Naomi Dawn Musch

There are lots of writers out there. For some of them, their byproduct has been publication. But not all of the published ones are very professional. They've simply been fortunate, and if their unprofessionalism shows up in their work, maybe they aren't even that.

At the same time, there are some unpublished writers who behave very professionally. They are made up of the stuff that marks them as professionals whose day just hasn't come yet.

How can an unpublished writer be a professional? It's all in how they treat their work. Even unpublished, a writer is on the path to a great future if they are doing those things now which mark professionalism.

There are two things that define whether or not you might be a professional. Being published is not one of them. This week in part one of this essay, I'll address the first mark of professionalism.

You Might Be a Professional Writer if You Maximize Your Potential.

I've met a lot of writers who are satisfied with their work much too easily, either because they consider a piece to be finished before it is, because they are tired of it and just want to start something new, or because they give up on themselves. They haven't maximized their potential.

It seems obvious, trite even, to say always do your best. But is it? Every time you finish a piece, whether it’s a blog post or novel, are you prepared to say you've done your best? Have you cleaned and polished until you can't figure out what else to do to it?

Do you study craft with an eye to what makes fine writing? This means you read widely. Believe it or not, I've met writers who say they either don't like to read or don't have the time. What?! You can't be a professional writer if you aren't reading a ton in the area you write. But even reading outside your genre in fields of both fiction and nonfiction will expand your vocabulary, your style, your eye for detail and description, your voice. Without being a widely read writer, you will stagnate, and possibly grow very full of yourself.

Not only should you be reading a LOT, you should be absorbing instruction on writing through books, blogs, podcasts, writers' groups, magazines, and so on. Artists never stop growing and learning, and writers are artists. Be open to new instruction. Even well-known writers -- some of the ones whose professionalism I, for one, respect -- say that they never stop studying craft.

Study publishers. Know the markets. Even if you aren't ready to submit your work, have a good understanding of what it's going to take to do so. Observe which trends are coming and going. Know what's already been done. Most publishers and agents have blogs these days. Pay attention to them.

And finally, another way to maximize potential that may seem obvious is this: professional writers write.They don't just talk about writing. They don't dabble at it. They scoff at notions of writers' block. They overcome and get words on a page, even if the page looks like a mess when they're done. They push on. They work through it. Then they go back to the top of this list. They clean, polish, refine -- or throw the whole thing out and start again if it isn't evolving into the best it can be. Writers who either are professional or long to be, carve out a time, put their backsides into a chair, and make their fingers work the keyboard.

Next week I'll hit the second point of being a professional writer. This one might sting. In the meantime go warm up that keyboard. Maximize your God-given potential.

Write on!

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How do you decide what to work on next?

Don't you have stories flitting around in your head like ghosts in an attic-riddled mansion? I do. They all beckon me to follow down this passageway or that. But which one will lead to a dead-end, or trap me in a closet, or shake me to bits? Stories do treat a writer that way.

And which one will lead me to a big reveal, a treasure of untold proportion?

I dunno. I can't make up my mind. Should I edit the fantasy that's been sitting for year? Should I shine up the romance for submission?

Yeah, yeah, I'll get to those. But what about the voyageur skirting the shore of Lake Superior in his canoe, bringing the Indian bride to the unscrupulous trader at Fort William? Will he ever get there if I don't start writing? And what about the young fellow caught in the liquor run to Al Capone's hideout in a tiny northern town? How will he ever break free of the mob's grip to marry that sweet girl-next-door if I don't help him?

So give me a hand. Tell me how you pick "what's next". When there are so many ghosts to follow, how do you choose?

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Forget eating bugs. John the Baptist did it. Forget driving down the highway at reckless high speeds. Cops and race car drivers do it for a living. Others do it just to make a YouTube video. Forget all that Fear Factor hype on TV. What really induces fear? Following your dreams, that's what.

My children are young adult kids who are chasing their dreams in big ways. They might lose a lot of money if things don't pan out. They might even end up jobless. They might have to endure criticism. Actually, I'm sure they will. But that's what happens when you chase after something -- an ideal, a passion -- and it stretches you beyond ordinary limits.

I'm a writer. I've been a writer since I was ten years old.Some people didn't believe it. (Can you imagine?) I hoped to be a published novelist by age 24. I dreamed of being an award winning journalist. Hmm... I'm 50, and I've been writing all along -- pretty much -- but some of my biggest achievements, like publishing a novel, only happened recently. If I had known it would be so tough, would I have pursued this dream for 40 years?

