Write from the Deep

Being a writer is exciting and fun—and overflowing with the unexpected. There are things coming on your writing journey that no one told you about! But it’s okay. We’re here to share what some of those things are, and, more important, to help you develop tools to endure and be refined in the unexpected.

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

I love writers conferences, and I believe they’re a good thing. But they can also be hard because it’s often at writers’ conferences where writers learn for the first time something no one ever told them about the writing journey.

Want to know what that is? Stay tuned. Because we’re not only going to tell you that, but several other things no one may have yet told you.

Here’s what I read in a Facebook post by Shannon Brink, a writers’ conference attendee. She gave me permission to share this.

“To be honest, I feel 30% encouraged by the content so far and 70% discouraged. With each bold step I take forward in writing, it feels like I learn the journey is ten steps farther than I thought! All of these lovely faculty are at such a further place in the journey and their journeys are all so inspiring, yet the whole ‘growing a platform’ piece feels so impossibly hard. Do any other authors struggle with this? I felt like I had achieved so much, getting my manuscript finished, branding my blog, gaining some steps in social media, finishing my proposal but then, woah…”

So let’s clear this up for everyone. For new writers, and for those who’ve been at this even for several years now: 

As difficult as it may be to hear that the journey is longer, harder, and more convoluted that you ever thought, think about if you knew everything—and I mean EVERYTHING—that’s involved in all this upfront. Might you be tempted to run screaming away? It’d be too overwhelming. Sometimes the best thing God can do for you is leave you in the dark about all the challenges that lay ahead in your life. He knows what they are, and that’s enough.

God not only knows what they are, he’s been there, seen that. A.W. Tozer puts it this way in a quote from his book The Knowledge of the Holy:

“God dwells in eternity, but time dwells in God. He has already lived all our tomorrows as he has lived all our yesterdays.”

Psalm 139 tells us:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” 139:13;16 (NIV)

What we want you to know is that there ARE challenges to this writing journey. And there will be MORE challenges. Much more than you’re picturing right now. So don’t let it surprise you when it happens. There isn’t some magical place you’re going to arrive at where there aren’t any more problems (except heaven!).

There isn’t some magical place you’re going to arrive at where there aren’t any more problems (except heaven!). #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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What we encourage you to do is take each challenge in stride. Look back at how far God has brought you and how faithful he’s been. He’s not playing some trick on you by leading you along on your journey only to abandon you at the edge of some precipice. He’s building your faith and your skills, and he’s teaching you to rely on him. 

If you’re prepared for that, for the long haul, for surprises, for difficulties, for everything to take much longer and be much harder than you thought, then you won’t be caught quite so off guard. Oh, you’ll probably still FEEL overwhelmed. Frustrated. Annoyed. But hopefully for a much shorter time, because you’ll be trained to know that God is still with you. That he never promised you an easy path. That he wants to see you grow and that, most of all, he’s going to get the glory for enabling you to do what you couldn’t possibly do on your own.

The next thing no one may have told you is that you need a cohort, a group of writers, at the same level as you are, who are moving with you. You need peers. We’re not saying you don’t need mentors and teachers ahead of you to help you learn. And yes, there will be people behind you to whom you should be lending a hand. 

But many authors neglect or fail to understand the necessity of having a group they’re traveling with. These are the writers who all might be having their very first book release at the same time. You can help each other because you’re all in the same place, having the same experiences. 

Or maybe they’re all now finding out just what it takes to grow a platform from small to large, and you can help each other and encourage each other. You can share blessings and woes and new ideas. 

These are the people who, like you, will be the writers of the future, the established veterans one day. But today’s veterans, those people ahead of you, are dealing with different problems that you haven’t come upon yet. It’s too early for you to be worrying about them. And the people behind you don’t understand your new conflicts and problems that you’re finding at your level. They can’t walk with you through them, because they’re not there yet.

So how do you find these people? Go to conferences, in person or online, and see who’s in the same classes as you. Join a writing group or start one. Or even consider a paid mastermind or a group that can help you connect with others.

Again, it’s great that writers of all levels can gather together and help each other. You need that. But you also need people at your level who you can grow up in the industry with. 

So don’t feel shut out when you can’t get into what feels like an advanced writers’ clique or what seems to be a closed group. They’re simply focused on issues they’re dealing with at their level. Instead, focus on finding other folks like you looking for connections at your level. These are where you have the best chance of forming lasting relationships as you take on the learning curve together. 

Make this a frequent topic of prayer: that God would lead you to friendships of his making. Divine appointments he sets up for you. Proverbs 12:26 says:

“The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” (NIV)

Proverbs 27:9 tells us:

“Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice.” (NIV)

Keep your eyes open, because you never know where and when and how God will bring new relationships about. 

The next thing no one may have told you is that even veteran writers get really hard edits filled with red ink and flaws. They get long revision letters pointing out plot problems, character problems, POV issues, and you name it. Now, to be fair, we can’t say for sure no one told you this because if you listen to our podcast, our last episode was an interview with Robin Jones Gunn, and she talked about turning in manuscripts that got rejected as unacceptable by her editors. And this was when she was a bestselling author.

What we want to focus on here is the difference between how veteran writers and new writers handle this. The veteran writers understand that writing is a process, and they roll up their sleeves and get to work. But first, they probably react just like you: with anger, frustration, annoyance, rebellion, you name it. But then they take a step back and look at their experience, and that experience gives them confidence that they can make the changes.

But what we often see happen to newer writers is that a hard critique or edit confirms, in their mind, their worst fear: they have no talent and they shouldn’t be writing. It’s a mindset difference. The veteran writer says, “I have work to do.” The inexperienced writer says, “I can’t do the work.” But really, you just haven’t learned how to do the work yet. Trust God to equip you for whatever tasks he’s given you. He’s not going to abandon you.

Ephesians 2:10 says:

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (ESV)

Hear this again: even the best of writers, gets harsh critiques and difficult edits. Don’t ever let that derail you. Be ready for it. It will happen. Ask God to help you process it. Bounce back, get better, and build your confidence in the writing—or should we say rewriting—process. 

Have you seen writers who seem to be doing an impossible amount of work? You know the kind: they have books coming out regularly, they put perfect pictures on Instagram, thoughtful posts on FB, pithy tweets on Twitter, and probably every other social media outlet. They have a robust newsletter list with 25,000 email addresses, and they probably even have ten children they’re homeschooling, three obedient dogs, and nutritionally balanced dinners every night. 

Here’s the deal: if this writer truly exists, and that’s debatable, what you probably haven’t been told is that they have people to help them. They aren’t doing it alone. They delegate. They hire people. They enlist volunteers. They use services. They are a business, and they manage that business. They don’t, and can’t do every aspect of it themselves. And this business did not develop overnight. They grew into an enterprise over time. 

So, when you feel overwhelmed about all the things some established writers are able to find time to do, remember that’s a representation of an established business and you’re just one person. It’s like comparing yourself to Coca Cola. You can’t do that and you can’t be that.

But what you can do is figure out what you’re good at and focus on that. You can lay the foundation for a future business if that’s where God is taking you. Learn to write the best books you can. Slowly grow your newsletter. Slowly engage people. Slowly make connections with assistants whose services you might want to use someday. Slowly learn about tools that can help you systematize your processes. Make mistakes. Change your mind. Remember that you’re sowing for a future harvest. 

Now, some of you listeners might be more established writers and you’re finding yourself in the middle of chaos. You’ve been trying to do all this on your own and you’re overwhelmed. It’s probably time to invest in help. Get to know yourself and what people like best from you. That’s how you learn what you can do yourself—what needs your personal touch—and what you can delegate. Set aside a portion of your writing income and reinvest it in finding help.

Yes, we just told you that the small income you may be getting from writing is about to get smaller. This is something else nobody ever told you about the writing journey. Whatever you think writers make, it’s way less. So, consider investing in someone to mow your lawn, or answer your email, or write your newsletters. Or invest in someone to make dinner, or run your Amazon ads, or train your dogs, or whatever you need.

If you don’t want to invest, if you feel God isn’t leading you to, then that’s okay, too. It is! But then be satisfied with where that decision puts you. Be satisfied with what type of writing journey that creates for you. Don’t look at those who are hiring and enlisting help and assume you can match that output with only one person doing the work.

The fifth thing no one may have told you is that you need more healthy habits than you realize. You want your writing commitments to fit in with your life, not take over it. Let me repeat that because it’s so important: you want writing to fit in with your life, not drown it out until there’s no room for anything else.

You want your writing commitments to fit in with your life, not take it over. #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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We’re talking about healthy habits like: proper rest, proper sleep (rest and sleep are two different things), eating right, and personal care like exercising, nurturing creativity, and a good long soak in the bathtub when you need one. 

We’re talking about healthy habits for dealing with family or household obligations, church obligations, obligations of your day job, and obligations for your writing.

And don’t forget the most important habits: the habits of seeking God, of revering him, praying, and just sitting in awe of him. 

The reason why we’re stressing the idea of habit is so that these are, or become, automatic. You automatically turn to God when something goes wrong, or when something goes amazingly right, and everything in between. You’re conditioning yourself to do what’s best for your life.

Habits also become nonnegotiable. For example, you don’t sacrifice your family time or your prayer time in order to write another chapter. You understand what space you have in your life for writing, and you, by habit, keep writing within that boundary. 

Don’t hear us saying that your whole life must be regulated and rigid. We’re not talking about that. We’re encouraging habits because you do them without having to decide to do them, and that makes them take up less energy. 

As a metaphor, think of your brain’s decision making ability as a battery. Each decision, small or large, uses some of the battery’s charge. From deciding if you really want to go on that walk this morning, to whether you want to floss your teeth, to whether you’re going to have those donuts for breakfast or a healthy protein smoothie. These are all decisions, and they all take energy. Even the tiniest decisions take energy. Every decision you make on social media of whether to click like, click share, click on another post, click to respond, or whatever: they all use up energy.

And guess what? The more your battery runs down, the less capacity you have for self-control to make good decisions. You can read more about this in this article on decision fatigue and also in a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

If you have healthy habits in place, it’s easier to maintain a life that reflects what you value, even when things get busy, like say, maybe you suddenly get a writing contract. You know whether you can meet the deadline they want to give you because you already know what your writing habits are and how that fits in with your life. 

And again, when things go wrong, or become far more difficult than you anticipated, or you’re blindsided by temptations, your habit will be to run to God. To trust in him, to lean on him. You’ve done, and keep doing, what Psalm 1:1-3 encourages:

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”  (NIV)

Meditating on God’s word day and night is a healthy habit, and it will serve you well. Of course, no one is perfect, so don’t try to be. But look around for ways you can develop healthy habits to help you live the kind of life you want, and be the kind of person you want to be whether that’s a parent, writer, Christ-follower, friend, or whatever.

We’ve told you five things no one may have told you about this writing journey, but of course, there’s certainly way more. The bottom line is this: No matter what you face, how wonderful, or how difficult it may be, God is with you, and he is for you, and he is working in you to fulfill his good purpose.

What was something you learned about the writing journey that you wish you’d known much earlier?

We’re excited to have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing Podcast, with host Thomas Umstattd Jr. He knows what he’s talking about, friends, and we highly recommend his podcast! You can find it at NovelMarketing.com or in your favorite podcast app. 

In this sponsorship we’ve been bringing you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. This week we’re talking about Commandment #10: Thou shalt not be false to thine own brand.

What Thomas means by this is: “Be true to who you are as an author. Your brand is not a photo, logo, genre, or collection of fonts. It is the story you tell about yourself. More importantly, it is the story others tell about you.”

Your brand is what readers expect of you. It’s your promise to them. Readers who read your first book and love it want to buy your next book, because they expect it will be like the first book. And they already know they like it. Now they want the same experience from you over and over. Commandment #10 ensures you give it to them.

So, think carefully about the type of book you want to publish before you ever publish anything, and make sure you’re willing to stay true to that brand.

For more book promotion and platform help listen to Novel Marketing in your favorite podcast app or at NovelMarketing.com.

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

Thanks so much to our July sponsor of the month, Wendy L. Macdonald. Not only is Wendy a writer, she also produces a weekly, short, inspirational podcast on Spotify called Hope Walking with Wendy.

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

The post 146 – 5 Things No One Told You About the Writing Journey appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Do things happen in your writing life that just don’t make sense? Do you sometimes wonder if you can take one more unexpected crisis or change? Are you tempted to wonder WHAT on earth is God thinking? Guest Robin Jones Gunn has faced those same kinds of things most of her writing career and shares with us the joy of embracing the mystery of this amazing God we follow.

About Robin Jones Gunn

Robin Jones Gunn is the bestselling, award-winning author of over 100 books with sales topping six million copies sold worldwide. Her timeless Christy Miller series for teens continues to endear her stories to moms and daughters, especially now that the characters appear in the Haven Makers series. Robin’s Father Christmas novels and one of her Glenbrooke novels were adapted by Hallmark and became record-breaking Christmas movies. Her passion for speaking and teaching has taken her around the world where she’s keynoted in Africa, Brazil, Europe, England and Australia as well as Canada and throughout the US. Robin and her husband recently moved from Hawaii to California. They have two grown and married children.

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

Erin: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the deep. I hope you can hear my smile. I am just plain happy right now. We have a guest with us, and we’re all smiling. I’m going to let Karen introduce our mystery guest.

Karen: I’ve been so excited about this interview. We are talking today with our guest Robin Jones Gunn, whom I have known since 1996 when I was two years old. When I came to what was then Questar Books but is now Multnomah Books to head up their fiction line, Robin was one of the authors I was working with, and God just bound our hearts together very much like he did with me and Erin. Robin is a treasured friend, has been a treasured friend. She is an unbelievably talented author. She loves kids. She loves teens. Her Christy Miller books have been made into movies. Her Father Christmas books have been made into Hallmark movies. She is a very gifted, talented, warm and loving person, and she makes my heart smile every time I see her. We are so happy to have you here, Robin. We are just delighted.

Robin: Oh, Karen! that’s all I have right now as I’m trying to stall a few tears. I should probably jump in and say we are praying that Christy Miller will be made into movies. We’ve gotten close, it’s fallen apart, up and down, up and down. Maybe at one point when I was talking to you it was like, “It’s so close, it’s gonna happen.” But, not yet. But thank you for that very kind introduction.

Karen: You are welcome.

Erin: Robin, we are glad to have you here, so let’s dive in with the thing we ask everyone. What does the deep mean to you?

Robin: I love that word: the deep. Because from when I was a teenager and stumbling onto that verse: “Deep calls to deep…” (Psalm 42:7) I felt like that’s what I want in my relationship with the Lord. To have that deeper level and to be in that place where it’s a communion. There’s this sweet relationship that’s growing and growing and growing. We lived in Hawaii as you know, Karen, for ten years. Recently we moved to Southern California. But I had a pet name for the Pacific Ocean. I started calling it Deep Blue. Because it’s deep and it’s blue. But I got to see it everyday and it’s mysterious and wide, so that deep called to deep.

I always wanted to be walking along the ocean. I know, Karen, you love the coast, too. You love that call of the ocean on your creativity. It stirs up those waves like the rest of that verse, deep calls to deep and all your waves wash over me. Right?

I have to tell you a story about going out into Deep Blue. Soon after we had moved to Maui, we had friends who had a little pontoon boat. Like a raft with a motor. He was a photographer, and David said, “Come on out. I’ll take you out.”

We went out deep, deep. I mean further and further out in this little raft, and I felt so small. Then he stopped and said, “Slide over the edge of the boat and go down about 18 inches.”

That was terrifying because we were out so far and it’s the big, big, deep ocean. But I did it. I slid over the edge and went down. I could hear the whales.

It was a life altering moment of being in that reverberating deep. And hearing them. Then coming up for air and then going back down and just not really knowing what else was all around, because we were out in the deep. But that sense when I got back in the boat, I just felt like my life was in 3D and like light was shooting out of the ends of my fingernails.

It was amazing. It was so amazing. That experience of going in the deep has brought me, during times when I’ve been journaling, just calling me to go and slide over the edge. Go ahead and be willing, even though it’s vast and terrifying. So for me, the deep is really, another word for it, is mystery. And that relationship with the Lord is such a mystery because we are so small. We cannot understand all that he is doing. All that he is accomplishing. All that is in motion in this universe around us. But that he would care for us.

My favorite place where that word is used in scripture, besides the deep calls to deep, is Exodus 20. This is Moses. He’s going up to Mount Sinai. The mountain is smoking, and there’s thunder and lightening. And it says that all the people stood back, but Moses stepped into the deep darkness because God was there. I want that in my life. I want to step into that mystery. Step into all that is thundering and crazy, and where the human response is to pull back and just go, “I can’t understand it. I can’t touch it.” But Moses, this friend of God, stepped into that deep and the darkness, because of one reason: God was there.

Moses, this friend of God, stepped into that deep and that darkness because of one reason: God was there. @robingunn #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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Erin: Wow.

Robin: I want to give an alter call right now.

Karen: I know!

Robin: Come! Come into the deep.

Erin: The thing is though, Robin, you’re absolutely right. If a writer doesn’t go there, what are they going to write about? What are they going to say to anybody, unless they’re going into that mystery and going into that deep? Getting called there by God to figure out what they have to say, what message is there.

Robin: And if you don’t feel so humble and small, and at the same time, like the ends of your hair are on fire because of the mystery, then the passion you bring to the story will be pattern instead of passion. It’ll just be, “I know how to put paragraphs together. I know at this point of the book, it’s supposed to go like this, and it’s supposed to go like that. I studied it all. I’ve got the formula, I can plug it all in and there, I made a book.”

But where’s the story? Where’s the mystery that propels us as readers to ponder? I love how you on your show here talk about the wonder and exploring that. How do you call it, Karen, exploring the wonder or…?

Karen: Savor.

Robin: Yes. Savoring the wonder. We have to do that as writers or else we are doing a disservice to this gift that was given to us. We’re just going through the motions and we’re not going deep. We’re not pulling out something that can change a heart.

Karen: Well, there was a factor to that, too, when you were on that pontoon boat with that friend. It was clear, going that far out into Deep Blue, that you trusted your friend. He was your guide and you trusted him.

When he told you to go over the edge 18 inches deep, you said that was scary. That was really scary. But you did it because of your trust in him. For us in our relationship with God as believers and as writers, we need to trust him, even when he’s saying to us, “Slide over the edge and go in 18 inches deep. Just far enough to hear. Go in there.”

We look and all we see in our mind is Jaws. We hear that background music.

Erin: That’s what I was thinking. I have to admit it.

Karen: We know that if we go over the edge of what we perceive to be our safety, we will die. But indeed God is saying, “Come in here to live.” We have to trust him as the guide, because the wonder that comes from that then is, like you said, life altering—when you came up out of the water, the way that you felt.

Years ago I was hospitalized because they said I had an aneurysm in my heart.  I didn’t even know what an aneurysm in my heart was. I didn’t know. I’d never heard of such a thing.

So they did all these tests. They did one really cool test where they run a thing across where your heart is, and you actually hear your heartbeat. The blood whooshing in and out. Whoosh, whoosh. The tech looked at me and said, “That’s your heart. That’s a good, strong heart.” And I’m like, “That is so cool. That’s my blood going through my heart.”

But they found an aneurysm. An aneurysm, I know now, is a blockage that could burst at any moment, and if it did that, I would be dead. So I’m in the hospital, and I have a really good friend who was the lead nurse on the cardiac care unit. She came into my hospital room, and she looked at me and said, “Karen, this is really serious. You’re way too young to be experiencing this.”

I looked at her and I just started laughing. I said, “I can’t explain it. I am not afraid. Normally I would be just consumed. But I’m not afraid. Something good is going to happen from this.”

