From Edie: Lynn Blackburn shares how Christian writers can hold on to joy when deadlines, expectations, and exhaustion make the writing life feel more like work than a calling.
How Christian Writers Can Find Joy When Writing Feels Like Work: The Fruit of the Spirit in Publishing
by Lynn H. Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn
Fruit Under Pressure: Deadlines, reviews, comparison, the silence after you hit send. We’re on month two of a nine-month exploration into what it looks like to live out the fruit of the Spirit as we navigate the pressure system of publishing.
Once upon a time, I was a little girl who loved her dictionary. I still have it. I can see it from where I’m sitting right now. It’s the Webster’s New Elementary Dictionary. I spent hours—hours—reading it.
These days, I don’t have much need for a paper dictionary. I usually hop over to the Merriam-Webster website, plug in the word, and go from there.
But y’all…the dictionary has let me down.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines joy as a feeling of great happiness or pleasure, a state of great happiness.
A feeling. A state. Of happiness?
With all due respect to the revered folks at MW, joy is not a feeling. It isn’t a state of happiness. Joy is a state of being that we have access to through the power of the Holy Spirit, and happiness is not a requirement.
In fact, the Bible tells us to count it all joy when we endure trials.
If you’ve been a follower of Christ for long, you know all about this. And you probably even have stories that you can share of how you’ve been able to find joy even when things were hard and when the prayers weren’t answered the way we hoped. We know it’s tough, but we persevere.
But what happens when the prayers do get answered? When we’ve been given the very opportunity we dreamed of, and we know we should be filled with joy?
We know it, but we can’t quite hang on to it.
We’re tired. We’re overwhelmed. And it’s complicated by the fact that we know we have the very thing many of our friends and fellow writers are still praying for.
My brain tells me, and the Christian establishment reminds me on the regular, that gratitude is the name of the game. The hashtags write themselves.
#TooBlessedToBeStressed #Gratitude #Thankful #LivingMyDreams #PinchMe
But when I’m still working at 2 a.m., my body is exhausted, and my soul is weary, joy is fleeting. When I have way too many irons in the fire, they’re all glowing red, and I’m trying to decide which can wait and which one is going to go molten if I leave it a second longer, there are no feelings of gratitude.
How do I find the joy when writing isn’t fun anymore? When those giddy moments of flow state where the words are pouring out of me and the story is clicking have been usurped by deadlines, reader expectations, and a healthy dose of fear that nothing I do is quite enough?
It turns out that true joy isn’t something I can manufacture. It isn’t something I can force. But it is something I can access, not because I’m super-spiritual or because I have my head in the sand about the reality of the difficulty of my current situation.
There are times when I don’t feel joy. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have it.
Wait. What?
Joy, particularly as it pertains to my writing life, comes from my deep belief that my writing has a purpose beyond anything I can see on this plane of existence. Sure, there are ways I know my writing makes a difference. I hear it from the readers who enjoy my books, or from the writers who, like you, read my words of encouragement in places like The Write Conversation.
But the path of my writing journey, the one that led to publication, deadlines, and frequent overwhelm, is one of sanctification for me. I can have joy, knowing that even though I am worn out, God is at work.
God’s work in my heart is rarely a fun time. My heart, just like yours, is deceitful and wicked according to Jeremiah. It requires constant clean up, continual repairs, and frequent overhauls. None of which would meet the Merriam-Webster definition of joy.
But y’all…the God of the Universe knows me! The Creator of all things works on my heart. The God who breathed life loves me. The Spirit is at home in me, and because those things are true, I have joy even when I’m not sure how I will survive the next deadline. I have joy even when I forget, and He has to remind me!
I’m not always thankful for my writing career, and I’m not always smiling as I pound out the words. But deep in my soul, there is joy because when I start to think it’s all about me, and all up to me, He reminds me that He who started a good work will be faithful to complete it.
Grace and peace,
Lynn
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Lynn lives in South Carolina with her husband, children, and an overprotective goldendoodle. She writes her novels in between homeschooling, parenting an adult with special needs, watching her boys play baseball, and teaching at conferences. You can follow along with her real-life plot twists by signing up for her newsletter at LynnHBlackburn.com and connecting with her @LynnHBlackburn on social media.
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