Um... Yeah, I think I would have.  I think I did know it would be tough. I was aware that upsets and interruptions would come. They have to. After all, who wants to miss out marrying their high school sweetheart and raising five kids and homeschooling and farming and buying and selling and going on escapades...?

Life is full. But adventures await. Still, the dreams cling and we pursue them if we aren't afraid.

What holds you back from chasing your passion? Fear of failure? Fear of rejection? Fear of hardship? Fear of inability? Fear of attack?

Kick the fear factors. If God planted a desire in you forsomething that just won't go away, step across the line and take a closer look. See if it doesn't grow. See if it doesn't grow you. Following your dreams will almost never be easy, and you won't be guaranteed absolute success. But it will keep you from wishing that you'd tried. After all, I think the fear of looking back at what "might have been" could be the worst feeling of all.

Write on!

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There's nothing very mystifying about unearthing themes for your series. Sometimes theme emerges out of the plot, setting, or period elements naturally. At other times it is the very idea that first churns up a story in your imagination. For instance, in the latter case, after someone you know tells you of the twists and turns they faced with foreign adoption, you may have an idea burst upon you for writing a story about the myriad issues involved in foreign adoption, thus beginning with theme. On the other hand, if this theme were to emerge later, from the plot, it might work more like this. You may think, I want to write about a childless couple who longs to adopt. Then, later you realize, they'll adopt from a foreign country. Oh... there are issues surrounding that!

Usually, when it comes to discovering a theme, you don't have to think much further than the situations and ideals that stir your heart right now.

Your concerns, those passions that are dear to your heart, those struggles you've faced and lessons you've learned are the best source of inspiration for choosing theme. I often find that when a Sunday sermon pricks my heart or thrills my soul, a story theme won't linger far behind.

Most often, new themes emerge in each book one writes. But when writing a series, I've noticed it's entirely likely passions will still be at the same stage from book to book because I'm still engrossed in a continuing saga of recurring characters. As I move from one book to the next, however, I don't want to keep repeating my themes.

Thankfully, universal themes -- grieving loss, discovering love, suffering spiritual or relational disillusionment, paying the demanding cost of pride, and so on --each have a hundred different spins to them that can make them truly unique. As a writer, your job is to take these universal themes and reflect on how you are affected by them in your own life. What conflicts have they been known to  produce? What outcomes? What lessons?

Love is probably the most written about of all the universal themes. Think of the myriad ways it is expressed, won, lost, and sought after. When I wrote The Green Veil, Empire in Pine Book One, I thought of how we are often encouraged to follow our hearts in seeking love. But this produced a conflict in my reasoning, because Scripture tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and that we can barely know or understand our own hearts. So what happens, really, when someone blindly follows his or her heart? Or at least, what might happen? This is the primary theme that emerged in the plotting of that novel.

Themes give stories their layers.

The really cool aspect of this when writing a series is that you can start to see those layers developing further in each book, thus producing a series arc. I realized as I wrote books 2 and 3 in my Empire in Pine series that the women in a particular family all disliked sewing. It's a generational series in which an impatience toward the craft was apparently passed down. On the other hand, these gals were crafty and artistic in other ways. By the time I reached Book 3, The Black Rose, on which I'm doing re-writes now, I discovered that this simple character trait resulted in a theme -- a poor self-image -- feelings of being unaccomplished and inferior. I'm working now on exploring that theme further.

So, are some themes over-used?

To answer, let's look at the theme of faith, or lack of it. Writers settle on exploring aspects of faith again and again. The entire genre of inspirational fiction is built around it, in fact. Because issues of faith are universal, it can never be overdone as a theme. People will continue to struggle and either search for faith or draw away from it. Therefore, it becomes the characters themselves that make the theme unique. As writers we create characters whose personalities, hopes, sorrows, and situations resonate with readers. In any of a thousand different combinations, the theme develops and finds its sticking place in readers' hearts.

So, explore your passions. Allow yourself to hope and dream and feel anguish. Read and grow and agonize. In all of your zeal and new understanding, you'll unearth themes that weave their way into your series.

Write on!

There's probably no more difficult aspect to writing any novel than capturing the right beginning. Les Edgerton, in his book Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers, says, "A good quality story beginning is a microcosm of the work entire. If you capture the right beginning, you've written a small version of the whole."

