Friday, May 25, 2012

Writer's Block?

We love our church family, and we thank God every night for bringing us to Florissant.  It is a very special - loving church family, that has qualities we've experienced with other church families, but none that has had the same high level of unity, tolerance, and unabashed love that is common to this family.  We are in the middle of our eighth year here, which is hard to believe - time truly does seems to keep flying by faster and faster, but our love for all of our family here just keeps growing.  The one thing that I have never been able to develop here, like I've had everywhere else we've been, is a scheduled time to write.  I'm not talking about the weekly writing that is part of my ministry - bulletin articles, lessons, letters, emails, and even blogs, but the time I want to set aside to work on books that I feel God gifted me to write.
You see, to work on a book, you need a good solid uninterrupted couple hours.  That's hard to find with all the daily and weekly things that full up my time.  It takes that long because you must back-read what you've already written to get into the flow of thought you had when you last stopped.  If the writing times are close enough together, that's not as important - since you remember better, but it still needs to be long enough that you don't have to stop in the middle of a great flow of thought.  Most of the time, in the past, I was able to fit in a couple hours twice a week.  I have done a little of that, but it has really been difficult to do consistently.  I have a book I have been working on about God's Tool Box for about four years now, but I've had lulls in my writing that have spanned months at a time.  I'm about two-thirds of the way done, but it's so old that I know I have tons of things to rewrite - which isn't all bad.
How can I work this out?  This is my 720th blog.  That means prior to this blog, I have written 719 articles.  Yes, some are just personal pictures, and some have been short thoughts to share or that I've passed on from someone else, but the majority have been articles.  That's about two books worth of writing.  It's not a totally good comparison to make, since most of my blogs take 30 to 45 minutes to write and construct (some less some more).  I'm just wondering if I'd do more Book writing if I wasn't doing the blog writing.  I don't know - I'm just thinking out loud - I mean out blog.  I'm just sharing with you so you won't be too surprised if - sometime after the play is over - I decide to bring my blog adventure to a close.
I would appreciate any insights and prayers that anyone can give as I consider how I can best serve and glorify God with whatever gifts he has blessed me with.

1 comment:

Deborah said...

Well, I would certainly miss reading your blog, but I guess I'd get over it when your book got published!!