Shining a Light on Scared

by Jean Kavich Bloom

Along with other contributors, I write short, monthly essays for a Christian community blog for women called The Glorious Table. If you or the women in your life don’t know it, check it out.

While encouraging women in all walks and aspects of life, the blog's multiple writers often bare their own souls. I’ve done that, too, although I don’t think my soul is as consistently bared as some of the others’. It’s too easy for me to “preach it” without exposing the ways I should be preaching to myself. I’ve had to work on that over the years, to shine a light on both that tendency and what I might be hiding. I'm still working on it.

You see, I’m a scared writer. Not in my basic ability to get the words down and make sense of them, but in what I’m willing to share. This may be in part born out of growing up a pastor’s kid (an excuse I love to make!), but before I know it, I’m thinking, What will people think if I confess that? What will people think when my opinion/conviction is less than traditional/conventional? What will people think of me?

I’ve also thought about any tendency to be a scared writer when it comes to writing fiction. Sure, we can make our characters as nontraditional and unconventional as we like, but how far are we willing to go to make them as vulnerable as real people? Like we are as real people? Even baring their souls?

I’m not talking how some writers would gladly portray everything as R-rated as possible; I think even beginning writers have the skill to avoid that. And I know protagonists are best loved when they’re likeable, at least eventually. But I don’t want to be afraid to infuse characters with real, reflecting a lot of me that might elicit a raised brow or two.

As primarily an editor, I’d also like to encourage authors with whom I work to not be afraid of real. The beauty of Christian fiction, or fiction not so labeled but that still accurately portrays the Christian walk, is that it can also portray the eye-opening, heart-opening redemption and transformation only God can provide.

Maybe a scared writer can be a good writer who's just decided to write what’s real anyway, unafraid to shine a light. 



Jean Kavich Bloom is a freelance editor and writer for Christian publishers and ministries (Bloom in Words Editorial Services), with more than thirty years of experience in the book publishing world. Her personal blog is Bloom in Words too, where she has posted articles about the writing life. She is also a regular contributor to The Glorious Table, a blog for women of all ages. Her published books are Bible Promises for God's Precious Princess and Bible Promises for God's Treasured Boy. She and her husband, Cal, live in central Indiana. They have three children (plus two who married in) and five grandchildren.


Photo credit: https://publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=216102&picture=desk-lamp