by Ane Mulligan @AneMulligan
We are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared for us in advance to do. Eph 2:110 NIV.
What does that look like in a writer? Does that mean God gives you the words so they must not be changed?
Not so, fellow scribe. God may give you a story idea. He may even whisper the main character’s traits, but God designed you to be a writer. He called you to be a writer. But he expects you to learn your craft, so you can best communicate what’s in your heart.
God may have given Noah the measurements and dimensions for the ark, but he expected Noah to build it. I don’t read anywhere in the Bible where God handed Noah his tools. He expected Noah to use his brain and gifts to learn the best way to do the job he’d been given.
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Karen Ball gave me my favorite quote in a workshop eons ago. “God whispers to our hearts, and our hearts whisper back in stories.”
Therefore, it’s our job to take those whispers and work them and work them and work them—until they are the best you can do. Then send them to a trusted critique partner and apply any things that profit your work. Each critique, each edit can add to our knowledge.
If you are a newer writer, keep learning. Follow writers blogs that teach. There are several writer blogs on the Internet. The blogs I find most helpful are:
The Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference Blog
Janice Hardy’s Fiction University Blog
If you are a multi-published author, keep learning. I find new tips nearly every week that take my work to a deeper level. We never arrive at the point where we can’t pick up new tips and techniques.
When I find a post that gives me a new tool for my writer’s toolbox, I copy it, keeping the link active, and file it in a special “Advanced Education” folder on my computer. Then I study it, gleaning the best points until it becomes part of my writing.
This past year has brought a few of those to my work. Now, as I write my first draft, I try to incorporate them until they become natural. I love learning new techniques.
What are the areas in which you need to grow? Characterization? Description? Deep POV? Join the conversation, and I’ll attempt to address those in the coming months.
Ane Mulligan has been a voracious reader ever since her mother instilled within her a love of books at age three. Together, they would escape into worlds otherwise unknown. Then, when Ane saw PETER PAN on stage, she was struck by a fever and never recovered—stage fever. Now, by night she wears a director’s hat at a community theatre and by day, a bestselling, award-winning novelist. She lives in Sugar Hill, GA, with her artist husband, a rescued German Shepherd, and a rascally Rottweiler. Find Ane on her website, Facebook, The Write Conversation, and Blue Ridge Conference Blog.
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