Tighty-Writey by Susan Barclay

 

 

One of my goals for 2025 is to work on rewrites or revisions of past work, and I’ve been doing that for the last few months. Rewriting is an important part of the submission process. You want your work to be the best that it can be before sending it into the hands of editors, agents, publishers, readers—in short, decision-makers. With the amount of competition in traditional publishing, nothing less than superlative will do, and even then there’s no certainty of acceptance. Writers have always needed a thick skin and that is even more true today, apart from self-publication.

Personally, I enjoy the process of revision. There is something about viewing your story with fresh eyes that allows you to see where a plot line may have gone sideways, a character needs greater development, description is wanting, or there are typographical or grammatical errors. While revision doesn’t always make a piece better, in my experience it usually does. The writing gets tighter with fewer extraneous sections or words.

How many drafts I write or how long it takes me depends on the needs of the piece and my ability to accurately assess those needs. I might pass a story or article through my writers’ group or a writing friend for extra feedback. I might let it steep a while and let my thoughts about it percolate (apologies for the mixed metaphor!). I might set it aside for a while and work on something else before coming back to it again. At a certain point, though, I let it go and send it off. That usually happens when I’m well-satisfied that there is nothing or little more I can do to improve it.

When the revisions are complete and I’ve submitted my work with a little prayer, I breathe a sigh of happiness and move on to something old or something new. I don’t worry while I wait; I trust the process and I trust God to know what is best for both my writing and me.

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c. Susan Barclay, 2025. For more about Susan and her writing, please visit www.susan-barclay.blogspot.com

 

God's Loving Dream for Me by Sharon Espeseth

God has always known me. As my creator, he says, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1: 4-5 NIV)

I'm getting used to recognizing myself as a writer, but I hesitated to call myself a prophet. Recently, however, I read a column by John Connelly in Western Catholic Reporter reminding us that God has "appointed us to be a prophetic people. A people who shine the light on truth in the darkness of our times." Hmm, I thought, that does shed a different light on the matter.

There is a lot of darkness out there and Jesus pointed out the futility of lighting a lamp and putting it under a bowl. Instead we are to put our lamp on a stand, so "it gives light to everyone in the house."

God loved me from the beginning. Sometimes I need the visual of God literally knitting me together in my mother's womb. While knitting, God implanted dreams and gifts that he intended me to explore and use to his honour and glory. One of those dreams was writing.


At particular points in my life I've had glimpses of God's dream for me, but I've then let everyday distractions crowd these dreams out like weeds can crowd out flowers in my flowerbeds. Eventually, untended, the flowers in my garden become indistinguishable from the weeds. That's when it's time to do some serious weeding to get rid of those detractors, so I can once again see the dreams God has knitted into my being.

To do this I need to spend quality time with my maker. I need to be still and know that he is God. Being present, listening, sharing, respecting, honouring, adoring, praising, submitting: these are the protocol of love. In these days of independence, rights, freedom, and equality, submission is not a popular concept.

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers reminds us that even Christ "never spoke of his right to himself, but always maintained an inner vigilance to submit His spirit continually to his Father." Christ provided an example of how we must attune ourselves to God's Spirit. Knowing God has created our inmost beings, would it not be wiser and more effective to give our loving heavenly father "elbow room" to work in our lives.

Pray with me: Dear Lord, like David the psalmist, may we humbly and frequently ask you to examine our ways. May we give you room to work in and through us so our lives and our writing may say what you want us to say.

Losses - Lynda Schultz

Loss dogs the steps of our daily lives, darkens the corners of our minds, and squeezes our hearts. Seventeen years ago, on September 26, my father passed into eternity. After such a long time, the date usually passes without too much notice but since I am reading through my father’s devotional book this year, I couldn’t help but be reminded.

Interestingly other events occurred this weekend to heighten the impression. On Saturday morning, I learned that my friend, Nancy, had lost her father the night before—the same date on which I had lost my own dad. Her experience brought back memories of my own.

On Sunday, I got word that another friend of many years had finally succumbed to cancer and was in the presence of the Lord. As I read the glowing words of praise for her life, I was reminded again that those dark corners in our life’s journey need desperately to be tempered by faith, hope and love.

The reading in my father’s devotional book for September 27 gave me a perspective on loss that sometimes gets overwhelmed by loss’s gloom. The author, James Hinton, writes: “Suppose you are bewildered and know not what is right nor what is true. Can you not cease to regard whether you do or not, whether you be bewildered, whether you be happy? Cannot you utterly and perfectly love, and rejoice to be in the dark, and gloom-beset, because that very thing is the fact of God’s Infinite Being as it is to you? Cannot you take this trial also into your own heart, and be ignorant, not because you are obliged, but because that being God’s will, it is yours also? Do you not see that a person who truly loves is one with the Infinite Being — cannot be uncomfortable or unhappy? It is that which is that he wills and desires and holds best of all to be. To know God is utterly to sacrifice self.”*

The style of writing takes a bit of analyzing to make it understandable, but the essence of the message is a reminder that trust in the dark places, as well as those places blessed with light, is essential and is evidenced not simply by a resignation to His plan, but by the embracing of it.

*Daily Strength for Daily Needs, Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1920