Passion for the Task

The online course of my writers' group for November is about writing your passion and getting published. We haven't gotten to the getting-published part, but the first assignment was to write about your passion for your "wip" (work in progress). I just posted this:

If I didn't love my story, I would have abandoned it a long time ago. Though I had created the characters and story idea many years before, I finished writing the story more than twenty years ago. I made a few half-hearted efforts to get it published, but it wasn't until recent years that I began a serious effort to upgrade it to today's styles and guidelines in Christian fiction.

So I've been learning and applying things like show-don't-tell, eschew was and -ing, no head hopping or butlers in the chandelier, goal-motivation-conflict, deep POV, hooks that grab and endings that don't let go--the list is endless. The more I practiced what I learned, the more I discovered I needed to learn. Then I had to discover how to apply those things without letting them kill my "voice"--in other words, making them my servant, not my master.

Doing that has taken more time than I ever imagined--so yes, it has taken passion. I believe in my story about a girl who "tosses aside love for a ride on a whirlwind," an action which soon lets her crash and subsequently sets her up to learn about forgiveness and second chances. It's a story about relationships and God's ability to unravel "tangled strands" and weave them into meaning and beauty despite human failures. I'm within sight of the end, but still wrestling with a few issues. It must be passion keeps me going. (End of assignment)

If you've been reading my blog very often, some of that will sound familiar. I hope so. I'm happy to report that I've finished what I called the "forward progress" on my big revision. Unfortunately, that is not synonymous with being perfectly "done." But as I said in my report to my local writers' group, I'm much closer to done than I've ever been before. Meanwhile, I keep digging deeper for that passion that is trying to keep me going.