a prayer for the hesitant writer
Writing isn’t something I’d abandon other things to do. It isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when asked the question, “What is the thing you’d do all day long even if you didn't get paid to do it?”
It’s definitely a shiny answer because all of history and a good portion of popular culture loves a storyteller. And for a while I thought first and (if I’m honest) ONLY of being as shiny to anyone looking as possible. So on the heels of naming that I’m podcast/digital media producer I’d add “…and I write.”
But I didn’t, not really. For years. I’d start a short story and then abandon it to the chaos of a disorganized “WRITING” Google folder. I’d jot down the most transcendent ideas (or at least I thought/think so) in my journal or on the back of a receipt or in my Notes app.
Now, I understand a few things I didn’t know then.
I was a writer. I just wasn’t committed.
I needed the courage.
The discovery of those details and a few others are a story for another time. But I am looking back on 2023 with a particular sense of gratitude for the ideas that God flooded me with (ample stories), my therapist and career coach’s affirmation that I am indeed an artist. And the author, Deesha Philyaw’s example of what’s possible when you bring all of yourself and your life experiences and inquiries to the page. I was listening to Deesha’s podcast Ursa Story and heard her mention that she’s the kind of writer who very much needs smaller assignments in order to focus her writing. So, her agent told her to focus on getting three of her short stories published and then they would start the process of taking a collection of short stories to market. When I heard that, all the bells started going off in my head. I felt that little rush of adrenaline slide through my core that lets me know I’m witnessing something purposed. I adopted that strategy straight away.
I pulled all my focus together to complete a short story I had been working on for three years. I honestly don’t remember how long it took me to finally get it done. But I did. And a few months later, my first short story to be published in a physical collection - ‘In the Middle of the Air ‘- was accepted with midnight & indigo. Ding ding ding!
Then, it was a matter of waiting to hear if my second short story ‘Zephryine’ would be accepted by Obsidian Lit. After a few rounds of edits… Zephryine was accepted! Two of my goal three short stories had been published in the same year. I didn’t know if that was normal or typical or noteworthy but heck, it was MIRACULOUS TO ME. I’d done my darndest to rein in my focus and do what I thought for years I was incapable of doing.
I don’t celebrate things as wholly and fully as I should. So, this piece is in part a celebration of those beautiful wins that have begun a journey I didn’t deem possible for me even just three short years ago. This post is also an offering for all the writers who are hesitant to call themselves writers or who have hit a wall. The writers who have had great success and are on that teetering edge wondering if they’ve got what it takes to do it again.
Writing, while it isn’t my absolute favorite thing to do and I can’t honestly say I’d abandon all else to do it, IS a calling for me. It is an art, a medium that I know is divinely placed right in the center of my life. There is no other explanation for the wealth of ideas that all but attack my brain at any given moment. There’s no other explanation for the ways I turn over stories and think on their delivery and how to make them better, how to make them resonate, how to deliver them to people in a way that sticks like grits.
The same might be true for you.
So, I pray that you allow yourself to write. I pray that you don’t discount the ideas and the sentences and the edits that come to you. I pray that you hold close the fact that you wouldn’t be inundated with the ideas you have if they weren’t strategically and divinely placed. Your voice is meant to heard even if you’ve been made to feel otherwise. I pray that you allow yourself the rest necessary to dream up bold worlds and even timid, cowering ones. I pray you allow yourself the grace to write the wack thing. Because if you keep going, the wack leads to the wonderful. I pray you choose to embrace the editing phase because although it might wear you out, you’ll be better at expressing all that needs expressing. I pray you tap into God’s voice through it all and let the purposed enormity of this art, this calling be just that. Purposed Enormous.
This is my prayer for you.