What are we doing this for, anyway?
These are challenging times for authors. I’ve heard from many of my author friends about the frustrations of the past few months. So many are seeing downturns in the number of books sold, fewer Kindle Unlimited pages read, lower ROIs on paid advertising. Things that were working well two years ago, even one year ago, now aren’t. I’ve seen some of this myself. Perhaps you have, too. But before we become too disheartened, let’s focus on the spiritual rewards of writing Christian fiction.
It’s so easy to look at the numbers from a world’s eye view and start wondering. Are the time and money we spend creating a great story and trying to share it with others being wasted? Time spent writing and publishing is time not spent on other worthwhile things. When it comes to how we use the time God has given us, it truly is a zero-sum game. Is the opportunity cost too high when the financial reward from writing simply isn’t great enough?
Whether an author is traditionally published or indie, writing is a business, and a business can’t keep losing money and still keep going. Without enough sales, authors writing for traditional publishers won’t get the next contract. Without those sales, indies end up earning less than minimum wage for the hours spent writing or tending to the business of publishing. The money spent on publishing costs can become greater than the income earned, turning an income-producing business into an expensive hobby.
But as Christian writers, we have two sets of books: financial and spiritual. Many of us started writing because we felt God calling us to do it.
So, no matter how profitable our author business might be, what spiritual rewards do we gain from writing?
While writing the stories in my Light in the Empire stand-alone series, I’ve experienced many things that have been spiritual blessings, and I’d like to share four of them here. The novels are Early Church stories set in the Roman Empire when it was illegal to be a Christian, and nonbelievers with Christian friends wrestle with whether accepting the Truth and following Jesus is worth the risk of dying for it.
I could never write what I do without a lot of prayer for guidance as I’m writing. I’m especially thankful for all those who pray for me as I try to write spiritual arcs that feel like real people facing believable challenges while having natural conversations that might lead to faith.
Here are four of the spiritual rewards I’ve received because I’ve been writing these stories.
Gaining a deeper understanding of what I believe and why and a greater awareness of how faith directs our lives.
When it comes to matters of faith, the standard advice of “write what you know” is solid. When we’re young, it’s easy to believe something is true because people we respect told us it was. But when someone asks us why we believe what we do, like my characters frequently ask, the answer “because So-and-so told me I should” isn’t convincing. It’s important to ponder things we take for granted and figure out how to explain them to someone for whom they are something new.
Writing someone else’s story where I think about God’s role in the events of my characters’ lives refocuses my attention on how God is working in my own life.
Thinking about how to share my faith with other people, how to tailor it for the way they usually think about life.
The first step in sharing our faith usually isn’t based on the words we speak. It starts with acts of forgiveness and love that can open a mind to listen to our words of Truth. Then we can write the questions and answers that lead to harder questions and deeper answers until the character reaches the point of decision about following Jesus. I’ve shared how I write spiritual arcs in an early blog post.
We may find that what works with our characters might be even more useful when we want to share with friends and strangers. Even if it doesn’t, learning to share with conversations based on questions and answers prepares us for sharing with the real people in our lives.
Seeing answers to prayers.
We’ve all experienced moments where we aren’t sure what direction our writing should take. I’ve found one of the most helpful things I can do is to ask both fellow authors and readers who’ve enjoyed some of my books to pray for me. We’ve probably all had those moments of inspiration when something we hadn’t considered before makes the words start flowing. We find ourselves writing an unexpected action or a surprising response in a conversation that had never occurred to us before we asked for those prayers.
Receiving words of encouragement and blessings.
It’s easy to get discouraged when the plot isn’t taking shape easily, the word count grows too slowly, the deadlines get too close and even fly by unmet, or the sales aren’t what we hoped for.
Then a reader posts a review sharing how much they enjoyed one of our books and how it encouraged their faith. Or someone sends an email or posts a message or comment at Facebook sharing how one of our books blessed them.
Sometimes after too many days of slow sales, a copy of every ebook but one in the series sells within fifteen minutes, like a single person read one and discovered they want all the others. Just as affirming is when several different paperbacks sell so quickly it feels like someone thought a set of them deserved a place in their physical library
Gaining a deeper understanding of what I believe and why and a greater awareness of how faith directs our lives.
When it comes to matters of faith, the standard advice of “write what you know” is solid. When we’re young, it’s easy to believe something is true because people we respect told us it was. But when someone asks us why we believe what we do, like my characters frequently ask, the answer “because So-and-so told me I should” isn’t convincing. It’s important to ponder things we take for granted and figure out how to explain them to someone for whom they are something new.
Writing someone else’s story where I think about God’s role in the events of my characters’ lives refocuses my attention on how God is working in my own life.Thinking about how to share my faith with other people, how to tailor it for the way they usually think about life.
The first step in sharing our faith usually isn’t based on the words we speak. It starts with acts of forgiveness and love that can open a mind to listen to our words of Truth. Then we can write the questions and answers that lead to harder questions and deeper answers until the character reaches the point of decision about following Jesus. I’ve shared how I write spiritual arcs in an early blog post.
We may find that what works with our characters might be even more useful when we want to share with friends and strangers. Even if it doesn’t, learning to share with conversations based on questions and answers prepares us for sharing with the real people in our lives.Seeing answers to prayers.
We’ve all experienced moments where we aren’t sure what direction our writing should take. I’ve found one of the most helpful things I can do is to ask both fellow authors and readers who’ve enjoyed some of my books to pray for me. We’ve probably all had those moments of inspiration when something we hadn’t considered before makes the words start flowing. We find ourselves writing an unexpected action or a surprising response in a conversation that had never occurred to us before we asked for those prayers.Receiving words of encouragement and blessings.
It’s easy to get discouraged when the plot isn’t taking shape easily, the word count grows too slowly, the deadlines get too close and even fly by unmet, or the sales aren’t what we hoped for.
Then a reader posts a review sharing how much they enjoyed one of our books and how it encouraged their faith. Or someone sends an email or posts a message or comment at Facebook sharing how one of our books blessed them.
Sometimes after too many days of slow sales, a copy of every ebook but one in the series sells within fifteen minutes, like a single person read one and discovered they want all the others. Just as affirming is when several different paperbacks sell so quickly it feels like someone thought a set of them deserved a place in their physical library
So, next time the numbers make us start wondering whether we’re still called to write, let’s focus back on the spiritual rewards of our writing for both our readers and ourselves.