The same thing is true for the first book in a series. If Book One doesn't resonate with captivating characters and a gripping plot, then you won't get a following. We've probably all begun reading a series only to abandon it somewhere along the way. It could be that it was simply not in a genre to our taste. But woe to the author if it was in a favorite genre and yet lacked the ability to make us yearn for more.

See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya.

It's thrilling to create an idea for a series, but if you don't put your all into book one without the distraction of those other books yet to be written, there's no point. First things first.Write book one. Develop a mind-blowing idea.

Of course, you may be thinking of your Big Idea as being the over-arching vision for the series. For instance, my current historical series is built around the Big Idea of the rise of the logging empire in the Wisconsin wilderness, and how it developed around the lives of one pioneer family over several generations.

But I didn't worry about any of those generations or even how the history evolved when I wrote Book One, The Green Veil. I focused solely on one single story, the tale of a young pioneer woman who loved a handsome woodsman but married a zealous land speculator. I didn't consider what the next book in the series would entail until I was nearly to the end of writing The Green Veil.

I recently played a story-building game with a group of 3rd graders. I set an award (the story goal) on a chair at the front of the room. Then I blind-folded one brave student (the protagonist). Another student gave him directions for retrieving his goal prize. But, I threw down a couple sheets of paper on the floor representing trouble he had to avoid. If he stepped on a sheet -- BOOM! -- the rest of the class responded to let him know. He got to his goal without too much trouble. Only one little explosion.

Then we tried it again, only this time we laced the floor with sheets of paper, all representing a host of problems he could encounter. Boom! Boom! BOOM! We learned that the more trouble our protagonist encountered on the way to his goal, the more adventure he had. Incidentally, his guide was a giggling direction-giver, and at times worked as a bit of an antagonist steering him directly into the paper-strewn path.

That's how gripping stories read.The action ramps up. The character has to face relational trouble, spiritual trouble, physical trouble. There has to be plenty of road blocks to them realizing their deepest desires. And if you want those characters to ring true and capture hearts, those desires have to be deep and universal as well as character specific.

So the first step to writing a series is to really focus on that first novel. Make it great! Write your heart out! Don't get mired down in planning a long chronicle of narratives before you've made a success of the first one. Once you have that first draft well in hand there'll be time to explore the possibilities for book two. Starting with book one, each story must be given your full focus, that "microcosm of the work entire".

Write on!

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My creativity takes a blow when painful emotional circumstances infiltrate my life. How about you? I wonder if it's the same for painters and sculptors and body shop mechanics. Is it just that when something squeezes tears out of our hearts we lose desire -- period? That's likely. I know right now I have pumpkin pies to bake and chickens to feed, and I don't feel like doing those things either.

So help me. How do I get out of this mire? I know that God knows exactly what's going on in my world, but patience is painful.

One of my very, very favorite passages of Scripture is Psalm 40, especially the first two verses: "I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings."

He's done that again and again, and so I plead with him now, writing this down, laying my heart at his feet, slogging through the mire of heartache to find that firm place.

How about you? How do you find your creativity again when life throws you a sucker punch? As for me, I think it's time I re-read Psalm 40.

Psalm 40

1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.

4 Blessed is that man that maketh the LORD his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.

5 Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.

6 Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.

7 Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,

8 I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.

9 I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O LORD, thou knowest.

10 I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation.

11 Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy loving kindness and thy truth continually preserve me.

12 For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.

13 Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me: O LORD, make haste to help me.

14 Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil.

15 Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame that say unto me, Aha, aha.

16 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: let such as love thy salvation say continually, The LORD be magnified.

17 But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God.

Have you ever felt like you are on a perpetual detour? You know where you want to go, maybe you even feel like God is leading you there, yet somehow you’ve ventured on the “scenic route” loaded with one detour after the next. Are you lost? Has God forgotten about you altogether? Maybe you’ve begun to question whether or not you will arrive at your destination at all. 

That was exactly how I felt a few months ago when God taught me a very expensive and frustrating lesson. And even though I know I often learn best through failures, I couldn’t help but question my circumstances. Couldn’t God have taught me the same lesson in an easier and less expensive way? Sure, He took me from point A to point B, but did He really have to take me to Q, S,W and Z first? 

