Recover Your Writing Rhythm by Jan Powell

Recover Your Writing Rhythm

by Jan Powell

“Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land”

(Exodus 23:30, NIV).

Picture me on a playground swing. I begin from a total stop. Each time I pass the starting point, I pump my feet and go higher. I move forward half of the time, yet backward half of the time. Life can sometimes bully me and disrupt my rhythm. To prevent these attacks from unseating me altogether, I must learn the benefits of both directions. I can recover from the doldrums of an unmoving swing in my writing if I learn how to maximize the patterns of to and fro.

Everyone has setbacks. The enemy may assault us with a sweeping affront or erode our efforts little by little, but our battle strategy involves pressing forward one moment at a time. My opposition has centered on ups and downs with health. Some people I know have family challenges. Others face job losses, relocations, or financial stress. Any of these can unhinge the best schedule ever designed.

When disruption came like a rising wind or a torrential downpour, I’ve fled the mud and rain that marred my writing and sought escape in TV or books. While admiring fine works of literature, I sat motionless in the swing and hung my head without making any effort. I abandoned dreams of lifting up people with my words and settled for reading the works of others. Sometimes my unfinished pages taunted me like Israel’s enemies that attacked them thousands of years ago. The same enemy has often insisted I’ll go nowhere.

Writing is as solitary as the seat of a swing. But the Lord can send friends to help us rise to loftier heights. I’ve needed a push many times. I’ve learned to acknowledge that the best ride on the swing is letting someone read my work and push me forward with encouragement and feedback. Little by little. And, on the backward swoop I can see all that lies ahead and anticipate the rush of moving with the wind of the Spirit to rise up toward the sun of completion.

We need our author friends. They help us and we help them. We review the landscape of our project when we swing back and flow forward to great improvement and a satisfying finish. Little by little our momentum carries us to success.

Lord of playground swings and writing rhythms, help us all move away from discouragement. Grant us light hearts so we can play with words again. Amen.

Jan Powell, a graduate of the University of South Florida, helps writers through Writing with You, offering editing, rewriting, and coaching for fiction and non-fiction. Published in The Wordsmith Journal and Splickety, she has written for Inkspirations since the beginning. Her in-depth editing includes poetry, devotionals, memoirs, fantasy, murder mysteries, thrillers, romantic suspense, and flash fiction. She has hosted Tampa Word Weavers for almost two decades and has served in its leadership.