Stalled by Susan Barclay

Waaay back in 2004 I started work on my first novel. I'm a pantser so I didn't work with an outline, but I did have a good idea of how the story would begin and how it would end.

For a while, I wrote consistently and the words pretty much flowed from my head and onto the page. I was part of a monthly writing group that offered amazing feedback, encouragement, and support.

Then I got stuck. Hit a roadblock in the plot and didn't know where to go, what to write next. Somewhere along the way I also lost much of my work due to a computer snafu. Here's a fact I can endorse from experience: always, always back up your back-up.

A member of our writing group passed away after a years'-long battle with breast cancer. I hadn't realized how much of the glue she must have been because our group fell apart and has never regained its momentum. 

I started a writing course with author J.A. McLachlan. Her feedback on my work was great but her gentle suggestions made it clear that I needed to pretty much start over.

Then Covid hit. My mom fell and moved in with us. My daughter boomeranged back home as well. And now my son has returned. While I'm happy to have a full house and to care for the people God's placed in my life, it's also meant setting my project aside for this season. We talked more about this in my August post.

So, in terms of strategies I'd normally suggest to someone who's stuck - take a break and work on writing something else, seek feedback from others and see if it generates new ideas or directions, ask yourself 'what if this?/what if that?' - none of those help me right now. I also find it difficult to get up any earlier in the morning or stay awake any later at night. The one thing I can do is read other people's books. As I said in the August post, "Reading is an important activity for writers as we learn from both good and bad writing and get ideas for subjects we might want to explore further through our own work." All is not lost.

As I was scrolling through Facebook this morning, I found some encouragement on Jennifer Rothschild's page. She said:

Sometimes we look at Psalm 37:4 as a blank check. We think that if we delight in God, He will give us what we want. But the emphasis of the verse is on delighting. When we delight in God, He places in us the desires He wants us to have. “It is God who works in you,” Paul reminds us, “to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). When our delight is in God, we can trust that our desires will be what He wants for us. That way we never settle for less!

Today instead of worrying about my set-aside project, wondering if it will ever get finished, I choose to focus on delighting on God. I want nothing less than His best for me, and that may mean forgetting the novel and all the years I poured into it. I know the time wasn't wasted as I improved my ability and skill. 

God has good plans for me (Jeremiah 29:11) and for my writing. When the time is right, He will show me the next step(s). My trust and my hope are in Him and nothing else. Nothing is better than Him!

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For more about Susan Barclay and her writing, please visit www.susan-barclay.blogspot.com