This is the day the Lord has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24 New King James Version
At this time of year, I often find myself wondering where the past year went. The questions keep coming:
What did I achieve?
How did I allow myself to let the year pass without doing all the things I said I’d do?
Why didn’t I finish my next book?
The Bible tells us that we only have this day. This day that the Lord has given us. This day the Lord has blessed us with.
When we question ourselves, we try and assess how we’ve honoured God on that day. As writers, we question whether or not we’ve honoured the gift that God has given us.
When we question, we may feel we’ve fallen short. But don’t we always? I know I do. I fall short every single day I’m alive.
So, how do we redeem our writing days? How do we honour the gift we’ve been given of a day, an hour, a moment?
In 2014, I set the goal of blogging about creativity for one hundred days at a rate of three hundred words per day. Even if it was five minutes to midnight, I’d get that blog post done. It wasn’t about producing something perfect, I just wrote about whatever was on my heart that day. Some days I wrote badly, but perfection wasn’t the point.
I wanted to push myself and produce work that may eventually become a book. The posts aren’t perfect–I figured that they could be edited and polished later. They have been compiled and sit in my writing folder to be possibly published one day.
Blogging for one hundred days, while stressful, taught me something about setting goals and achieving them, but I think the biggest lesson was that no matter how bad the day went, I could redeem it by producing those three hundred words, even in the last minute of the day.
As I struggle to write now, I’ve been thinking back to the days when writing seemed to flow. What is helping me to redeem my writing days now?
- Write for five minutes and see what comes out.
- Write Morning Pages (or Evening Pages for us night owls!)
- Brainstorm ideas and create mind maps
- Use story/writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing
- Read background material for something I’m writing
- Work with a critique partner for accountability
- Organise writing dates with friends
- Set up retreat days
- Pray for inspiration
To redeem means to compensate for the fault or bad aspects of something. To get a win back. To be saved or delivered from sin or its consequences. Reclaiming something from bad circumstances for good purposes.
We writers have a different way of thinking. We can have the best day ever, but if we haven’t written we can feel frustrated and as if the day has been wasted.
If you have a difficult day, it may be redeemed by writing about it. Writing can be a way of witnessing our frustrations, pain, or struggles. Writing can be a way of witnessing gratitude and joy. As a writer, I can honestly say that if I write something, even a paragraph, I feel as if I’ve achieved something significant. There are other measures to our days of course, but we writers have a unique way of viewing our days.
As I begin a new year and contemplate what I hope will be the hallmarks of 2024, I aim to bring back the joy in my writing. I aim to redeem the gift God has given me and even when I find it hard, I’ll find moments to write in my days.
How do you redeem your writing days? Do you have particular practical or spiritual practices?