They went in. My mom and dad’s cardiologist did the procedure going in with the heart cath to see what they needed to do. I still remember the sound of his voice when he leaned next to my ear and said, “Karen, your heart is perfect. It’s beautiful.”

I came back to the hospital room and came out of whatever slight anesthesia they had done. I looked at Don and I said, “There is sunshine coming out of me. There’s just sunshine. I have never felt this in my entire life.”

So I experienced, even as I’m talking to you I’m getting chills, I experienced God’s touch and his healing.

Robin: Yeah.

Karen: Everybody else was saying, “This is dangerous. This is threatening your life.”

And I was just like, “God is going to do something cool.”

That’s not normal for me to react that way. Sliding into that deep and knowing who had hold of me every single step of the way, I saw wonders and savored them. That’s where it started to me. That’s where I looked at that and I thought the way I dealt with that life-threatening situation was so different from anything I’ve ever done. And that’s because God. God reached in, took hold of me, breathed his peace into my heart, and drew me out with sunshine that he breathed into me. It was the most amazing thing.

Robin: It’s so connected to the surrender of our control. I didn’t know why David was saying slide over the boat. I didn’t know what was going on. Was it going to repair a leak? I didn’t know.

It’s just that step of surrender. Like, “Okay. I’m not going to question. I’m not going to have to have control to understand it all. It’s a mystery. Okay. I trust you. I’ll do that.” And that’s exactly what you did.

I remember a moment with a woman, whom I thought was wonderful, years ago, spent time with her. But it started to get to where everything you talked about, she had an answered for. She had an app for that. Oil for that. You know, like everything. Oh, you shouldn’t be eating this food or something.

There was one moment where I remember we were a group of women together and someone asked her something and she paused and had an expression I hadn’t seen before. She said, “I don’t know.” And I thought, “Okay. Now we can be friends. Now we can walk together into the mystery and we may never know.”

But it’s that I have let go of the control that I have to know everything and have it all figured out. Because we don’t. When we humble ourselves before Almighty God, that’s when he lifts us up.

But I feel as writers we have to do that with every story. I feel like this sort of rhythm I’ve had for decades—I present myself to the Lord before every book I write and it’s over a hundred books now. I write out a prayer, a prayer of surrender, of dedication. I’ve kept them all. It’s that moment of saying, “I’m your handmaiden. I’m your servant, Lord. May I be able to communicate your personality, your love to others. If that’s something you desire for me to do through story, I want that. But I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t control this. I just surrender this and make an offering of myself before you.” You know, the living sacrifice we’re called to be from Romans 12.

That’s when he does this deeper work. That’s when deep calls to deep, because I’m not in complete control anymore. We have to do that as writers to have that sense that we are truly doing what we were created to do. Otherwise, the influence from outside takes over. If we aren’t so centered and anchored to get that audience of One, to get that understanding of why I’m doing this, even if no one ever reads it, even if it has to be rewritten. This is the process. It’s a mystery. I have to go into this.

Karen: I think that he also, well I know that he also brings partners alongside once we’ve surrendered and we’ve said, “Yes, I do this however you want me to do this.” He brings people, the people that he’s brought to me in my life to assist me as a writer. To assist me in editing. To assist me…Erin. If Erin hadn’t come to me and out of the blue said, “You know, I feel that God is leading me to join you in a ministry.”

I had shared with her that I longed to be a chaplain to writers because so many of my friends were so depressed and thinking about quitting and just beaten down. I said, “We need to lift them up. We need to give them hope.” And if she hadn’t said to me that God had led her to that. I just sat there and stared at her. I was like, “Well, I can tell you what I’ve been thinking lately.”

Robin: Wow.

Karen: It was such a shared passion. It was so clear that God brought us together. It was really amazing how that worked out.

I remember, too, that those who are brought into our lives have to be willing to submit. When I came to what was then Questar Books and became Multnomah Books, you were the top author. You were one of the top authors, but I think you may have been the top author there. When I came, you turned in a new manuscript and I read it. I had read your other books and I thought, “This isn’t Robin. This just, this isn’t right.”

I was terrified. How do I go to Robin Jones Gunn, who I adore, and say to her, “Yeah, I can’t accept this. This has to be rewritten.”

I prayed and I prayed and I talked with people that I trusted in my family and asked them to pray for me. So, I went to Robin and I shared with her that it wasn’t acceptable. I thought to myself, “She’s going to hate me. She’s never going to want to work with me again.” So now you can tell your side of it.

Robin: So that book was number eight, I think, in the Glenbrooke series. What was the title? Oh, it was Meadows. Meadows was never published. But to have written as much as I had and as fast as I had—about two or three books a year for a decade and a half—and then to get to the very last book in the series and to have turned in the story—again that story was surrendered to the Lord. I did the work. And then I received your advice, Karen.

Again, it’s that trust. I knew you. I trusted you. I wanted you to be my editor. I wanted you to call me deeper in. I wanted to be a better writer. So I remember that phone call. I was actually feeling kind of sorry for you because you were in such agony.

But it was to better the craft, and I trusted that part of it. But I did hang up the phone and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry. I’m like, “Maybe this is it. Maybe it’s the Wizard of Oz syndrome—pay no attention to the writer behind the curtain. Karen, you’re my Toto. You pulled back the curtain and now everybody knows I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m just sort of trying here and it’s not working.”

But what happened as a result is that you mentored me and walked me through the process of what that last book was going to be. Wildflowers was quite different from the first seven books. I had an older character and she’s struggling in her marriage. So I got to go into more issues, and I got to see this story develop in a way that it ended that series the way it needed to be ended.

Then the next series I wrote was an entire series about women in mid-life, which I would not have been prepared to write the Sisterchicks series had I not gotten to know Genevieve, thanks to you, for challenging me to draw deeper and find a new character. Because I think in the other book, the character was twenty-two and like many other young flibbertigibbets, you know, but you challenged me to dig deeper.

So that process was for good. And wow. If we could understand that as children of God and as writers and as those who are wanting to see our work make a difference, we have to be in that place of being teachable to that. But Karen, you’re such a good teacher. You made it a joy and look how it strengthened our friendship.

Karen: Right.

Robin: That was a gift, too.

Karen: I can’t even begin to tell you what it meant to me when you contacted me after that phone call. I knew you would be in tears. You contacted me and you said, “I trust you. Let’s move forward with this.”

One of the things that has always stayed with me, in our conversations afterwards, one of the realizations we had was that your voice was missing in that book. You had tried to do something a little different. You had been feeling that your stories were too fluffy and you wanted to write something more serious. And with Wildflowers you dealt with something more serious, but it was back to Robin’s voice. In Meadows you were missing from the story.

So when you went back to that and you accepted who you were as a writer and you just moved forward joyfully in that, it was a delight to me because the final manuscript, when it came in was so, so good.

I’ve told Erin before in my work as an editor, nothing gives me more joy—you know, it’s like the Scripture that says, was it Paul who says nothing gives me more joy than to know that my children in the Lord have grown? And when I saw the advances in your writing, and in your heart and your spirit and in our relationship, I just, I danced around my office. I was like, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Robin: But what a gift that you gave me because that really could have been the end of my writing career if I had not been willing to receive instruction or had been so full of myself that I said, “Hey, look, I’ve written so many books, and you’re the new editor, you don’t know.”

But the thing that prepped me for was I wrote a Christmas novella, Finding Father Christmas, and then the publisher asked me to write a second one. So I wrote Engaging Father Christmas. I got a new editor at that publishing house with that sequel and that editor also, when I turned it in said, “Nope, it’s not like the first one. We really wanted more of a love story. Though the first one wasn’t a love story, we need a love story. Can you redo it?”

I was befuddled but I said, “You know, it was for my good, when Karen told me this, and this editor is saying the same thing. I want to learn. I want to grow.” I went back to work, wrote a second sequel, turned it in and she said, “Oh dear, this is worse than the first one.” She said it more kindly, but…

Karen: I was gonna say who is it? I’ll beat her up.

Robin: You know her. You love her. I do, too. I saw where I had gone as a writer, just sort of in that automatic place of, “I’ve got to get this deadline. I’ve got another project over here,” and just “Do the work, do the work,” without the heart in it. So it goes back to that deep. I just skimmed the surface, like, “All right, you want a book? Here’s the book. Done.” You know? And how cheap. How sad.

So I turned it in the third time and, she’d given me lots of good suggestions to make it more of a love story. And I did and when I turned it in the third time, she said, “I think the first one was better than this.”

I mean, it was just…. I wrote it a fourth time. I wrote Engaging Father Christmas four times and made it more of a love story than I had ever intended it to be. And it turned into, “I don’t want to ever talk about this book.” Then sure enough, what was it? Twelve years later is the phone call from my agent. Hallmark wants to make a love story Christmas movie out of your Father Christmas, because you wrote a love story.

You see? You see how that works? If I had not been willing to surrender to the process and be stripped of all the arrogance that I had of thinking, “I know how to do this. Everybody stand back. I’ll do it. I’ll get it done.”

But what is God doing? Calling us deeper. More. Bringing us closer to him in the whole process. What a joy that Hallmark did three Christmas movies out of the Father Christmas novella. Never would have happened if it hadn’t been a love story.

Karen: That editor..well no, I won’t beat her up.

Erin: You know what else I’m hearing about all of this, Robin, is that even veteran writers get difficult edits. I think sometimes the newer writers out there feel like all of the hard work ends once you get to the publishing phase. You know, once you get published, it’s all smooth sailing.

That’s not true. It’s still a process. It’s still work, and it’s still humility, and it’s still growing, and it’s still watching what God does with each thing. And it’s a surprise.

Robin: It’s the mystery. But if we are willing to step into the mystery because God is there, it’s thunder and lightning, and don’t stand back. But I think we all have. Those times in my life when I’ve stood back from a project and not entered in at that deeper level, that’s when graciously God has brought editors who called me. “No, no, no, come deeper. Come deeper.”

Karen: You know, what I love about all this is that it speaks to us as writers and it speaks to us as those who follow Christ. Because life nowadays, it’s very difficult for those who claim Christ as their Savior and as their Lord. So many places, if you speak the name of Jesus, you know, you’re being left out and cut out. I just watched a news report this morning about a young woman who was valedictorian of her high school class. The principal put the kibosh on her valedictorian speech because she had the audacity to say that the purpose of life is to live serving Christ. How dare she do that? It was a public school. How dare she do that?

Rather than honoring who she was and all that she had accomplished because of her faith in Christ, they told her, “No. You can’t give this speech. You have to write something else.”

I listened to that and I thought, “Lord, we are in a world that is willingly walking into darkness without you. That is willingly saying, leave God behind and all the ills of the world will be fixed.” And that’s never going to happen without us going into the deep with him. Without us embracing the mystery.

There’s a friend of mine who listens to prophecies, and the jury is still out for me on how I feel about some of that. But one of the things that she’s been saying is so many current day profits are talking about the fact that it’s just going to continue getting more difficult to follow God in this dark world. And we have to go deeper with him so that whatever comes, we can say, “Yea though, he slay me. I will serve the Lord.”

We have to hold on to the deep. We have to swim in the deep. We have to embrace God’s mystery in every aspect of who we are and in every aspect of our writing, because only in doing that will we bring God’s truth, and only in bringing God’s truth, will we change the world.”

Robin: Here’s the thing: We have to write.

Karen: Yes.

Robin: Those who are listening to this podcast. I want to tell you right now you have been stalling. Stop it. Get back to work. Come on! Mama Robin is telling you, get that book finished. Get that article written, get those words out on your blog. And be willing to be taught along the way, but to put in the work, because we need truth and light in this world more than ever.

Erin: Right.

Karen: Amen. And what a perfect word to end on. Robin, thank you so much.

Robin: Oh, it was my delight. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Erin.

Erin: Thank you.

Has God been calling you into his mystery?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast, and we’re bringing you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr., guru on marketing and all things publishing! You can find the podcast at novelmarketing.com.

Today we’re covering Commandment Number 9: Thou shalt not publish thy first book first.

This is the most controversial commandment, but think about an athlete. Your first race is never in the Olympics for a gold medal. You have a lot to learn before you can get to that level. So it is with writing. Your first book isn’t gold medal quality. It’s the training ground.

Writers too often feel that any word they write is wasted if they’re not published. But you can’t get better at writing without writing. That means that lots of words are going to be practice, and that’s okay.

We’re not saying it can never be published, but later after you’re better. Too many writers get overly focused on their first book and become discouraged when it doesn’t get published. Or they publish it themselves because they think it’s ready, and it’s not.

For more book promotion and platform help listen to Novel Marketing in your favorite podcast app or at NovelMarketing.com.

Finding Father Christmas & Engaging Father Christmas

Wildflowers by Robin Jones Gunn

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

Thanks so much to our July sponsor of the month, Wendy L. Macdonald. Not only is Wendy a writer, she also produces a weekly, short, inspirational podcast on Spotify called Hope Walking with Wendy.

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

The post 145 – Embrace God’s Mystery with Guest Robin Jones Gunn appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Guilt, real guilt, serves a purpose in our faith and lives. But, as he often does, Satan has taken something God intended for good and warped it. Enter false guilt. We’ll share how to identify it—and escape it—so that you and your writing shine God’s light in this weary world.

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

In our last podcast, The Gift of Guilt, we explored what true guilt was and how God uses it in our lives. Today, we’re talking about something completely different: false guilt. The trouble is, it seems the same as true and healthy guilt. But it’s not. Far from it.

Surprisingly, Webster’s doesn’t have a definition for the term false guilt. But here’s what it has to say about false:

: not genuine

: intentionally untrue; adjusted or made so as to deceive; intended or tending to mislead

: treacherous

: lacking naturalness or sincerity

: based on mistaken ideas

: inconsistent with the facts

: threateningly deceptive

It’s pretty clear that something false is all about misleading us, about treacherous deception. And that’s exactly what false guilt is: it’s a deception that leads us to create negative perspectives and feelings about ourselves. We’re not just at fault, false guilt tells us we’re bad or that there’s something wrong with us. And we don’t just deserve punishment, we don’t deserve forgiveness or restored relationships, not with others and not with God.

We all know how guilt feels, because we know when we’ve done something we shouldn’t, or haven’t done something we should. But there are other times…times when there’s that vague sense that something is wrong. You’re not sure what or why, but deep inside is the certainty that whatever is wrong, it’s your fault.

Maybe you set a daily writing goal for yourself, but, you know, life. Things happened that made it perfectly reasonable that you couldn’t meet the goal. But you still feel…guilty. Even bad. You’re letting everyone down. You’re letting God down. Your mind starts down the “I’ll never finish this book, I can’t even meet my daily goals!” track, and that leads you merrily along the path of “Why on earth did I think God could use someone like me? I’m useless.” And so it goes.

Or maybe you haven’t heard from a friend for awhile. A friend who usually gets in touch with you on a regular basis. When you realize that person hasn’t done so for quite some time, the false guilt starts trying to slip in. And darned if you don’t let it. Suddenly you’re thinking, “So what did I do wrong? Did I make her mad? Did I offend her when she told me she wanted to go see a depressing movie and I said I like happy movies instead of depressing ones?”

And off you go! If you two were really friends, she wouldn’t mind that you don’t like the same things! Why do you always mess things up? And on and on, until you reach the firm conclusion that you’re a terrible friend and you don’t deserve her. Or she’s a terrible friend and you’re done with her. Either way, it leads to destruction.

Or a teacher calls you and says, “Hey, your daughter came to school without lunch today.” Your response? “I’m so sorry!” Followed by the thought, “I’m a terrible mother.”

Or you put a LOT of time and effort into a class on writing. When you teach it, 99% of the students come up afterward and tell you how great it was. But then that one person leaves the class without saying anything. And he looked…disgruntled. False guilt whispers, “Did he not like the class? Did it not meet his needs?” And you pick up the baton and fly with it. “Dang it! I knew I should have taught something different. I didn’t even include (fill in the blank). How could I forget that? I’m useless!”

Sure, some of these examples seem extreme. But are they really? The truth is, Satan is always waiting to send false guilt into your heart and spirit so it can put down roots and, like an evil weed, push out your confidence in God’s love and provision.

When you let yourself buy into false guilt, when you fall into the pit of false guilt, it becomes self-fulfilling. Because you’re bad or there’s something inherently wrong with you, and because you don’t deserve healthy relationships with people or God, you end up isolating yourself, growing more and more antisocial. Soon you’re wondering why no one wants to be around you. Which only affirms that you’re no good and no one wants to be around someone as awful as you. Nor would they ever want to read anything you’ve written! Look how terrible you are. How could God possibly use your writing to express His love and grace?

In his article, “Why Shame and Guilt Are Functional For Mental Health,” psychologist Joaquin Selve points to a study done in 2016 focusing on guilt and shame. One aspect of that study looked at the experience of both guilt and shame. Two conclusions from that study seem especially telling.

The first affirms what we said in our podcast on the Gift of Guilt. “People who feel guilt are more likely to want to repair the damage they may have caused than people who felt shame.” Guilt is a true and healthy motivator that God uses to draw us to repentance and restoration. So YAY for guilt! True guilt, that is.

Then there’s false guilt, which almost always instills in us a sense of shame. When it comes to shame, the study concluded that “people who feel shame are more likely to avoid eye contact than people who feel guilty.” How telling is that?

Eye contact is a vital part of being in relationship with each other. It’s a sign of connection, of vulnerability, of care for one another. When someone intentionally avoids eye contact, that can be an early sign that this person is starting to isolate herself, or that he doesn’t feel worthy of the connection, or that she is afraid if she makes eye contact, you’ll see right through her to the core of the terrible person she is.

Likewise, being authentic and vulnerable are vital aspects of writing God’s truths. We can’t move people’s hearts or minds if we’re writing from behind the curtain. Like the Wizard of Oz, we have to pull back the curtain of our real selves, letting our readers see the good, the bad, AND the ugly. But if you’re steeped in shame because of false guilt, doing that doesn’t just seem impossible, it seems dangerous.

Dr. Mary Lamia, in her article “Shame: A Concealed and Dangerous Emotion,” had this to say about shame:

“As a self-conscious emotion, shame informs us of an internal state of inadequacy, unworthiness, dishonor, regret, or disconnection….Shame can lead us to feel as though our whole self is flawed, bad, or subject to exclusion, it motivates us to hide or to do something to save face. So it is no wonder that shame avoidance can lead to withdrawal or to addictions that attempt to mask its impact.”

No wonder false guilt seems to be one of Satan’s favorite tools to use against believers. Sadly, false guilt is especially effective when used to demoralize or sideline writers seeking to serve God in their work. Think about it. We’ve talked before about how so many Christians writers struggle with feeling like imposters. The whole, “If they knew who I really was, they’d never read my books” routine. Or, “Someday someone is going to realize I haven’t a clue what I’m doing! It’s all an act. I don’t have any talent at all!”

It only makes sense, then, that the same minds and spirits that can be detoured by imposter syndrome are also painfully susceptible to false guilt. And you know what? False guilt doesn’t just focus on making us feel shame when we think, or feel like, we’ve done something wrong. It dredges up wrongs from the past to substantiate just how awful we are.

GotQuestions.org says this about the way Satan uses false guilt against us:

“He brings to mind our most horrible sin—sometimes imagined, but also those God or others have forgiven—and causes us to focus on our terrible selves rather than on God’s forgiveness.”

