My metamorphosis into a writer - Ruth L. Snyder

My journey to becoming a writer is more of a metamorphosis (by definition, "A profound change in form from one stage to the next") than a "Eureka" moment.

I clearly remember the day I read my first book. (It was actually more like rehearsing the memorized text of my favourite book, but to me it was reading.) I made everyone I encountered sit down and listen to me "read". A few weeks later I realized those squiggles on the page had meaning and began the process of learning how to actually read. Reading opened a colourful imaginative world I still enjoy today.

The next step in the metamorphosis came a year or so later. We lived in South Africa at the time and had just returned from a year of furlough in the United States and Canada. Writing letters formed a link across the ocean and helped me stay in touch with relatives. I remember listening intently as my mother read each letter, using my imagination to visualize the actions and people described. Soon I joined my mother writing letters back.

We enjoyed a visit from a special family friend, "Auntie Ngairie," a couple years after we moved to Botswana. Decades later, I remember her insistence that my writing would be stronger if I used a greater variety of words. "Try not to repeat any words. Replace repetitions with something that will add to the meaning." (Something I still work at today!)

A year or so later, my sister and I joined our two older brothers at a mission hostel in Zimbabwe. We travelled five hundred miles by train to attend school in the capital city of Salisbury (now called Harare). Writing became even more important to me because I was away from my parents for three months at a time. I eagerly anticipated the weekly letters my parents wrote, and in return, I searched for words to describe my activities and opportunities.

We moved to Canada in 1977 and other than school activities or the very occasional letter, my writing consisted of daily journaling. This continued through middle school and high school. In grade ten, I joined the school newsletter and yearbook committees. Here I discovered the joy of sharing my writing with a larger audience. I also enjoyed experimenting with layout and design.

After I finished Bible College, my mother showed me an advertisement for a writing "aptitude test". "You should do this and send it in." More to get her to leave me alone than anything else, I complied. A few weeks later I received an invitation to take a course on writing for children from the Institute of Children's Literature in Connecticut. I received encouraging comments from my instructor and learned the basics of writing for children. After two courses from the institute, the metamorphosis continued with two more courses from their sister organization, Long Ridge Writers' Group.

One of my instructors encouraged me to join groups where I would have the opportunity to interact with other writers. Through the internet I found and connected with The Word Guild, InScribe Christian Writers' Fellowship and The Christian PEN. These groups provided more nurturing and encouragement. Winning the Fresh Ink contest with The Word Guild finally convinced me I am a writer. Conferences provide opportunities to learn from and network with other writers. Through a course with The Christian PEN I met Kathi Macias, who invited me to write my first novella, Cecile's Christmas Miracle.

The metamorphosis continues. This week I learned how to format my own manuscript for Kindle and uploaded my Learn Twitter: 10 Beginning Steps to Amazon. Launch date is set for April 27th. I'm excited to see where God and my writing lead next!

Follow Ruth's adventures in writing and life at http://ruthlsnyder.com

God Grows a Writer by Bobbi Junior

“Is it a sin to hate yourself?”

At thirteen years of age, these words began my first journal. I couldn’t know this statement would lead me on the path to become a writer. As a young girl, all I knew, or thought I knew, was that I had no worth. I came to the page profoundly alone, yet crying out to the one I instinctively knew was listening.

For me, journalling deflated an agony of heart that often threatened to push me over the edge. I would never have called myself a writer. Journalling was simply a way to cope. The act of putting pen to paper diminished the power of my misery enough to keep me alive one day longer.

I hid my journal carefully, although no one sought to read it. My pain wasn’t as invisible as I believed, though. God saw it. God read it. God cared.

I couldn’t know back then that the Lord was honing my craft. Such private, uncensored, expression gave me freedom to write my story unhampered by literary constraints. Day by day, tear by tear, pain designed my words, my style. 

With God my only audience, I became a writer.

In my twenties I wrote a series of children’s stories that were published in the Edmonton Journal. Confidence began to grow until they hired a new editor who critiqued my next submission. I didn’t know that critique meant I should now revise. With no writer to turn to for advice, I simply stopped.

In my forties, my stable life tipped. This time I knew Jesus was my willing audience. Once again I journalled voraciously as I dragged and fought my way through the ensuing tumultuous decade.

Eventually life settled, but with a significant change. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The desire Jesus gave me was to write, but with a new purpose. I attended a Women’s Words writers week which showed me I was on the right track. Then, and to this day I don’t remember how, I came to attend the 2012 InScribe Fall Conference.

The rest, to use a timeworn cliche, is history.

Writing saved my life as a teen, and again as an adult. 

Writing about what I was saved from, saved for, is now my calling. 

God is good.

Bobbi’s book,The Reluctant Caregiver, was published in 2014. Since then, Bobbi has been invited to speak on caregiving, dementia, and the needs of seniors in a number of venues. She’s excited to see where God will take her in the coming years. Download a chapter at bobbijunior.com.

Growing into a Writer – by Ramona Heikel

For years as an adult, I had in the back of my mind that, when I had time—when I was in my eighties—I would be a writer.  Then one day when I was in my forties, I thought to myself, “I can hardly wait until I’m old and get to write!  But…I guess it couldn’t hurt to get started right now, could it?”  From that time on, I endeavored to be a skilled writer.  And the more I look back, the more it makes sense.

During my childhood and pre-teen years I wrote several stories.  I have in my scrapbook a science fiction thriller, poems, a cat adventure, and even a four-page newspaper I wrote for my chameleon.  My mom encouraged me to submit my poems to a children’s magazine, and at the age of eleven I received my first rejection slip:  “Stories and poems written by children are not purchased.  Keep reading Child Life and Children’s Playmate…” 

As a teen I wrote in diaries, loved school writing assignments, and wrote pages and pages of letters to friends out of town.  I was placed in the advanced English classes in high school, and wrote a column in my college newspaper.  Yet the only thing I remember wanting to “be” as I was growing up was a secretary or a teacher; I figured writing could only be a hobby.  I wasn’t aware that one could actually study English or Writing in college until I was majoring in math, and a friend announced that she was majoring in journalism.  I was envious!

I realize now how much my parents both influenced me to write.  My dad was very articulate, and always teaching me new vocabulary.  When I was living out of town he wrote me beautiful, long letters.  He took a creative writing course while he was in the Air Force, and I still have some of his well-written assignments.  I also learned that his mother and grandmother both wrote poetry, and my great-grandmother had some of hers published.

My mom took the Famous Writers Course by correspondence.  I remember the brown and white binders sitting on her art-deco desk, and her fat yellow envelopes full of assignments ready to mail.  She had two articles published in magazines and, inspired by God’s leading, she wrote the manuscript of a book about how the ideals of feminism contrast with God’s design for men and women.  I remember her often sitting in her office, looking out the window, deep in thought.  She has become understandably discouraged that many Christian publishers no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts, but would still love to perfect and publish her manuscript.

So, I wouldn’t say that I started by sensing God’s call to write; I just loved to write.  Now, although I have not “arrived”, I believe writing is a talent given to me, and as I’ve looked back at how naturally writing came to me, and all the writing talent in my background, and I do now sense his call to write.

I’m so glad that Mom and Dad implanted in my psyche the ideas that sitting and staring out the window to put words together is a perfectly valid way to spend time, taking writing courses is a good investment of money, and writing a book manuscript is a worthy goal.  I have done all three since I moved my “retirement dream” forward!

Posted by Ramona

www.happilywriting.com

 

Picture credit:  Mary Pickford writing -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Pickford-desk.jpg