A Little Can Go a Long Way

I’m close to being settled in my new home. Close enough that I finally made the time to find and print the file of notes on the story I might work on during NaNo. Yay! I’m the kind of person who gets a lot of mileage out of encouragement, though, so I have been staying open to anything that comes my way that might encourage me to keep going, anything that might give me more creative energy. I found encouragement this week while reading the Bible.

I highlighted this from the 13^th chapter of Matthew, verse
33: “[Jesus] told them another parable. ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.’”

As I read that, I thought of two things. I remembered how little yeast it takes to add to bread mix to make a loaf of bread, and I focused on the word “hid.” The stories I write have a tendency to focus on the every day lives and conflicts of my characters, and it’s only because of who they are and what they believe that they show their faith. A lot of times, you wouldn’t even know if the characters are Christians or not. They’re just people. But their choices reflect my values and faith.

It was encouraging to me to know that in some things like bread – and perhaps my writing – the right or best way to make it is with very little of the key ingredient, and with it hidden and mixed inside.

As we read books and articles and talk to other writers, we internalize a lot of what other people think is the correct way to write. The difficult part is figuring out what bits we’ve internalized that are not right for us and exorcising them. But it gets a lot easier if we stay open to expected or unexpected moments of encouragement.

After reading that passage, I feel really good about my writing not being a straight romance or Christian fiction or full-blown fantasy. Advice from the professionals still echoes in my head – some say you should be sure there is actually a market for what you want to write. But thanks to some unexpected encouragement, my creative energy is overriding that advice, at least until NaNo is over.