That was all about making values-based decisions about what activities and commitments you do and don’t want to have as part of your life. Check it out if you haven’t heard it yet. It’s a good backdrop for everything we’ll cover in the rest of this series.

Today, we’ll be talking about developing focus at the career level. 

For those of you who are just getting started in your pursuit of writing a career, or some form of ongoing publishing, you’re probably hearing advice like: Improve your craft, settle on a genre, create a website, build a newsletter list, get on social media, find more followers, get a marketing plan, study the publishing industry, find an agent, find a publisher, figure out how to indie publish…

It’s overwhelming. Trying to do too many things at once divides your attention, creates stress, and makes it hard to do any one thing with excellence.

Those of you in the midst of a writing career face a multitude of competing possibilities as well. How do you sort through it all? How do you know what area to “focus” on first, or what to focus on each day? 

Not surprisingly, the same type of answer we gave in our first podcast about focus on the largest scale also applies to this “career-level” scale of focus. You have to make decisions.

 In an article about focus by James Clear, he talks about using the “2 List Strategy” to create focus. Some people call it the “25/5 Strategy.” Several sources on the internet attribute this strategy to Warren Buffett, but there seems to be some controversy as to whether that’s really true. In any case, the strategy is worth considering.

In the 2 List Strategy, you start by writing a list of your top 25 career goals. This strategy is easiest to employ by those of you already in the midst of a writing career. If you’re in the beginning stages of writing, we’ll talk about a modified version of this for you in a bit. 

If you’re in the midst of a career right now, then make your list. Your top 25 career goals. You’re going to need to devote some time to this. Pray about it. Ponder it. Brainstorm. 

1. Create Specific Goals

You want to be as specific as possible with the goals you list. For example, rather than listing, “Increase my newsletter list,” choose something like, “Add 100 names to my newsletter list every month.” Rather than saying, “Create a backlist of books so I can more effectively advertise,” say, “Create a backlist of twenty books so I can advertise rotating discounts.” Or whatever.

2. Create Goals You Have Reasonable Control Over

It’s also important to pick goals you can reasonably control. So rather than listing, “Get on the bestsellers’ list,” instead list, “Execute an advertising campaign that would help me make a run for the bestsellers’ list.” Obviously your intention is to get on the bestsellers list, but you can’t control what other books come out the same week your book does, and you can’t control what others spend on their marketing campaigns.

Rather than saying, “Win a Christy Award,” which you can’t control, opt for something you can do to improve your craft, such as, “Read a book on dialogue and incorporate those new techniques in my next novel.”

3. Choose the 5 Most Important Goals

Once you’ve made your list of 25, go back and circle the 5 most important. Again, take your time with this. Pray about it. Seek counsel from wise people. Then choose 5 by circling them.

4. Focus on Your 5 Most Important Goals Until They’re Done

Now you have two lists. One list has the most important 5, and the other list has the remaining 20, which admittedly are also important otherwise you wouldn’t have listed them, right? But the key is that you’re only going to focus on those top 5. The top 5 are on your to-do list until they’re done. 

Guess what you should do with your remaining 20 items? Nothing. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. In fact, rename the list to: The Avoid At All Costs List.

It’s easy to get tripped up on this step. We’re tempted to think that we’ll work on those other 20 intermittently or in our spare time, because they’re not as urgent but they’re still important. Therefore, we still want to try to put some effort into them. 

That’s an understandable temptation, but that is exactly the wrong idea. Remember, if you want focus—and this is true on any level of focus—you have to make choices. You must decide what to say yes to and what to say no to. To focus on those top 5, you need to say no to those 20 other things. 

Remember, saying no is not the same thing as saying never. No means “not right now.” Not until you finish those top 5. After that, you get to create a new list of 5. Or, as you complete one thing on your top 5, you could move one of those other 20 things up to the top five, so you would have an evolving list. 

Also, you should be reevaluating your list regularly because things in our lives—and in the marketplace—constantly change. 

The benefit of all this list-making is that it helps you make a commitment. In another article by James Clear, he writes, “Basically, if you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything.”

Another benefit of this list-making is that it helps you avoid overwhelm. It gives you permission to NOT focus on those other 20 things, and that gives you peace of mind. Those things aren’t forgotten, they’re just safely tucked away for now. 

