Writing for the Fun of It

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.

Monthly Hoosier Hangouts

 

Mark your calendar now for a year's worth of connecting with ACFW Indiana Chapter members to "talk shop."

Stop by for an informal time to fuel your writerly tank and satisfy those cravings to be with and learn from other writers. 

January 15th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

February 20th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

March 20th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

April 18th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

May 20th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

June 18th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

July 17th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

August 22nd - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

September 16th - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

October 22nd - 7:00pm - Hoosier Hangout

A Christmas Gift to Myself

Sometimes I don't have enough money to attend a national writers' conference, but that doesn't prevent me from reaping the benefits. If the budget is tight, I can still choose a few audio recordings for my personal training. And if I receive a few cash gifts for Christmas, that's enough to buy several conference recordings. Call it a Christmas gift to myself. 

For example, I can buy and download recordings of the 2023 ACFW Conference in St. Louis at this website. If you attended this year's conference, which workshops and plenary presentations would you recommend? Why?

I'm making my list and checking it twice,
        so please pass along your Conference advice.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.

Hi Ho. Hi Ho. Cleaning Up My Resource Library I Go...

Over the Thanksgiving Week Holiday, I decided to take some extended vacation time to work on my home related projects. It was extremely productive and very theraputic. 

One of those many, many projects stacked up on the plate was to dig into my office to sort and reorganize my resource book library...most of which has become a monument to "creative stacking."

To that end, I decided to clear out some space in one area by re-organizing what I had on bookshelves to open space, but more importantly, use the existing space I have more wisely.

My end goal was to refresh my knowledge on the resources I currently own (that may have become lost in the void,) to group like items, and to make my books easier to find by not having so many books stacked in front of each other on the shelf (or even on the top of the bookcase).

It was a win-win-win scenario that I even carried over to my DVD-BR collection (which is another source of inspiration to my creativity flow). 

Do you have a writing resource library or source of inspiration that could do with a refresh? If so, the Holidays could be a wonderful time to tackle that task and have a few side benefits as well.

It's a Christmas treat when you find old reference books that proved to be an inspiration when you first started your writing journey "back in the day." See below:

Who Are Our Customers?

Tsunami-sized changes are sweeping through Great Britain’s publishing industry as they are through ours. It’s instructive to eavesdrop on what British publishing professionals are saying about this. I believe they are asking questions we should ask ourselves in this time of radical change.

The May 18 issue of The Bookseller (Britain’s equivalent to Publishers Weekly) featured an article by Hannah Macdonald of September Publishing, who challenges publishers to ask who their customers are. Twenty years ago, most publishers said their customers were retail bookstores. They thought that if they persuaded stores to carry their books, readers would find and purchase them. No more. The number of retail bookstores has shrunk radically and large store chains have disappeared altogether because fewer readers find and buy books through brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Publishers have responded with a variety of new schemes—free e-books with the purchase of print editions, special editions printed on demand, etc.—but none of these strategies have swept back the tsunami. So Macdonald reminds publishers:

Retailers are just a part of our customer base… Readers are the point of it. And authors are our partners in it, sales channels of their own. We should be rethinking all our processes, structures and ambitions—everything—through that new perspective. We sit at the centre of that glorious, electric, world-changing relationship between book and reader (or listener). That human creative exchange is our single most important purpose….

Note the main points of Macdonald’s argument, because she identifies some changes for all of us:

a Retailers are just a part of our customer base...Readers are the point of it. Publishers who try to cater to bookstores by imitating cover designs, popular characters, or settings of best-sellers, they may sell our books into stores but not through them. Readers spot knock-offs and avoid them.

a Authors are our partners in [publishing], sales channels of their own. Too often we are tempted to think, I’m the creative part of the publishing equation. I’ll do the writing and the publisher will do the selling. However, each of us has a network of contacts with family, friends, and members of the same congregation, alumni of the same college, etc. If we tell them about our latest books, we can start sales rolling.

a That human creative exchange [between book and reader] is our single most important purpose. We can take this cue from innovative publishers if we visualize our readers at each step of the writing process. We can imagine them asking questions as we write and listen as they respond to our stories. This will make readers our co-creators, not merely consumers of what we write.

Widespread change can be frightening, but loyal readers are loyal customers. If we satisfy them, they will come back for more of what we have to share. So take heart. It's time to recapture the principles that used to guide Christian publishing. They can determine where we land when the publishing tsunami passes by.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.