By Darren Kehrer
We all have our own reasons for writing. For Christian writers, there is usually a Christian themed motivation (which I would assume is a commonality) along with other varied factors of motivation that can be personal and, in some cases, financial (but not necessarily to make money other than making it a sustainable living option).
Writing could be either a full-time profession or maybe a hobby that you are pushing towards a full-time occupation. In either scenario, or some variation in between, there are always many tasks a writer has scrolling on their (endless) to-do list:
• Brainstorming ideas
• Plotting and character creation
• Editing and re-writing
• Marketing, blogging, and promoting
• Contest submission
• Maintaining writing technology
• Time management to balance writing time
• Reading and researching about writing in order to improve skills
• Attending conferences
The list goes on!
In addition to all of these, you have family, friends, home, and other work tasks and responsibilities to fill out any remaining time.
I have found lately that almost all of this leads to a traffic jam on my imagination highway. All of this is actually PREVENTING me from writing. Why did I start my writing journey? Why do I enjoy writing? Why? Because I LOVE to write and it’s FUN telling a story that’s playing on the movie screen in my imagination.
Yes, there is definitely a core Christian aspect to my writing, however, I write because the Lord made it fun for me. I decided to take a step back from the responsibility of writing and NOT worry about deadlines and such questions as is it good writing, does it make sense, am I punctuating correctly, or do the plot lines and characters work, etc. From that time, the STRESS of writing was lifted and now I write way more than I did before because I’m just writing…writing for the fun of telling a story for myself with me as an audience.
I am NOT saying this is something that will continue as my go-to writing strategy, but it has definitely helped me navigate around a very long path of “real world work stress” that has blocked my ability to just sit down and write. Thank you, Lord, for the grace of realizing that the reason that I write is because you made it my way to glorify you and YOUR imagination. It occurs to me that if God didn’t have an imagination, we wouldn’t be here.
As Christian writers, we are so very blessed to have been gifted this ability to tell stories, create characters, dream up new worlds, and spin adventures into the past, present, and the future. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our gifts are not wasted and sidetracked by the world around us.
If you are not having fun while you write, consider this short-term paradigm shift to get you back on track to find the joy in writing again, which at its core, can be the turning point in breaking through any writer’s block currently in your way.