If you’re a newer writer, you still need peace of mind. You still need 2 lists. But, thinking in terms of career goals can be a minefield at this stage because many of those goals will require lots of smaller goals to be completed first. You can’t sell any books until you write them, and you can’t write them well until you’ve honed your craft, and so on. 

Instead of making a list of career goals, brainstorm your top 25 goals using a shorter timeline. For example, what do you want to accomplish by this time next year? Or in two years?

Some ideas to list might be:

Once you’ve made your list of 25, you’ll follow the same process we talked about for the more established writers: You’ll pray about your list, seek counsel from others, and then circle your top 5 goals. And you know what to do with those remaining 20 items: Say NO to them for now.

Remember that we’re following God in this endeavor, and he rarely gives the whole picture at once. That’s why prayer is such a crucial part in this. If he’s leading you to prioritize something—meaning to put it in your top 5—and it’s something that doesn’t exactly make sense to you, that’s okay. He has his reasons. Be obedient.

The 2 List Strategy is just one method of finding focus. It’s one method for picking what to say no to and what to say yes to. There are certainly other methods. For example, Gary Keller wrote a book called The One Thing which has another great perspective on how to focus.

One of the things he says in his book is how many of us fall into believing myths about productivity. One important myth he refutes is the myth that “Everything is equally important.” Everything is NOT equally important. To back up that statement, Keller points to the “80/20” rule, also called the Pareto principle, that says 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. If everything were equally important, we’d get the same results from everything. But we don’t.

How can we apply this information? We find the things in that 20% category of effort and keep saying yes to them, because that produces the greatest results. The things in the unhelpful 80% category of effort are the things we want to say no to.

How will you know which 20% is creating those terrific results? Measure as best you can. 

Some things are objective and easily measured—marketing results for example. If you find that the majority of your sales come from your newsletter list and very few sales come from, say, posting regularly on Facebook or Twitter, then you’d want to focus on your newsletter and free yourself from the burden of social media. Focus on doing the things that give you high impact results. If you enjoy social media, considerate to be just a fun thing you do, and keep it in the time you set aside in your life for fun or socializing.

Some of the measuring we have to do is more subjective. For example, do you find that when you write cozy mysteries the words flow easily and your critique partners say they enjoy your stories, and sometimes they even forget to critique? Yet when you work on the epic fantasy you feel committed to, it’s a slow grind that produces less exciting results? Is this subjective or objective? A little of both perhaps. But it may well be a sign that writing cozies is in your 20% of effort “wheelhouse,” and writing the epic fantasy is a less effective use of your time. 

Gary Keller also talks about asking yourself a key question: “What is the one thing I can do that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” 

This is a powerful question that deserves time and thought. It can help you narrow your focus on a large scale as well as a very small scale. We’ll talk about this question more in the next episode of this series when we cover focus on a daily, and even a moment-by-moment level. But for now, you can use it to help guide you in what to say no to on a career level. 

For example, maybe you have a lot of email to wade through, and a lot of advertising campaigns you’re overseeing, and you’re putting together information for newsletter swaps, and doing other administrative tasks. If you asked yourself, “What is the one thing I can do that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” the answer might be: hire a virtual assistant. That would make it unnecessary for you to do all those other email tasks because you’ve delegated it to someone else.

That decision helps you concentrate your work efforts on the things that only you can do, which means you’re more focused.

The question “What is the one thing I can do that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” also implies a sense of sequential order. Some things need to be done, or in place, before other things can happen. So you might think in terms of asking, “What must be in place before this goal I’m thinking of can happen?”

For example, you probably ought to settle into a genre before you pay to have a website designed. Or, you may decide to hold up on Amazon ads until after the fifth book of your series is complete so you have more opportunity for return on your investment of advertising dollars. 

You might wait to read that book on how to revise a novel until after you’ve finished your first draft. That way you let your creativity run its course as you write. Then you can set your draft aside, read the book on revising, and come back to your manuscript with fresh eyes and new information.

We’ve talked about some ways to help you find focus in your writing journey. But what about ways to maintain your focus? Aside from saying no to other options, what else can help you maintain focus?

1. Know Your Why and Keep it in Sight

Why did you put this goal on your list of career goals? Why is it important? It’s also good to ask: Is it still important or does it need to be changed? 

