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Another cause of writers block is 'a sense of failure' and boy-howdy did I have one surrounding this particular endeavor.
When I first started this particular blog, I had only really imagined it as a place where I could journal my thoughts and the things that God had been sharing with me. Prior to kicking things off here, I had come through a very long dry time where God had been really distant. Then allofasudden, things broke through and there He was again in such a vivid and amazing way. I knew I needed to start journaling and writing about it.
Once I started writing though, something surprising happened. I started getting comments, feedback, discussion. It was wonderful and exhilarating. Even more surprising was that some of the comments were coming from folks around the country, not just my friends. Folks that I didn't even know were having conversations with me. I had thoughts that maybe God was maybe bringing an audience to me. After all, he was telling me things, I was writing those things down and people were interacting with me. THIS was beyond all expectations and was exhilarating.
And then, things started to slightly go down hill. I'm not sure if I can chalk it up to be an inexperienced writer or maybe it was the constant conflict that surrounded my content, but my early success was not to be long lived and eventually the audience dwindled. This was discouraging. I went from feeling surprised and successful to lonely and discouraged over the course of that year.
By the end of my prolific writing year, I felt like a total failure as far as communicating my ideas went. I had hoped to enact some change in the world through the words I typed, but I just felt like nothing had changed and nothing had moved. Things were the same as they ever were and all I had succeeded in was giving myself an anxiety disorder.
When I try to analyze what went wrong, perhaps part of the problem was that early on I lost sight of what the original purpose of the blog was. Having an audience changed the way that I interacted with it and changed my tone. This place quickly stopped being my personal journal and became a preachy sounding board for what God was showing me. I think I could have gotten away with that change if I were a better writer or a better teacher, but I'm just not there yet.
As always, God has a redemption story for this failure, but I'll get to that in a future post.
Once I started writing though, something surprising happened. I started getting comments, feedback, discussion. It was wonderful and exhilarating. Even more surprising was that some of the comments were coming from folks around the country, not just my friends. Folks that I didn't even know were having conversations with me. I had thoughts that maybe God was maybe bringing an audience to me. After all, he was telling me things, I was writing those things down and people were interacting with me. THIS was beyond all expectations and was exhilarating.
And then, things started to slightly go down hill. I'm not sure if I can chalk it up to be an inexperienced writer or maybe it was the constant conflict that surrounded my content, but my early success was not to be long lived and eventually the audience dwindled. This was discouraging. I went from feeling surprised and successful to lonely and discouraged over the course of that year.
By the end of my prolific writing year, I felt like a total failure as far as communicating my ideas went. I had hoped to enact some change in the world through the words I typed, but I just felt like nothing had changed and nothing had moved. Things were the same as they ever were and all I had succeeded in was giving myself an anxiety disorder.
When I try to analyze what went wrong, perhaps part of the problem was that early on I lost sight of what the original purpose of the blog was. Having an audience changed the way that I interacted with it and changed my tone. This place quickly stopped being my personal journal and became a preachy sounding board for what God was showing me. I think I could have gotten away with that change if I were a better writer or a better teacher, but I'm just not there yet.
As always, God has a redemption story for this failure, but I'll get to that in a future post.
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