But then I read Exodus 13:17 “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said,‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’”

The Israelites couldn’t see what lay ahead, but God could. More importantly, God saw their heart -- He knew their breaking point and what it was going to take to turn their emerging faith into victorious confidence. Each day, as they traveled through the desert, they learned who God was. When the cloud rose in the morning, signaling it was time to depart, they learned to rely on and trust in God’s guidance. When Manna rained down from the sky, they learned God would provide. When they crossed the Jordan River, they learned no obstacle was too great when God stood beside them.

Maybe you are in a valley right now, or wandering through a desert waste land and it’s hard to see God’s hand amidst the frustration. Certainly some of God’s detours are meant to strengthen and challenge us, but others are a direct result of His mercy and compassion.

With the Israelites, God knew what lay ahead, and even more importantly, how much the Israelites could handle, and He knew that they were in no condition, spiritually or emotionally, to face fierce opposition from the Philistines. And so, in His infinite mercy, He led them in a gentler, albeit longer, direction. 

How many times has God done this for me? Perhaps there was some hidden danger in that job I so desperately wanted. Perhaps that house I longed to buy had structural damage that would inevitably drain my finances. Perhaps that ministry opportunity that appeared so perfect yet continually evaded my grasp would have led to spiritual weakness or distraction. Who knows? I don’t, but God does. And really, that is all that matters. In my limited, human understanding, I will always be stuck in the here and now, but I serve a God who can see yesterday, today and tomorrow all at once and who is constantly at work behind the scenes to lead me towards that good, narrow path. My job is not to figure it all out, because I never will this side of heaven, but instead, to trust in the person and nature of Jesus Christ, knowing that He will indeed perfect the plans He has for me. 

Jennifer Slattery is a freelance writer and publicist who lives in the Midwest with her husband of 16 years and their thirteen year old daughter. She’s the marketing manager for the literary website, Clash of the Titles, writes for Christ to the World, Samie Sisters, and has written for numerous other publications. Find out more about her andher writing at http://jenniferslatterylivesoutloud.com and http://wordsthatkeep.wordpress.com

Find out more about Clash of the Titles, the literary website where authors compete and readers judge, at http://www.clashofthetitles.com.

It might not be what you think. The hardest thing about being a Christian writer isn't the actual writing. It isn't even finishing the manuscript. It's not the plotting or the research or the editing. In fact, the hardest thing about being a Christian writer has nothing really to do with the writing at all.

When we writers get our big ideas and a story starts screaming in our heads to be told, the feeling is almost euphoric. Like a film unwinding, or a puzzle fitting together, the pieces settle into place revealing the big 3-D picture. We create emotional havoc, turning phrases, tightening dialogue, and pruning the final result into something that can transfer that same emotional experience to readers.

But the really hard -- though always inspiring -- part of being a Christian writer are the life-lessons that always expose themselves in the process.

For some reason, it seems whenever a Christian begins writing a story, God uses it to teach the writer something about His Divine Nature. Sometimes the revelations split our hearts wide open and then He poors them full of His love. Other times, our hearts yield less easily because the lesson is painful. It can be that our hearts are chapped, cracked, dry, and He needs to massage them until they are soft again, and willing to open to His trust-worthy hands. Sometimes He squeezes and it hurts. But in the end, we learn something about ourselves, about the people in our lives, about telling a story the way He writes them on our hearts. About the greatness of His love.

That's the hardest part. And also the best.

Write on!

Book 2 -- THE RED FURY -- coming October 15, 2011!

Kids are fascinating.  If you watch them, they will teach you very profound lessons about life and yourself.

A couple weeks ago in Sunday School, we did the infamous puzzle day. On that day we are talking about the Holy Spirit and how, if you let Him, the Holy Spirit can put your life together in such a way as to make it fit perfectly--not just for you but for everyone else too.

I have this puzzle that's the picture of Jesus hugging the person who's just come to Heaven.  In the sky is a rainbow representing the Father. Also above Jesus' head is a dove. The puzzle is like 560 pieces. Since I'm not good with puzzles and we have to put the thing together with 40 different kids in about 30 minutes, I have put nine pieces in each of 63 bags and numbered them.

The idea is that each kid gets a "day's" worth of pieces--nine.  They are to put those pieces together and then as I call out the number of their bag, they bring them up and I put them together. Then they go and get a new bag of pieces. Of course this is the ultimate lesson in working together because everyone is putting their own pieces together and then helping others who are trying to get theirs together as well.  It's quite the class.

