From Edie: A New Year message for writers on learning from past successes and failures without letting them hold you back as you move forward.
A New Year for Writers: Learning from the Past Without Living There
by Martin Wiles @LinesFromGod
“I wish I could come back.”
Every year, it happens. A student says it—most of the time, quite a few. High school freshmen who hated middle school. We middle school teachers tried to warn them about the transition to high school. We told them how much more difficult it would be. But they couldn’t wait to be delivered from the prison of middle school—or so they thought.
Then, the summer passed, and they entered the halls of the ivory tower they had longed for. But it wasn’t what they thought. The pace was quicker. The homework load was heavier. Several returned to the middle school hall each morning to tell us they wanted to return. Perhaps I passed them in the high school hall or the lunchroom. “Dr. Wiles, can we come back, please?” Sadly, I had to tell them no.
I have taught some students who returned to my room every day before going to their high school morning class to reminisce about the good old days of middle school, which they didn’t think were good while they were there. The old saying is true: “We never know what we have until it’s gone.”
“But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26 NLT).
How long Lot and his family lived in wicked Sodom before God’s judgment, we don’t know. Did they make good friends there? Did they love the sinful lifestyle of most of the inhabitants? The day came when God grew tired of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. As Lot and his family ran for their lives, Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.
This is not to say that looking back has no merit. Once in high school, my students appreciated more what we had taught them in middle school. And they reflected on the good times they enjoyed in middle school, despite the difficult journey. Still, they couldn’t return. They had to move on. But had their longing been so intense that they couldn’t function in high school, they would have had a problem.
Looking back also carries merit for us writers. We can see where we have and have not been. We can relish the successes—the acceptance letters, the book contracts, other writing contracts and opportunities (even the ones for which we were not paid). Of course, what writer’s journey isn’t also peppered with rejections? And acceptance letters, but with edits (sometimes, heavy edits). Hopefully, we also learned valuable lessons from the “No’s.” Looking back with the proper perspective also helps us map our way forward.
But some things God wanted Lot and his family to flee from, mainly the wicked influence Sodom provided. What we writers should not do is to live in our past—the failures or successes. Past successes give us no reason not to press on in the future. And if we dwell on our failures, we may never move forward.
Like everyone else, we writers live in transition, with one day melding into the next. We can’t turn back. We must move forward, for time doesn’t stand still but marches on, and we must march with it. We must build on past successes and failures and then move toward God’s new ventures for us.
God’s writers can afford to live with regret. Regret is Satan’s way of keeping our feet planted where we are, not in the future God has planned for us. God’s ways are not our ways. Yet, he has a bright future for us, and this is where we should focus.
Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Writers, we are in a New Year. There is no turning back.
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