I mean, of course God forgave me, but how could I have done that? I’m so awful. God has to forgive me, He’s GOD. But I just can’t forgive myself. And on it goes…

If you’ve ever said or thought something like that, about God forgiving you but you can’t forgive yourself, you need to stop, RIGHT NOW, and repent of that attitude. Because what you’re doing when you let yourself think or believe that is putting yourself above God. You’re saying God’s forgiveness isn’t sufficient. That your forgiveness is harder to come by and more important than God’s. What’s more, you’re saying God is a liar. Scripture tells us in Psalms 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (NIV)

The Barnes Commentary on this Scripture brings the point home:

“As far as the east is from the west – As far as possible; as far as we can imagine. These are the points in our [understanding] that are most distant from each other. We can conceive nothing beyond them, so the meaning is, that we cannot imagine any way our sins could be more effectively removed than what God does in removing them… He has…put our sins entirely away. They are so removed that they cannot affect us any more. We are safe from all condemnation for our sins, as if they had not been committed at all.”

Friends, when God forgives, it’s over. The sin is gone, erased. There is no, “I can’t forgive myself.” There is only “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25)

All of which brings us back to why false guilt is so insidious and dangerous. It whispers to us, “Has God really forgiven you? Then why do you still feel guilty?”

Remember, false guilt is about deceptions, about keeping you deep in the darkness of unnecessary feelings of guilt and not being worth anything. Satan doesn’t want you to figure out the cause of those feelings, to actually know why you feel so full of shame, because if you knew that, you could take it to God. That’s the last thing Satan wants. He does everything he can, unleashes every foul tactic, to keep you from going to God and being truly forgiven. Because you know what God’s forgiveness brings: freedom!

So the enemy uses false guilt to convince you, through untrue “facts,” that you can’t be forgiven. But he’s not the only one who uses false guilt against us. Sometimes, fellow believers do so. And sometimes we do it all on our own.

An InTouch Ministries devotional titled, “The Burden of False Guilt,” shares the three bridges—actions or attitudes or behaviors—that often lead us deep into false guilt: legalism, perfectionism, and trying to please people.

Legalism

Legalism focuses on man-made rules rather than on what Scripture says is right and wrong. And we all know how easy it is for man’s rules to become the measuring stick of faith and witness. Legalism leads to judgmentalism and pride, and to a faith based on works. None of which “has power for salvation or transformation but instead enslaves us to false guilt” because we can never, in our own power, keep the rules. Heck, we can’t even know what the rules are because they keep changing!

Perfectionism

There’s an old saying: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” In other words, good is never good enough. In fact, nothing is ever good enough.

You can’t turn that manuscript in on time because you know you can do better with it. Your sales aren’t what you’d hoped, so this whole writing thing was obviously a waste of time. Whatever made you think you could do it in the first place?

Jon Bloom, in his article “Lay Aside the Weight of Perfection,” describes it this way:

“Perfectionism is a pride- or fear-based compulsion that either fuels our obsessive fixation on doing something perfectly or paralyzes us from acting at all—both of which often result in the harmful neglect of other necessary or good things.”

For those who take on the bondage of perfectionism, they have to perform to their self-imposed standards, which are seldom reasonable or necessary, or they’ve failed. And failure is the unforgivable sin.

Perfectionism is definitely something I (Erin) struggle with. My dad always used to say, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.” Somewhere along the way, my little mind turned that into, “Anything worth doing must be done perfectly.” But those aren’t the words he used, and it’s certainly not what he meant.

Still, I became overly critical of myself. It doesn’t help that I’m a detail oriented person. So I see lots of flaws in everything I do. That’s a recipe for a boatload of dissatisfaction if I let things carry on in that direction. But worse, it’s ridiculous and prideful to think I can do anything perfectly. Perfection is for God alone. I need to remember my place. It’s not just okay, but human, to be imperfect. Sure, I should always do my best, but I need to define and accept that as always, in some way shape or form, in varying degrees, less than perfect and in need of grace.

Furthermore, perfectionism can cause us to focus too much attention on ourselves, rather than on God, where it belongs. As the InTouch devotional states: “Christians are commanded to live for Christ, not for themselves and their own expectations.”

Trying to Please People

Of course, as writers, we work to make our stories pleasing to our readers. But this is something different. This is when we make pleasing everyone, no matter what we have to do to accomplish it, our focus. And if everyone isn’t happy with us, we’ve failed.

This kind of people pleasing is not just debilitating—because you really can’t please all the people all the time—it’s crazy-making. It’s looking to other fallible, sinful humans to define you and tell you whether or not you’re worthwhile. Or whether or not your writing is worthwhile. It’s reading reviews religiously to see what people think. But you know what that does? You are elated at the good reviews, and demolished by the bad ones. Doesn’t matter how many good ones there are, the bad ones are the ones that stick with you. Focusing on pleasing anyone but God is not just foolish, it’s crazy-making.

Think about it. Say you’re working a full-time job, taking care of your family, AND doing the task of writing that God has given you. Then you get a call from someone who wants you to come teach a workshop on writing to his writing group. You know you can’t. You know you’ll have to short something else to do it. As if this guy can tell you’re about to decline, he says, “You know, God has given you a gift and you need to share it.”

Oh yeah. He pulled the “God wants you to do this” card. Which wasn’t his to pull in the first place. But now your people pleasing side kicks in because what if he tells his group that you refused because you think you’re too big now to speak to small groups, or that you don’t listen to God? And boom! Just like that, false guilt steps in and you’re not fulfilling an already-accepted responsibility to take on something God never intended you to take on.

False Guilt from Childhood Trauma

There’s another powerful source of false guilt, and that’s a painful or traumatic childhood. If you grow up being taught that every word, every action is unacceptable. Not good enough, you end up believing that. And feeling shame and false guilt. You carry them into adulthood as your constant companions and critics.

But false guilt doesn’t just hurt us, especially where legalism is concerned. We don’t just end up in bondage ourselves, but we try to put others in bondage as well. We judge their actions, words, faith, and so on, based on what we feel is right, regardless of what Scripture says.

We hear about a fellow writer receiving some award or accolade, and we think how unworthy that person is: “If those in charge knew what that writer did/said/or whatever,” sometimes based on what we ourselves have witnessed, but more often than not based on hearsay, “there’s no way they’d have given that unworthy person an award/contract/whatever.” It’s a vicious cycle and Satan delights when you get caught in it.

What to Do About False Guilt

So what can we do about false guilt when we realize it’s rearing it’s oh-so-ugly head?

Friends, God knows our hearts! His forgiveness is forever. No feeling or deception can change that truth. We can rest assured before Him and we can agree with Jesus, in full confidence when He says in John 8:36, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

If you’ve taken your sense of guilt and shame to God, if you’ve surrendered to Him, even if you have no idea why you’re feeling the way you are, and you’ve asked His forgiveness, then…

Your. Sins. Are. Forgiven.

Now, forever.

What is false guilt and how does it affect your writing? #amwriting #Christianwriter @karenball1
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What helps you discern the difference between true and false guilt?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast, and we’re bringing you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr., a genius on marketing and all things publishing! You can find the podcast at novelmarketing.com.

Today we’re covering commandment number 8: Thou shalt surround thyself with savvy authors.

Thomas says, “There are some things you can only learn from other authors. The savvier your friends are, the more you will learn.”

My experience makes me agree with this. I’ve had a number of wonderful author friends throughout my career who’ve taught me plenty. But I’ve also been blessed to be part of a mastermind group, and that’s the one thing I wish I’d done 5 years sooner in my career.

For any of you out there interested in mastermind groups, Thomas Umstattd hosts a handful of mastermind groups. Each group is limited to 10 authors, and they meet monthly over Zoom. They also share a Slack Workspace where they answer each other’s questions throughout the month, cheer progress, and keep up. If you are looking for a place to connect with savvy authors and with Thomas, you can learn more about Thomas’s masterminds here.

For more book promotion and platform help listen to Novel Marketing in your favorite podcast app or at NovelMarketing.com.

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

Thanks so much to our June sponsor of the month, K.D. Aster. She’s hard at work on her novel: Kingdom of Azur, and we’re excited to see how it turns out. K.D. Aster, thanks, and keep writing!

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

The post 144 – Don’t Let False Guilt Hinder Your Writing appeared first on Write from the Deep.

No one likes feeling guilty. Knowing they’ve done something wrong or hurt someone by their actions, or by their spoken or written words. Even believers too often seem steeped in guilt, held back from doing what God has asked them to do, like write His truths to people. But the reality is that guilt is a gift that God uses to make you a better person—and writer—than you ever imagined. Come see how!

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

Guilt. Most people feel it. And hate it. It’s one of those emotions you never want to experience, and yet it tends to invade our lives all the time. But why? After all, those of us who follow Christ shouldn’t feel guilty about anything, should we? All our sins are covered by Christ’s sacrificial, restoring act on the cross. We’re forgiven, now and forever. So what place does guilt have in the life of a believer… and the life of a writer?

I (Karen) confess, I wondered about that myself. Are we, as God’s children, who’ve been restored to Him by the blood of Christ, struggling with emotions God doesn’t want us to feel? If that’s the case, is it bad?

Are we hindering our relationships with God and others, or damaging our witness? Are we letting that unnecessary emotion keep us from doing what God has asked us to do on our writing journey? After all, if we’re guilty, who are we to write about life and faith? How can we inspire others when we’re caught in guilt ourselves? And if we’re doing all that, engaging in something we shouldn’t be, how do we stop? And if we are supposed to feel guilt, how could we ever consider it a gift?

All good questions, which we’ll tackle today. 

So let’s start by figuring out what the word guilt really means by going to our favorite resource for such things, Webster’s. The definitions are: 

: the fact of having committed a breach of conduct especially violating law and involving a penalty  broadly: guilty conduct 

: the state of one who has committed an offense especially consciously : culpability

: feelings of culpability especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy : morbid self-reproach often manifest in marked preoccupation with the moral correctness of one’s behavior : self-accusation

: the state of being liable to penalty for offense against law—used in respect to persons and sometimes property that by reason of illegal usage has become liable to forfeiture or other burden

Okay, so now that we have the definitions, let’s consider the question of whether or not we believers should be feeling guilty. In 1 John 1:8, John delivers this bit of “encouragement” to Christ’s followers:

“If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.”

Ouch. Okay, we still sin.

Then there’s Romans 8:23:

“And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.”

Groaning, longing for release from sin! So, if we still sin, then surely we have things to feel guilty about?

James certainly seemed to think so. Consider James 4:7-10:

“So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.”

Wow. We need to wash our hands, to purify our hearts, to not divide our loyalty. As for sorrow and deep grief…sadness and gloom…that all sounds like the consequences of guilt. 

Paul talks about his own struggle with his sinful self in Romans 7:14-15. How many of us can relate to this:

“…The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.”

Then he writes this powerful truth in Romans 7:24-8:4 (ESV):

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” 

These are just a few of the Scriptures that show that those of us who are restored to God our Father through Jesus’s death and resurrection are far from sinless. And if we sin, you know we’re gonna feel guilt. More important, be in a factual state of guilt. The truth is that guilt, or feeling guilt, doesn’t damage our witness or hinder our obedience in whatever tasks God gives us, including our writing. 

I can hear you now: How can we write for others, to inspire and uplift them, if we’re guilty? Well, as Jesus pointed out in Luke 5:31:

“It is not the well who need a physician, but the sick.”

Guilty or not, OF COURSE we can inspire others in our writing because we’re not writing from some “holy” point above what our readers struggle with. We’re right there with them, in the struggle. Those who haven’t faced what our readers have are the ones who have little to say. 

So yes, we do—and should—feel guilt. But why, exactly? What’s the purpose of guilt? Is it just emotions or is it something else entirely?

John I. Snyder wrote in his blog post, “A State of Being: Guilt and Shame”:

“From the Bible’s point of view, guilt, real guilt, is first and foremost not a feeling. It’s a state of being. It’s the position of being out of line with our God by virtue of our sin. It can be fixed only by being placed into a right relationship with him, a solution that’s brought about only by God himself, not by us. It is his specialty to fix this problem. Resorting to our own measures only makes things worse…[When God fixes our guilt] nothing more can be—or needs to be—added to it. We can’t make it better or earn it.” 

So guilt, true guilt (yes, there’s false guilt out there, but we’ll talk about that another time), is a twofold proposition. It’s a state or condition. When we do what we know is wrong—or when we don’t do what we know to be right—basically, when we sin, we are guilty. Our emotions have little or nothing to do with our guilt. We are, factually, in a state of being guilty. 

Guilt is also the emotional response we feel when we’re in a state of guilt. Whether our wrongdoing is in violation of God’s laws, civil laws (that don’t break God’s laws), or our own personally held values, the result is the same. True guilt. We sin, and we feel guilt. 

I’m betting we all know that terrible feeling. The heaviness inside. The regret. The restlessness and even sadness or grief. The awareness that we’ve damaged something—whether that’s our integrity, our relationship with God or people, or our witness as believers—and the holy nagging to put things right. 

How does this affect writers? Writers seeking to honor Christ are constantly presented with opportunities to violate what we know to be right. Temptations for writers are out there. For example:

Those kinds of things, and so much more, leave us with uncomfortable, nagging, even devastating guilt. As they should, because we are guilty when we’ve sinned. 1 John 1:8-10 makes that pretty clear:

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”

Now there’s some guilt I wouldn’t want. 

So yes, we’re created in God’s image, and we’re commanded to be holy as He is holy. We’re given clear guidelines in Scripture as to what’s right and what’s wrong. When we go against those truths, of course we’ll feel guilty. It’s only natural. And it’s natural that true guilt negatively affects everything—keeping us from moving forward in our relationships, career, and faith—until we make things right.

Let’s repeat that: true guilt affects everything…until we make things right. That, friends, is a vital aspect of true guilt. And that’s what makes true and healthy guilt a gift in our lives and writing. 

God never intended for believers to live wracked by guilt. To feel guilt every day, in every way, and never get away from it. Let me put in a side note here: For unbelievers, guilt is absolutely intended to be there, to draw people to Christ. But for believers, God never intended us to live incapacitated by guilt and overwhelmed by how terrible we are. 

Isn’t that where guilt hits writers the hardest? In that place where we look at the task in front of us, a task God has given us, and let guilt tell us we’re not worthy to do it? If we live with unresolved guilt, it festers and becomes a barrier to our belief that God can use us. 

Which is why it’s such good news that God doesn’t want us to live with guilt! 

Grant Agler, a pastor, wrote this in his article “Guilt – Is it from God?“:

“God is for you. Remember that, he is not against you, he is for you. He has gone to great length just to demonstrate how much he is for you.”

Agler then points us to Romans 8:31-33: 

“If God is for us, then who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.”

This amazing God who is for us, ALWAYS for us, knows what living in guilt would do to us. As Agler writes:

“[Our] loving father…would never heap guilt on you that has no clear resolution. God will give you something better than just guilt, he will give you a ‘path to repentance.'”

God wants to erase our guilt. To remove it so we no longer feel it. He uses true guilt, a good—although terrible—thing to move us to repentance and reconciliation. Again, that’s the purpose of true guilt: reconciliation, restoration, and freedom through forgiveness. That, without a doubt, is a gift. 

I (Karen) have never had a problem with confessing my sin to God, but oh, how I hated having to go through the humiliation of confessing my sin to those I’d wronged. But God, in His mercy, showed me the wonder of forgiveness and erased guilt when I was seventeen years old. I’d deliberately disobeyed my dad. He’d told me I could go out to dinner with my friends, but I was not to go cruising with my friends afterwards because it was dangerous. If they wanted to go cruising, he told me to ask to be brought home first.

As much as I adored my dad, well, I was seventeen! So when my friends decided to go cruising, I went along. When I came home, I was consumed with guilt. This was the first time I’d flat gone against my dad. I went up to my room and lay on my bed crying and suffering.

I pulled out my Bible and God led me to Psalm 32, which is a wonderful testimony of the effect of feeling guilt when we sin. In verses 3-4, it was clear David had an intimate knowledge of feeling guilt:

“When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.” 

That, my friends, is a terrible place to be even temporarily. I can’t imagine living there. 

Which is why it’s so wonderful that we who believe in God never have to stay in a state of guilt. The very millisecond we surrender to the Spirit’s leading and confess our sins, God’s forgiveness washes us clean. When we follow the Spirit’s leading to make things right, freedom is restored. 

Best-selling author Tamera Alexandar shared with us in podcast episode #130 about a devastating time in her career when she sinned. If you haven’t listened to that podcast episode, do so. You’ll see how God wouldn’t let her live in that sin. How, as humiliating as it felt, she confessed to those she’d wronged. And how God not only set her free, but made her so much stronger in her faith and obedience. Her experience is the perfect example of the gift of true guilt. 

So that then, is the grand news for all of us. Yes, we sin. Yes, we put ourselves in a state of true guilt. And yes we feel the emotion of guilt. But it doesn’t end there! Thanks be to God, as Paul said, true guilt isn’t permanent! 

In fact, it serves God’s purposes for our life, faith, and writing. True guilt:

Once we’ve taken our guilt to God, once we’ve done as He leads to make things right, it’s done. Gone. It evaporates in the warmth of holy restoration. We are free and able to rejoice in God’s and others’ forgiveness. 

Now, as much as true guilt is healthy for us, there is something else at work where guilt is concerned. Remember how we mentioned false guilt earlier? Well, sometimes we feel guilty but we’re not sure why. We can’t tell if what we’re feeling is true guilt, or false guilt. False guilt is devastating, and it’s an effective tool the enemy uses against believers. 

It’s especially effective against writers seeking to honor God because writers are already so vulnerable to something we’ve talked about before in episode 81: Imposter Syndrome. Which is why we’re devoting our entire next podcast to understanding, exploring, and erasing false guilt. 

Until then, here’s a handy list from the article “How to Tell the Difference Between True and False Guilt” on Lifecoachingonthego.com to help you determine if what you’re feeling is true guilt. Well…their list with a few tweaks from us. 

When you feel true guilt:

If those things resonate, then yes, what you’re feeling is true and healthy guilt. And yes, it’s a gift. We’re not saying it’s easy. Or fun. It’s going to take courage to deal with. And humility. But remember, God already knows your sin. Nothing you can do will surprise him or make him take his love from you, because God IS love. It’s his nature, and it doesn’t depend on you. Thank God, right?

When God has used good guilt to work His purpose in your life, you will be able to walk and write in the freedom of forgiveness. And your stories, be they fiction or nonfiction, will resonate with the authenticity of one who is forgiven and restored. 

Then you’ll be able to sing with David the rest of Psalm 32. You didn’t think we’d forget to share that, did you? Well buckle up, friends, because the following verses are why this Psalm was so powerful to my (Karen’s) seventeen-year-old sinner’s self, and why I wept when I read it. I’d just confessed my wrong to my dad, and his forgiveness was swift and complete, and ended with the assurance, “Karen, you could never do anything that would make me not love you.” 

Trust me, those are the same words you’ll hear from God when your guilt is forgiven. So, here are the words God gave me that night so long ago: 

“Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!… Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.” Psalm 32:1-2; 5

Amen!

Do you feel guilty? Find out when it’s a gift...and when it’s not! #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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How has God used guilt in your life?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast, and we’re bringing you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr., a genius on marketing and all things publishing! You can find the podcast at novelmarketing.com.

Today we’re covering commandment number 7: Thou shalt weigh thine options before investing in marketing.

Investing in marketing is a given. Every successful author does so. But how much of which resources do you invest? For example, one resource is time, and another is money. They’re both valuable. But how much do you have of each? And how do you allocate them?

You can’t spend the same marketing dollar on two different things. You’ve got to choose. Nor can you spend the same hour of time on two different things. There is always going to be a cost, a thing you chose and a thing you didn’t choose. The best thing you can do for yourself is understand and weigh your options so you can make the best decisions you can. 

You also need to be asking the right question when it comes to marketing. Don’t ask: will this tactic or thing I want to try help me sell more books? Lots of things can help you sell more books. Ask instead: Will this help me sell more books than the next best alternative?