Why you do what you do should be a consistent topic of prayer. And keep in mind that God has his own agenda with each season, day, and moment in our lives. Be sensitive to his leading each day, even when it seems at odds with the goal you planned on for that day.

2. Measure Your Progress

Another way to help you maintain focus is to measure your progress. Not for judgment but for feedback on where you are right now. Tracking your journey helps give you a sense of forward momentum, even though some phases will take a while. Some phases might even feel like you’re spinning your wheels going nowhere, but those times still give way eventually—like a traffic jam that finally clears. In the overall scheme of things, you are moving, even if it’s slow sometimes. Measuring your progress helps you see that.

3. Celebrate Milestones

Celebrating milestones another way to measure your progress, and it’s fun! Celebrations give you encouragement and give you positive reinforcement for the hard work that focusing is.

4. Keep a Record

To help you eliminate distractions—and thus maintain focus—keep a record of why you chose to say yes to what you said yes to, and no to other things. Write in your journal: “I eliminated that because…” While it’s good to reevaluate sometimes, and to ask if the “because” is still true, it’s also good to not constantly rehash or second guess your decisions. Keeping a record helps you avoid unnecessary rehashing.

5. Have an Accountability Group

Consider forming a mastermind group, critique group, writers group, accountability group, or whatever kind of group, to help you stay accountable, to celebrate with, and so on. This group can be a great sounding board to help you process your decisions about what you’re saying yes and no to. They can also be a great source of encouragement. God has wired us for relationship. Don’t try to walk the writing journey alone.

6. Love the Process

While we’ve talked a lot about using goals to help you achieve focus, remember that it’s still the process that matters, not the end results. Writing is a journey, and you want to love the journey, love writing. We’re sometimes tempted to say, “I’ll love it when I arrive at this goal, or that goal…” Arriving at a goal is short-lived. It’s a specific point in time. And it’s transient because there’s always another goal to get to.

When we don’t love the journey, we’re in danger of becoming like a person on a road trip constantly asking, “Are we there yet…?”  But when we love the journey, we become partners with God on an amazing adventure that continually has new delights and joys, even amidst the difficulties.

As we ponder, pray, and submit our thoughts, our lists, and ourselves to God, keep in mind Hebrews 12:1.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)

Move forward with God’s guidance and his direction in what you need to focus on so you can walk in peace and confidence, and with a sense of great reward in our Lord and Savior, wherever the writing journey takes you!

What’s important NOW in your writing career, and what’s just a distraction? Find focus in your writing career! #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

The One Thing by Gary Keller

What helps you decide what to focus on first in your writing career?

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

A big thank you to our November sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the second book of the series!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 178 – Get Focused! Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Do you struggle to focus on your writing? You’re not alone. But you can regain the focus you need in your writing and your life. Come learn how!

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

With the busyness our culture and our lives bring us each day, we have a multitude of things vying for our attention. And it’s not just for any given moment but also for any given season in our lives. Urgent demands and expectations badger us relentlessly. This can create a problem that we might not even be aware of as it’s happening: we lose focus. We get sidetracked from what we actually wanted to be doing. And it happens on both a large, life-level scale and a small, moment-by-moment scale.

What should get our time and attention, and what shouldn’t? That’s the question we want to help you answer, so we’re going to talk about focus. What it is, how we achieve it, and how we can maintain it. It’s a big topic so we’ll cover it in a series of episodes.

Let’s start by defining focus. Merriam-Webster tells us focus is:

1a : a center of activity, attraction, or attention

b: a point of concentration

2: directed attention.

In an article on James Clear’s website he writes, “Experts define focus as the act of concentrating your interest or activity on something.” What I love about this definition is the idea of concentrating, Merriam-Webster mentioned that as well.

But how do we do that? James Clear goes on to say, “In order to concentrate on one thing you must, by default, ignore many other things…Focus can only occur when we have said yes to one option and no to all other options…in the present moment focus requires that you only do one thing.”

So tuning other things out is crucial to focusing. This is true both on a large scale and on a small scale. We’re going to cover both those scales, but for this episode we’ll concentrate on large scale focus.

On a large scale, you might have trouble focusing on your writing career or on the book you’re currently trying to write if you have a day job that demands you to put in lots of overtime. Maybe you also have children or grandchildren at home who keep wanting stuff from you—like dinner, or a diaper change, or help with homework, or a ride to soccer practice, or a listening ear when things go wrong at school. That’s a lot to deal with.

