It took ten years from the time I started writing my first novel to the time I wrote
THE END
of only my second completed manuscript. Sure, I’ve started many books over the years. I’ve had no shortage of ideas when it comes to books to write. I even really love to do the writing part. I get a little jammed up during revisions, but everyone who does anything worth doing has some spots that jam them up.
This year, my word is obedience. I expected this to be fraught with challenges that seemed insurmountable at times. Now, we are only four months into the year, but honestly, God hasn’t called me into anything surprising. (This isn’t a challenge to surprise me…)
One of the first things I felt impressed on my heart was to write. This did not strike me as odd as I have felt very called to write over the years. Books, blogs, more books. I’d start out, then stop again. I had a never-ending supply of excuses. I had some things come up that I think went beyond excuses and were actually enemy attacks. In the end, I wasn’t writing with consistency.
I am working very hard to change that. I actually deleted all of my social media and as such, I have really freed up time that I didn’t even realize I was wasting. I know being stuck at home because of COVID-19 has given me some time I had committed to being out of the house. But the truth is, the majority of the time I’ve reclaimed comes from not scrolling through social media over and over throughout the day. (I’ll post more about that later.)
I’ve created a daily word goal for myself, that is on hold as I work on revisions for this book. Once I really owned that my word goal matters only to me, and no one else was going to cajole me along, I started knocking it out of the park nearly every day. I would exceed the goal enough days that when something really came up and I didn’t meet it for a day, it was covered and it didn’t knock me out of momentum.
Now I’m working on cleaning up my first draft to be able to share my novel with a few beta readers. I can’t wait to get some feedback on it, and I can’t wait to share it. In my excitement, there was one moment I didn’t see coming.
My precious daughter, who is 7, came up to me and laid her sweet hand on my arm. With her big eyes staring straight at me, she said:
“Mommy, I’m really proud of you for writing your book.”
I don’t even have words for what that meant to me. The warm-fuzzies were out of this world on that one, though. I hugged her tight and thought, ‘Wow, that could be all that I ever hear about this book and I would be satisfied.’
So, if you’re a mom reading this, I want to encourage you. I want to remind you that your kiddos are watching. They recognize your effort. It is okay to have something that is yours and to find time in your day to nurture your thing. Your kids will see how hard you work and it will lead them and inspire them to do the same thing. You will be teaching them to value what is important to them by valuing what is important to you.
(Stay tuned, friends… my book cover reveal will go up on Friday!)
Until next time,
Regina Walker 