At the end of 2006, our pastor encouraged us to select one word (www.myoneword.org) that would be our motivation for godly living this year. I picked “surrender” for 2007. There were several things in life I gave up as a result of this. One being writing. I felt God’s call to do that. However, he has given me this thing back for some reason. Despite its serious toll on my mind and emotions, God has not taken away the desire to craft a novel. He has only deepened it.
And so, wanting to complete a rough draft of about 75,000 words before I turn 40 in September, I’m going to need a lot of my “one word.” It is “perseverance.” The driving force behind this word is the scripture found in James 1:4—“Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Certainly, James is speaking of spiritual perseverance, of what Paul would call "finishing the race" or "fighting the good fight." But I think we writers can relate perseverance to our writing journeys. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, and in my experience, writing is doggone difficult. It has taken me years to even break through the top layer of ice of writing. We can keep going deeper and deeper into themes, research, and creativity. But we have to keep on.
I need perseverance to finish my work in progress. I know my tendency to get excited about something, obsess about it, and then let it fall by the wayside later. If I’m to achieve my goal, I need to stick to the plan and write about 307 words a day. Thank God it’s a leap year—I get an extra day. Woohoo!
I pray for those in the LGG and readers of this blog who are also writers. We need to encourage each other to stick with it and not give up. Though the task seems near impossible, we know that God provides all we need in order to do his will.
God help us!
3 comments:
All I can say is AMEN! I'm not here so much as a writer as an encourager, which I believe God has called me to be (for the time being, anyway). But I still understand the need for perseverance such as you are proclaiming. May God hold you up and sustain you as you listen to Him and persevere!
There's a kind of joyous persevereance which is a persevereance with the sense that a thing will eventually be completed...and perfected. And there's a kind of joyless enduring...which gives us our word "patient" for sick folks...which is about grinding away....joylessly...with teeth gritted. Wishing you joyous persevereance. -C
Wow.... someone who suffers the same affliction as myself. I've been so excited about my own work in progress, but the follow through is harder. Life keeps getting in my way. I'm so thankful for all the writers of the Lost Genre who help to keep me encouraged and enthusiastic about the art of writing. God is so good -- to give us each other!
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