Today's been one of those days. Oh, I'm sure you know exactly what I mean. In this case it involved missing kitties. After finding them, we had to find the trail of...well, never mind...that they left around the house. The dishes are overflowing the sink (and the counters). My son put some food items into his diaper. Everyone's been a bit on edge today.
We've all had those days.
On those days writing can be our refuge. Or at worst we throw a few words on paper and call it a day.
But what about the other kinds of days. These days last weeks or months.
disability
job loss
grieving
an accident
news that turns your world upside down.
The most difficult season of my own life was when my father died eight years ago. I could go on and on about the spiritual lessons I have learned. Yet I believe trials and deep losses can strengthen our writing in several ways.
1) Adds to the believability of your characters:
Its no secret that the best fiction kicks it up a notch continually in terms of drama. Each of our characters faces some sort of trial or loss. As I go through difficult things, I believe it adds new dimensions to my characters as they go through losses. The characters that stick with us have a depth that is only added to by what we go through in our own life.
Mary DeMuth has a series on her blog where readers share their "thin places" something Mary has done masterfully through her own novels. Consider journaling at a personal level during these rough seasons and allow God to use it for something more. The times when I am most real and vulnerable are often the times when God uses my writing the most. In my brokenness, His strength is most revealed.
2) Gives us a greater understanding of our characters and a greater sympathy for their plight.
As you meet others down the road who have gone through similar circumstances, don't you find yourself feeling a closeness with them? I am a private person, but when I hear about someone who is going through the death of a parent, I feel led to reach out and send them a note.
Empathy led to my current story idea as I sobbed my way through a documentary on those in a cult. As we plummet the depths of our character's emotions, all the trials we have gone through can bubble up through the character as we empathize with their plight as a writer. If we cannot feel deeply for our character's struggles, who will?
3) Trials leave us famished in our own flesh. These times cause us to crawl on our knees to the God who sees all. They leave us with a gnawing hunger to feast on God's every word.
As he fills us as only He can through these difficult seasons, we have more to pour out for our brothers and sisters. This overflows into our fiction allowing our words to be used to minister to someone else's heart.
Have you ever read a book where the words seemed to leap off the page? You felt that it was written just for you, to encourage, to teach, to convict?
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith--more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. -1 Peter 1:6-9 (ESV)
Do you feel the difficult times you have gone through have helped your writing?
