The Writer's Business Plan

Mom: Aww! You drew our family! Annabelle: Um, no Mommy. Those are birds....

As a mom, I've said MORE THAN ONCE the phrase, "Do as I say, not as I do."

Like when I ask them to clean their room but they look at mine, which is pretty much the catch-all most days for the rest of the house and I'm doing REALLY good to walk through it to the bathroom and not trip and fall flat on my face.

Or when I tell them NO POP because it isn't healthy for you while I'm nursing a Dr. Pepper.

Or... well. I think you get the drift. It is easy to know what you SHOULD do, but the execution thereof throws a wrench in things sometimes.

So a few weeks ago, Pepper and I had a little mini one-night writer's pow-wow. We chatted about brainstorming and story ideas and business plans for our writing.

Or should I say.

HER writing.

Between the two of us, we came up with a fun color coded spreadsheet of her next year and a half of publishing with goal dates to finish and yeah. It made the business side of my brain VERY happy.

But then I went home and tried to write out my OWN plan. Because I've been a bit haphazard lately and the idea of being organized like that sounded really nice.

Uh, yeah.

The plan is still unwritten.

Why is it that it's so easy to tell someone ELSE what they should do but so very hard to then do it yourself???

*sigh*

Business plans are funny things though. It's one of the things Pepper and I talked about. I truly believe God wants us to be wise, and making a business plan for our careers is a wise thing to do. Wise as serpents and gentle as doves, right?

That said, we can make our plans all we want, but in the end, we turn those lovely plans over to Jesus and say, "Okay, here is what I came up with. Feel free to tweak, throw it out, scrap the whole thing, if it is crap. Cause I only want this whole writing thing if YOU are behind this, Jesus."

So over the next few weeks, I'm gonna be trying to work on my own business plan. I'll even color code it like I did Pepper's cause ya know? Colors make us ALL smile.

And then I WILL follow my own advice and lay that puppy down at Jesus feet and let him do with it, do with ME, what he likes. It may end up looking nothing like my plan, but what I'm sure of, is if I'm obedient to God and follow Him, my plan will look like a kindergartner's drawing in comparison to what actually happens.