While living in Colombia, South America, my friend Bessie and I visited her former colleagues in Bogota. As we stepped into their high-rise apartment, it felt like a penthouse: elegant, classy, and affluent. Not something I expected from missionaries who normally lived in modest homes. After our hostess greeted us warmly, I noticed the dinner table was set with a linen cloth, silverware and bone China. During dinner, whenever our hostess wanted the maid’s service, she rang the tiny bell beside her plate. The maid, wearing a stereotypical black dress and white apron, appeared from behind the closed kitchen door. Though maids were common among missionaries, I was not used to such formality.
However, years later when I read my journal, I had only briefly mentioned these details: “Do they ever have culture and ‘class’!...a different society!”
But my journal included interesting details I had forgotten. Completely. Their son, John, an MBA student at Harvard University, was visiting his family for Christmas. Also visiting was his grandmother. My journal notes that John, “confided to his grandmother (but made sure I heard), that he liked ‘Southern belles, Jewish girls, and foreign girls’, which included me in the list.”
How could I have forgotten those people and those delicious details?
Shortly afterwards, I read an article that pointed to what I experienced: the Zeigarnik Effect, named after Bluma Zeigarnik, the Russian psychologist of a century ago. She studied how waitresses remembered complex orders but then forgot the details once the order was completed. This led to the principle: We forget completed tasks. We remember unfinished tasks because we need to mentally hang onto the details.
How can this concept relate to our month’s theme of guarding our hearts?
What has God put in your heart to write and you haven't finished? Are you discouraged? Can't think of how to write it? Do you keep putting it off?
I’ve put writing projects on hold for various reasons. Yet I keep mulling over ideas, jotting notes, writing thoughts in my journal.
These unfinished projects won’t let go.
I’m now consciously working on finishing a number of those undertakings, and I have some strategies if you are in the same situation.
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Write a summary of what you want to say, and this will help focus your thoughts.
Reread your work after six months—or longer. Seeing it with fresh eyes will point out what you know is good, and perhaps how you can finish it.
Adapt Brenda Wood’s recommendations in last month’s blog post: write missing parts in your morning pages. Fill out scenes. Write a new transition. Reorganize your structure. Experiment with different introductions or applications. Then transcribe those drafts into the appropriate projects.
Take a morning or whole day for a self-guided retreat. Blocking this time gives you more headway than working little by little. You may need more time than just a day, but at least you'll have a good start at finishing.
If November is nearing, challenge yourself to complete what you started through participating in NaNoWriMo (for fiction) or Write Nonfiction in November.
You may need to let a project go. Accept that it just isn't workable. However, you can perform transplant surgery and add pieces to some other works in progress.
If you’re still “finishing challenged”, invite a coach, an editor, or a trusted confidant to share their perspectives. Taking a course might be a good way to go.
And finally, guard God’s words to you in your heart. He might say, “Be strong and finish the work”, or “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans” (Proverbs 16:3). Or He might encourage you with a new direction: “For I am about to do something new…. Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness (Isaiah 43:18-19 NLT).
As we listen to the Spirit’s promptings, trust God, and step out in faith, He’ll help us bring to completion what we’ve started.
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