Story Sensei

It’s been a few years since I last had a book out, and while some of that is because I changed my mind about how I wanted the next book to go, for some of that time I had a few bad bouts of writer’s block. I know there are people who say writer’s block doesn’t exist, and/or it’s just your subconscious trying to tell you something about your story or about your own emotional state. I’m not here to debate that. All I know is that I couldn’t write, for whatever reasons, when I hadn’t had bad writer’s block during my time writing for Love Inspired, Guideposts, and Zondervan. I know that sometimes when I had writer’s block, it was due to stress. There were family issues that came up and I could clearly tell that I was worried and that made it difficult for me to focus emotionally on writing. I personally need a calm heart and clear mind to create fiction, and it’s very hard for me to write when I’m emotionally upset. Some writers rage-write or cry-write to great emotional impact, but I’...

kapitan_kraken posted this quote on the writing subreddit: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will clo...