It's time to be honest

I'm sorry for anyone who read the half of this post that was up earlier.  I had a bit of posting problems.  I see the post ended in half a sentence too.  I'm fixing that...

This weekend I attended a women's conference organised by our church.  A lot of things fell in place for me today.  Things about my life and things about my story.  I want to share some of it with you.

I have served God for most of my life.  I credit Him with everything I have, most of all my talent to write.  I have always written.  Not always on paper and not always structured.  But there have always been stories.  It's just that I never felt fulfilled in my writing. It never had a purpose beyond who I was.  That frustrated me immensely.  I always wrote for myself, to please myself.  Now I have found my purpose.  A seed that has always been inside me germinated today.  Today I know why God gave me the talent to write.

Human trafficking is a big problem all around the world.  It is abhorrent that one person can abuse and sell another for profit.  It is modern day slavery.  It is the evil of our society.  And God wants to put a stop to it.  He has a plan and I am part of it.

My story has a new purpose.  I realised that what I thought it was for was totally wrong.  I know that I don't have my talent for nothing.  I was selfish in my writing.  You will remember how I went on about it being MY writing and I will write the way I want to blah blah blah.  Whatever.

I also realised that I was trying to write in my own strength.  I was doing it my way without help from anyone.  If someone gave me advice I would listen, but I would still do it my way mostly.  Most of all I never prayed about my writing.  It was like I thought God had nothing to do with it or that He wasn't interested.  I know now how wrong I was.  God is interested in every little thing that you do.  I just never gave Him the opportunity to give His input into what I was doing.  Silly me.

I have a new idea of what my writing is about.  I was right about the theme and subject matter.  I wasn't sure about the story, though.  I have a much better idea of where it should go.  I even have the title.  I am well on my way to writing a Masterpiece.  Anything I do that is for God's Kingdom WILL be a masterpiece.  And yes, this book is for the glory of His Kingdom.

I'm not trying to make my writing sound extra super special!  I just know that whatever I do for God will prosper.  It may be a small purpose, but it is a purpose nonetheless.

Have you found the purpose of your writing yet?  How do you keep that in mind while you write?

A change from the usual

I am not only a fiction writer, I am also a copy writer.  This means that I write pretty mundane stuff sometimes.  Ghost writing is a part of my work.  All of you would understand what it is like for me to write someone else's or even my own work just in a different way, with different words.  It is not exactly conductive to a creative experience.  I tend to get a little frustrated when I am asked to ghost write something.  I feel the same kind of frustration when I have been writing the same (creative) thing for a while.  Luckily there is a cure that works for both my job and my creative writing.

If I've been focusing on poetry for a while, I often start to feel like my poetic creativity takes a nose dive.  Big time.  I can't rhyme, and my non-rhyming poems just plain suck.  So what I do is to write something completely different.  I would write a long, plainly worded letter.  Or I would write a piece of prose that is focused on a completely different topic.  If I was writing poetry about the seasons, I will write prose about darkness and light or even an interesting newsworthy article.  I have written many philosophical essays that are probably very badly thought through and that make no sense.  But it was to write something different. That was the whole point.

This need to write something different is what drove me to start a blog.  Writing through my writing problems often lead to a solution, if only because I am not writing my WiP.  Writing something else has the power to clear your mind, give you new perspective.  I don't mean start a new novel if you are bored with your old one.  That probably won't help at all.  Write something completely different.

What about you?  Do you write the same thing all the time?  How do you clear your head and get perspective?