Can doubt play a positive role in your writing life?

If you’re a writer, you’ll have doubt. We all do. It comes with the territory.

What amazes me is that even the most successful writers go through it. I was listening to the most recent NovelMarketing podcast and Jim Rubart made mention of the fact that his latest novel – his 10th – has been hard. He’s wondered if he can actually write and doubting if he’s up to it. Jim’s an amazing author with half-a-library’s worth of books with his name on them, but he’s still saying he experiences doubt.

I’m going through another phase of doubt too. I’ve just had the rush and enormous excitement of signing a contract and working on my debut novel with my publisher. The edits. The cover design. The marketing ideas. It’s been amazing, and a sense of achievement. Recognition. Validation that the doubt was wrong.

Then it came time to pitch some more ideas. The doubt returned quickly. Very quickly. My feeling of success was still warm but the icy hand of doubt came back.

I tried to shake off the doubt – we all do, don’t we? – but then I wondered if there was another way to think about it.

So I was thinking about the role of doubt in a writer’s life. It’s often spoken about as a negative, and there are a gazillion blog posts about overcoming it so I, in typical contrarian fashion, wondered what sort of positive role it might play.

I didn’t want to write another blog post about “tips on getting rid of doubt”, so I thought about how doubt might actually help me.

1. Doubt makes me challenge what I write. Let’s face it, I’m the worst person to evaluate one of my own ideas – either in a positive or negative light. For me, when I doubt my story because I wonder if that plotline is derivative or just lame, it forces me to rethink it, and strengthen it. I doubt a character is likeable, so I examine him. It drives me to work harder to make him quirkier, more engaging and memorable.
2. Doubt helps me check my research and presentation – research or grammar. I doubt I’m right about the details, so I check the Chicago Manual of Style (my marketplace is in the US), and I get it right. I don’t presume, and therefore make silly mistakes. 
3. Doubt is a part of the fun. I don’t know if this idea is going to get over the line or not. It’s exciting while waiting (he says, knowing he often thinks otherwise in the middle of the wait). 
4. Doubt keeps me reliant on God. This is a big one when you’ve just had a success. When well-meaning people (who are clueless about the writing journey, let's be honest) start to tell you that you’ll retire on your “author money” in the next five minutes, that doubt over your next idea – and the thought that my first novel was just lightning in a bottle – keeps me leaning into God for whatever happens next. 

So that’s what I’ve learned about doubt and me. What role does doubt play in your writing life?

Using Our Words to Heal, by Jebraun Clifford

Jesus cursed a fig tree, and it died. He told a dead little girl to rise to life, and she did.

Words are powerful.

Words create reality.

Words have the ability to harm or to heal.

Whoever made up the children’s nursery rhyme about sticks and stones was mistaken. People of any age who hear that they are ugly or stupid or useless can carry emotional wounds that often take longer to mend than a broken bone. But a positive word brings encouragement. Scientific studies have shown that even houseplants thrive more when nice things are said about them!

This shouldn’t surprise us. Proverbs tells us that life and death are in the power of the tongue.

Whilst this refers to the spoken word, I believe the written word can have just as much of an impact.

The written word is powerful and can't be altered or denied. It carries explosive ideas between cultures. It expresses the deepest yearnings in our hearts, explains what it means to be human. Some words are deemed too potent, and the books that contain them are banned.

The written word creates reality. Historical fiction brings the past to life. A skilled writer can make us feel like we’re walking through Ancient China, Elizabethan England, or the Oregon Trail. And who hasn’t been so lost in the imaginary world of a novel that coming back to reality is a shock? Sometimes the ordinary can seem hum-drum after wandering in Narnia, Middle-Earth, or Pern.

And, yes, the written word has the ability to harm or heal. The introduction of any topic on Facebook – be in controversial or inoculate – will garner remarks of all sorts. It’s astonishing, really, how people write the most insulting, belittling, and downright mean words to one another. These words cut deep, piling on top of each other, until we stagger beneath the weight of them.