For that, again, you need to know what those alternatives are. Listening to the Novel Marketing Podcast is a great way to be informed about those options, which is why we recommend that show. You can find more book promotion and platform help by listening to Novel Marketing in your favorite podcast app or at NovelMarketing.com.

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

Thanks so much to our June sponsor of the month, K.D. Aster. She’s hard at work on her novel: Kingdom of Azur, and we’re excited to see how it turns out. K.D. Aster, thanks, and keep writing!

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

The post 143 – The Gift of Guilt appeared first on Write from the Deep.

It’s hard to let go of our expectations when we embark on this journey of writing God’s truth. Whether the path we’re on is to write fiction or nonfiction, we think we have an idea of how it will go. Then reality smacks us between the eyes. Guest Tim Shoemaker reveals how it all makes sense when we look through God’s eyes.

About Tim Shoemaker

Tim Shoemaker has authored sixteen books, is a popular conference speaker, and serves at his local church. His latest book, Easy Target, released in March, 2021, with Focus on the Family, and Escape From the Everglades releases in July. Tim has been happily married for over forty years to Cheryl, his high school sweetheart.

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

Karen: Hey guys, it’s time to enter into the deep and we are so glad that you’re here with us today. And with our guest, Tim Shoemaker. Erin will introduce him.

Erin: I will. Tim Shoemaker is the author of sixteen books, and he writes both fiction and nonfiction. His latest book, Easy Target, is a middle grade thriller that just released with Focus on the Family. For all you people looking for middle grade stories out there, that’s a thriller that your kids might like.

Tim also speaks at schools, churches, conferences, and para-church organizations like Focus on the Family. He’s happily married to the love of his life, and he has three grown sons. On his website he lists several of the things he’s passionate about, but I think this one is my favorite. He says he’s passionate about being a man of integrity who loves God and others with all his heart.

Tim, we are so glad to have you here with us. Thank you and welcome!

Tim: Erin, Karen, thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here.

Erin: Tim, let’s just jump in with our first question that we always give. What does the deep mean to you?

Tim: Well, I think, we were talking just a moment before we got on the air, and here in the Chicago roots, I would have to say deep dish pizza is certainly a big one there. And I would be a Giordano’s guy.

Erin: Me too! We all have Chicago roots here. Now we’re all wanting pizza.

Karen: Yeah, that’s right!

Tim: No, but really I think the deep to me is about those deep places in your heart. When you’re writing, it comes from those strong passions that we have that are deep down. Our deepest convictions. It’s these core things, these foundational beliefs that we’ve got.

To me, I think that’s what the deep is about it. I feel like—you’ve seen this too, right?—when you’re reading fiction, can’t you tell about an author you’ve never met before just by reading their fiction? Because if they’re writing from their heart, you’re going to find out what they’re really about and what makes them tick. To me, that’s it. It’s definitely about those deep places of our heart.

Erin: I love that. Tim, you’ve been a full-time author and a speaker for quite a few years, more than fifteen years now, I think. But tell me, how did your writing career start?

Tim: Well, it started by just telling stories to nieces and nephews and my own three sons.

I love telling stories. Seeing their eyes get wide, you know? And if you think, “Okay, maybe I’m going a little bit too far here, we’ll tone it down.” That type of thing. I love doing that. But I would keep hearing, “Dad, you’ve got to write these stories down.”

I will tell you, I had zero interest in that. None. You know, you’re just sort of making things up. I figured I’m never going to remember what I just talked about anyway. But one time I tried, and I found out I loved it.

I could not believe it because that had never happened to me in school. Maybe because everything was so regimented, it was so formulaic in school. But just to be able to write like this? I loved it. I was actually in the photo business. I had a one hour mini lab.

Erin: Oh, cool. Way back when those existed.

Tim: Yeah, exactly. I had that mini lab and studio, and I was starting to write on the side then. My dream was that someday that business would do well enough where I could hire somebody to do part of what I was doing so I could have more time to write. But that was not God’s plan.

But that’s how it started with me. Just telling stories to kids, and kids encouraged me to put it on paper.

Erin: What happened then with the photo shop?

Tim: In 2004, we had to close. Digital was taking over where people weren’t making the prints. That’s how we made our living. Making pictures. We just saw I was losing my shirt, for one. My wife and I were in it together. So we just felt this was it. That God was making it so clear that we had to close the store.

We closed it in June of 2004, and that was it. I felt that was God’s nudge to try writing full-time. I had some books out at that point, but it was all nonfiction. It was that elusive fiction that I was trying so hard for.

Karen: What kind of struggles did you face at that point? Did you struggle with feeling like a failure? And don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying you were. Or were you excited because you felt as though God was saying this activity is done, now I’m asking you to go down this path?

Tim: I think there was a little of both. But there was a lot of that when I was there at the store, you know, working late into the night and things like that, there was very much a feeling of failure. I would say that was an attack of the enemy in so many ways.

You know, everybody ended up losing their stores. For the most part, all the independents, they went. Everything was changing, but there was this sense of supreme failure. “Wow, I couldn’t even do this right. And you’re going to go into something different?”

Erin: And risky!

Tim: Yeah. We left on, oh, it was June, I want to say 25th. I may be a day off on that. But we closed the store, and I took the money from the register, you know, like our change, the backup change you have. $300 in change in singles and fives, and all this. We took our $300. We drove from Chicago down to Atlanta where the Christian booksellers convention was.

We left right from there, from closing the store. Because I had a book that was going to be coming out at that point. It was a devotional for boys. So we were going to be there and do whatever we could to publicize it. The crazy thing was there was a little glitch and the book didn’t even make it to the convention. You know, these are great times.

Erin: Wait, I’m seeing what people might be tempted, in your shoes, to think: failure upon failure upon failure. How did you react to that?

Tim: I think in a very real way, my faith was strong. Fantastic wife. Incredibly encouraging and supportive of this. Which, I mean, as big of a step as it was for me, look at what a step that was for her, right?

So I was surrounded by family who were very supportive, which was huge. Strong connections in our church, so we had all of that. But I will still say the enemy, you know, he did his best. There were times there was this thought. Not a voice, but a thought. It did come to my mind. “You know, you need to do it. You failed. It’s over. Put your house in order. You’re done.”

It scared me. It’s like, “Oh my goodness, I don’t love that.” It was this attack from the enemy. I took it as that. He kept saying, “You failed. You’ve blown it. You’ve let everybody down.” It was like one of those Jimmy Stewart things, right? It’s a Wonderful Life. You’re worth more dead than alive. You’ve got a good insurance policy.

Karen: You’re looking around for Clarence.

Tim: I don’t think I was at risk, but it was a thought that was like the enemy was trying it out. “Let’s see if this works on him.”

I think that all stopped when we actually closed the store and left. That was it. It was done. From that point on it was the new career.

Karen: God took you off the cliff, and you just sailed on from there.

Tim: Well, it was not all flying. There was still a lot of bumps. But it was good.

Erin: I know you said that first book was nonfiction, but you wanted to get into fiction. How did that become a passion and how did that lead you into wanting to write that kind of fiction for your kids?

Tim: I think again going back to that storytelling, and I’ve got a love for kids. I’m trying to think where that started. I’ve got two older sisters, two younger brothers. But my two younger brothers, one is nine years younger, one is twelve years younger, so it was like a whole different family. I did a lot of babysitting and stuff for them, and we had so much fun.

I mean, there were broken bones and stitches and stuff, so, uh, we just had a ride. That’s where my love for kids grew. Then of course, I had kids. But in the meantime, I taught junior high and Sunday school and all kinds of things. I really loved the power of a story and wanted to get through to them that way. I was also trying to connect with my kids, like in family devotions and all that. So some of those early books, they were family devotion type books.

By the time we closed the store, I probably had four or five books at that point. But everything’s nonfiction. I wanted to write fiction. The short stories were beginning to go. They were starting to get picked up by Focus on the Family Clubhouse magazine, things like that. But I just couldn’t get that fiction. And that’s where I was just living for that fiction.

Erin: Well then how did that happen? How did you end up sticking with it?

Tim: I guess I just always thought it was to happen and was going to happen. I had some great encouragers that felt I should. They’d point out it’s just a bad time in the market. Your writing’s good. Keep going. You know, all that type of stuff.

But it was years of that. I also heard from some very wise people that it takes a lot of time for fiction to break in for traditional publishing.

But I didn’t always have good advice, either. I can remember I was at a Christian writers’ conference, and I was teaching by this time. Another faculty member came up to me and said, “You know, you really need to stop writing for kids. You need to write for adults. You can write that good. You should be writing for them.” And their closing comment is what sort of sealed it for me. They said, “That’s where the money is.”

Right at that point, I’m not thinking that this is necessarily a word from the Lord. I ended up rejecting that. My passion was this: My heart is for kids. There’s a bazillion things written for broken adults. I want to write for the kids. I want to write to them. I want a chance before they’re broken. Let me try to inspire them there.

I want to bring friends to kids that don’t have friends in the characters of these stories. I want to help show a path to these kids who are smart, but they lack experience, so they’re going to make dumb mistakes. How can we show them traps that are out there, but all wrapped into a good story that they can be involved in? Because we learn from experiences, right?

So I kept with it. Again, God’s grace, just God’s grace that he kept me knowing I was to do this. And finally it broke open.

Erin: What’s so interesting about this to me is that here you are needing to help support your family and the money temptation would be super strong. I love that you recognized that that was simply just a temptation, simply just not suited to your passion. I love that.

You and I had talked a little bit before and you talked to me about some waiting times in your career, and you were telling me about the sled. I love that story. Share that so our listeners can hear how waiting can sometimes come to fruition. Or often, or always, in God’s plan.

Tim: When the fiction finally broke, it ended up being first a one book contract, and that turned into a three book contract. So that was great. That was with Zondervan. We completed that contract in June of 2014. Now my editor had left, so I’m a bit of an orphan author here. So, I’m gonna pitch another idea, and they really wanted to see how the series would do. That was going to take time, right?

As it turned out, things changed in the publishing industry. Sometimes people are more into one target market, or not, depending on where things are going. Suddenly here I am with no contract.

I wasn’t so worried at first, but as time goes on, I did get some nonfiction things going, and God had led me to speaking. Oh my goodness, that was another whole thing where when you are so dependent on God, you are so desperate to do it right. I learned to say yes to just about anything if I felt it was out of my comfort zone, but I felt this was an opportunity God was putting there. That opened up so many things. I never saw the speaking. That was a huge thing.

But yeah, I’m waiting and that goes into two years. And then three years. June of 2017, it had been three years. I had a complete novel done. I had started another one. I had four proposals out with our agents. Let’s see, two were nonfiction. One was the standalone fiction I just finished. And one was another book that I’d hoped would start into a series. So I’ve got four proposals out there.

Karen: You’re definitely doing the work.

Tim: But nothing’s happening. So, it’s a June day. Picture Chicago, June. It’s 80 degrees, and I’m walking a couple of miles, which is my practice to walk a couple miles and think and pray and different things like that. So I’m walking and I’m kind of at the place where I make my turnaround.

It’s garbage day in this neighborhood that I was walking through, and I see these four sleds by the curb. Now, they were in terrific shape and they all had ropes. I mean, they’re great. Obviously somebody is cleaning out their garage and they’re saying, this is it. No more. The kids are grown.

But they were good sleds. I thought to myself, “You know what? My sons would like these. They’re starting families themselves. They’ve got young families. They’d like these, but in winter, not right now.”

Well, you know, I could walk home, I could get the car and pick these up, but I knew the garbage truck would be there. They’d be gone, and I would be kicking myself, come winter, that I didn’t get these sleds when they were available.

I thought, “Okay, I’m going to look like an idiot.” But I picked up these four sleds, slung them over my back, and started my walk home. I was, I don’t know, maybe a half a mile from home. I’m walking, and I hear this voice, and here’s this guy on this porch. I don’t know who he is, but he says, “Mighty fine collection of sleds ya got there.” Just real sarcastic.

We’re joking around a little bit because obviously I look like this complete idiot. As we break up that conversation he says, “Hey, I’m going in to get my skates. You know, you’re probably right. The weather’s going to change. I’m going to be ready, too.”

As I left there, I don’t think I’d walked ten steps before this thought popped to my mind that this was representing my life. I felt as out of place right then, an 80 degree day, carrying sleds, something that was definitely not needed now, but it would definitely be needed in the future. And here I was with four proposals just weighing on me. Just weighing on me daily that I’ve got four proposals and nothing’s happening. But in that moment, I thought, “They are going to be needed. When that time comes, you’re going to be ready. Just keep on the course.”

It was a huge moment. And you know what? Erin, when we were talking about this, I pulled up my journal and I was looking at that just a little bit. In my journal, before I went on that walk, one of the verses that day, in my journal, I’ll just read it here from Psalm 71.

It goes, “Since my youth, oh God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds. Even when I’m old and gray do not forsake me, oh God, until I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.”

That’s my deep. That’s what I want. I want to impact this next generation. So that’s what I was praying that morning that I ended up walking with four sleds. And God gave me the encouragement to keep walking.

So that was three years I’d been without a contract for fiction. Now, as it turned out, I don’t know, in the next six months or a year, I think one of the nonfiction ones did get picked up, and that did very well, so that was terrific.

But it was two and a half years after the sleds that the fiction all went. Easy Target was one of those books. Escape from the Everglades, which comes out in July, was the one that starts the series. Those were those other two proposals. So three of the four proposals have gone. In fact, one of them, they expanded from a one book deal to a three book contract.

God gave all that. But it was a long haul. But I’ve got to say this: I changed in five and a half years. My writing deepened in five and a half years. I mean, by deepen, I don’t know if I would say, you know, it got better. I mean, we all want to say that it got better. But it was deeper. There were things that were more important that I wanted to get out.

I think even the publisher, that was Focus on the Family, I think they went through things. So it all came together at the right time. But yeah, five and a half years. I mean, talk about doubts. I’m teaching fiction writing, but I don’t have a contract. What is this?

Karen: I absolutely love what you’ve shared because my life verse is Habakkuk 2:3 but I’m going to read Habakkuk 2:1-3 because your life and all that you’ve been through, and in what you’re saying, it is the perfect example of this.

Habakkuk says, “I will climb my watchtower now and wait to see what answer God will give to my complaint. And the Lord said to me, ‘Write my answer on a billboard, large and clear, so that anyone can read it at a glance and rush to tell others. But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, do not despair for these things will surely come to pass, just be patient. They will not be overdue a single day.'”

And we see, you know, as you were telling the sled story, I’m thinking, well, surely the week or two weeks after he got the contract… No. Two and a half years! But they weren’t overdue a single day. God knew exactly how long it needed to take. God knew exactly what he needed to do in you.

For those of you listening, God knows. He knows exactly what his vision is for you. Nothing will keep that from being fulfilled. We don’t know what God’s plans are for you in what you’re writing. Maybe for publication, maybe not. But whatever it is, if you’re obedient to the task that God has given you, slowly, steadily, surely the time will approach when the vision will be fulfilled. Do not despair, friends. These things will surely come to pass. Just be patient. They won’t be overdue a single day.

Tim: That’s good.

Erin: Amen.

Guest Tim Shoemaker helps you see your writing journey through God’s eyes. #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1 @TimShoemaker1
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Are you waiting for God to bring something to pass? What helps you be patient as you wait?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast, and we’re bringing you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr., a genius on marketing and all things publishing! You can find the podcast at novelmarketing.com.

Today we’re covering commandment number six: Thou shalt own thine own platform.

You only need to look around at what’s happening in the world today, where a social media platform can cancel you in a heartbeat, and you lose access to the readers you may have spent years growing. Or those platforms can make you pay, anytime they want, for anyone to see your posts. And this has happened. That makes growing your platform on those types of ground an unwise investment.

Own. Your. Platform.

The two most important things for you to own is your website and your newsletter list. This is what you should be spending time and money developing. Your website is your home base. It’s a place readers can find you and connect with you. A place you own, so it can never be taken away from you. 

Your newsletter is how you communicate directly with your readers. Again, those email addresses can never be taken away from you by some company that decides to cancel you.

For more book promotion and platform help listen to Novel Marketing in your favorite podcast app or at NovelMarketing.com

Easy Target by Tim Shoemaker

Escape from the Everglades by Tim Shoemaker

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

Thanks so much to our May sponsor of the month, Stacy McLain! We’re praying for you on your writing journey, Stacy!

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

The post 142 – Seeing Through God’s Eyes with Guest Tim Shoemaker appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Writing is never easy, but it can be especially challenging when you have a full-time job. It can seem so hard to find writing time on top of everything else! But we’ve got some great tips and strategies, shared by those facing the same challenges, to help you in this seemingly impossible task.

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

We recently heard from one of our new listeners that the hardest thing for her about this task of writing was balancing between her day job and time to write. We’ve never done an episode specifically about that, and clearly it’s needed. Thanks for the idea!

Like many struggles on the writing journey, it helps us to hear, and learn from each other’s experiences. Remember Hebrews 10:24-25:

“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

With that in mind, we sent an email out to other authors for their feedback, which we’ll be sharing. And because we’ve have both had times when we’ve been writing while working day jobs, we’ll mix in some of our thoughts as well. 

Christina Sinisi, who works as a professor, has this to say:

“Schedule your down time, set boundaries, and be flexible. I know these may seem contradictory, but they’re real. I schedule my work time, including grading at home, so I have a built-in nap, outdoors time, etc. I even schedule expected times for meals. That way, I don’t run out of time and discard important things. And then I protect those times. Students would seek help at all hours in this digital age, but I have cut-offs and stick to them.”  

I (Erin) like the idea of setting boundaries and protecting them. My hubby’s a professor, too, and I can testify that students do seek help at all hours. There will be an email at 10:30 at night about an assignment due at 11:00pm, as if my hubby has nothing to do 24/7 but watch for their emails.

But the same thing can happen with coworkers or your boss. If you answer that email on Saturday afternoon, or at 10pm, instead of waiting until you get back to work, you’re training people to expect that, and it’s hard to retrain them, or not feel guilty when you want to set boundaries. Obviously emergencies happen or there are jobs that require you to be on call, but you get the idea.

Christina goes on to say:

“Finally, I allow myself leeway. It’s the end of the semester, and I didn’t write for my fiction yesterday. That’s okay. I’ll make it up when the semester is over. Priorities have to shift depending on needs, while maintaining health and faith.”

That’s so good to keep in mind. And to stay flexible even when those shifting priorities have unexpected results. Sometimes shifting priorities can feel like a juggling act but having that flexibility can help us not be frustrated, and that saves our emotional energy for writing when we do have time.

Linda Harris shared this with us:

“When I was employed by the US Dept. of Education, the work and environment was structured and rigid. I write historical fiction. My lunch hour was one-hour, no exceptions. If I stayed in my office, I was open to interruptions and work-related issues. I found a place out of my assigned area where I could work in relative quiet…My first five published novels were before personal computers, and work equipment was off limits. I transcribed my noon-time writing to the home typewriter. We lived in the country so I could dictate to my hand-held recorder on the way home. A commercial dictaphone machine made the transcribing go faster. Knowing Shorthand was a plus. Even knowing a few basic strokes and abbreviations for characters would help today when pencil and paper are the only tools available.”

I love the dedication this shows. Linda made a work around for so many of her challenges. She goes on to say:

“I learned to write in scenes instead of chapters. Scenes were easier to rearrange and develop than full chapters. Staying in POV (point of view) is easier in scenes. Dividing into chapters later was a snap. A detailed outline, while time consuming to create, kept me on track. I added historical notations to the outline to keep the flow and not miss an important point… Since time was premium, I allowed 15 minutes to gather my gear and get to my writing spot, and another 15 to gather my gear, get to my office, and be ready to work. Obviously, all minutes saved during these 30 minutes were added to writing time. Fast forward to laptops and computers and marvelous programs like Scrivener, AutoCrit, etc., and production is streamlined.”

