When Chicks Hatch

As I said before, that blank page was terrifying. My spelling was (and still is) atrocious. I didn’t have a story to tell. In high school I believed I was too young to write anything of value. As I grew older I started working, got married and became too busy to write.  Eventually I was a Mommy and my hands were full. I was full of excuses. Still, when God speaks to you it is hard to forget His words.

In the summer of 2003 I determined to tackle my white page phobia once and for all. With a busy two year old running around the back yard and an infant in safety swing wedged onto the branch of a tree, I began reading a book titled Discovering the Writer Within: 40 Days to More Imaginative Writing by Bruce Ballenger and Barry Lane.

It looked like a good book of inspirational prompts to shake me out of writer’s block, and creative tools to build my writing technique, but I only made it to day 4 (page 13). On that page they wrote a suggestion that inspired my first novel.

The exercise was to list everyone I had ever known. Yeah, that won’t take any time right? Before I knew it I had filled my entire journal with well over a thousand names. If I’ve ever met you, however briefly, your name is probably in my book.

The second step to the exercise was to choose a few names and freewrite about them. Due to the personal relationships each name represented, I had a treasure trove of inspiration for “living” characters with familiar personalities.

I didn’t want to write about these people though. This was going to be a fictional story after all. Instead, I chose five random people from my journal, renamed them, and imagined them as stock characters to draw from, not to copy. Next I put them in unlikely, uncomfortable positions. Then I played with their personalities, experimenting with how my real life friends would function in these situations.

By then I had a story line, intrigue and my first chapter completed. I only intended to write a short story, just a quick exercise in characterization. Then the unexpected occurred.

These familiar characters started to get their own voices. They became separated from the original inspiration and they turned the story with each move of my pen.

Yup, I said pen. I hand wrote my entire manuscript using a fat pen. The picture at the top of this post is from page 2 of When Chicks Hatch. I couldn’t believe the ink stayed with me all the way to the last page.

Anyway, this is how I tackled the blank page and eventually wrote my first novel.

It started there, but it sure didn’t end there. That was just the spark. It was God who would fan the flame.

Eventually I could feel God speaking to me as I would write. He was going to do something powerful through this story.  I began to seek Him on the direction I should take my plot. I prayed as I wrote and I soaked in a whole new form of inspiration.

I’m a creative personality. I’m a dreamer and at times pretty flighty. I bounce from thing to thing. I’ve been asked if I’m ADD and, though I’ve never been diagnosed, at times I swear I wonder if I might be. Finishing things is hard for me, but I stuck with this. I was supposed to.

Just like the earth in Genesis 1:2 my mind was “without form and void”.  God was hovering even as he did in the beginning of time. He spoke to the empty corners of my mind and sparked a creativity that grew to become something I could never do alone.

I hope you’ll stick around as I fill more pages with His help.

     ~e.e. cummings

I have a book sitting on my shelf that has my name written down its spine, and I am still afraid of the blank page.  The truth is beginnings are always scary. There’s no telling where they will lead.

My desire to be a writer started at a very early age, but In high school it became much more than a desire.  

In 9^th grade I wrote a paper for a creative writing class. I can’t even remember what the paper was about. When it was returned to me my teacher had written over my writing in red pen. He wrote: “Heather, I know you love to write. Never forsake it.”

First of all it isn’t every day a teacher notices your gifting, much less tells you about them. Second, I had never seen so much red on a page. He wrote across my entire report!

I think it was the following Saturday (or very soon after) when I attended a winter retreat hosted by my church youth group. It was at a HUGE house, more like a mansion really. We had a popular guest speaker who also sang and had a beautiful worship band. As they sang I was struck by the passion of the keyboardist as she worshipped. When the service ended I approached her and complimented her on how beautifully she led worship. She smiled and asked my name. We chatted about nothing in particular and eventually parted ways.

Later that night I went downstairs to swim in the indoor pool (I told you it was a mansion). The water was a little cold so I opted for the hot tub first. The keyboardist was sitting in the hot tub already and when she saw me she called me over.

She told me that she had been praying after the service and that God told her that I was going to be a writer.  Instantly I remembered the red words scribbled across my report only now they didn’t seem to come from a teacher, but from God himself.

“Heather, I know you love to write. Never forsake it.”

 That’s when I knew.

However, like anyone with a calling I had shortcomings, fears and inadequacies that fought to keep me from accomplishing the goals God had for me.

Do you know what I mean?

Have you ever felt God speak to you, urging you to do something that just seems a million times bigger than you? If so, please don’t forsake that calling.

Webster defines the word forsake as “to renounce or turn away from entirely.”

God never forsakes what He loves. Neither should we.

Psalm 138:8 says “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands.”

We don’t have to be perfect on our own. The Lord will perfect us. We are the work of His hands, His creation, and He will stick with us until completion, if we let Him.

Remember Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV)

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

Tonight I’ve tackled this blank post with all the same jitters of approaching a blank page. I’m starting at the beginning of my story as a writer.

In my next post I’ll tell you how I finally began taking baby steps to be what God designed me to be. I’ll share the beginnings of When Chicks Hatch. I hope you’ll stick around.