“So much death!” King Theoden says in The Two Towers. “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

What can we do?

We can write!

We can write words that uplift, inspire, and restore. We can tell stories of forgiveness, hope, and reconciliation. We can create winsome and complex characters who struggle and fall, get up and try again. We can introduce our readers to the Word who became flesh, and let His life-giving words colour ours.

For that is the privilege of a writer.

“My pen shall heal, not hurt,” vows Emily Starr from L.M. Montgomery’s book Emily Climbs.

We would do well to imitate her example.

Whether you’re a published author, a hopeful one, or simply a person who scribbles privately in his or her journal, your words matter.

Your words can change a life, or even the world!

Growing up, I always wanted to walk through a door to an imaginary world so it’s no surprise I now call New Zealand home. Too short to be an elf and too tall to be a hobbit, I live in the centre of Middle Earth where the Preacher and I planted a church over a decade ago. I love tree ferns, dark chocolate, British spelling (except for tyres...that one still looks weird!) and Jesus. When inspiration strikes, I blog at www.jebraunclifford.wordpress.com

WARNING TO WRITERS. WARNING...WARNING !!!

If you want to write fiction you have to adjust to the fact that all fiction is autobiographical…to a point. You’re going to bleed emotionally on the pages. You will need plenty of hankies near your computer.   

When I first started writing 15 years ago, I understood any non-fiction I hoped to write, especially the book on my birth-mother

experience, would be autobiographical. But later when it seemed that particular true-life account might never be published, I felt the Lord urge me to put the spiritual and emotional truths I’d learned into Christian Fiction.

Whew! This means I don’t have to bare my soul. I can hide behind my “untrue” historical epics with plenty of action and romance that God-willing might help readers think about the Lord while they’re being entertained.

Ah...but here’s the real scoop.

When people read Shadowed in Silk I don’t think they have a clue that I poured my own wounded heart and soul into my "bad-guy", the enemy of my heroine Abby Fraser. Much of my emotions (from a number of years ago) are seen in Tikah the woman who kidnaps Abby’s child.

The title Shadowed in Silk shows all characters feel invisible for their own reasons. The two women feel no one sees their heartaches or hears their cries in the night. As a woman who was hurting over the relinquishment of my firstborn to adoption, I felt like invisible Abby. But I also felt like Tikah who steals Abby’s little boy, because part of my heart longed to turn the clock back so that I’d never relinquished my child in the first place. 

I took the bare truth of my soul and painted that longing into my character Tikah as she does the reprehensible.    

Shocking, I know. I’m not saying my emotions were right or honorable. Emotions are emotions, but that’s what books are, a baring of the soul. 

Of course I didn’t take back my true-life child, and the Lord helped me through my heartache. Thankfully, God also didn’t leave me in my spiritual immaturity, and my second book Captured by Moonlight shows some of that spiritual growth.  

One of my heroines, the beautiful Indian woman Eshana is imprisoned in a ruined jungle palace by her fanatical uncle. Her head is shaved, her lovely saris taken away, and she's dressed in coarse white cotton like that of a Hindu widow. In this book Eshana says the following, straight from what I hope I will say the next time I go through a real life valley of suffering...

“I will sing your praises, Lord. Though you have dressed me in funeral clothes, I will sing your praises with joy.”  

I could go on and on—how Veiled at Midnight shows what I learned the 2 years my brother lived with my husband and me, as my brother went through rehab for his alcoholism. This book breathes the message that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God.

The message of Londonderry Dreaming is to speak the truth in love, no matter how hard it hurts. And in the soon-to-be-released Sofi’s Bridge is about being true to the gifts God has placed in our souls, and to not try and save your loved ones on your own. All deep spiritual and emotional lessons that I have learned in my true life. 

God has done some amazing things for me.  Sure, I’ve suffered, who doesn’t, but I’ve experienced that scintillating feeling when 

God makes everything new. That’s why I always write happy endings.