What a great job Linda does with optimizing her writing time to make the most of it. Think about your own job and the flow of your day. Are there ways you can optimize your time? Routines you can establish to help make the most of your time?

Linda ends with this:

“God is the ultimate redeemer of my time spent writing for Him.”

What a wonderful reminder that the burden of accomplishing this task doesn’t rest on us, but on HIM! He’s given you this task, and He will enable you, and bring His purposes to fruition. 

Jessica White offered these tips:

“It’s 100% about making the most of the small times. The in between moments. Plotting while you wait. Using an app like OTTER so it transcribes your thoughts and you have a template to start with. Also just knowing yourself and how you write so you can find prime time. For example, my brain is more relaxed [at night] so I can free-write first drafts then, but don’t ask me to edit. But if I try to draft in the morning, my inner editor makes it slow and painful. Working with myself instead of against myself is the key.” 

I love that because it’s another way to optimize your time. You’re being more efficient with the time you have. I realize not everyone can do this. You may need to be at your day job during your most creative time. In that case, maybe take some quick notes during your break times, if you get them, or like Linda Harris did, use your lunchtime if you can. Try to save that time during weekends and your days off, and try to find your second best creative time.

Jessica continues:

“Just being realistic about how much it’s going to take to write a book [helps]. For me it is about an hour a page from first draft to editor’s desk. So if I need a 90,000 word book, that’s going to be about 360 hours. If I could only give it an hour a day, then it would take me a year.” 

As an editor for major publishing houses, I (Karen) can tell you how important it is to turn your manuscript in on time. You need to know how long it takes you to write a book so you can make sure you’re not signing a contract with an unrealistic deadline that’s going to cause you stress, or cause you to produce less than your best effort because you ran out of time.

Kelly Scott shared this with us:

“My biggest tip is using the Google docs app on my phone. Every time a scene came to mind or I had an idea, I could quickly write it out while I was sitting at my work desk. I would also designate Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons to writing.”

Kathleen Y’Barbo Turner offers this advice:

“First, for writers employed full time outside the home, if you spend all your free time wishing you had more time to write, you’ll never find time to write. I cringe when I think of the time I wasted on evenings and weekends, wishing I didn’t spend 8 hours of every weekday as a paralegal at a law office.” 

Paul gives us the foundation to deal with this discontent in Philippians 4: 11-13: “…for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

Kathleen clearly learned this principle. She goes on to say:

“Then I remind myself how stressed I was when I was depending on hit-or-miss royalty payments and book advances to pay bills that came every month no matter what. And I really do like being a paralegal. It uses the other side of my brain. And though I can’t write about our cases or clients, it does spark ideas just being out in the world that I didn’t have when I was home writing all day.”

I totally agree with what she says about sparking ideas. Part of what builds creativity is taking in stimuli from lots of sources all around you and finding new connections and new ways to solve problems, like for example, writing your character out of the corner you painted him into!

As far as how to manage the writing time, Kathleen says:

“First of all, ignore the urge to lament what you don’t have time for and make a plan for the time you do have. Your plan can be a writing schedule or just an acknowledgement that you’ve got a certain number of hours today and using those hours to do something productive and writing related… The best thing I did, other than learn how to write ANYWHERE, including but not limited to cars, airplanes, and waiting rooms, was to get my priorities straight. God first. My daily reading before work happens no matter what.”  

Amen to that! Kathleen also says:

“If I can sneak some writing time in before I leave for the office, I do it…When I get home from work, I’m usually tired. We don’t break for lunch at my office, so after dinner I’m ready to throw myself on the sofa and watch mindless television with hubby. So I do. Yep. I do. But only for a pre-determined amount of time. I don’t have children at home now, but I started writing when my eldest was four. I think writing with children around is great training for writing with a job. You just get on with it. Do the work. Manage as best you can but above all, protect your time, your faith, and your creativity. God will give you the ability. You just have to ask. And listen to His response.”

I love that because our ability really does come from God. You have to protect your time with God. Sometimes in the midst of all the busyness of life and writing, what we need most is to stop moving and be quiet before God for even just a few minutes and let him wash over us. Let him be our rest. Let him refill our well. Take time where we’re not trying to create, not trying to speak, not trying to do anything but soak in the awareness of his presence. And his majesty. You might be surprised how refreshing that can be. 

Psalm 62:5 says, “Rest in God alone, my soul, for my hope comes from Him.”

Psalm 23:1-3 (NIRV) says, “The Lord is my shepherd. He gives me everything I need. He lets me lie down in fields of green grass. He leads me beside quiet waters. He gives me new strength…”

When I (Karen) worked a full-time job as well as being a writer, I had a special difficulty because my full-time job was in publishing. As many of you know, I headed up fiction for Tyndale as well as three other major publishers in Christian publishing. I worked with books all day long. I was editing, brainwashing, and doing all those things with writers. My whole world was about writing and story and all the things that needed to be done as a writer, but I was working as an editor.

It took me awhile to realize that they were two different hats for me. They’re two different functions of the brain. One is a more collaborative, synergistic action, and that’s the editing. In that, I’d use one part of my brain. But then when it came to just letting the right side of my brain out to play, that’s when I went into writing. I had to shift. On the drive home from work, I would decompress from the day and then prepare myself for, when I got home, the writing session.

I had set times for dinner when I got home, and Don and I would spend time together. But I also had a bedroom set aside as an office. When I went into that bedroom to do the writing work, Don knew not to come in and try to talk to me unless it was some kind of emergency, like a severed artery or protruding bone. I had a set amount of time that I spent in there.

I had to be careful not to go in there when I couldn’t sleep. Not to go in there when I was frustrated. Not to use that room for anything other than for just sitting and entering into the phase and the work of writing. I had to protect the space, as well as protect what I did in there.

Linda Goodnight wrote this:

“When I first began pursuing publication, I taught school and had three active children at home. In addition, I was working part-time as a home health care nurse. So, yes, time was tight. I specifically remember brainstorming scenes as I was driving between patient homes each evening and on weekends. I kept a notepad on the seat next to me and when I stopped, I’d jot down snatches of conversation or whatever brainstorm I’d had. I was never good at speaking into a recorder. Frankly, during those days I was so compelled to write that I literally always had a pen and paper. To me, the whole time management thing is about priorities. We find time for the things we really want to do. I hear people say they’re going to write a book when they get time, which means they probably never will.” 

We all say that we have no time, and yet we have time, I know I have time, to sit and watch a movie on TV. If I have something else that’s a higher priority, then I need to put that in place of what is a mindless activity. Although, I want to give you all permission to involve yourself in mindless activity, because there are times when our brains and our creativity need that.

Linda goes on to give these specific tips that helped her: 

Becca Wierwille wrote this:

“I work as a kindergarten teacher, and by the time I get home, my creative energy is often drained. While I do occasionally have time to write in the evenings, I’ve learned I can’t count on it. My strategy this year has been to write in the morning before I leave for school. My daily goal is to write for at least ten minutes—ten minutes is enough to get me started, and once I’m into the story, I almost always write for longer than that. Sometimes the excitement from my morning writing time carries into the evening, and then I’m able to continue it later as well.”

What’s so great about this is that Becca is setting herself up to succeed in her daily writing goal because she’s wisely made it easy. Anytime you’re trying to develop a habit, you want to make it so easy that you almost can’t NOT do it. And for getting our writing time going, sometimes the hardest bit is just overcoming inertia. Getting started each day is the biggest battle. If you tell yourself you only have to write one paragraph, or one sentence even, or five or ten minutes, that can get you started, and then more often than not, you’ll be off to the races. 

Becca goes on to say:

“Revisions are a bit more difficult because I find I need larger blocks of time in order to get into a good rhythm for editing. So when I’m revising, I try to set aside time on the weekend, or very intentional time in the evenings on weekdays. I used to do a word count goal for both writing and revising, and I know that works well for some people. But for me, a time goal has been more encouraging and less stressful overall, especially during the school year.”

I (Erin) love time goals, too. I’m a slow writer, and somehow knowing I had to make a certain number of words each session made me self-conscious. But simply working for a set time felt more freeing. The key is to learn what works best for you.

Robin Lee Hatcher gives this advice:

“I wrote and published my first 9 books over 10 years while working an 8 to 5 job (never worked anywhere that started at 9!). Most of that time, I was a single mom of two. I set myself a schedule and stuck to it, but I also, as a mom, had to be available to my daughters. So I had an open door policy. They could interrupt me any time they needed me. I came home from work and fixed and ate dinner. Then I wrote from 7 to 9PM on Monday through Thursday nights. Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays were reserved for family. Since most of those years my girls were tweens and teens, they usually slept in on Saturdays so I often got to write on Saturday mornings. The key is to think of it as a job, whether or not under contract. I believe that having a set schedule and a set writing place helps with discipline, so that your brain knows, when [you] sit down here with [your] computer, it is time to write. When necessary, a writer can train her brain to switch from creating to dealing with family matters and then switch back again. It may not be ideal, but a writer really can learn to do it when necessary.”

Cara Putman offers this:

When I (Erin) was homeschooling my kids, I would try to get all the grading and prep done during the day with them, then after the school day, that was time I’d be writing and they’d do their own thing. It was easy to get buy-in. After having Mom as teacher all day, they were tired of me! Think about the best ways to get buy-in from your family.

Cara has a short video with tips and strategies for maximizing your writing time as well.

This has been a lot of information. However, there’s one important thing to keep in mind about all these strategies and experiences we’ve shared with you: They’re meant to inspire you. To encourage you. To help you get a springboard for ideas about what might work for you.

They are not for you to compare yourself to others, to go on that path where you feel like a failure because you’re not doing what someone else is. You are not allowed to compare yourself to anyone but yourself. Instead, focus on what works for you, using these ideas to help you figure that out.

Colossians 3:15-17 says, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Let this encourage you. Let this be an inspiration for you. And let it remind you that if God has given you this task, he’ll help you figure out how to do it.

Do you struggle to find time to write because of your job? Have we got some great tips for you! #amwriting #christianwriter @karenball1
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What tips do you have for writing with a full-time job?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast. We’re bringing you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr., who is a genius on marketing and all things publishing. You can find the podcast at novelmarketing.com.

Today we’re covering commandment #5: Thou shalt not dig thy well whilst thou art thirsty.

It takes time and money to develop your craft and build your platform. A successful writing journey isn’t an overnight trip, so don’t fall prey to anyone who promises that it is. You have to plan ahead and work at a pace you can sustain over the long haul. 

Be leary of anyone who offers you an instant audience for a price, or instant sales. They’re often better at taking your money than anything, and they’re taking advantage of your desire to make a quick profit from your writing.

Instead, create a budget for both your time and money, no matter how small the amount, and stick to it. Don’t go into debt, and don’t bet the farm. Invest. That’s the best way to ensure steady growth over the long term.

For more book promotion and platform help listen to Novel Marketing in your favorite podcast app or at NovelMarketing.com.

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

Thanks so much to our May sponsor of the month, Stacy McLain! We’re praying for you on your writing journey, Stacy!

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

The post 141 – Writing with a Full-Time Job appeared first on Write from the Deep.

So many writers deal with not just one health issue, but multiple issues. It can feel like our bodies are attacking us or even sabotaging our efforts to write. Guest Lindsay A. Franklin understands, and she’s here to share how God is bringing her through her own health struggles and enabling her to meet deadlines and thrive on her writing journey.

About Lindsay A. Franklin

Lindsay A. Franklin is a Carol Award–winning author, freelance editor, and homeschooling mom of three. She would wear pajama pants all the time if it were socially acceptable. Lindsay lives in her native San Diego with her scruffy-looking nerf-herder husband, their precious geeklings, three demanding thunder pillows (a.k.a. cats), and a stuffed marsupial named Wombatman. She’s @LinzyAFranklin on Instagram and Twitter, and she Facebooks at facebook.com/LindsayAFranklin.

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

Karen: Welcome, listeners, to the deep. We’re so glad that you’re here with us today. We have a guest, Lindsay A. Franklin, and Erin, the inimitable, is going to introduce her.

Erin: I can’t even say that word! No, this isn’t a do- over like the Groundhog Day movie. We really do have Lindsay Franklin with us for another episode, because we had so much we wanted to talk about. So, just as a reminder, Lindsay A. Franklin is the Carol Award-winning author of five books. She’s a freelance editor and a homeschooling mom of three, and she’s also been diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder: Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

If you heard our last podcast, you heard part of our interview where we talked with her about that long journey to finding the diagnosis in the midst of starting her writing career. If you didn’t hear it, go back and listen. It’s a good one!

Today we want to continue our conversation with her and talk about the practical side of how in the world she managed all those book contracts in the midst of dealing with the repercussions of her disease that she deals with all of the time.

Welcome, Lindsay.

Lindsay: Thank you so much for having me back. I’m excited to be here again.

Erin: We love having you. You had mentioned in our last show that you had to have knee surgery, and right as we were ending, you were like, “Yeah, I had to do all these books.” We thought our listeners would want to know some of the deal with that, the practical side. How did you do that?

Lindsay: That’s such a good question. I think something all of us who struggle with chronic conditions have to wrestle with that a lot. How am I going to do these things that I want to do? How am I going to accomplish what I want to in life, or fulfill my obligations?

At that point, once I had signed on the dotted line, it was like, I have to. I literally have to do this. I agreed to legally, so how am I going to do that? I think there are a few tips that will hopefully resonate for people in a similar position.

Time management is very key for me because I never really know when I’m going to feel good, and when I’m going to be completely not functional. Because that’s kind of how I swing. I know for some people it’s like their baseline is just constantly sort of lower all the time. They have to figure out how they’re going to make the most of the limited amount of energy that they have all the time.

I’m kind of very up and down with my energy levels. Some days I’m just super way up here, and I can get tons of stuff done. Then other days it’s literally nothing, and my husband is pulling all the weight around the house, taking care of the kids and everything. Because I just can’t do anything because my pain levels are too high.

For me, I do a lot of planning where I will look out at my long-term calendar. I look at my short-term calendar. I’m kind of tactile, so I have a paper planner still. We’ve got our digital family calendar that we put all our appointments in. But for my work, I like to look at it on paper so that I can see the whole month at a time. Then I can see the week.

In those days, when I had five books under contract at once, I had an hourly. You know, like a daily planner that had everything broken down by hour, because then what I could do was block out my days. These are the times I simply have to pick up the kids from school, or these are the times I’ve got a doctor’s appointment or whatever, you know, those appointments you can’t move around. I would block those out first.

Then I would look at what deadlines are coming up. What are the kids’ school deadlines, school obligations coming up that I need to be involved with? It’s helpful that they’re older now. When they were littler, that was a much bigger slice of my daily pie, so to speak.

Karen: Okay, so I have four and a half minutes on Thursday next week where I can write…

Lindsay: That’s pretty much what it was. When my kids were little and I was homeschooling them full-time, my husband would get home. I think it was on Wednesday evenings and Friday evenings, those were my times to write. I would leave the house because that was the only way that I could really disconnect mentally from what was going on at home and all of my obligations there. He would just be like, “Okay, I’m here. I got dinner. Go.”

I would eat dinner out, just by myself, and write until 9 or 10, whenever my coffee shop closed. I wrote an entire, 100,000 word fantasy novel that way over the course of however many months it took me to do that.

So what I do practically really does vary depending on the season of life that I’m in. I was lucky that when I had all these books under contract, my kids were a little older, a little bit more independent. I was able to focus a little more time on writing.

Being realistic about what I can actually do, not looking at the paper and saying, “Oh, well, if I work every single spare minute that I have open on my calendar, then I can turn this in earlier.”

I’m always tempted to do that. “Oh, I can also take on an editing project while I write…No. Don’t do it, Lindsay. Stop.”

Those are lessons I’ve had to learn because my instinct is to do that. So I would say yes, agree to all these different things and you know, realize that I’d made a mistake and no, I can’t actually do all those things.

Erin: I love that, though, Lindsay. That’s so smart to put that on paper because there’s no fudging. You can’t pretend that those blocks aren’t full when they’re full. I think that helps you have permission to say no to certain things.

Lindsay: Yeah. And to really see it, to see it on paper, and to see how little some of those open blocks are. Like one day, I’m going to have 45 minutes to work. I mean, I simply can’t look at that and say, “Oh yes, I have time for X, Y, Z,” because it’s obvious that I don’t.

Erin: Right. Very cool. I’m curious, you had said that you deal with these ups and these downs. Do you find yourself ever struggling with feeling guilty when you’re in that down and you can’t do anything? And if so, how do you get past that?

Lindsay: Absolutely. That it has been a really big struggle for me. Because I do like to say yes. I like to say yes to a lot of things. So when I say yes to something and then I’m struck down and can’t follow through in the way that I wanted to, or I’m late with following through on something, I really do struggle with feeling guilty about that.

It does give me permission to say no at the outset more when I know that I’m going to feel worse. I hate to say no, I really do. Especially when a young writer contacts me. “Would you maybe be willing to read my book for endorsement?” I always want to say yes to that, because it’s so hard to ask people that question.

I know that feeling, so that kind of stuff, it just kills me to have to say no upfront. But I also know that it’s worse for me and for them to say yes to something like that, and then to have no time to actually be able to follow through with that, because then they’re all hopeful waiting for that endorsement that may come in. Then I have to say, “I’m so sorry. I did not have time in my schedule to be able to work it in.”

Karen: The thing to always keep in mind in those situations, so that you don’t end up falling into guilty feelings, is that God knows the exact right people to be endorsing that person’s book. You can say no with the full confidence that it’s not like God turns around and says, “What did she say? She was supposed to do this.”

He doesn’t do that. And if you say yes when you know you shouldn’t, then you are short circuiting what God is trying to accomplish with someone else.

Lindsay: It’s so true. That’s such a good point. I think it’s really easy, and maybe this is especially true for women. I don’t know, maybe guys are like this, too. But I think it’s really easy to feel like all of this depends on us. That if we’re not doing it, nobody else is going to. I just feel like my female friends are right there in that camp with me, where we feel like we have to be all things to all people or else the world’s gonna fall apart. And that’s just not true. It’s not true.

God has it. He’s got the big-picture plan already laid out. I keep telling myself over and over, “You’re not that important, Lindsay.”

Karen: That’s exactly right.

Lindsay: The world is not going to fall apart if you have to say no to something, it’s really not that serious. So yeah, that’s a good word.

The world is not going to fall apart if you have to say no to something. @LinzyAFranklin #amwriting #Christianwriter @karenball1
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Karen: It’s way too easy for us in the Christian world for Christian women to feel as though we’re both the cause of and solution to all the problems around us. “It’s my fault. Somehow it’s my fault. I have to do something to fix this and if I don’t, nobody else is going to.”

And God’s like, “Would you mind getting out of the way, please?”

Erin: “I’m trying to do something here. Move over.”

Lindsay: “I’ve got this.” Yes. So true. Relatable. I wish it weren’t so relatable, but it is.

Erin: We understand! The other thing we wanted to talk about was when COVID was shutting everything down last year, that was right about when the third book of your Weaver trilogy came out. You had said, “Yeah, that’s an interesting story.”

We’re like, “Well, now we have to hear that.” So tell us what happened with that.

Lindsay: It’s kind of funny because yes, The Story Hunter, which is book three, released in May of 2020. So a very difficult time pandemic-wise. A tumultuous time politically, socially. There was a lot going on in May, 2020. And I think if my life has taught me anything, it has really forced me to be flexible.

It forced me to be flexible because I’m probably not naturally the most flexible person. This cracks me up. I have to just throw this in here, because I’m such a nerd, but the health conditions that I have make me laugh because I am physically a very flexible person. Because of my disorder, I’m hyper mobile. I’m literally flexible, and yet inside, not so much.

