by Leigh DeLozier @lbdelozier

As college football season got underway, several posts with the same theme popped up on my social media feeds: Don’t forget to let your emotional wellbeing be dictated by kids in college playing football today.

It was a tongue-in-cheek statement but can be true for some sports fans. We love our teams, we want them to win, and we watch each competition with high hopes. And, yes, sometimes we’re so caught up in what happens with our teams that the aftereffects can trickle into our personal lives. A loss or less-than-stellar game can make us angry or sad or grumpy afterwards.

Watching the outcome of a ballgame influence attitudes might seem silly to people who don’t care much about sports. If we take a closer look, however, we might find similar parallels in our lives as writers.

We invest time, money, and effort to chase our writing dreams. As Christian writers, we believe God has called us to write things that glorify Him and help others. We know that being able to string words together in beautiful, meaningful ways is a gift from God. We pray that He will give us words to write and will use them to touch readers.

Then something in our writing life doesn’t go as we had hoped.

We have days — or weeks — when the words won’t flow. We enter a contest and are discouraged by a judge’s comments. No one visits our blog. Multiple people on social media are already writing about the topic on our heart.

We let circumstances shape our attitude and, just like the moody sports fan, we’re overcome with doom and gloom.

Doubts fill our minds: Why did I think I could write a novel? Why would anyone want to read something I write? Who am I to think I could teach people something about the Bible? God has plenty of other people writing and speaking for Him. Why would He want me?

When we find ourselves in that place, we need to do the same things a sports team does after a bad game: evaluate, regroup, and plan how to move forward.

Here are three steps we can take to get our mind back in the writing game.

1. Evaluate: Think through the situation, even though the self-examination might be difficult. What sent our minds down the path of doubt? Why are we questioning what we believed God called us to do?

2. Regroup: Take time for a personal pep talk. Read through supportive comments from critique partners. Remember the person who liked our encouraging social media post. Ask other writers how they fight discouragement so we can try some of the same strategies.

3. Move forward: What things can we learn that will make us better, stronger writers? Maybe once our bruised ego begins to heal, we’ll find value in the judge’s comments. Maybe we can learn tactics to help our blog become more visible to the audience we want to reach.

Through it all, we should pray for God’s direction and clarity. He does sometimes lead us to write in a different genre or for a new audience. We might go through a season of speaking more than writing, or a time when other things in our lives need to take precedence.

It’s all good because it’s all from God, and we can learn things along the way.

Just as a team can’t quit mid-season because of a big loss, we shouldn’t quit writing when we get disheartened. Although we might not hear thousands of people cheering for us, the One who called us to write is our biggest fan of all — and that’s why we stay in the game.

Leigh DeLozier is a corporate writer/editor by day and a Christian writer, blogger, and book reviewer by night. She is the author of three devotional books, a graduate of She Speaks, and a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Word Weavers International. Connect with her at www.AuthorLeighDeLozier.com or on social media (Instagram,Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter) where she encourages others — and reminds herself — to slow down and see God every day.