I’ve found that in writing these little segments of the email, I learn to appreciate the random little things more. I take note of things more. Sometimes I think, “Ooh, there’s something I could write about!” Sometimes after sitting and staring at a blinking cursor for a few minutes, my brain produces something, and I run with it. Or an idea clobbers me in the face with a metaphorical chair when I’m trying to sleep (thus, Monday night: in which I slept from 2:30-7:30 am…though that was more my brain being weird) or I’m writing a position paper. I’ll wander around, washing the dishes or whatever I’m doing, phrasing the way I want to say things in my head. I plan these a surprising amount because I sort of have to. Whether I’ve thought up an idea or not, I need to write something, so it’s a lot easier to plan something in advance.
This concept, planning, is not something that carries over into my fiction writing, unfortunately. Instead, I’ll have a will-o’-the-wisp of an idea and decide to knead it into a story. It needs time to expand in my head. It needs reworking. Then it needs the fire—the actual effort of transforming a scatterbrained idea into words on a page. Thus, I will have moments mid-writing session that look like this: “Ohhh! That’s why Aevri is so upset! Because of something that happened in her childhood! It all makes sense now!” (True story. Not the character part, the discovery.)
I am a die-hard pantser. What is a pantser, you ask? It’s a writing term for certain type of writer. There are plotters: pretty self-explanatory. They plot out their story, sometimes down to the chapter and sometimes just the general three-act structure. And then there are pantsers. That is a contraction for fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants writers. We sort of just write and see where the seat of our pants takes us. In my opinion, it is way more fun for me to write when I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. I’m just as surprised at the plot twists and character development as the characters themselves are. However, the downfall is that when writer’s block hits, it hits hard. I also have no clue where I’m going to end up about 60% of the time, something that is probably evident here. I sort of ramble on and then tie it together in a haphazard bow at the end. But that is also my style. I wouldn’t be me if I planned out every chapter of a novel, or every Secretary’s Corner for the next six months.
It’s really easy for me to compare myself to others, in a lot of ways, but particularly when it comes to writing. It’s a pretty niche hobby, so there’s less variety across the board. I’m trying to improve, which is good, but it also means I look at authors who are extraordinarily prolific, to the point of publishing six books in one year, which is insane. It takes me two to three months to write a rough draft! But that is their style. Not mine. I cannot compare myself to that, because by that standard, I will never be a real writer. And that is simply not true. Yes, there are rules and expectations in writing. “Show, don’t tell,” “never end a chapter with sleeping,” “never use -ly adverbs,” “don’t make the book or the chapters too long,” all sorts of random things. But there are authors who break all the rules and are still some of the most well-loved authors of all time.
All in all, comparison will never take me, or anyone else, anywhere. It will only dig me into a chasm of self-pity and doubt. So instead of focusing on how I compare to others, I should be focused on Jesus and what He thinks of me. His opinion is perfect and worth more than anything on this earth could ever amount to. So I’ll focus on Jesus.