Oh, I also have a heart condition where I was born with a congenital defect with my heart, which is not actually related to the connective tissue disorder.

Erin: Is there any disorder you don’t have? Is there anything missing in your family?

Lindsay: Right? And my hair is way too frizzy, so I just don’t know.

Karen: I have a host of medical issues as well, and I went to my parents at one point, laughingly, but I said, “Thank you so much for the shallow end of the gene pool, from which I sprung.”

Lindsay: Right? I joke about this. Because I have one older sister, biological, older sister, and she has none of these issues. I was like, you guys saved it all for me. I got the heart from my dad. I got the connective tissue disorder from my mom. I’m like, “What is going on, you guys?”

Karen: They just think you’re so special.

Lindsay: We joke about my heart, too, because I was born into a family of very emotional feelers. I’m the one person in the family who is a T. You know, if you’re into Myers-Briggs, I’m the only T in my entire family. I’m the thinker, they’re all feelers. So we joke about my broken heart and my lack of flexibility.

It’s funny. God has a sense of humor. He does. I’m just convinced. But yes, the book launch, I have learned to be flexible. Especially in publishing where you can plan and plan, and everybody’s got these great production calendars, and you’ve got all of these dates and everything is lined up. Then the delays started happening, or the problem over here with Amazon, or the problem with the printer, or just whatever. You know, there’s always something popping up in publishing.

With The Story Hunter, I was so chill about all of those things that came up. I was just like, okay, well, if the release is delayed, it’s delayed. Again, I’m not that important. Nothing is going to explode or implode if my book doesn’t release exactly on time, or if there’s a delay in shipping. I mean, that’s hard for my readers because I ended book two on a cliffhanger, and they’ve been waiting for this book for like a year at that point. That’s a bummer for them, and I feel bad about that. But really, we just have to go with the flow on these things.

The second book in the series, The Story Raider, which came out in 2019 actually had a harder, more delay-ridden, more tumultuous journey to the shelf than The Story Hunter did. So I was prepared. I was like, nothing can be worse than The Story Raider. It’s gotta be better. And it was. It was fine, you know?

Erin: Wow. So you didn’t feel like there was really any negative impact or anything like that?

Lindsay: I think that because of the pandemic, I think people were actually reading a little bit more. You know, they were stuck at home, especially at that time early on in the pandemic.

I know that some of my friends had very difficult launches, so I don’t want to minimize any of that, you know, difficult launches in 2020. But right where I hit, I think that people were looking for a bit of an escape. They were looking for novels to read. So I didn’t notice a real big impact sales-wise or just anything.

It just kind of rolled the way it was supposed to, and everything was okay. We had a much choppier experience with Raider the year before. Because there was just business stuff outside of my control, outside of my publisher’s control. That was a really rocky road.

Just like with all my health stuff, I feel like I got prepped with something that was harder. I kind of cut my teeth on something that was harder. Then, when what looks on paper like it would be the big disaster in 2020, when that came along, it was like, everything’s going to be okay. ‘Cause I’ve already been through, as far as book launches are concerned, I’ve been through worse. So it’s going to be fine.

Erin: That’s very cool. So we’re getting near again to the end of our time. Do you have some final words of wisdom that you would want to tell, maybe young writers out there, or people struggling with their own chronic illness, or family members with chronic illness, or anything completely off topic?

Lindsay: I think, and it’s almost cliche at this point in the chronic illness community, we’ve all heard probably the concept of spoons at this point.

Karen: The only spoons I know is a game.

Lindsay: That’s fun too. Oh, yay. I’m so excited to share this. Okay, the concept of spoons is that spoons are like your energy or your capacity to do things, basically. When you have a chronic illness, you just start the day with a certain number of spoons. One day might be like a two-spoon day when you’ve got almost nothing.  Just getting up and getting into the shower to clean yourself, costs you a spoon. Then you’re down to just one, and what are you going to do with that spoon for the day?

This is a really helpful way for me to explain to people who don’t have chronic illnesses what it’s like. I may wake up with say, 20 spoons in a day. And I’m going to spend a certain number of those just being a mom, and being a wife, and taking care of my kids, taking care of my house. Then you’re left with a certain number and what are you going to do with those?

And self-care costs spoons. Working out costs me spoons, which is important for my joints. I have to work out. That’s not like a luxury, you know?

So, that idea of having a limited amount of resources and energy, that is important in explaining to other people what it’s like. And how even the small things that they don’t even think about, like my husband is such a healthy guy and he’s got all the energy, I feel like he has unlimited spoons. Of course he doesn’t, because nobody does, but he starts with so many.

He doesn’t even think about stuff like going and taking a shower, that that would cost any kind of energy for him. He just does that. For me, that does cost me some of my spoons.

I find that very helpful in helping people understand, but also in reframing the way I think about my day. My time, my life. It’s just acknowledging that I have a limited number of spoons. What am I going to say yes to? What do I want to spend those spoons on? Because it’s not unlimited.

I want to spend my spoons doing things that I love, not just things that I like. That really helps me to decide what I want to say yes to. I want to say yes to being a fantasy novelist.

I want to spend my spoons doing things that I love, not just things that I like. That really helps me to decide what I want to say yes to. @LinzyAFranklin @Karenball1 #amwriting
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Do I want to say yes to being a volunteer over here? Or doing this other kind of book? Or you know, any of the other opportunities that come up to me. I really have to weigh that. Do I want to spend however many spoons it’s going to cost me for whatever period of time on that project?

So it’s helpful to explain to other people, but it’s been really important to me in reframing how I think about my life.

Erin: I love that.

Karen: Lindsay, it’s been so good to have you on again, to talk through all these things. And it’s encouraging because it helps remind us that we can only do what we can do. We shouldn’t be trying to get in there doing other people’s jobs. We shouldn’t be trying to get in there and do God’s job.

These things that are in our lives that come to us, health, family, all of it, it comes for a reason and God uses them for these amazing tools to teach us and refine us. I went from being a high energy level, type-A personality “gotta do it, gotta be the best,” to being, “Oh, well, God’s got this.” And I’m very comfortable with that.

I’m comfortable with saying I can do what I can do, and the rest is up to God. It’s not on me. I think more of us need to come to that place, as you have with what you’ve learned. Thank you so much for sharing with our listeners today. We really appreciate it.

Erin: We do!

Lindsay: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me back on.

Do you feel like your body is sabotaging your writing journey? What helps you keep writing?

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The Story Raider by Lindsay A. Franklin

The Story Hunter by Lindsay A. Franklin

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Special thanks to our April 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 next book in the series!

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The post 140 – Overcoming Health Obstacles with Guest Lindsay A. Franklin appeared first on Write from the Deep.

So many times on our writing journey, and in our lives, we find ourselves waiting…and waiting…and waiting for answers we need. It can even feel as though God has forgotten us. Guest Lindsay Franklin shares her experiences with waiting for answers and what amazing insights God taught her as she waited.

About Lindsay A. Franklin

Lindsay A. Franklin is a Carol Award–winning author, freelance editor, and homeschooling mom of three. She would wear pajama pants all the time if it were socially acceptable. Lindsay lives in her native San Diego with her scruffy-looking nerf-herder husband, their precious geeklings, three demanding thunder pillows (a.k.a. cats), and a stuffed marsupial named Wombatman. She’s @LinzyAFranklin on Instagram and Twitter, and she Facebooks at facebook.com/LindsayAFranklin.

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

Karen: Welcome, listeners, to the deep. We have an exciting show for you today because we have a guest, Lindsay A. Franklin, and Erin is going to introduce her.

Erin: I love it when I get to introduce somebody. I first met Lindsay at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference way back before she was published, and now she’s a Carol-Award winning author. Yes, indeed. Her first book, The Story Peddler, which is a YA fantasy, published by Enclave, won the Carol Award for debut novel. That was the first book of a three book trilogy, and that third just came out I think last year, when COVID was shutting everything down. So that may have been interesting. We may even talk about that a little today. Lindsay is a freelance editor as well, and a homeschooling mom of three. And this is my favorite thing, guys: she would wear pajama pants all the time if it were socially acceptable.

Karen: She’s wearing them now.

Erin: I’m wearing them too.

Karen: I’m so out of it with my jeans.

Erin: Well, Lindsay, as you can see, we are glad to have you. Welcome!

Lindsay: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Erin: In your pajama pants.

Lindsay: When I can get away with it.

Erin: Lindsay, our first thing we always want to find out from listeners is what does the deep mean to you?

Lindsay: Ooh, that’s a really great question.

To me, the deep is like an intense, quiet place. Does that make sense? Does that description kind of capture it? The places that are the deep places for me are the ones where it’s just me and it’s God and that’s it.

I’m really excited to talk to your listeners today about some of these things, because I feel like I spend half my life pulling from the deep. I’m sure many of your listeners can relate, and you guys probably can too.

Erin: Yes we can, in fact. Let’s start from the beginning. We met, I mentioned, at a writer’s conference. So what were you doing there? What made you pursue writing to begin with?

Lindsay: I think like a lot of writers, maybe especially fiction authors, I always wrote stories. That was just something I did. I didn’t realize that was unusual. I was like 11 years old writing a novel, and I just didn’t know that wasn’t a thing that a lot of people did as a pastime. Honestly, it never occurred to me all throughout my childhood, my adolescent years, I didn’t realize that it could be a career.

Obviously, I knew people did that, but it never occurred to me that that could be something I would get into as a career. I wanted to be an attorney. I thought about being an English teacher. Those seemed like careers to me. Writing books, telling stories, that was just the thing that I did.

I didn’t think about it very seriously until I wrote a book as an adult. I wrote a fantasy manuscript as an adult and thought, “Maybe other people would want to read this. I should look into what publishing is all about. That might be a thing I should do.”

This was like in 2009 or so. There wasn’t the information out there about indie publishing that, if I were doing those searches now, there would be a whole different world for me to discover as a young writer. Maybe I would’ve pursued that avenue. But in 2009, indie publishing was  certainly gaining steam, but it wasn’t quite the thing that it is in 2021.

I ended up researching what traditional publication was like. I found out that literary agents were a thing. I was very green, let’s put it that way. I found my future agent on online through various searching and clicking and all of these different things. I just really connected with her bio on the agency website.

I saw on her schedule that she was planning to be at a writer’s conference coming up in two weeks. My husband said, “You should do this.” He booked me a flight and I went. We had little children at the time. Looking back, it’s like, what in the world were we thinking? But that’s how I ended up at my first writer’s conference.

I pitched to that agent. I had no clue what I was doing, and she saw potential. Let’s put it that way. She told me to submit. So I went home and rewrote my entire manuscript because I learned about point of view. I learned about “show, don’t tell” at that conference.

I knew I needed to rewrite my draft because it was such a mess. But I did that and then submitted the full to her some months later. By the end of that year, I was signed with her.

Karen: Very cool. That was the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference, and your agent is Rachel Kent.

Erin: I remember one of the visits that I had at Mount Herman, where you and I met each other, I remember we had a conversation about some health issues that you were dealing with. What happened with that?

Lindsay: This is a complicated question because my family is a medically complicated family. We may have talked at the time about my son’s issues. We may have talked about my issues.

Erin: I think you were still looking for answers for your issues.

Lindsay: Yes. That’s probably accurate given the timeframe. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. That is a connective tissue disorder. It basically means that the collagen in my body is put together in a structurally unsound way, if that’s a helpful description of it. My collagen is faulty.

You don’t think about collagen probably unless you have a collagen disorder, but it’s in everything. It’s in your bones, it’s in your eyes, it’s in your skin, it’s in your organs. I mean, it’s just everywhere in your body. You can imagine that if your collagen is even just a little bit wonky, it affects everything. Everything in your body.

I was someone who was chronically ill or in pain or struggling with something health-related. But doctors looked at me, they ran tests on me, and there would be indicators of illness and indicators of, you know, something, but I was healthy by most of their standards. So they would notice like severe vitamin deficiencies, but never really have a reason why I was severely vitamin deficient despite having a healthy diet or supplementing.

So there were indicators. I mean, I ended up in the ER one time because I was sitting there watching TV and half of my face went completely numb. I thought I was having a stroke. My tongue even went numb. It was so bizarre, such a bizarre feeling.

I ended up in the ER, but you know, they did all of the tests. They did MRIs. My brain looked fine. They couldn’t figure out what in the world had happened. Ever since then, I’ve continued to randomly get transient numbness in certain parts of my body for no good reason, really, except that everything is just not put together quite the way it’s supposed to be.

Karen: Yeah.

Erin: How do you deal with that and be a writer at the same time? And how did it come to be known as the disease that you now know you have?

Lindsay: Because this is something that I’ve always lived with, and I’ve always had plans and goals and interests and things that I wanted to do with my life, maybe that’s one—this is going to sound very strange when I first say it—but maybe that’s one kind of benefit of a chronic illness that you’re born with. It’s part of your existence. Either you’re going to let that swallow everything about your future and everything about what you want in life, or you’re going to adapt and find some way to still pursue your dreams, to still have the things that you want, that you’re able to pursue in life.

Either you're going to let chronic illness swallow everything about your future and everything you want in life, or you're going to adapt and find some way to still pursue your dreams. #amwriting @LinzyAFranklin @karenball1
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Sometimes our illnesses do take things off the table for us. That’s a very real fact. I’m definitely not trying to discount that. There are certain things in life that I would love to do that I just won’t or can’t. There’s a grieving process with that sort of thing.

But on the other hand, I’ve always been driven. I’ve always had goals, so I just need to keep pressing forward, recognizing that my life doesn’t belong to me. My source of energy and strength is coming from elsewhere anyways. So I’m just going to use what’s available to me in any given moment and keep pressing forward. That’s how I approach things.

I also try to be really realistic about what I am able to handle. That varies for me during different seasons. Sometimes I have a ton of energy. I’m feeling really great. If I’m not having a cycle of migraines and cluster headaches, for example, I’m doing great. I can work eight hours a day like anybody else and stay on top of my work life.

Other seasons, it’s not that at all. I have to build extra time into deadlines, extra time into pretty much everything because my illness is unpredictable. I don’t know when I’m suddenly going to go numb or have a migraine or be dealing with joint pain or any of those things. So I have to plan to not be able to plan.

Karen: You’re not the only one in your family dealing with this, though, right?

Lindsay: Correct. It’s a genetic disease. My mom and I actually laugh about this now. For so many years throughout my later teens—I got married when I was 18, so I was out of the house fairly young—I’d be calling up my mom in my late teens, or throughout my early to mid twenties and telling her, because this disease progresses as you age, your body is a little less resilient. So if you have hyper-mobility issues, which comes with Ehlers-Danlos, you might have a bunch of dislocations as a kid, and then as you get older, you have dislocations and subluxations, but they might result in ligament tears because you’re getting older. So it’s progressive in that sense.

I would call my mom up and say, “You know, this weird thing happened…” I remember one time I was just standing there doing something and all of a sudden a blood vessel bursts in my hand. For no reason. I didn’t hit it on anything. I was just like, what in the world? I called my mom and she goes, “Oh yeah, that happens sometimes,” because she has the same genetic condition that I do, and she didn’t know it. We kind of became this self- perpetuating cycle of affirming that these strange things happening to our bodies were normal because it was happening to both of us. But it’s because I have her genes.

She has EDS. We think she got it from my grandpa. Then I have three children and my two younger children have also been diagnosed with EDS.

Erin: How did it finally get diagnosed? Who discovered this finally?

Lindsay: I want to say, I guess it would have been in 2016. I was in a yoga class, and because I’m hyper mobile, I’m very flexible. So I was doing some show off-y kind of pose. I did the pose just fine but didn’t very gently come out of it, so something happened with my leg, and my knee cap actually dislocated for the second time. That happened to me when I was 18 and the paramedics had to come and pop my knee back into place. But I recovered okay from that because I was 18.

When this happened in 2016 I was, I don’t know, mid-thirties somewhere in there. I’m 38 now, so we can do the math backwards. When that dislocated, one of my ligaments in my knee tore. I had to have surgery to correct that, and EDS tissue doesn’t always heal very well from surgery. My recovery was complicated and long. I just thought, “Something is not right here. Something is off.”

My physical therapist, who was working with me after that surgery, I was seeing her three times a week for months. I had a weird complication with my recovery where I developed adhesions all over the place in my knee. So I had to go back under anesthesia, and the surgeon had to manually break the adhesions. He’s this orthopedic surgeon, and he says, “You’re my youngest patient. You’re my healthiest patient. I don’t know why you are the one having this complication.” He’s like, “These kinds of things keep me up at night. What is the deal with you? I don’t get you.”

I’m like, “Me either. If you can never figure it out, let me know.”

It was actually the physical therapist, because we chatted so much while she was torturing me during therapy, trying to get my knee to bend again. We would talk about my headaches, and we would talk about some of my other symptoms. She was actually the first medical professional to look at the whole picture of my health, honestly, in the way a general practitioner probably should be looking at the big picture.

So I don’t really have an explanation as to why it went under the radar for so long when I did seek help for a number of different things. You’d think somebody would be thinking at some point that there’s a systemic issue here and we should be looking at those kinds of things.

I think that we’re just sort of now catching up in the US. The UK is a little bit ahead of us in regard to connective tissue disorders, so there’s a lot more information out there and help. The NHS is a little more aware of these conditions for whatever reason. They’ve done more research there. With my son’s rare condition, we’ve done more research here in the US, so it just kind of depends.

So, my physical therapist was the one who said, “You really need to talk to the surgeon about this again and see if he’ll refer you out to a rheumatologist or geneticist or somebody.” Because she’s like, “I think you’ve got something going on with your connective tissue.”

It was the geneticist who finally diagnosed me, but it was that physical therapist who set the wheels in motion.

Karen: I listen to you and being able to hear all that and look back, it’s as though God oversaw the whole thing. Well, of course he did, but you can see his hand in all of it. That you wanted to be a writer and not an Olympian. That you had a mother who was able to affirm to you that, yes, this happens to me as well. Even though you didn’t find a medical professional who got it until 2016, that person was there for you and had the wherewithal to look at it and send you where you needed to go for a diagnosis.

As somebody who has a number of health issues that weren’t diagnosed, because there wasn’t a lot of information. Like for fibromyalgia, I have fibromyalgia, so does Erin in fact, and you know, being told it’s all in your head, you’re a hypochondriac. All those kinds of things. You know, the proof is there. They can’t deny the physical proof. They just can’t explain it. So God’s hand, was there providing all along the way for you.

How did your faith develop in the face of all this? I remember being so angry when I didn’t know what was going on. My body was working against me , and I couldn’t figure out why. I couldn’t figure out, if I’m wonderfully made, then why am I so messed up? Am I a hypochondriac? And just really having wrestling matches with God and saying, “I trust you, help me with my lack of trust.”

Lindsay: I love that verse—I think even before I was actually a believer and I was sitting there as a teenager with my first student Bible or whatever, and it was in Mark, it may be also in others of the gospels, but the one that I saw specifically was in Mark and it was, “Lord, I believe. Help me with my unbelief.” I was like, “Right here, my man. I understand. He is my heart friend. I feel you, sir.”

I think by the time my own diagnosis came, I had processed so much related to chronic illness because of my oldest son. My one son who does not have EDS was born with a rare lesion on his brain. So my husband is the only healthy, whole person in our family. He’s just like, “It’s fine. I will take care of all of you. It’s totally fine.”

But yes, our oldest has what’s called a hypothalamic hamartoma. If I can get those words all out, it’s a mouthful. From the time he was an infant, he was having seizures. There’s a whole host of issues that come. You can imagine having any kind of lesion in your brain can lead to a lot of different things. For some kids they’ll get precocious puberty. So you have like babies going through puberty because of where the lesion is on their brain.

