It wasn’t long after forming the basic story in my head that I decided to turn it into a novel. I wanted to be a novelist since high school, but I had buried that dream when I chose to pursue “higher callings” in college. Now that my other dreams were gone, I figured “why not now?” I spent my lunch breaks and whatever free time I could scrounge up constructing the outline of the novel and crafting profiles for all my characters. I wrote chapter summaries and key events that had to happen in each chapter to move the story forward. I thought about it constantly! And when I was finally ready to dive in, I took some time off from work and began writing my first chapter.
I jumped in eagerly, knowing the vision I had for the novel was given to me by God. If God was all for this new life direction I was taking, then I just knew it was going to be easy! There was no way I couldn’t fail! Unfortunately someone forgot to let my lack of knowledge or my dreadfully raw talent level in on the secret.
Several frustrating hours into my day off and only a couple of pages in, I was stuck. I couldn’t figure out what to write next or how to transition to it. Since I had no clue what to do, I did what any husband would do: I asked my wife to read what I had and give me her honest opinion.
She got about half way through then hesitated. When she switched to her “kind and gentle” voice, I knew I was about to regret asking for her honesty. She told me what no writer wants to hear: it bored her! I had gone into such extreme and tedious detail about every little thing that I completely killed the flow of the story. I overwhelmed my very first reader with a geek’s level of information and description when all she wanted was to enjoy the story.
I was disappointed but undeterred. I took another day off work, deleted the offending parts, and rewrote what I had. My wife reviewed it again, and I saw her eyes brighten up this time. “This is so much better than what you had before!” she told me. After that, she finally bought into the vision I had for my novel. She became my biggest fan and greatest cheerleader!
I learned a number of important lessons that day. First, there’s a fine line between not enough description and way too much. Second, it’s okay to suck at something when you first get started so long as you listen to criticism. Third, I had a lot to learn and a long way to go in order to fulfill my dream. And finally, writing is a heck of a lot harder than it looks!
With these lessons firmly in hand, I spent the next few years learning everything I could, writing whenever I could, and carefully crafting my novel. I discovered that not only was my talent level improving, but I really enjoyed the process too! Nothing made me feel more alive than when I got a “writer’s wind” and soared through my writing sessions!
But then life was always getting in the way of the writing process, and my own personal demons were difficult to tame. Because of this I struggled constantly to keep my momentum going. Weeks turned into too many months, and months turned into many more years than I wanted. It was demoralizing! I had this God-given dream to write, but the road was so much more difficult than I expected. I prayed constantly for more time to write, but it never came. I had to get by with whatever time I could manage.
As I got close to finally finishing the novel, I unexpectedly lost my job. It was another layoff, but this time the company I was with decided to pay me for a few extra months so I could look for a new job without struggling too much financially. I jumped on this opportunity as an answer to my prayers and finished up the final chapters as quickly as I could!
I was so frustrated with how long the novel had taken me to write—and so relieved when I finally finished it—that I didn’t realize I still had much more to learn. When I looked at the completed product, it fell far short of what I had envisioned. The story was there, but it felt rushed. The pacing and scene sequences didn’t always make sense. The characters had no life or depth to them and often came off as whiny. On top of that, there were certain parts I was too embarrassed to read myself, much less let strangers read!
But I was stubborn and didn’t want to take any more time to fix it. Instead I stuck my head in the sand and spent the next several months trying to finagle legitimate, intelligent literary agents into agreeing to represent my work. I only had a certain amount of unemployment, so I had to find some way to get it sold quickly. It was foolish. I was so focused on the dream of publishing my novel that I refused to believe what was staring me right in the face: My novel needed A LOT more work before it would be ready for the world!
When reality finally set in and unemployment ran out, I decided to gut the entire book and do a complete rewrite. I kept the parts I really liked, rearranged some of the other parts, and threw out everything else. When I finished mapping out the plan for the rewrite, I discovered that I had to recreate from scratch more than 40% of the novel and heavily modify the rest.
