Life Critique: A Year in Review

There’s nothing like decking the Christmas tree in baubles and lights for bringing home the reality that another year is nearly at an end. Heard any of these lines lately? - or maybe you’ve uttered them yourself:

“Where on earth has this year gone?”

“The years seem to be speeding up the older I get.”

“It seems like only yesterday we were launching into the new year. The time has just vanished.”

Every year we say the same things to each other with the same tone of surprise. It’s true – the busier we become, and the more responsibilities life heaps onto our plate, the faster our minutes and days and weeks and months fly past. Before we know it, another year is gone. 

The bad news? We won’t ever get it back.

The good news? There’s a brand new one waiting right around the corner. J

We can’t change what’s been. We CAN, however, learn from the year that was. As writers, we’re good at critiquing our own work and that of others. But how many of us take the time to critique our lives?

They say the definition of insanity is doing things the way you’ve always done them and expecting a different result. A lot of us live our lives this way. We have an idea of what we’d like to achieve in life; what we want our lives to look like. But that’s all it ever is. An idea. Intangible. Unreachable. Somewhere, simmering down deep in our spirit, is the knowledge of our full potential. But as the years roll past, we learn to settle for mere survival. Our grip loosens on our dreams. Our vision clouds. It happens so slowly that often we don’t even realise it’s occurred.

That’s why it’s so important, every now and then, to pause.

Take some time out from the seasonal madness; the relentless demands of life, and think back on the year that was.

What did you do to move yourself in the direction of your dreams?

What steps did you take to serve others with the gifts God has given you?

Did you grow in spiritual depth and character, inching closer day by day to being the person you know God wants you to be?

The destination is not the important part here. Life is a journey. We’re never going to “arrive”. But have a look at where you’re standing compared to where you struck out from at the start of the year. And ask yourself:

Do you see progress – however small?

Are you moving forward, or are you walking in circles, doing the same old things and getting the same results?

Do you feel you’re on the right path with your life – or does it seem to you that in certain areas, you’ve lost your way?

These questions are not about condemnation or pointing out your shortcomings. We serve a God of grace. And the fact is that we all go through different seasons in our lives. Perhaps this year you’ve begun a new job, experienced ill-health, or cared for an elderly parent. For me, the year has been full to the brim with messy, exhausting, wonderful life. I’ve given birth to a precious daughter and parented three preschool-age children. I’ve survived sleep-deprivation, tantrums, potty-training, a teaching contract, curriculum development, home improvements and a new blogging schedule. Writing has taken a backseat this year.

And that’s okay.

Nothing is wasted in God’s economy. It’s easy for me to look back at this bewildering blur of a year and measure it merely in terms of what I did or didn’t do. To feel like a failure because of all the ways I didn’t measure up; the goals I didn’t achieve.

But I’m sensing that God wants more from us than an annual checklist of achievements. As always, he’s after our hearts.

And if our hearts are turned toward him, if we’re willing to let him use us, then he will, no matter what season we find ourselves in. The journey might be slow and incremental, but the important thing is that we’re moving forward. Making progress.

Maybe you feel like you haven’t made any progress this year in the areas that are important to you. The days and months have slipped past and you’re still right where you started. In that case, perhaps it’s time to lift your gaze and refresh your vision. God never condemns us, but he does challenge us to grow and change.

As the curtain falls on another year, I’m taking stock. How could I better use my time? How can I more effectively live out the adventure of the everyday as a wife, a mother, a writer, a daughter of destiny? How can I grow into my calling?

Lord, what do you want from us in 2013?

As you evaluate the year that was, what do you feel God impressing on your heart?

Images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Karen Schravemade lives in the land of Oz and likes to confuse her American friends by using weird Australian figures of speech. When she's not chasing after two small boys or cuddling her baby girl, she spends her spare minutes daydreaming about the intricate lives of characters who don't actually exist. Find her on her website, on Twitter or getting creative over at her mummy blog.

The Heart of the Author and The Heart of the Story

Authors are brave. I mean, very, very brave. You have to have a unique kind of heart to be a writer, or at least, to be a good one. On the one hand, you have to feel deeply. You must be compassionate, sensitive, even empathetic, to craft characters whose stories resonate with readers. You must care deeply enough to stick with a story until page three-hundred and twenty-two, through all the zingers that come along the way. You must have something deep in your core, a calling, that holds you to to task and pushes you toward your goal. You must, in other words, feel in order to be a good artist.

On the other hand, unless you are writing strictly for our own sake, your story must inevitably stand on its however-wobbly little newborn feel and step out into the real world of readers. That world is scary sometimes because it carries rejection, it carries disappointment, it carries doubt, and sometimes it carries straight-out pain.

Today I want to talk about the ever-important, ever-difficult-to-discern line we all must find between these two things, between compassion and the inevitability of writing as a business. I think it's important we take time to flesh out the space in between the two, especially as conference season approaches and we're all bound to face at least some measure of disappointment.