That didn’t really happen to my son, but he was shaving by the time he was nine or something. It happened a little bit to him, but it wasn’t as bad as like the infant going through puberty. But he had a really difficult time with seizures. He’s on the autism spectrum. There’s just a lot of stuff that came with that.

I was 18 when I had him. My husband was 20, so we were very young parents dealing with a kid who was sick. I was new in my faith. Our marriage was new. It was an intense season for sure. He did not get diagnosed, my son did not get a full diagnosis, until he was 13 years old. He’s 20 now.

That was quite a long journey, and I went through all of the emotions that you’re describing. I had that with my son’s condition where, you know, there were moments where I felt like, “God, why are you being so mean to my baby? Why is this happening to him?”

I can recall trying to make deals with God. Like, “Okay, I will do this, this, and this, if you will just give some relief to the situation.”

I definitely went through all of that. In a season so intense where my husband and I had so few tools at our disposal because we had no clue what we were doing. We were kids ourselves raising this baby. So it was like, okay, we are going to rely on God completely, because there was no sense that, “Oh, I’ve got this, I can handle this on my own.” I didn’t even know how to change a diaper when I had my baby. So, when you already feel that clueless with the basic stuff and then you’re like, “Oh, and my kid’s having seizures. That’s great.”

We just didn’t even have a choice except to absolutely rely on God to just show us the very next thing that he wanted us to do. I am a long range planner. I like to see the whole picture. I like to consider all of the options and then make really good choices based on everything I see. That’s how I’m built.

God was like, “No, we’re not going to do any of that. I’m going to teach you. Trial by fire. I’m going to teach you to only look at the very next step and make the very best choice that you can in that moment, relying on me, on the Holy Spirit. We’re just going to move forward through your life. One stepping stone at a time.”

Sometimes I felt like I was just getting enough of the next stepping stone to put my toes on. Then the fog would clear a little bit more, then I could put the ball of my foot on the stepping stone.

That is how I lived my life for so many years that it almost becomes habit when you don’t have a choice except to trust. So, by the time my diagnosis came along, I was very like Zen about the whole thing. We finally have a name for the dragon that we’ve been fighting for…I think I was 35 when I finally got diagnosed.

I was like, that’s awesome. Great. You know, bonus.  Now I can actually name this condition. I can research it. I can figure out what’s the best thing I can do for myself. What’s the best thing I can do to help my two younger kids prepare for their lives, lived and spent with EDS and, you know, really equip them so that they will have more tools.

I didn’t have any tools. They will be able to have tools. I just always have to make sure that with them, because they’re going to have a much better leg up into this stuff than I did, I always make sure to point them back to, “Look at the tools that the Lord has given us so that you guys don’t have to be in as much pain.” Because man, I don’t wish the kind of early adulthood that I had, that my husband had, on anybody else. But it really did force us to trust and make our faith the center of everything. I hope that my kids will have that experience too, maybe without so much of the hardship, but we’ll see. Sometimes we need hardship.

Karen: Yeah. Sometimes I think, in fact I know, it’s the hardships that drive us down to, “I know nothing but Christ and him crucified.” That’s the only thing I have to hold on to. And that’s everything. I mean, that’s sufficient, but in our minds we say things like, “I can just trust God,” or, “All I can do is pray.”

When you come on the other side of it and you look at it, you’re like, “You guys, you can pray!” I mean, can I just tell you how powerful that is?

Lindsay: You know, we talk about prayer like it’s passive and it’s not.

Karen: Exactly. It’s warfare. Prayer is warfare. I wish people saw it that way more often. Well, we have hit the end of our time in being able to talk with you. We’re going to have to have you back on, because Lindsay, I want to know how in the world you wrote in the midst of all this. Everything that you were going through sounds to me like pretty much a full time occupation. So how you wrote in the midst of it all, I really want to know that and how God led you in that. So we’ll have you back on.

Thank you so much for what you’ve shared with us today, and that powerful truth that when we finally recognize we are not able, that God is able and he gives us just what we need. He doesn’t give us beyond that, but he gives us what he knows we need to keep moving forward.

I’m so grateful that God has been with you and that he has shown himself to you in the way he has. That’s very encouraging to me and I’m sure it is to our listeners as well. So thank you for being here and for sharing all this with us.

Lindsay: Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a privilege to be able to talk to you ladies and your listeners about this.

What do you do when you’re waiting for answers? How has God proven himself trustworthy in your waiting times?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast.

This helps you guys and us because we’re going to bring you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr., who is a genius on marketing and all things publishing. You can find the podcast at novelmarketing.com.

This week we’re talking about commandment number three: Thou shalt persist in thy craft. Let’s face it guys. We all learned to write somewhere in grade school, right? We can make sentences and paragraphs, and sometimes we even punctuate properly. But writing well is another story altogether. Really communicating well and knowing how to create a good structure for a book, or even that there is structure, takes time and practice. To say someone who can make sentences on a page can write a great book is kind of like saying anyone who can talk can win an Academy Award for acting.

Most writers don’t even know what they don’t know. You need to get help from professionals and listen to them. And you need to read and study excellent books on craft and your genre. Writing is a skill and it deserves your best effort.

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The Story Peddler by Lindsay A. Franklin

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

Special thanks to our April 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 next book in the series!

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

The post 139 – Waiting for Answers with Guest Lindsay A. Franklin appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Guest Paul Hastings brings his podcast listeners tales of people compelled to live for God, no matter the opposition. From facing assassins, to refusing to renounce faith in God to save a career-building opportunity, to everyday moments of standing strong for God, these stories inspire and challenge us to step up in our lives—and in our writing.

About Paul Hastings

Paul Hastings is a podcaster and entrepreneur. He has consulted extensively in the film, marketing, and political arenas. He is the host of Compelled, a podcast telling unique stories about God working through people’s lives. He has also produced several award-winning short films and industrial pieces. His work has been featured by Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, World Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, American Family Association, TheBlaze, CBN News, WND, and more. Paul, his wife, and their three children live near Austin, Texas.

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

Erin: Paul Hastings is the host and producer of Compelled Podcast, which is a podcast with unique stories from the kingdom of God, told by people compelled to live for him. Paul is an entrepreneur and has consulted extensively in the film, marketing, and political arenas. He, his wife, Sarah and their three children live near Austin, Texas, which right now is very cold.

His work has been featured by Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, World Magazine, American Family Association, the Gospel Coalition and the Blaze. Paul, we are so delighted to have you here with us. Welcome!

Paul: Well, thank you. I’m glad to be here from chilly Texas, never thought I’d say those words at the same time.

Karen: Not unless it’s about food.

Erin: It’s very cold. Paul, thanks for being here in the cold, but talk to us about the deep and maybe not the deep freeze. Or maybe! What does the deep mean to you?

Paul: I’ve thought about it a little bit, and it’s an intriguing thought because I think obviously it means something different for each person.

When we’re trying to put together a podcast episode we spend a lot of time assembling our edits. We’ll think about things like, what are the things that are going to connect with our audience? Frequently it means me taking a walk outside. Sometimes I’ll take a long walk, maybe an hour at a time, just to really get my brain away from the storyline and back to what is the actual emphasis that we’re trying to leave with listeners.

So for me to get into the deep, it means a place of peacefulness and quiet. They’re not quite related to podcasting, but from other moments that I’ve had—I guess I would call it communion with God—have been moments when I’ve been outdoors. So like, hiking in the Grand Canyon. I went there when I was I think 14, 15, or 16. I went for a three-day hike through the Grand Canyon. That was just a profound moment. I was walking with my family and we were hiking up and down through the canyon, with backpacks on board. When I would step away from them and look at the grandeur around me, it was profound. In a convoluted way, that’s what I think of the deep. That’s what comes to my mind immediately.

Karen: That’s really great.

Erin: I love that. Talk a little bit about your podcast. Talk about Compelled and what you guys do there so you can enlighten our listeners who might be very interested. I suggest they listened to your podcast because it’s a good one!

Paul: Well, good. I appreciate that. Our show, we are looking for unique stories from the kingdom of God, from people that are everyday ordinary people like us, or maybe the people are famous. But they have unique stories of what God has done in their life.

For an example, we started our podcast, and I just happened to know this lady. She’s probably about 70 years old, and she used to be an abortion clinic owner. She was responsible for 30,000 abortions back in the seventies, profited off of that, and she believed she was a Christian. She faithfully went to church. She tithed 10% of her abortion profits to the church, faithfully. She kept a Bible in her drawer at work, and every morning would praise God, asking God, “Please don’t let any women die in my clinics.”

This was her lifestyle. Right in the middle of that, one day, this guy shows up. He was an arbitrator because she was having a financial dispute with one of her partners. This arbitrator had agreed to arbitrate with them, but he was actually a pastor. So be began witnessing with her and telling her, “Do you know who Jesus Christ is?”

She was like, “Of course I do. I’m a Christian.” You know, go through her little spiel. He began to share the gospel with her, and she had never really heard the gospel her entire life. That was the first time. Again, this is back in the seventies, right, and so anyway, she gave her life to Christ and renounced that old lifestyle.

Today, she’s a staunch pro-life advocate. But this is a lady that like, you know, no one’s ever heard of her. I mean, lots of people had heard of her back in the day, I guess. But she was just this person that I knew personally as a friend of mine. We went and told her story.

We’re looking for stories like that all the time. Incredible stories of what God has done, because God is not someone who’s constrained by explanations or circumstances. He can do anything he feels like, and that’s what we’re looking for.

Erin: Wow. In essence, what I love about your show is that you’re a storyteller, Paul.

You’re not writing novels. You’re not writing non-fiction books, but you’re telling your story via podcasting. That’s one of the things that I think listeners could really benefit from if they listened to your show. It’s just a different take on how you do story. Lots of insights.

But what do you think as far as how writers might be able to benefit from listening to your show?

Paul: There are two things, well, three things actually. For the regular person, who’s just a believer, I encourage them to listen to our show. I think it’s really encouraging to hear what God is doing. But specifically for writers, there’s two ways that I can think of immediately that writers might find really interesting for our show.

The first one is the actual stories themselves. People that we interview, they do have books they’ve written about themselves or other people have written books about them. But a lot of the folks that we have, nothing has been written about them. They’re just literally normal folks with these crazy stories, and they’re waiting to be told.

One comes to mind right now. It’s a story that we have not released yet, but we’ll be releasing it probably three or four weeks from now.  It’s this young man, he’s about 30 years old, about my age, and he has lived his entire life with cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a disease that slowly destroys your lungs. When he was born back in the 1980s, they told his family that he would be dead by somewhere in his early childhood. He didn’t die in his childhood. He made it to his teen years. In his teen years, the doctor said he will die as a teenager. He still survived. Medicine was kind of slowly keeping up pace with him.

But now that he’s hit the early twenties, they’re like, yeah, you’re going to die. No one’s ever made it past, you know, whatever it is, age 35 or something.

He continued living his life faithfully for the Lord, believing that his life was in God’s hands. He knew that his days were numbered, but he wanted to live as normal a Christian life as possible.

He got married. He and his wife had a child, but then last year, the cystic fibrosis had finally reached the limit. He only had 17% lung capacity. He was on oxygen tanks 24/7, still having to go to the ER constantly. They thought he was going to die multiple times. He’s basically drowning in his own lungs.

Then he gets on the lung transplant list. It’s a tough choice to make when you’re on that list. Because you can live if you get the transplant, but it’s a very dangerous procedure, especially as a cystic fibrosis patient. Even if the lungs successfully transplant into your body, they’re only going to last you two or three years as a cystic fibrosis patient. And then that’s it.

You can try to get another set of lungs, and that’ll last you maybe two or three years, but at this point, I think the most lungs someone’s ever gone through, that’s probably three sets of lungs and then you die. That’s it.

They had a young daughter, she was two years old. So, here he is, he’s in a hospital room dying, basically drowning. In his few moments of consciousness, he and his wife are trying to decide, “Am I going to try to get another set of lungs and live? Or should I allow God to take me home?” And again, this is a decision you would never want to make, right?

He’s like 30 years old. He’s got this young wife, a two year old daughter at home. So he says, “Okay, I want to live to at least see my daughter a little bit more. That’s worth it to me to live in this form of torture, basically.”

They put them on the lung transplant list, and he manages to hobble along for a few more months, and they’re waiting for a donor to die.

What happens, though, is he gets the phone call. The call comes in. When a donor dies, you have to get that set of lungs put in you right away. So when that call comes, it’s just the people through the donor registry. They’re calling, and whoever picks up, if you’re first on the list, you pick up and if you say you want the lungs, you get them. If you don’t pick up, they just call the very next person on the list. You’ve got your phone on 24/7 all the time. And you’re prepared to say yes.

So they get the call. The call says, “Do you want the set of lungs? You’ve got to choose right now. Yes or no?” And they say, “Yes, we want the lungs.”

They hop in their car. They drive to San Antonio, Texas. They’ve got two hours before they get these lungs put in them.

His wife, the whole time, she believes firmly that Josh is going to die. Like she has a check in her spirit that he’s not going to wake up. And she knows this is their only option. If they don’t do this Josh will die. If they do this, he might die or he might live. But this is it.

So she’s saying goodbye to him at the hospital. They get to the hospital, they put him on a gurney, they shave his chest. They start injecting him with drugs.

His wife is just repeatedly saying, “I love you. I love you. I just want you to know that I love you.” Then the doctors walk in moments before they’re about to put him under. They said, “Hey man, we just did a third test on the lungs and they ruptured.”

If the doctors had only done the first two tests of the lungs, then they would have put him under. They would have put the lungs in him. They would have brought him back to life, and he’d be dead that very moment.

So it’s this massive disappointment, right?

Can you imagine his wife, it’s just like this roller coaster ride. So they go back home and again, they’re on the list, and you can just imagine all the emotional terminal.

They’re waiting for the next set of lungs. While they are waiting—and this just happened less than a year ago—while they are waiting, they get a surprise phone call out of nowhere from their doctor. He says, “Hey, Josh, this is kind of crazy, but there’s this new drug that just came out of medical experimentation”—I forget the exact term for it—”but the FDA has approved it to go to a certain early access list. And if you can get on the early access list, it might help you. It might not, we don’t know. But to get on the early access list, you have to already be on the lung transplant list. You have to be on that list in order to get the early access drug. Do you want it?”

Josh is like, “Sure I’ll take it.”

The next week, he gets a phone call saying, “We have another set of lungs. Do you want this set of lungs?” This is before he’s had the chance to start taking the experimental drug.

Erin: Wow.

Paul: So this time he says, “No, I don’t want the lungs. I’m gonna try this drug out and just see what happens.”

He gets on the drug and it has transformed his life. It was so successful for him and for all the other early access patients with cystic fibrosis that actually the early access program was just canceled, and they’ve extended this drug to all cystic fibrosis patients across America. It’s like 95% effective for cystic fibrosis patients.

He, for the first time, can actually think about living to become an old person. And none of this, none of this would ever have happened if first off, if he had not been on the lung transplant list. But also this would not have happened if the lungs they had been trying to get—

Karen: Had not ruptured.

Paul: Yeah, if they’d not ruptured. Even if they had worked, he would have woken up. He would have had lungs for three years and then he would still be on a ticking time bomb to die anyway, because you can’t live long after that.

Erin: My goodness.

Paul: That was a lot. You may have to edit some out.

Erin: No.

Paul: That’s a story I just recorded. In fact, I’m holding their family Christmas newsletter. These are friends of mine. No one’s ever recorded their story. No one’s ever put this on film. No one’s ever done a podcast. I’m the first person to do a podcast interview with them. This is a way that your listeners might be able to find really cool stories of unfound people. We’re already doing the due diligence to find these awesome stories.

Karen: The other thing is, what incredible inspiration for us. The obstacles that we face, that writers face on their writing journey, they can be so discouraging and seem so devastating. But when you look at those obstacles that you’re hitting and you compare it to some of the stories that are on your podcast—the one that I listened to was a woman who had to face down an assassin who’d been sent to kill her—it was just like, I’m listening to this and I’m thinking I will never complain about the deep places or the obstacles that I face in my life today, because I’ve never had somebody look at me and say, “I’m here to kill you.”

Now, my husband may have periodically thought that, but he’s never actually said that to me. So, how amazing the inspiration there. These people who are in these situations, ordinary people in extraordinary situations, who hold fast to their faith. People who won’t renounce their faith, even though it could cost them a career building opportunity.

People who say, “I’m sorry, you are not more important to me than my faith in Christ, and I will not renounce Jesus in order to get that reality TV show. What matters to me is being obedient to him and standing for my faith.”

We need to be inspired in that, to do the same thing. Because how many authors have wanted a contract so much, and then they’re asked to do something that goes against their principles, goes against even their faith? Suddenly they’re facing this decision that in our mind of the temporal world, we think it’s going to end our careers as writers. But in reality, God is saying, “Who do you love more? Do you love me? Or do you love being published?” It’s an amazing inspiration.

Erin: Yeah, very much. So obviously then, you interview people for your show. What do you think is one thing you should do, and one thing you should not do when you’re interviewing people about their stories? Our writers, our listeners, may be doing interviews. What have you learned from your experience of interviewing people?

Paul: That’s a good question. Okay, I’m gonna give away one of my trade secrets. One of my favorite questions to ask people is, let’s say I was interviewing you, Karen, I say, “Karen, what would the Karen today say to the Karen 20 years ago?”

I’ve found this to be really effective. I’ve interviewed people who’ve had tons of media interviews, and frequently they will just stop and just think for a second. And then they’ll say, “Wow, I’ve never been asked that before.”

It causes them to really think because frequently, when you’re asking the same set of questions that they’ve been asked before, it’s rote. Maybe even subconscious. They’re just saying the same thoughts that their brain has developed, the same answer. But when you ask them a totally brand new question, like asking, what would the you today say to the you 20 years ago, that really causes a lot of introspection.

You’re trying to break new turf in their brain. Sometimes, there are these gems that are hidden. It’s like, “Whoa, that surprises me.” It surprises them when they say something that comes out.

Karen: Okay. So Paul, you’re 30, right? what would the Paul today say to the Paul 10 years ago?

Paul: Oh my goodness. I’ve never been asked that question. Can you believe that? You know, that is a tough question. I think right now in my season, I would probably say, “Hey, Paul, it’s good to hustle. But I think you need to take some more time to be more contemplative about some things. There’ll be rushing from one project to the next, but take some intentional time to really think strategically and just be at peace. Find your spot in the deep, you know?”

Karen: Yes, yes. Can you imagine if we really had our future selves coming and saying those things to us, the impact that it would have? Don’t you wonder how it would change how we view our lives today? I think about where I was 20 years ago and how different it is from where I am today.

My husband and I have been through some very difficult things to the point where I almost tried to run him down with my vehicle, with my car. If he hadn’t had really good physical reactions, I’d be talking to you through plexiglass.

It’s those kinds of things and you look back on them now and you think, but I wouldn’t change a moment because I am who I am in my faith. I am who I am in my life and my career because of what I learned through those very dark, very difficult days. And I learned who God was.

My whole childhood was golden. My dad was a pastor. He pastored the same little church for 45 years, and my dad was unusual in that he made us, his three kids, me and my brothers, his first ministry. My parents never pushed us off for work with the church. So, I had this golden childhood and then this marriage that was just a nightmare.

But now I see how God used that to create in me a sense of compassion. To stop me from looking at things in black and white and judging who people are based on what comes out of their mouths and understanding that some people are so broken, it’s a lifelong process to find peace and contentment with him.

So I absolutely love that concept, Paul. That is awesome.

Erin: Yeah. I think, too, that’s a good question for writers to ask themselves because there are writers out there who are still looking for their message, who are still looking for who they are as a writer. That’s a really good question to ask yourself to delve into what’s important to you now, and how have you grown. That’s your journey, and that might be what you’re writing about.

