Devotion: Severely Flawed, or just a Writer?

I've been becoming increasingly concerned about myself. There are some character traits that I cannot shake, no matter how hard I try or pray.  For one thing, I am a complete night owl. If I didn't know better, I'd be concerned that I was harbouring latent vampire genes. If real life didn't demand that I put in an appearance while the sun was up, I could probably go for weeks productively busy between sundown and sunrise.

I'm also obsessive over details. I get caught up like a burr in woolen socks over whatever my mind hooks onto. If there are no current WIP's to take centrestage, then my brain will look for something to chew on - a conversation, a look, a feeling. Analyze analyze analyze... process... allow the resultant emotion to take hold of me and dictate. This is not always a good thing and I'm working on it.

I'm also somewhat anti-social. It's not that I don't like people, I just like being by myself. School holidays are a real challenge as the days often start with a bed full of sprogs before I'm actually ready to open my eyes and continues in a flurry of mom-demanding activities until way past the time I would like to be closing them.  By the time peace and quiet arrives, I'm way beyond tired to do anything but surrender to the soft cooing of the duvet.

I was chatting to God this morning, and He gently flicked a switch in my brain. It all became obvious - I'm not odd, weird or degenerate... well, maybe just a little... Truth is, all the stuff above are good ingredients for a life given to churning out words. To write an article, story ... novel - one needs to be consumed with details, labour alone for long hours and the best time for this is when the world is asleep.

So I'm not bizarre, just built for a purpose.

That's a really good thing to know!

So now it's your turn. Are there things about yourself that bug you? If you step back and look at the big picture, can you see how those niggles actually fit? Let's chat.

"For we are his workmanship, 

created in Christ Jesus to do good works, 

which God prepared in advance for us to do." 

Ephesians 2:10

(reposted from Di's blog Doodles)

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She has just signed a three book contract for a YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon & Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

LOST DONKEYS---By Christine Lindsay

You’ve heard the phrase, ‘cast your bread upon the waters and wait for it to come back to you’.

Well how about the one, ‘looking for lost donkeys’?

Nope? Never heard of that one?

Lately I’ve been testing the waters to see what direction I should take with my writing career. Not being independently wealthy I need to bring in an income. I know, I know, you’ve heard me whine about financial difficulties before, but debut novels don't sell a whole lot. Well we all have our crosses to bear. Ooops, there’s another well-worn phrase.

Thing is, we all have our stresses. And we all reach crossroads at frequent intervals where we have to make decisions----will I go in that direction . . . or in this direction?

Right now I’m prayerfully trying to decide if I should search for a full-time job outside the home which would mean I lose out on the time it would take to write another book. Or if I continue to write, it may mean more years of financial strain.

So last week I put out a number of resumes at various jobs, and I sent out a new book proposal to an agent. My fingers drum the table, which one of these diametrically different ventures will be my 'ship coming in'?

You may be looking for a job, deciding on what college to attend. Asking yourself, what should you focus on for a career. Should you stay at your current job or apply to other places? Perhaps your health is an issue? Or maybe you're like me, should you keep persevering to have a writing career?

There’s an incident in the life of Saul that each time I read it, gives me comfort. The young Saul had no idea that God had chosen him to be the first king of Israel. He just figured he was an ordinary guy whose father was a farmer and owned a string of donkeys. One day those donkeys went missing, and Saul’s father sent him out to look for them.

Saul travelled through various areas, the hill country of Ephraim, passed through the land of Shalishah, etc., etc., etc. He looked for ages and all over the place. Saul could not find those donkeys.

I can connect with Saul’s long and unfruitful search for those financially-strategic donkeys.

Funny thing is, God used that long and winding search to bring Saul to the prophet Samuel. The Lord had already revealed to Samuel that He had chosen Saul to be that first king. As Samuel unveiled this to Saul, he also told him that the donkeys he was searching for had been found and were already at home, and that God had a totally new direction for his life.