I don't know about you, but I think writing honestly, deeply, with feeling, is a struggle. I can't tell you how many times I have e-mailed my fellow Alley Cat Angie in the last two weeks with updated versions of my pitch or one sheet because I keep panicking over it, wanting my pitch to be the best it possibly can. Do you feel that way too sometimes? I think this kind of anxiety is normal when you've become so invested in a dream or goal. But we have to be so careful that we don't allow our fears of rejection to cloud our heart for a project.

What I mean is that we always, always must write from our hearts if we expect to write anything worthwhile. It's so much easier to detach ourselves from our writing and never experience the sting of rejection, is it not? But whenever we write a story that is close to us, whenever we craft a heroine who's struggles we truly understand, who's pain we actually feel, we take a risk. If she is rejected, does a little part of us not feel rejected also? But what benefit is to to the reader if we refuse to be brave enough to give them stories that we feel? How do we expect the reader to then feel anything, to be moved by the story, if we are not even moved by it ourself? Now, I'm not saying your stories have to be biographical. They don't have to be true or have happened to you. In fact, probably better if they haven't actually happened to you. But they need to live somewhere in you. You need to be able to imagine how your heroine might feel when she faces her greatest fear, and a little part of you, when you think about that playing out, should feel that fear yourself in the same way your heart would hurt over the trials of a good friend. Your characters, your plot arc, your narrative--they should all reflect your deeper heart and calling for the novel. That is how you find your writing voice.

Now let's say you've successfully done this. You've poured your heart and soul into a book and turned off those voices of inner doubt. You've worked with your critique partner and have squeezed every last bit of vulnerability out of your own heart and into the work.

That means it's time to let go. Going back to that wobbly-knees idea, it's time to let your story have a chance, to struggle, in the world. At this point in the process, you have to learn to detach yourself from any criticism, constructive or otherwise, that you might receive. You must turn your back on your own story, difficult as it might seem, so you can instead turn toward improvement. The neat thing about writing is that there is no perfect writer. There is always room for a story, for an author, to improve, and one of the best ways of achieving that is by exposing yourself to feedback from editors, critique partners, and even contests. I'm not saying you should listen to everything everybody tells you. I am saying you should listen sometimes. Surround yourself with people who believe in you as a writer, who "get" your vision for your writing and whose advice you can trust, and then trust them.

I know it may feel like your story is already the way it should be, that you made decisions like where the story starts or why a particular character has certain quirks for a reason. But what if you started at chapter three instead? What if you paired down some of your descriptions to make the dialogue flow faster? Things like this can only be found through keeping an open mind and being willing to let go of your original intentions for the story. Remember that we will never be able to see the larger picture in a story if we won't take our eyes off the first draft.

Here are some things to keep in mind about rejection and difficult feedback.

Rejection is...

• Change
• Challenging
• Subjective
• Inevitable
• Character-building (pun intended!)

Rejection might be...

• Helpful
• Part of a larger picture
• Wrong (plenty of authors are rejected only to find success with that same project--just look what happened with The Shack!)
• Temporary
• A source of self-doubt and fear, if left unchecked
• The single-most reason writers give up

Rejection is not...

• Personal
• A reason to give up
• A reflection of your heart for the book
• Reason to give up writing

To get a different perspective on all of this, I asked my friend Amanda Luedeke of the MacGregor Agency her advice for authors who are struggling to find that distinction between the vulnerability of the writing process itself and taking rejection too seriously.

She said, "People just need to realize that not everyone is going to like your book... just like there are people who love Twilight, and others who hate it. People who love Dickens, Jane Austen, and Tolkein, and others who don't. The industry is subjective. It's nothing personal."

I thought that was such good advice, and especially helpful to hear when it's coming from a literary agent. So as you're gearing up for the conference, be encouraged. Your calling as a writer is so much bigger than any rejection or hardships you might face. Remember to see the big picture and hold fast to God's plans for you. They are always greater than our own.

It can be so difficult to stay balanced instead of 1) taking criticism too harshly or 2) writing from a place outside of our heart in an attempt to protect our feelings. How do you manage these two things effectively? What thoughts do you have on dealing with constructive criticism, even rejection, in a way that allows you to keep pressing on? (I.e. Hitting up the Godiva store.)

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Ashley Clark writes romantic comedy with southern grace. She's dreamed of being a writer ever since the thumbprint-cookie-days of library story hour. Ashley has an M.A. in English and enjoys teaching literature courses at her local university. She's an active member of ACFW and runs their newcomer's loop. When she's not writing, Ashley's usually busy rescuing stray animals and finding charming new towns. You can find Ashley on her personal blog, Facebook,Pinterest, and Twitter. She is represented by Karen Solem.