Or maybe you’ve always wanted to go back to school yourself to finish a degree or get a postgraduate degree. Or maybe you really love being a Bible study leader at church, and they’ve asked you to teach more classes.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these things by themselves, but if you try to do them all in this season of your life, you’ve got a recipe for disaster. There are too many large scale objectives competing for your time, attention, and energy. You end up burned out and stressed, and more often than not, feeling like a failure. And it’s not because you’re a terrible person, it’s because you’ve given yourself an impossible mission. 

You’ve got to make some choices if you want to be able to focus on writing. Because the key is focus. Focus—concentration, directed attention—is necessary in order to work to the best of your ability. You can work poorly without focus, but you can’t work at your best level.

Please don’t hear us saying that you can’t be a good mom and a good writer. Or that you can’t have a demanding day job and still be a writer, or whatever. What we’re saying is that you’re limited in time and energy.

Step one in achieving focus on a large scale is deciding how many large scale things you can reasonably manage, and which ones those will be. When it comes to writing, you have to decide whether writing that book or having some sort of writing career is in fact a goal right now. Whether it’s something you want to commit time and energy to, because that’s most likely going to come at the expense of something else. To say yes to one thing means you have to say no to other things.

Make a list of the things you’re already committed to, or that you want to commit to. It might help your list to be more thorough if you go through the various roles you play in your life. For example, maybe you’re a school teacher, a mom, a homeowner, a leader on your neighborhood association board, and a wife. 

You’ve really got to dig into those questions. To help do that, you need to consider your values.

Your values are just what it sounds like: the things you value. The things you believe are important in life in the way you work, in the way you live, and even in the way you play. Some examples of values are: generosity, compassion, creativity, courage, discipline, justice, joy, teamwork, connection, vision.

Why is knowing your values important?  What you do with your time, and how you do it, needs to align with what you value. If they align, then you will experience satisfaction. If they conflict, you set yourself up for frustration and discontent. 

As Christians, it’s important that our values also align with what the Bible teaches. The Bible is, in essence, God’s “User Manual” for our lives. When we put it at the center of our focus, we can move forward with confidence. If we try to go against it? You guessed it.  We’re setting ourselves up for frustration and discontent.

We found some great resources about values on the internet. One is a worksheet that gives a short list of values and has some great questions to ponder to help you make decisions based on your values. 

Another resource has a more exhaustive list of values that you can look at. It’s nice to have a list of values to help stimulate your thinking. 

Another way that might help you define your values is to consider three different types of experiences in your life. It’s best to consider examples from both your personal life and your career life. This method comes from another article on the internet.

1) Think about the times you were happiest in your life. 

2) Think about the times you felt most proud.

We’re not talking about arrogance here, but rather pleasure in accomplishment, of doing your best, of doing the type of good works well done that God planned for us. 

3) Think about times you felt most fulfilled or satisfied.

The goal, remember, is to identify the things that are truly important to you. The things you value. Think about all those experiences you’ve had and identify the values they represent. You can use one of those lists of values that we linked to to help you. Remember that typically when you’re feeling a deep joy, fulfillment, and a feeling of godly accomplishment, you’re probably doing something that aligns closely with your values.

For those of you who write fiction, thinking about values may be something you already do with your characters. You ask them what they value, or what they think is important in life and why. Do they value security, for example? And if so, how is that shown by what they do? Maybe your character chooses a career path that provides a high, steady income. Or maybe your character values freedom, so she buys an RV and travels the world working random odd jobs.

In fiction it’s always more interesting if your characters have values that bring conflict. What if your character values freedom but also values love? Now she has to decide between going on the road in her RV or becoming a wife to the man she’s fallen in love with, who must remain in the same town to care for his aging parents. She wants two roles: traveler and wife. Those roles highlight two different values: love and freedom. She can’t have them both. She has to make a difficult choice.

As fiction goes, real life can go, too. Conflict. Choices.

As you think about your values, you’ll find that, like our imaginary character, you have to rank which values are most important to you. It helps to ask yourself, “If I could satisfy only one of these values, which would I choose?”

