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This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. I’ve started to dig deep into who I am as a writer and as far as I can tell, I’m probably not.

(Hold on tight, I’m about to share some of my writing history) My spark for writing started back when I was 12. I was inspired by Christopher Paolini, who, like me, was homeschooled. That produced an idea, which I wrote roughly the first 2-3 chapters of before I got bored of. That story now lives in the trash, never to be read again. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.

Jump forward 3-4 years and a second story idea flies into my funnel (Thomas the Tank Engine puns… That’s pretty much the only one). A Minecraft story idea. I’ve been “working” on it for almost three years now. But that’s besides the point.

Something in November/December of 2017, I picked up a book titled Wings of Fire, some of you may know about it already. But because of this book series, I was inspired to create a form of writing known as Fan Fiction.

And boy, did I have a blast writing it! By the time I decided I’d wrote too much, I already had a trilogy. The total word count was 32,137. This happened in roughly seven months. Let’s jump forward to a more depressing time. Which is now.

I’m still working on that Minecraft idea and I’m pretty much splat. I’m barely interested in my own writing anymore. It’s pretty depressing. I almost want to give up. Which is probably why I find myself wondering if I’m not even ready for this task or not. I’ve read plenty about how I’m supposed to use my writing to glorify God and stuff like that, but I don’t feel up to the task. I feel too weak, unprepared and just plain not ready.

I feel like I’m missing the joy of writing. The feeling you have even while you’re writing the middle part of the story, the feeling of enjoyment. The same feeling that got me through a large 32,000+ word Fan Fiction and several other story ideas I had at the time.

So my question is: How do you combine the joy of writing with God? I feel like there’s a piece to being a good Christian writer that, when I finally find it, my writing will finally be worth something to me. I’ll know that I’m doing something that glorifies God. I’ll be writing something that I enjoy.

What is it? What’s the secret? What am I missing that makes writing what it was to me when I wrote Fan Fiction? Does anyone know?

Thank you,

Thomas.