What would you say, Paul, might be a mistake that someone would make when they were interviewing people? You probably never made any, but…

Paul: Well, okay. I’ve got to be a little more practical here. This is one of my practical answers I’ll tell you. One time I had a guest and he had an incredible story. He was a Lieutenant Colonel at the Pentagon during 9/11. He was at his job doing his regular routine when the plane crashed into the Pentagon just yards away from him.

He was blasted across a room, instantly set on fire. His flesh was melting off, and he sits there in the dark. It’s pitch black. It’s like the smoke is so intense. There’s fire everywhere, but it’s also pitch black. So he sits there. His body is just destroyed, and he’s on fire, and he screams out, he says, “Lord Jesus, I’m coming to see you.”

He lays down and does the one thing in the military they teach you never to do. He lays down and gives up and he just waits. And waits. And waits. And he doesn’t die.

It’s a crazy story. You’ll have to listen to it. It’s the Brian Birdwell episode. But, what’s wild is I’m interviewing him, and as he’s telling me these incredibly emotional moments, my batteries on my recorder die. Only happened to me once in my entire podcasting career, but it’s during this moment.

He is weeping. Tears are coming out of his eyes, and I suddenly realize, “Oh my goodness, I have to interrupt him and stop the tears so I can put new batteries in my recorder.” It was terrible. So I have to interrupt him, and then I try to get him back to the same emotional place, and of course it doesn’t happen. But the interview is still good.

So let me encourage you. As an author, make sure you have prepared. Whether it’s batteries because you recording or whether you need extra paper, or whether it’s like your dog or your phone’s gonna go off, or whatever, just make sure you have thoroughly prepared ahead of time, and you’re not going to miss out on some really important moment or spoil the moment.

Karen: Oh man. “Yeah, that was really moving. Could you just, you know, do that again please?”

Well, Paul, this has been just delightful. Thank you so much for coming to be with us today. We’re about at the point where we’ve got to wrap up. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to share with our listeners? With these writers who are facing ups and downs, dark places, hilltops of joy and rejoicing. What are your final thoughts of wisdom for them?

Paul: I think I would just say that whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. It could be really tempting to myself when I’m making these episodes and people say, “Oh, this is incredible.”

It can be really tempting for myself to feel inflated or an ego, or like, “Wow, I am amazing.” And really, I just need to remember, “Hey, I’m actually just telling stories of the crazy things that God has done. I didn’t give Brian Birdwell the strength to survive 9/11. I didn’t give this lady that strength to like talk to the assassin, and I didn’t do any of these things. God is the one who did those things and I am simply a tool in God’s hands.”

So I’d encourage any of your authors to say the same thing there as well.

Karen: Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Friends, I hope that you’ve benefited from this as much as we have. It’s just been a delightful time, and I pray that in your moments of darkness and in your moments of joy, you will remember you’re a tool in God’s hands to accomplish his purposes. And there’s no better thing than that.

Erin: Amen.

Karen: Amen.

Guest Paul Hastings, the founder of the podcast @compelledshow shares why we, as Christians and writers, MUST live compelled by God––no matter the opposition. #amwriting @karenball1
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What would the “you” now say to the “you” 20 years ago?

For the next few months, we have a sponsorship from the Novel Marketing podcast.

This helps you guys and us because we’re going to bring you Novel Marketing’s 10 Commandments of Book Marketing. We highly recommend this podcast with host Thomas Umstattd Jr. You can find it at novelmarketing.com.

Last week we talked about commandment number one: Love thy reader as you love thy book. Commandment number two is similar: Thou shalt write for the reader, not for myself.

You probably heard this before, but one way to ensure that you do that is to kill your darlings. That means you only include in your book those things that will impact the reader. So if you have a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph that you absolutely love, but it’s not going to serve the reader. It goes. As editors, we’re telling you it needs to go. Just do it guys. Kill your darlings.

The other thing that we wanted to say that might help you with commandment number two is write the back cover copy before you write your book, because that helps you keep your reader in mind and why they might want to read your book. Remember thou shalt write for thy reader, not thyself. For more book promotion and platform help listen to the Novel Marketing podcast in your favorite podcast app, or find it at novelmarketing.com.

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

Thanks so much to our March sponsor of the month, Bobbi Updegraff! Bobbie has been a long time supporter of another ministry called Friends of Renacer, a support network for a home that helps abused, orphaned, and abandoned children in Honduras. You can find out more about them at friendsofrenacer.com.

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

The post 138 – Compelled by God with Guest Paul Hastings appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Does it feel like every word you write lately is a challenge? When guest Nadine Brandes wrote her award-winning Out of Time series, her writing flowed from her heart and passion. Then came a book that she wrote mostly from the head. She shares that difficult part of her writing journey and how God used it to teach her about creativity and obedience.

About Nadine Brandes

Nadine Brandes is the three-time Carol-Award winning author of Fawkes, Romanov, and the Out of Time Series. She’s an adventurer fusing authentic faith with bold imagination and her first reader is always Jesus. Nadine, her husband, and their Halfling children are building a Tiny House on wheels. Current mission: paint the world in shalom.

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

Erin: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the deep. We are so glad to have you here with us. And we’re doubly glad we have a guest! Nadine Brandes here with us. Yay! Karen is going to introduce her.

Karen: Nadine Brandes is an amazing person as well as a gifted writer. I’ve got to tell you, when I edited her book A Time to Die for Enclave, I was so drawn into the story that half the time I would forget I was supposed to be editing.

Erin: I can understand that. I read that book!

Karen: It’s an amazing book, and it was an amazing debut novel. She has gone on from there to author four more books. Her Out of Time series has won all kinds of awards, deservedly so. But what I love most about Nadine—and yes, I was her agent for a little while—but what I love most about her is her smile.

She has the most brilliant smile that just wraps around you and warms you up and makes you feel as though you’ve known her forever. She has an adventurous spirit. In fact, if you go onto her website, her about page is something along the lines of:

“I’m the author of five books. I’m an adventurer. I’m a Harry Potter super nerd who has been known to eat an entire package of Oreos, family size, by herself,” which you would not know to look at her. She’s just a little stick of a person. “I watch Fiddler on the Roof at least once a year. Wait, you don’t? I love the word bumbershoot.”

And I do, too. I just saw, again, the Frasier episode where they’re talking about bumbershoots. It’s hysterical. Nadine has this marvelous sense of who she is, who she is in God, who she is as a wife and mother, and we are just delighted to have her here with us today.

Nadine: Thank you so much for having me. I am honored to even be on this podcast because it ministers to me every time I listen to it. I love chatting with you amazing, inspiring ladies.

Erin: Oh, thank you! If you’ve listened before then you know what’s coming. What does the deep mean to you?

Nadine: I feel like I could take this a lot of different ways, but I wanted to go with my gut reaction. Every time I hear you guys ask that question, I think through it, and to me it means this intentional pursuit of God, and the reward that comes from that has been promised to us in scripture.

It makes me think of Jeremiah 29:13 where it says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I feel like to me the deep is those three words: you will find me. I guess that’s four words, but…

Karen: You’re a writer not a mathematician.

Nadine: Math is not my strong point. But finding the Lord after that obedience of pursuit and the beautiful communion and relationship that happens when I’m in that place. Especially as a creative person entering into that communion with him, the ultimate creator who has given me my joy for creativity, there’s a freedom found in the deep. Not only just in the deep relationship, but in everything else falling away or being set aside intentionally, just so that he is my sole focus.

That is what the deep means to me. I’m sure I will reference that mentality a lot more just throughout this podcast episode, because it’s so tied to how I am able to write.

Erin: Well, yeah, that’s what we wanted to get into today is how your writing process goes.

I loved what you said in an email to us. You said, “I’m passionate about talking about writing from the head versus writing from the heart.” What is the difference there and how does that work for you?

Nadine: It’s a difference I wouldn’t understand unless I had to do it, which I did. Karen mentioned my first series, the Out of Time series and A Time to Die. That series was born out of such a personal place in my life. I processed so many big life things while I wrote that series. I started it without even thinking of publishing. It was just, I processed through stories. It has gone on to be published, and it’s ministered to a lot of other people.

After that series, when it was time for, “Okay, what’s next?” I didn’t really know where to go. I had this inquiry from a large publishing house that said, “Okay, what do you have next? What are you writing?”

I had this fantasy idea that I pitched to them. I was really excited to write it. They said, “No, we’re not looking for that. How about something historical?”

I countered with, “Well, what about historical with a fantasy twist?” And they agreed.

So my next book was agreed upon. It’s called Fawkes and it’s this retelling of the son of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot in England with a fantasy twist. At the time I’d kind of gotten caught up in this, “God has opened these doors to this bigger publishing house.” There was God in there every step of the way of him opening the doors and how I connected with them and how he gave me the idea for that story.

But it wasn’t an idea born from my heart or really anything passionate. It was just the right idea that they were looking for. I ran into these roadblocks as I started writing it because there wasn’t emotion behind it. Coming from a series that was so emotional to me, it was just fighting tooth and nail. Fawkes was hands down the hardest book I’ve ever written.

But as I was writing that book, I listened to a talk by Allen Arnold, who wrote the book The Story of With, and he just talked about how your reward as a writer is communion with God while you write, and while you create. It’s not the finished product, not the book in your hands, not the advance that you get.

I just had to cling to that. I have always prayed before writing. I try to do it before every writing session. I was doing that with Fawkes and just praying, like, “Okay, God put something in this that reflects you,” because everything I was writing felt so flat and uninspired, and I wasn’t excited about it.

It was just so many tears. I felt like I was just writing this book for the market. I was writing it for the publisher because that’s what they wanted. I still knew God wanted me to do that, but there just wasn’t any feeling behind it. As a creative, and I know a lot of other writers will relate to this, we thrive off of that inspiration and being excited to dive into this story and discover the characters.

All of that was missing. I was questioning, “Can I even be a writer anymore?” And the Lord was saying, “Yes. And you have to write this book, whether you feel like it or not.”

I had the security knowing he told me to write it, too. It wasn’t just the publisher. Knowing that, I knew that I could push through any lack of emotion to write it. Finally, after a long year of deadlines and editing, I got to this point at the very, very end, when I was reading back through the copy edits, the final stage, and for the first time I took a breath and looked at the story and I thought, “I’m proud of this piece of work. I see something in it.”

But it wasn’t until all the way at the very, very end that anything in my heart connected with it. Since then, I’ve seen how God has used it for readers and to open doors for other books.

But not just that, it has transformed how I write books now going forward. The goal of writing is to commune with the Lord and not just to get a book contract or a book published, and it drastically changed me. It’s a message I’m so passionate about. If you can’t tell by how I’m just talking and talking!

Karen: We love that!

Nadine: That is, in a nutshell, writing from the head versus the heart, but how you can still do both with the Lord.

Karen: How did you go then after Fawkes and after going through all of that, where did God take you next? And how was that decision and what you wrote influenced by what had happened?

Nadine: Actually, my contract was for two books. So, I already had another deadline looming after that, and they wanted another historical fantasy. This one was for Romanov, that’s what I pitched them, which is a retelling of princess Anastasia with a fantasy twist, of course.

It was neat to see that shift because I actually had an idea for the story that I was excited about. My entire life, I have been so passionate about the people and the language and the country of Russia. My dad did ministry in Russia for a really long time. And I got the chance to go to Russia to do research for that, where we also connected with a pastor and his wife and were able to do ministry. It was so neat seeing the Lord bring these two passions of writing and Russia together in a book.

Even though my deadline for that book was much, much shorter than what I had for Fawkes, and I am not a quick writer, I was able to enter in right from the beginning into this healthy mindset with the Lord and with writing that allowed me to write without the barriers of constant self doubt. I mean, I still have days where I struggle with self doubt, but it’s like, I know the formula. I go to the Lord, and he will remove that.

Even though the strain of writing that book, you know, it was exhausting just from a creative perspective, it wasn’t spiritually exhausting. I was in this new place of being able to write it and it came out beautifully.

Erin: I love the benefit that you had. Circling back to when you started Fawkes, you said that you were confident that God wanted you to write that book, that you were sure about that. Since we just did a podcast recently about how people hear God and how people listen to God, how would you say that you knew that? Like, how did you hear that? That that’s what he wanted?

Nadine: Well, I pray a lot over every decision in writing. That’s a big one, but I’m trying to think.  I meant to listen to that podcast, but I didn’t get to before our interview!

Something in my walk with the Lord that made a big impact to me, I can’t even remember the Bible reference, but it’s a Proverb and it says, “The King’s heart is like a stream of flowing water in the hands of the Lord, and the Lord directs it which way he desires.”

That has always been a driving verse for me when it comes to taking actions and taking steps forward. I know so many people who freeze up because, “I haven’t heard from the Lord yet, so I’m not going to take any action.” Then you’re being a puddle. You can’t redirect a puddle because you’re not moving.

So I cover my steps in a lot of prayer and I ask him to redirect me. And he directed me to this publishing house, and he directed me to someone who gave me the idea for Fawkes and then, you know, just constant direction covered in constant prayer.

I feel like I hear his voice through redirection and trying to be in his presence and surrendering those decisions to him as often as I can. If I’m taking action with the heartset of being willing to be redirected, I know that he is respecting my faithfulness to him, and he will be faithful to put me on the path that he wants me.

Karen: Okay, now here’s my question. I noticed this when we first started working together, when I was editing your book and then when I became your agent, it had a profound impact on me: the level of wisdom that you bring to your life, that you bring to your writing, that you bring to your life with your husband. It’s amazing.

I know I keep using that word, but I do know what amazing means, and it’s amazing because you’re young. Here I am at 63, and I learned wisdom, and God granted me wisdom through the course of a lot of very difficult things over those 63 years. But you have this wisdom already. As you’re coming in, you have this wisdom to submit your decisions to God.

You have this wisdom and you have this joy in everything. The look on your face when you talk about your husband and your kids and your writing, it emanates from you. How did that happen?

Nadine: I don’t feel wise.

Erin: The wise people never do.

Karen: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Nadine: Oh, man. I think it’s just happened from seeing the Lord open doors for me through surrendering to him. I think back to when I first realized I wanted to write, but I was in college for speech therapy. I cried in my first class, thinking this isn’t what I want to do, but I was sticking to it. You know, I’m in college, I’m going to get my degree and be an obedient daughter.

But the longer I was in college, year after year, I realized, “No, I actually really don’t want to do this. I want to be a writer.”

I talked to my dad about it and he said, “Okay, well then switch majors or switch colleges.”

I was so surprised that I had that support and I thought, “Oh great, well, I’ll do that.” Well, the Lord closed every single door, every single window to doing that.  I remember when I realized, “I have found my identity. This is who I want to be.” According to Disney, every door is supposed to open now.

Karen: And birds will sing.

Nadine: Yes. I’ve found my path, so I’m supposed to be able to go walk it. And the Lord said no.

I had this choice before me, where I realized God’s no meant years more of college for me in something I didn’t want to do. Was I willing to obey him and trust him with this desire to be a writer?

I decided yes. I wasn’t very happy about it, but all the doors were closed, so saying no would have been really hard anyway. In that process, God grew me as a person. That’s how I met my husband. Then when I graduated with a master’s degree in speech therapy and everybody expects me to go become a speech therapist, God whispered, “Okay. Now you can be a writer.”

I thought, “Everyone’s going to look at me like I’m crazy.”

But once he said yes, he opened every single door. My author journey is one that I’m actually very hesitant to share a lot of times because I have encountered very little rejection. I know that’s not the common story, but God made me wait seven years before he said yes.

Seeing that faithfulness, even when I was—I feel like I was very immature and ignorant in college—but I, at least, thank the Lord, chose to obey him in that one thing. And I saw the follow through. It impacted me so greatly, not just in the course of my life, but in understanding how faithful he truly is. It made me want to seek him more and more in every single decision. Every time I do, there’s just so much of him to see in every aspect of my story that I don’t want to miss it.

Understanding how faithful God truly is made me want to seek him more and more in every single decision. @NadineBrandes #amwriting #christianwriter @KarenBall1
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Erin: That is a great quote. You know what I’m catching? I jotted a note down while you were talking. Obedience in your case, and probably in everybody’s case, leads to wisdom. It leads to these experiences and this understanding about who God is and what he wants you to do.

If we don’t stop and be obedient, it’s exactly what you said: we’re going to miss it. We’re going to miss the life growing and the maturing and all of those steps. So I love that.

Nadine: Thanks.

Erin: The other thing I like is that, we were talking earlier, before we started the podcast about your tiny house, talking about how you’re an adventurer here. I love the tiny house idea because you said it’s going to be something in obedience. Talk a little bit about that.

Nadine: Yes. Several years ago, I think about five years ago, my husband and I were living in Idaho, and I can’t even remember the origin of the idea, but God placed it on both of our hearts: hey, I think we’re supposed to build a tiny house. My recollection is different than my husband’s. I remember bringing it up to him saying, wouldn’t this be a cool idea? And he was like, no.

What he remembers is that God gave us both the idea at the same time, and we were both on board immediately. It’s funny because I don’t know whose recollection is correct, but then my husband was not just onboard, but like, okay, let’s research, let’s figure out how to do this. And he was all in, and I was all in.

I’m a very spontaneous—impulsive, sorry, the correct word is impulsive—person. Sometimes to my detriment. But I’ve learned that about myself so I can try to tone it down when it gets too strong.

I thought, “Well, is this an impulse? Are we being crazy? Are we being wasteful of our finances?” It’s five years later, and we are even more excited about building and living in this thing. Even now that we have two kids, then we were, when we first had the idea. We’ve just been chipping away at it. Every year, my husband can only work on it in the summers because of his work schedule.

We hope that it’ll be done in a couple of years. We don’t really know why the Lord has told us to build it, but we know, I mean, I know there’s a purpose. Someday we’ll move in and maybe we’ll move right back out again and we’ll learn the purpose. I know that we’ll see the answer someday.

Erin: What I love is that there’s a lot of writers out there and I want them to picture your tiny house. They’re writing this book because they think they should. They think that they’re called to do this and they’re being obedient and they’ll find out when they’re done, maybe, what it was all about and maybe along the journey. For me, it just feels like a great metaphor.

Karen: Tell our listeners, what you’ve named your tiny house.

Nadine: It is called Tiny Teva. Teva is the Hebrew word for ark. Tiny Ark. We are building it like Noah, just being obedient and we’ll see what sort of flood comes.

Karen: Well, I don’t think you’re going to be able to fit two of every creature. Settle for one. They’re what? Like 300 square feet?

Nadine: Yeah, I think a little bit less than that.

Karen: Well, it’s been a delight, Nadine. It is so much fun to just watch your face as you share what God has done in your life. I hope that the readers have caught on to your enthusiasm and excitement about the importance of presenting all of our decisions to God and trusting him with the answers. Even if the answer is no. That’s really hard to do. Too many of us try to forge ahead anyway, thinking we heard him wrong. But it’s not that we hear him wrong. It’s that we respond wrong. I pray that we gain the wisdom on our journeys, that we can make God our reward and not anything else. So thank you.

Nadine: Amen to that, and thank you so much for having me.

The Out of Time series by Nadine Brandes

Fawkes by Nadine Brandes

Romanov by Nadine Brandes

The Story of With by Allen Arnold

What do you do when you’re struggling to get words on the page?

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Thanks so much to our March sponsor of the month, Bobbi Updegraff! Bobbie has been a long time supporter of another ministry called Friends of Renacer, a support network for a home that helps abused, orphaned, and abandoned children in Honduras. You can find out more about them at friendsofrenacer.com.

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The post 137 – Writing from the Heart with Guest Nadine Brandes appeared first on Write from the Deep.