If you are here from the Proverbs 31 Devotion, I’m so glad you’re visiting.
I’m leaving my post up from yesterday because if you are a writer, you may find what I wrote below helpful. But first, I want to link three other posts you’ll find encouraging if you’re in the midst of waiting.
Waiting can be hard, frustrating, maddening. I know. But there are things in the midst of a time of waiting that are beautiful if only we can see them. Here are three more articles to encourage you in your time of wait:
I’ve loved to write for as long as I can remember knowing words. But, learning to write words that connect took a while. A long while.
You see there’s a big difference between writing and connecting. Writing is the craft of stringing words together under the guidelines of certain standards. Connecting is crafting words with movement. Words that stir and pop and buzz and linger and best of all mess with the reader.
That’s the connection I want when I read. So, I sho’ nuff better make sure that’s the connection I create when I write.
Let’s be honest, no one wants their words to be scanned. We want them to be read, ingested, and best of all digested. Digested to the point where they become part of what the reader is pondering for that day. Maybe even part of what the reader brings up in conversation with their friends.
That’s when you know your words have movement. Words that leap from the flat page and start traveling from this conversation to the next… those are words that connect. Saturate those words with God’s truth and they’ll change the world.
And maybe it’s a bit lofty to think a simple redneck girl whose dog peed on her recently and who stood in front of 4500 women wondering if her pants were split open from falling backstage- could craft words that move. But I’m daring to try.
Care to join me?
Whatever you’re writing today be it a blog post, an article, or even an email where you need to move people to action, ask yourself three questions before sending your words forth:
1. Does this have emotion? It’s hard to create “motion” without some sort of “emotion.” Be it passion, laughter, tears, inspiration, encouragement or even challenge- will this connect on a heart level of some sort. We don’t scan things that make us go hmmm, ha!, or ohhh.
2. Do I need to store any of these words in my junk drawer? Strange question, I know. But think about that junk drawer. It’s where you put the extra stuff you’ll need one day but not right now. We should have a place like that for points we want to make but shouldn’t make today. Sometimes we sacrifice saying one great thing because we’re trying to say too many things all at once. Stick with one great point. Use the fewest words possible to make that point. And put all those other points in your junk drawer to use another day.
3. Have landed my plane in the right city? Stick with me through this quirky question too. When you start your writing piece you need to alert people where you’re going on this journey. Most people do that. But then too many writers veer off course and land their article in a completely different place by the end. Make sure to re-read your beginning sentences and complete your journey exactly as you promised.
Writing. Connecting.
Two words that seem so similar and yet are world’s apart.
Like I said, I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be a connector… one who connects the world with movement that might not have been found if I hadn’t dared to write.