God knows which of those job resumes or if that book proposal is meant to be. I'm going to sit back and trust that He will safely bring home my lost donkey.

When you’re unclear about what direction to take in your life, or it seems that every iron you place in the fire doesn't get hot enough to provide for you, or you’re not sure which direction to cast your bread on the water, remember that God knows exactly where your lost donkeys are.


The story of Saul and the lost donkeys is found in I Samuel 9

To purchase Christine Lindsay's Award-winning debut novel, click here on Shadowed in Silk.

Or drop by her website, www.christinelindsay.com

Motive-free imagination

Once, I was challenged to complete an exercise which involved making a list of my favourite childhood activities. Here is what I came up with. Reading books, acting out books (I'd pretend I was one of the characters and walk around with the book in front of my nose 'playing' the book as if it was a movie), playing handball against a brick wall pretending I was a tennis star, playing memory games, drama lessons, playing pretend games with friends, visiting playgrounds, riding my bike and pretending it was a horse, art lessons, cooking sweet treats, pretending my life was a story book.

I could see that even as far back as then, my fascination with stories was thriving. It was my natural way of expression from a very early age and I used to do it spontaneously. The point of the memory exercise was to prove that God has planted our future roles and destinies inside of us way back when we're in the secret place of Psalm 139 (implanted in our mothers' wombs). It certainly showed me that but I noticed something extra too.

Part of my adult life has been tainted with wanting to achieve something impressive. In my childhood, I simply did all of these activities because they brought me joy and pleasure. As I grew up, I couldn't help adding a certain heaviness to the joy, making life more of a burden. One day I was stewing over how I can possibly get my books "out there" more, when I heard my 16-year-old son humming. He'd finished his study commitments for the day and was happily checking his footy tips and beginning his computer games, getting involved in his cyber-world just because he loves it. I started thinking, I need to take a step back and ponder, because I'm missing something.

Perhaps my point is that worrying over how many people we're touching or affecting with our work moves into the arena of arrogance and pride. It's freeing to think that God intends us to keep our youthful enthusiasm, delighting in our activities for their own sake without getting hung up on the notice and attention we're receiving. We need to trust that our creativity is being directed exactly where it needs to be. I want to move back into the beautiful childhood attitude of getting fully immersed in something just because I love it.

The word, "success" is an insidious blood-sucker that we never think much about during our first ten years on this planet. We're down-to-earth and sensible, simply doing what we enjoy whenever we can. When "success" is introduced into our vocabulary as something to strive for, that's when we begin deciding we need to do a heap of other things. I'm sure it's also when we begin to open ourselves to depression and neuroses we were never designed to carry.

I started having a closer look at some of the Biblical folk who God promised to bless abundantly. Many of them seemed to have a different heart attitude, wanting to take themselves out of the picture, simply using their skills and talents to celebrate God and give Him the glory. Whenever they moved dangerously into the domain of worldly thinking, it was never a good thing and was always rebuked. I'm thinking of King Saul burning the sacrifice before Samuel arrived, out of fear of how he would appear to the people if didn't; of King David organizing a census simply because he wanted the personal security of being able to gloat over the size of his army; of James and John being gently rebuked because of their striving for the right and left-handed positions next to Jesus. Similar attitudes to these sometimes get themselves entrenched in my thought processes. I believe I need to keep alert and weed them out of there.

I need to remember the simple motivation of my childhood, creating through my writing simply out of love and pleasure, not being overly concerned about positive feedback, catalogue appearances, numbers of sales or literary attention as gauges of how I'm going.

How about everyone else? What were your favourite childhood activities? Do you notice a thread between them and your current life occupation?

Paula Vince is an award-winning fiction author who lives in Mount Barker, South Australia, with her husband and three children. She enjoys her lifestyle of writing and educating her children at home. She has written seven novels for youth and adults. Paula values her faith, family and fiction and believes that nothing has more power to delight and inspire people than a good story with lovable characters. She likes working with the background hum of the washing machine and dishwasher, to give the illusion that she's multi-tasking.