Mountaintop Experience in More Ways Than One

Where's Waldo? In the blue sweater.

This time last week, I was in Indianapolis attending the ACFW Conference. I went with the single goal of improving my writing craft in some way, shape or form. You know, like 3 ways to create a hero sans tights that will crawl into a reader's heart and live there for the next five years, guaranteeing word of mouth sales from said reader. Or maybe I'd finally internalize the difference between lay and lie. But unh-unh.

God had other things in mind.

Instead of focusing on the mechanics of writing, I ended up examining my writing relationship with God. Here are a few nuggets:

- You can't write truth while you're faking it. You can't offer life that you don't have.

- God rigs life so that it won't work without him, forcing you to either trust His truths or throw them away.

- Vertical relationship with God must come before horizontal relationships with editors, agents, publishers, or readers.

- You can't manufacture joy in a story if you don't experience joy in your life.

Meeting other writers and rubbing elbows with publishers was great, but the best thing about the conference for me was having the time and space to reevaluate why I write. My standard answer is to impart Biblical truth. Don't get me wrong, that still stands. But digging a little deeper, my driving force in writing fiction is to discover my identity in Christ through story/characters, and then share that with readers who don't know their identity. 

With that kind of mission statement, I am reenergized to grab my laptop and pound away...right after I climb Mount Dirty Laundry. After being away for nearly a week, my family is out of clean socks and underwear.