Wounded Writing

So you want to be a writer? Be careful what you wish for. The best writing often comes from wounded places. 

C.S Lewis said, "If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity." 

Was
he really suggesting people shouldn't come to faith in Christ? No, he
was pointing out that God would not act as a fairy godfather, but he
would refine them if they gave themselves to him. If you want to be a
writer, expect more of the same discomfort, because God will ask you to
use your pen to minister grace through the experience of your own
struggles.

 

I
don't believe God is the author of pain, death, sorrow, heartache,
fear, rejection, illness, or loss... Those things came from Satan when
he introduced us to sin way back in Eden. 

Because we live in this
fallen world, we experience them. I do believe God allows his children
to experience them in a different way, a way that will glorify Him if we
surrender our wills and let him use those things that come our way to
build our personal "character arc". 

So what does this
have to do with being a writer? As writers we spend a lot of our time
learning to "live" in our characters' skins. We feel for them and speak
for them. How much better do we understand them if we have been through
what they're going through or something like it. It's one thing to write
about the death of a child. It's another to have experienced the
bone-aching agony of losing a loved one, and then eventually writing
those feelings into the hearts of characters. Writing about infidelity,
abandonment, cancer, rebellion -- and their counterparts --
faithfulness, loyalty, recovery, humility -- are better understood if we
have stood on one end and walked to the other of those things. God
allows us to feel the deep, wrenching level of pain those things bring
so that we can write with greater understanding and empathy for those
who experience them. He brings us through them so that we can write
truthfully about faith and hope. Even if we are writing about fictional
lives, understanding agony at that gut level can help even "characters"
bring a path of healing to someone who reads their story.

 

Writing is another way of acting out 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who
comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort
those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we
ourselves are comforted by God."

 

I've
been comforted through the expertise of other fiction writers. Have
you? What must they have experienced to help me so connect to their
words?

Another C.S. Lewis quote if you don't mind:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." 

 

If
God allows you to walk the path of grief, you understand what that
feeling he describes -- a feeling you can show in your stories. You can
imbue your writing with a truer understanding.

 

Grief,
pain, and heartache have a magnetic power to suck us into very dark
places which seem to hold no escape. Why let those experiences exist
solely as painful memories? If we desire to write, we have an obligation
to use the character arc of our lives to tell stories that resonate,
that have the power to supply healing and grace to the glory of God.

Write on.