That’s also why 15 years since I first starting writing, I’m seeing my original dream come to pass. Remember that non-fiction book on my birth-mother experience that started it all? Well, it too is soon-to-be-released. But in all honesty, there is just as much of me in my fictional novels as there is in this account.

Me and my birth-daughter Sarah. She too writes a piece for the book, including several other people from various adoption reunions.

No matter what emotional state you are currently in--hold tight to God, and believe in the ultimate happy ending for you through Jesus Christ. 

For more about Christine Lindsay and her books, go to www.ChristineLindsay.com

Are We Using What God Gave Us? by Ruth Bigler

I run in the mornings. For years I wasn’t able to run, because pregnancy and babies and something that happened to my knee when I was pregnant with number one. But suddenly, blissfully, I run now, almost every morning.

There is something magical about being outside in the morning in the summer, when the early light is filtering through the leaves that have passed the pale, yellow-green of spring and are now the dark, rich colour of a summer forest. The birds talk more in the morning than they do at any other time of day. They talk more, and they talk louder, quarrelling, singing, jubilating in the experience of existing in a morning in the summer.

There’s a field I run past that’s flat and boggy, and often a moose will startle at my approach and take off running, his gangly legs flailing, his whole disproportioned body evoking a cross between the majestic awe of creation and a great cosmic joke. Sometimes I even see “my” owl perched on a fence post, watching me as I run past, its head swivelling a full 180 degrees to follow me down the road.

And then there’s the running. I never feel more alive, more grateful for the beautiful gift that is my body, as when I’m pounding down the hard-packed dirt road, the smell of dew and aspen and warm dirt in my nostrils, my feet hitting the road in perfect rhythm and my breath as steady as my footsteps. It is my meditation, my zen, my morning devotional. It affects my every day. It affects my confidence, how I feel physically, and how much patience I have for my kids, my husband, and my co-workers.

A beautiful, sublime purpose exists within our bodies and our spirits. When I run, my body is doing what it was built to do; when I pray, or read my Bible, or go to church—when I turn to God—my spirit is doing what it was built to do.

When I first started training again, after six years out of commission, it was hard. I kept injuring myself, so many times that I finally had to go back to a five-minute run per day. For weeks! It was painful, and hard, and some days, just plain boring. There were times I wondered if it was worth it. Sometimes I almost decided it wasn’t. But I had run before, and I knew that once I passed that mysterious threshold, running would once again go from a chore to a part of my life-force.

Being spiritual isn’t easy, either, especially when you’re just starting. Turning to God can be hard, and painful, and sometimes so, so monotonous. Other activities are much easier, and, at least in the short term, more enjoyable. But we keep trying, because perhaps we’ve had a glimpse of how rewarding a relationship with God can be. We’ll sludge and slog our way, step by painful step, until one day we’ll look up and we’re not dragging our feet any more; we’re soaring, and life is more beautiful than we can even comprehend.

We need that glimpse of Heaven first. Before going through the pain and discomfort of fully trusting God, we need to understand why. I write about the rewards of running because I hope others will challenge themselves physically, too. I write about God’s miracles because I want to share them with people who don’t know them or have forgotten. Maybe that’s why you write, too.

Have you experienced a glimpse of Heaven through the mud and sweat of life? God has given each of us a way to let others experience Heaven on Earth. So, if we write, let’s write! If we preach, let’s preach. Even if all we do is run, let’s run for His glory. Because nothing in the world could be more beautiful than being what God made us to be.

Ruth is a bit of a nomad, having moved eleven times between three countries in her seven years of marriage. She's a lawyer, a mother of four very energetic children, and an omnivorous reader, and despite everything, (usually) manages to squeeze in some writing. Ruth writes mostly Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction, ranging from sic-fi to historical. She loves running, dark chocolate, and cross-country skiing, and is determined one day to get her very own dog.