That’s awful and doesn’t feel fair, but remember that achieving focus on a large scale means deciding not just how many large scale commitments you can reasonably manage, but which ones those will be. Most of us can’t do everything we want to in this life.

Understanding your values is important because it’s easy to get sucked into commitments that aren’t our passion and don’t reflect what we value most. For example, what if you’re putting in a lot of extra hours at work because that’s the culture there, but those extra hours put you in line for a promotion to a job that is less creative than your current job. You might just drift into that promotion without stopping to think about why you’re working all that overtime and whether you actually want that promotion. 

What if, when you stop to think about your values, you realize you’re working those hours and following your work culture because community is something you value. There’s nothing wrong with that. Unless it turns out that creativity is something you value more than community. Now you have insight into why you’ve been working long hours, and you can make an informed choice about whether you really want to keep doing that. 

Or, what if you’ve been feeling frustrated and dissatisfied with your life because you haven’t been making any progress on the manuscript you’ve been working on? You’ve been too tired after working those long hours. Once you realize you value creativity, it’s even easier to understand your frustration. You may have thought you were frustrated by your lack of energy, when really the underlying problem is a lack of focus on what you value most.

This was a simple example, and we’re not saying that all writers do or should value creativity most highly. These are complicated issues, and they’re hard decisions. James Clear, in his article, says, “Most people don’t have trouble with focusing. They have trouble with deciding.”

The decisions you make about what you value and what you commit to matter a great deal. Those decisions become permission. Making a decision means you’ve given yourself permission to take the time to write, for example. You’ve given yourself permission to say no to everything else during that writing time and do just that one thing. Or to say no to that request to be on your neighborhood’s Welcome Wagon committee, or whatever is of lesser value to you. That’s how you foster focus on a large scale in your life.

We encourage you to make decisions like this prayerfully. And look at the way God has made you. You probably won’t get neon signs or a pristine career plan all laid out for you, but you will sense God’s direction if you’re seeking him. He’s not trying to make you guess. We’ve done two previous podcast episodes (episodes 110 and 111) specifically on hearing God if you’re looking for more help with that.

Keep in mind, too, that God has given us all the gift of creativity in some way, shape, or form because we’re made in his image. Writing is a great way for us to live in to the act of creating with God. Even if you haven’t heard a directive from God that “thou shalt write,” there isn’t anything wrong with making the decision to have writing be part of your life unless God is telling you not to, which he might in fact do. 

For more about the question of: “Did God really ask you to write,” we have a special audio recording on our Patreon page called “Did God Really Ask You to Write.” Bear in mind that you have to be a patron for at least one month to get access to that. 

Don’t be afraid to stop writing, or cut back, if that’s what you need to do. We’ve interviewed several writers who’ve felt God leading them in exactly that direction (episodes 152, 153, 171, 172). We encourage you to listen to those interviews for more discussion about that.

It’s also crucial to periodically reevaluate our decisions. That’s another way we maintain focus on the things that are important to us. We have to make sure those things are still important. Set aside time, maybe quarterly or semi-annually or whatever, to check in with yourself and see if what you’re doing still makes sense. If your passion is still there. If your values are the same—because those can and do change over time. Life is fluid. 

In your evaluation, ask yourself if you were realistic about the time and energy involved in the commitments you made. Check in with your family, your boss, or whoever is important to you as well. They may have differing opinions about how well you kept up with your responsibilities. Ask yourself if you can take on something new. Or should you expand one of your roles? Or does something have to be cut back or dropped altogether?

So, the most basic and simple way we develop focus on the largest scale, a “life-size scale,” is to make decisions based on our values about what will and won’t be part of our life. What we will and won’t focus on. Knowing our values, knowing Scripture, praying through our decisions, submitting them to God, all this helps us know why we’re doing what we’re doing, and helps us be sure we’re focusing on what matters most. Then, we maintain our focus by sticking to those decisions. 

In the next episode of our series on focus, we’ll talk about developing focus within your writing career. Between now and then, we encourage you to spend time working through these issues. Know your values, understand your decisions so that your life can have the focus you want it to have!

Too much going on in your life? Struggling to find focus? We can help! #amwriting #christianwriter
Share on X

What do you think is the biggest challenge to finding focus?

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

A big thank you to our November sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the second book of the series!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 177 – Get Focused! Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.