My Writing Path, to Date by Marcia Lee Laycock

 My Writing Path, to Date by Marcia Lee Laycock

Photo by Jaime Spaniol on Unsplash

Perhaps it was living in a stressful home that drove me to write, plus the space my father provided for me. He fashioned a little door and hung a single lightbulb in a room under the eaves of our house. I wrote for my dolls. They didn’t complain so I kept it up.

That space morphed into school, where I learned to fashion words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs that revealed my own story to my own heart and a few others.

A summer house on Lake Huron was the next place on my journey. There, the year I turned eleven, I was given a copy of Emily of New Moon. I determined, in some small crevice of my heart and soul, that I would someday be a writer. I expected to keep it hidden away, believed no one would ever know.

In high school teachers used the word ‘talent.’ I looked over my shoulder every time. Surely they were talking about someone else. Those “Emily words” were buried deep. How could they have seen them?

Years later, at a kitchen table, my father convinced me that you couldn’t survive writing short stories and poetry. So I abandoned the idea of studying creative writing at UBC and went to Carleton University to study journalism. It was in a professor’s office I pondered the idea of becoming a writer who was known, when he said, “You write very well.” But after two years I knew journalism was not the path for me, though I picked up some skills that have served me well.

The next Providential place was a log cabin outside of Dawson City, Yukon. As temperatures fell to -60’s, I sat by our barrel heater writing my first novel on a stack of rough yellow legal pads. I was also introduced to the work of Rudy Wiebe that winter. It was The Temptations of Big Bear that instilled in me the power of setting and poetic language and pure, sing-it-to-the-world story.

I continued to scribble on those legal pads until God took me to a place where I challenged Him to reveal Himself. He did, and everything changed. It was at Briercrest Bible College that I realized the talent I had was God-given and had a God-designed purpose. I asked God to show me how to fulfill it.

He led me to the cluttered office of a small town newspaper. The editor scanned the short devotional I’d brought and said, “Yeah, it’ll do.” That was the beginning of an almost twenty-year run of a weekly faith column. At about that time I discovered InScribe, heard stunning poetry and moving short stories written by people I rejoiced to have found.

Not long after, I met Gus Henne. He convinced me to publish my first book, a collection of the devotionals I’d written for that faith column. The first edition sold out quickly, as did the second. The third is still in demand.

I continued to write devotionals and the occasional article but I grabbed every moment I could to write fiction. That came to a screeching halt one afternoon when I was at my tiny desk, absorbed to the point of obsession. My daughter had come home from school, needing to talk. I kept my eyes on the monitor, giving her a few ‘uhuhs’ until she cried out, “Why do you never have time for me?” Struck to my core, I prayed. God said, “Stop.” I fought that answer but finally agreed on the condition that He take away all the stories that swirled in my brain. He did. I wrote no fiction for over a year.

I was in the foyer of our church when God released me from that prohibition. A fictional character took shape and would not go away. Again, I prayed and was given the gift of time to write One Smooth Stone. It won the Best New Canadian Christian Author Award from Castle Quay Books.

I was working on the sequel when I saw a link to a mentorship program at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. The Mentor was Rudy Wiebe. My heart raced. Was my writing good enough to be accepted into the program? I filled out the application. No email arrived. I did receive a large manilla envelope. I thought it was a school calendar. I almost threw it away without opening it and was stunned when I did. I had been accepted into the mentorship week. The deadline for acknowledging my entrance was the next day. I called the school immediately to say yes. Goin’ to Winnipeg!

Sitting in that bare classroom, my pulse raced. It was my turn to have my work dissected. For years people had been telling me I wrote well. But what would Rudy Wiebe, a literary icon of Canada, say about it?

The session began with students’ comments, most positive. Then Rudy began. “What do you think of this sentence?” Everyone loved it and my heart soared. Rudy looked at me. “You love it too, no doubt?” I nodded. He stood and turned to the blackboard behind him. “This is what’s happening.” He drew a line across the board. “The story is going along well.” He turned and looked at everyone. “And by the way, this is good writing.” I almost gasped. “But then this happens.” He drew a box on the line, then continued it on. He smiled at me. “It’s a lovely sentence. Maybe you can use it in something someday. But not here. You have to cut it because it takes the reader out of the story. They’ve stopped to enjoy that sentence. You can’t do that to your readers.” I nodded again, barely breathing.

“This is good writing.” Had I really heard those words? Could I truly believe them?

As reader’s responses arrived in my inbox and mailbox I realized that all those words of praise were wonderful but only one thing mattered – what God did with the words I put into sentences and paragraphs and chapters. My skill was only as valuable as His purpose in it.

As I continue to follow this path He has put me on, I strive to remember the words “Soli Deo Gloria.”