At the end of putting the puzzle together, there is a "trick."  The Holy Spirit played it on me first, so I don't take credit for thinking it up.  See, the first time we put the puzzle together, we got the whole thing done -- and we were missing one piece (which we later found and put in a separate bag).  That piece is right up in the sky, part of the Holy Spirit's wings, and it is really obvious when you get the thing together that one piece is missing. So, of course, one bag has only 8 pieces in it.  But I don't tell them that.  They expect the puzzle to be whole when it's finished.

Every year the kids freak out about the missing piece. Most of the time they all go on scouting duty around the tables trying to find it. This year, they took a different tack.

Now, I know there is one piece missing. They just don't know that I know.

Well, this year, that pesky bag with only eight could not be solved. The poor girl working on it was really good at puzzles but because of the missing piece, she was having a really hard time getting it together. Therefore, that section was the last one to be put in.  In fact, several of the boys tried to "help" by putting it in piece-by-piece rather than as a completed section. That was interesting.

The thing is, everyone was around the table when the last piece went in, and guess what... it wasn't the last piece!

I'm not sure which student figured it out first, but as I was standing there talking, all of a sudden like 8 students had their hand on the puzzle. They were all trying to cover the missing piece, looking up at me as if nothing in the world were wrong with this picture.  Like... "Maybe if we stand here and act natural she won't notice."  What they didn't know was that they hadn't lost the piece at all. It was missing for a reason.

But isn't that just like all of us? We perceive that we have a "missing piece," and so we do everything in our power to cover that thing up so maybe no one will notice -- especially God.  What ends up happening is, instead of making it less noticeable, we draw attention to it!

What pieces are you trying to cover up in your puzzle? Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason the Holy Spirit hasn't filled that piece in yet. One thing is for sure... He knows better than you that there's a missing piece. He knows where it is, and He knows where it goes. If you will trust Him and stop trying to hide the obvious, maybe together, you and He can fill it in. Otherwise, frankly, you just look a bit silly standing there with your hand over the puzzle like no one's going to notice you're trying to hide that missing piece.

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. (Pick up the Price of Silence now for only$0.99! http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-of-Silence-ebook/dp/B004E9U7P6) Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again.  Every title is a new adventure!  That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading.  Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe every week with her various Internet endeavors including:

BooksIn Print, Kindle, & FREE on Spirit Light Works:

http://stacistallings.wordpress.com/

SpiritLight Books--The Blog: http://spiritlightbooks.wordpress.com/

And… Staci’s website http://www.stacistallings.com ; Comeon over for a visit… You’ll feel better for the experience!

Connect with her on Twitter: @StaciStallings

(Copyright 2011)

Seeking God's will is sometimes a matter of simply doing the next thing. The essence of discovering His greater purposes lies in vigilant prayer while also learning to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's promptings.

This weekend I attended an annual retreat for board members of Living Stones News http://www.livingstonesnews.com an award-winning Christian publication focused on sharing the testimonies of those whose lives have been impacted byJesus. Our goal at each year's retreat is to plan, celebrate, and pray over the focus and direction of LSN. One of the things we do on our first evening together is to gather around the campfire to discuss what God is doing in our lives individually. This year we all addressed the topic of His individual call, and where we each were on that path. As it turned out, we were each in various stages of trying to figure out His will. Even our prayer requests reflected that many of us desired direction and guidance from God, be it over family matters, our writing, our day jobs, or our personal goals.

The difficulty in discerning God's will is usually a matter of our natures struggling with His. We want to know it all. We want the entire plan laid out where we can see it. We want the promise of success. But God doesn't operate that way. He does have a plan, rest assured of that. But He desires our trust. He often only shows us a tiny bit of what lies ahead. "His Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path," (Psalm 119:105).  It's like He's telling us, Don't worry. Just follow the light I'm showing you. Sometimes His beams are on high (the path) and other times on low (just at our feet). It's when those beams are bent only a step ahead of our toes that we simply have to do what God is showing us to do today -- the next thing.

We writers (like everyone else, I suppose) obsess about God's will and calling sometimes. We want to feel Him guiding our stories and leading us on to publication. My struggle circled around whether or not I should concentrate on writing fiction or non-fiction since I have passions toward both. So I kept doing the next thing. Then one day He shone a beam on my path. I realized it didn't matter about the fiction or non-fiction. It mattered that I told stories about changed lives. That was His will, the genre didn't matter.

So whether God's headlights are lighting your path or merely your feet today, do the next thing. Pray often. Listen to His voice. Trust. "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path," (Proverbs 3:5).

Write on!