I looked at the mountain of writing I had in front of me and compared it to the miniscule amount of free time my newest job and extracurricular activities provided me. I had no clue how I was going to be able to do it all. I was so discouraged that I told one of my closest and most trusted friends, Tania, that it was going to be next to impossible to complete the rewrite in any sort of timely manner. I was looking at years again. She prayed with me, but I was once again demoralized.
But something happened the next day to remind me that God was just as invested in my novel as I was:
I was invited to a church party the following evening. My wife was out of town and I suck at socializing, so I didn’t want to go. But Tania was going, so my son (who wanted to play video games with Tania’s sons) talked me into attending. I decided I would follow Tania around like a lost puppy and let her do all the socializing with everyone. All I had to do was smile and nod while waiting patiently for enough time to pass where it would be socially acceptable for me to run away. But then there would be free food and ice cream so I figured it wouldn’t be entirely a nightmare.
Toward the end of the party, Tania and I (mostly Tania) were talking with one of our friends who had just come home from a ministry school. Somehow the topic of prophesying came up and the next thing I knew, Tania asked our friend to prophesy over her. She prophesied over her, and then for some reason I asked her to do the same for me.
My ministry friend (who knew nothing of my conversation with Tania the previous night, and was only mildly aware I was a novelist) said that when she looked at me, she kept thinking of a song about Jesus carrying our heaviest burdens. She prophesied that there was a situation in my life that appeared so difficult that I couldn’t figure out how to do it. She said that God knew about it and wanted to help me with it. She finished by saying He was about to make my path so easy that it would feel like I didn’t even have to work at it anymore.
Tania burst out into laughter! I sat completely stunned because I had shared my concern about my writing with only my wife and Tania. But God clearly heard what I said too—and He wanted to give me His opinion on it. I accepted what my friend prophesied, then went home with my mind and heart racing.
When my wife came home from her trip, she and I agreed on a new writing schedule. The time I could commit to writing was pitifully small, but I found that the story had suddenly become effortless to write. I wrote faster than I had ever done before, cranking out entirely new chapters at a pace of weeks instead of months! In 6 months, I managed to rewrite my entire novel from start to finish while only managing to squeeze in 10 hours a week or less (usually much less) of writing the entire time!
What was even more amazing was the quality of what I had written! All of a sudden everything meshed! The story flowed brilliantly! I was able to build the characters exactly how I envisioned them to be! The world was complex yet beautiful! The message within the story was clear, powerful, and poignant, but it never once became preachy or took away from the story. And, per my beta readers, the ending was exceptional and fulfilling, yet left them clamoring for a sequel.
What I enjoyed the most about the rewrite, though, was how much I discovered about my characters! The characters were as deep as you or me, complete with full personalities, back stories, fears, secrets, and struggles. They were funny and relatable, yet tragic and vulnerable at the same time. The more I wrote about them, the more real they became to me! I found myself crying with Theia or laughing at Neel’s random antics. I was heartbroken by Ziah’s losses and inspired by Cerra’s courage. I wept with Mila and felt Joktham’s uncertainty and fear. And even though they were all figments of my imagination, I felt honored that they shared their lives, thoughts, and secrets with me. And with as closely as I knew them, telling their story became easy!
I thought at that point, my dreams were close to their fulfillment. But then I realized again that my path wasn’t finished yet. God helped me complete the novel, but there were still a few things He needed to work on me before I was ready. He needed to help me overcome my fear, anxiety, and timidity (a story for another time) before I would be ready to be visible to the world.
Now that those lessons have finally begun to sink in, I’m ready to press forward again. I still need to find an agent who will agree to represent my work. Then my agent will still have to find a publisher to purchase it. After that, the publisher will need to put my novel on their publishing schedule. On top of all that, I still have no clue how well my novel will sell, or how many people will read it. But I do know this: God has been with me every step of the way, and He will use my work to help change lives!
And if I still have more to learn before I can get to that point, then those are lessons I will fully embrace.
The path has longer and harder than I had ever imagined, but when God is the one who’s given you the dream, that dream is always worth the journey.
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