BUG Book

I believe I've mentioned on here before that I am working on writing a book for Christian girls preparing for college. Well, I finished the first draft at the end of July and handed out a few copies to some trusted people to read and make comments the beginning of August. That was a scary step because it required me to be vulnerable to others and allow them to critique my writing style and ideas. But I knew it was necessary. It was probably also good to let people who know me see it first so that I can get used to the feedback before giving it to random people who will probably be more harsh with their comments. Plus I want it to be well developed before potential publishers see it.

It is now the middle of October. I have received a couple of manuscripts back with notes. There are still a couple floating out there, which is fine. However, I have done absolutely nothing with the notes since receiving them. I did read through the first edited manuscript to see what kind of feedback there was. It was much more encouraging than I had expected (why I expected harshness, I have no idea). But they've just sat in the closet not being properly used. I have had people ask how the book is going and have honestly answered that I've been lazy and done nothing with them. In slight defense, I was dealing with my first trimester of pregnancy which makes one less than ambitious.

You would think that the accountability of people knowing and asking would motivate me, but it really didn't. I was okay with being honest about my laziness and not doing anything about it. I was sort of proud that I was at least honest. But, at the Catalyst Conference, the question was raised by someone speaking whether there was something God had called us to do that we weren't doing. I immediately thought about the book. God placed the idea and desire in me and I do need to be obedient and see it to completion. I don't know what is going to happen with it, but I need to do my part. And then Sunday's message was about needing to be obedient to God's promptings if we want to continue to hear him.

I finally got the message. I need to put aside any of my handy excuses for not working on the book (I'm lazy, the editing part is soooooo boring, I don't have all of my copies back) and just do it. So I decided to go back to the reasoning I used when working on the first draft when the writing became tedious. "Just sit down for 15 minutes and work on it. When it's done, you can go do other things." In the past, fifteen minutes sometimes was just that. But many times it turned in to an hour or more.

This morning I decided that it would be the first task I worked on for the day. To my surprise, it wasn't as bad as I had imagined it to be. I know some later parts will be more challenging than today's editing process, but fifteen minutes is a manageable chunk of time. I think I had allowed Satan to build it up in my mind as this completely boring and painful chore, which kept me from action. Now that I've taken that first step, I think the next one will be easier. Praise God who frees us from fear and does not allow us to drown in condemnation, shame or guilt!