Monday Motivation - On the Write Path to Success

On the Write Path: Success

Success doesn’t always look like we think it should. The appearance of success may not be up in lights, surrounded by fame and fortune or appear on the New York Times bestseller list. You’ll know you’ve accomplished something when a turn of phrase makes a critique partner write “nice” or your friends tell you they can’t wait to read your next story.

But true success is in the obedience to the calling. If you were born to write, to share the little gift God gave you with the rest of the world, then you put pen to page or keyboard to blank screen one letter, one word, one sentence at a time. The time you take to scribe out your words into an article or story may be the stress relief you need or your words offered to the Lord. You work so hard, building on each skill you’ve learned, the craft you’ve honed. You search for the glimmer of hope. Who doesn’t want to get published? For some of you it may take longer than others.

One day you find yourself having coffee with another writer in a café and you’re talking about wips and building worlds and what the characters in your head are telling you about themselves, how one of them just might have to go. The person across the aisle from you looks nervous, their thumbs poised to text something, but then they catch a police officer’s eye and wave frantically. When the officer comes over and the other customer accuses you of a plot to take over the world, or at very least, murder, you smile.

Your friend lifts up a copy of her manuscript. You take a swallow of lukewarm latte before you show them your manuscript and a dog-eared copy of Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell. And shrug. The police officer chuckles and walks away. Congratulations! You’re definitely a writer! You’ve succeeded by learning from your rejections, by starting anew each day—taking the next step on the write path and plugging away. You know the language and the tools are no longer strange to you. Keep your eye on where you're going and on the One who will take you there.

What makes a writer real? What’s your definition of success?

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