From Edie: Discover why a writer’s motives matter more than platform growth or visibility. Learn how ambition, opportunity, and calling can quietly drift apart—and how to seek God’s direction before saying yes.
Why Your Motives Matter More Than Your Writing Platform
by Heidi Gray McGill @HeidiGrayMcGill
What drives you to the desk matters as much as what you produce there.
I had not been to a conference yet. I did not know what I was doing, so I did what most new authors do. I studied the writers who had it together and took my cues from them. Some of that served me well. Participating in Facebook Reader Group parties, connecting with readers, and learning how the community worked were all good things.
Then an author suggested I join a MAP, a Multi Author Project. The logic made sense on the surface. Multiple authors, each with their own following, write books in a shared series. Readers who love the series discover every author in it. Aligning myself with established names could expand my reach. I considered it, and then I did something I am not proud of. I stopped considering and started moving without ever asking God what He thought about it.
I set aside my current work in progress, wrote a book for the series, and became the author of book number 76.
What I had not researched was that somewhere after book 60, readers had grown tired of the series. Most of them never made it to number 76. The motive, building my platform by borrowing someone else's audience, had led me somewhere God had never directed me to go. The book I had set aside sat untouched while I wrote something that reached almost no one. I had moved fast, convinced myself it made sense, and missed God entirely.
What David Knew About Motives
Near the end of his life, David gathered the leaders of Israel and spoke to his son Solomon about what it would mean to build the temple. His words in 1 Chronicles 28:9 cut straight to the interior life. Serve God with a submissive attitude and a willing spirit, he said, because the Lord examines all minds and understands every motive of one's thoughts.
Every motive means every motive. Not just the ones we would never say out loud, but the ones we dress up in spiritual language and present as obedience when they are something else. David was not warning Solomon against blatant rebellion. He was warning him against the subtler drift, the kind where a writer is still doing the work, still writing the book, still showing up at the desk, but the engine running underneath has shifted from God's glory to personal advancement.
I know that drift. It does not announce itself. It shows up wearing the clothes of wisdom and opportunity, and it moves fast enough that you are three steps in before you think to ask whether God was the one who opened the door.
The Motives We Don't Name
It is easy to say we write for God. Most of us believe it when we say it. The question David puts to Solomon is whether we believe it enough to stop and ask Him before we move.
I said yes to that MAP because I wanted what it seemed to offer. Visibility, association with known names, and a shortcut to the audience I was working hard to build on my own. None of those are sinful desires in themselves. But I had not laid them before God and waited for His answer. I had decided what made sense and moved.
The Lord examines all minds and understands every motive. That verse is not a threat. It is an invitation to the kind of transparency that produces writing worth reading. When we bring our actual motives to God, the ones underneath the spiritual framing, He can work with that honesty.
Writing From a Submitted Heart
The second half of that verse holds the promise. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him. Seek is an active word. It requires stopping long enough to ask, and then waiting long enough to listen, before the next opportunity arrives and the momentum of excitement carries you somewhere God never intended.
My work in progress was waiting when the MAP ended. I went back to it, finished it, and it became part of the series God had placed on my heart from the beginning. That book found its readers. Not because I had borrowed someone else's platform, but because I had stopped long enough to write what God had called me to write.
I learned something in that season that I carry into every new opportunity now. Before I sign on, before I set aside what God gave me to chase what looks promising, I ask Him. I sit with the question long enough to hear something other than my excitement. The Lord examines every motive, which means He already knows what is driving me. The only question is whether I am willing to know it, too.
TWEETABLE
A sought-after encourager in the writing community, Heidi speaks and writes on the craft of storytelling, writing with biblical conviction, and reaching readers across generational and cultural divides. She is both independently and traditionally published, and she writes despite progressive vision loss, which has only sharpened her perspective on what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.
Connect with Heidi and receive a free prequel to her bestselling series at HeidiGrayMcGill.com.
Christian Fiction. Relatable Characters. Life-changing Stories. Fusing Faith and Fiction™
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