Open Yourself Up, Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve
I write thousands of words every single day as a professional writer. It’s easy for me. Perhaps that is because I grew up as an avid reader. Writers are readers, or so they say. Maybe I find writing easy because I’ve had so much practice writing an untold number of college papers over the years. Nah . . . that’s not it. I have had a love for writing since high school. Perhaps, Mrs. Johnson, my tenth grade English teacher, instilled a passion with her enthusiasm and encouraging words surrounding my writing. Funny thing is, writing for others is something that I can do on command with ease. Writing about myself, however, well . . . that’s another story.
If you’ve been working on writing your miracle story in a book or blog, you may be running into this challenge yourself. I’ve got a few insider tips that will make that just a little bit easier for you.
Back when I wrote what was going to be my first book, Beyond Boo-Book Kisses, I struggled to write. I knew that in order to create a book that effectively took my readers to those moments in time when I was told that my four-year-old son had brain cancer (and every agonizing step of that journey) that I had to be willing to go back there myself – to relive the trauma. I had to be willing to hear the sounds, smell the smells, and feel those feelings once again so that my audience could be there in that moment and hear, smell, and feel those things too. And if you want to tell a story that engages and moves people, you’ve got to be willing to be vulnerable as well. That’s often very difficult to do.
I would stare at a blank page for hours. The more I failed to put words on the page the more frustrating and stressful it became. “I’m never going to get this written,” I thought. So, I began to come up with things I could do to help myself overcome the difficulty I was having.
The first thing I did to move myself along is I wrote a different book. I decided that I would write a book about a subject that was fun and important to me, but a topic which I did not need to be vulnerable about. I needed to prove to myself that I could actually write a book. 50 Nifty Freebies: Homeschool Edition, a book giving homeschool parents 50 ideas for free resources they could use to teach their children, became my very first published work.
30 days – that’s all it took.
Within 30 days my first book was written. A week later, I was selling copies at a conference. Before long, I’d sold hundreds of copies. I was now a published author who could make money selling books. And that book opened up multiple opportunities to speak at conferences where I could sell even more books.
If you are struggling to write about things that are deep wounds or just having difficulty being vulnerable, try writing something that isn’t as emotional for you. It doesn’t have to be an entire book and you most certainly don’t have to go around marketing one like I did. Sometimes just the act of putting forth words on a page will get you going again.
Another strategy that helps is what I call praying on paper. Grab a spiral notebook and a pen and just start writing. Have a conversation with God. Tell him what you are struggling with, whether related to the work you are trying to write or just life in general (if He answers, write that too). Some time spent with this written conversation between you and the Lord will strengthen you and really get the words flowing.
The point is, just start writing somewhere about something. When you do, the words for your story will begin to flood your mind and you’ll be cranking out chapters of your story in no time. In fact, as I write this, I’m remembering more and more approaches that I used to help me write my miracle story.
We’ll have to get to those another day. Until then, try one of these strategies to help you record and share your miracle story.
Which strategy will you try? Do you have a different strategy to help you get over writer’s block?
