Don’t let negative thoughts assault your gift and calling. If you’re new at this, you must think like a writer from now on. Perhaps this quote will help:

“You are a writer. Right now. With only what you have in your head as it is. You don’t need anything else. You are a writer. You just need to keep writing. Don’t let the Writing Fairy tell you that you aren’t. That you need something more, that you’re pretending to be something you’re not. Hemmingway wasn’t Hemmingway when he started. He was just a guy named Ernest who sat down at his typewriter.” ~ Joseph Devon

Writing is a lonely occupation. It’s necessary to pull away sometimes to connect with real people, particularly friends who understand the nature of writing and support your endeavors. Rather than talk to characters in your head, you probably need a reality check now and then:-)

Seriously, every good writer needs love and support.

“If you find yourself emotionally empty, go to a caring friend. If you are bruised and bleeding, the empathetic response of another will stem the hemorrhage of emotion and begin the process of healing and filling,” writes Dr. Richard Swenson, author of Margin: Restoring Emotional. Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.

Swenson’s book addresses stress and overload, something most writers deal with, especially as we juggle family, day jobs, health issues, and deadlines, among other things. Margin is full of practical guidance to help restore balance through contentment, simplicity, rest, better health, and relationships.

Be sure to put this book on your ‘to read’ list, and don’t forget to call a friend.

Thanks to Tricia Goyer for two excellent quotes that challenge our thinking about the writing life:

“Writing is like religion. Every man who feels the call must work out his own salvation. I might add that while many are called, few are chosen.”

“Many beginners think that if they can acquire style, the fight is won; but style without ideas is as useless as an edge tool without material to carve. On the other hand many men who have ideas think they can write acceptably without serving an apprenticeship. They must learn how to use the tools of their trade. ~ Horace Lorimer, Adventures in Interviewing

But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. ~ Ann Lamott, Bird by Bird

Lamott says she’s managed to write nearly every day of her adult life “without impressive financial success.” She would do it all over again, though—mistakes, doldrums, breakdowns, and everything else. It wasn’t until her fourth book came out that she stopped being a starving artist. Few writers make enough money to live on, so that can’t be the motivating factor. Curiously enough, Lamott tells her students that when her writer friends are working, “they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time.” When they’re writing well, she says, they feel that they are living up to something.

Do you sense this as well?

While re-reading John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life, I’m painfully convicted of wasting time, caving into fear, and thereby postponing the very meat of writing that God has called me to do. But Piper’s words invigorate my heart. They call me to account. For instance:

We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes Him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that He really is.

“…magnifying God in all spheres of life…” This truth renews the passion and purpose for my writing. Not all will share my sentiments, but one day we’ll all give account for our words, even the ones we failed to write.

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

Piper says: “Not to aim to show God is not love, because God is what we need most deeply. And to have all else without Him is to perish in the end.”

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.~
Gilbert K. Chesterton

In matters of truth, the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton