Don't Lose Your Focus: Struggles Of A Christian Writer.............

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told myself this. And yet… distraction comes, I start chasing the shiniest new thing, and find myself far off the path I was meant to be on. This is a lesson, I believe, that will have to be drilled into my head until the end of my days. Now… What exactly am I rambling on about???

I’m talking, mainly, about my writing. (Though, I’ll be honest, it kind of applies to real life, too.) But, in this post, I’m referring to one specific writing situation.

For the last several months, I’ve had, dare I say, the worst bout of writer’s block I’ve ever experienced in my career. I could barely write anything from scratch, and anything I did write, I ended up sending to “THE VAULT” — a messy document that contains all the words that will probably never see the page. I’m used to writer’s block lasting two weeks. I’ve seen it last a month for me. But… this time, it has lasted since Fall of 2024 — around November which, once again, is strange. Fall and Winter tend to be when I have the most down time, and the most inspiration. There’s something about cold days and warm coffee that just ignites my creativity. And the snow—oh, it snowed so much! Captive takes place in the winter, so I had the perfect aesthetic. The situation could have only been better had I been able to claim a writing nook of the Pittock Mansion of Portland, Oregon (which, if you didn’t know, is a key location in my book.)

And yet… my writing was non-existent.

I had the spark, all the inspiration, the excitement. After all, I had been fantasizing about and planning out these chapters in Captive since I was sixteen. I could see every scene so clearly and get so lost in my thoughts. But when I went to write, my fingers would hover over the keyboard, paralyzed. I would force out a few words, only to believe they were the most horrid things on earth and banish them from memory. I wish I could say I’m just being dramatic, but this went on for months!

“WHAT IS GOING ON?!” I would whisper-scream as I closed my laptop—night after night after night.

“I don’t know what it is,” I would tell my parents the next day, “But there is just something about the story that isn’t right, and I can’t figure it out!”

They heard this, again, for months. Of course, with long periods of writer’s block comes that imposter syndrome that makes you doubt whether you have what it takes to be an author. Those aren’t fun, and the longer it goes, the worse it gets. Finally, I just decided to go back to the last decent chapter and fire everything after it. About ten thousand words went into The Vault (and how it hurts to say that!)

I said, “Okay. I’m going to rewrite everything from this point forward.” And I did. It started out pretty rough. Que yet another two months of trying to rewrite those chapters. After several brainstorming sessions with my dad, we found a way to smooth out the pacing, but it still felt off.

A couple of weeks went by and I was venting to my mom. “There’s just something missing. I can’t figure it out! It’s just like I’m not seeing something, and it’s is ruining the rest of the story!”

She gave the great advice of, “Well, then that’s something you need to pray about. You need to ask God what He wants you to say.”

I don’t know why prayer is always the last option. Why is it never the first? Why, in crisis or unclarity, do we try all of our wordly "solutions" before going to the One who created the world—who gave us the very breath of life from which we speak our words? Why is it that I always forget to pray… and I always lose focus?

I think we all know the reason why. Our focus is rarely on God or His will. No, we’re like dogs chasing cars—we think we can reach whatever we want all by ourselves. We think we can create stories apart from His direction. We lose sight of the “Why,” the bigger reason for all of this — our world, lives, purpose.

I started to think on this and turn it over in my mind. You lost the focus. I kept hearing that in my phrase, not really understanding what it meant. Lost the focus? No, I didn’t. I knew my characters’ goals and motivations. I knew where I wanted to take the story and why I was telling the story I was.

You lost the focus.

As I started re-reading my Vaulted chapters, that phrase shifted. It lost the focus… There’s something missing. Something important. Something that was so vital to this narrative that its absence was detrimental to my creativity itself.

SPOILERS FOR “COLLECTOR” BELOW:

I read those chapters in Captive, book II. They were intense and action-packed. The conflict was there. They stakes were high. But, something I found interesting, was a lack of the Holy Bible. Or, more accurately, the lack of significance regarding the Holy Bible.

In book one, Haylen, my main character, finds a Bible and decides to keep it—which is against protocol as a Collector, and most definitely against Federal law. At the moment when she finds that Bible, everything changes. The Bible was the entire focus of Collector. It was the root of the entire story—and has been since the beginning. “Teenage girl finds and keeps an illegal Bible.” That was my first idea for this book. One would think I would remember that…

In Book II, however, the focus had shifted. Instead of being a book about the discovery of a Holy Bible, it read more like a super fun thriller. The Bible—God’s Word—had been reduced to a prop. Oh, it was mentioned, but only when used as a tool to gain trust or when my main character was the one glorified. She became the interesting “girl with the rare Bible.” She was the special one, the one to be protected. She was very “main” character when she is merely a shovel that unearthed what is a beyond priceless treasure. In addition, some heartbreaking scenes later on became a focus. The heroes became the focus instead of what they were saving and why.

Within a second, it all clicked.

What had been missing… it was the Bible.

As I was writing this post, I kept getting the feeling that I had already said all of this before. And, I did, on January 10th—the day I decided to completely rewrite chapters 18-23 of Captive:

When you write a story that puts the Bible at the forefront, you have to keep it at the forefront. Yes, I believe great stories can be written with subtle Christian/Biblical themes, but mine isn’t. Mine has the Bible as the sun of this plot. It is the center, the catalyst of all that has and will happen in my story.

I lost sight of that, and because I built my world on this clear, Biblical foundation, the world is now crumbling in a way. The story feels pointless.

I think it can be a temptation when writing a story like mine that the Bible simply becomes a “piece in the games” I move to get the story how I want it. That is NEVER a good idea. Do not lower the Word of God to be nothing more than a literary tool. It is not a character, it is not a metaphor. It is TRUTH. If you’re writing a story where the Bible, salvation, faith, theology, etc. are focal points, it needs to be for the right reasons. Remember: God has given you this story. God has given us the Bible to use as a resource and account of His glory, to point people toward Him.

So, this is just a reminder that if you have been tasked with telling a story using the Bible, keep the Bible at the forefront of your mind. Pray over your words. Challenge your story against the Truth of the Bible. It can be so easy to reduce the Bible, especially in a fictional world, as simply a tool for our own means when it deserves and demands so much more respect.

It took me a while to figure out how to apply all of this in my story, but last week, it happened. And, you know what is incredible? All I did was add a few sentences in a few chapters, and it was like the story opened up. The block was lifted. Instead of having to completely overhaul several chapters and thousands upon thousands of words, I simply had to get my sights back on the root of my story and kick my main character (and myself) out of the spotlight….

So… the entire lesson of this post is to urge you, dear reader, to not lose focus. If you’re writing a story, and especially if you’re writing on where faith/salvation/Biblical teachings are a focus, you must keep your “WHY” throughout the entire story.

Questions To Ask Yourself:

1. Why, out of all your ideas, was your story the one you decided to focus on? What themes or lessons are you hoping to teach?

2. Why do you feel like these lessons are important?

3. Why is your character doing what they’re doing?

4. Why are they fighting so hard to reach their goal?

5. What are some aspects of your story that you need to focus on?

6. Why is it so important to focus on those aspects?

7. Why do you feel you’ve maybe lost sight of them?

8. What are some ways you can bring them back into focus your story?

9. What are some ways you can bring them back into focus for yourself?

I hope this post helps remind you to keep your sights on what is key! It’s so easy to get distracted or excited about the storytelling—the plot, action, tension, etc.—and forget why we’re telling these stories.

Do you feel like there’s just something missing in your story? Is this something you’ve struggled with? How did you overcome the distractions? I'd love to gain more insight on this topic (and some advice!)