(From September 7, 2026, but I never posted it)
So I’ve started this thing where I write for two hours straight, have 30 minutes to edit it and then publish it. I haven’t been good at keeping up with that, but today I thought I would. There’s only one problem…I don’t know what to write. I don’t have anything in mind that would take up two hours, nor anything that I could condense into two hours, meaning everything that I would write would take me either a significantly shorter or longer time to write. And I was going to use that as an excuse not to write. Then I remembered the short story that I wrote as a sort of a dare or a challenge to myself over 20 years ago when I was on a Greyhound bus to Louisiana…or maybe I was on a Greyhound bus coming back from Louisiana…anyway. I was probably somewhere in the middle of Texas, and being a city girl, I just marveled at all the expansive nothingness outside my window. I wondered, if I, kinda like God in the creation of, well, everything, could make something out of nothingness too. So I started writing a story and decided it would have something to do with beauty, a topic I’m fascinated with and that has since made its way into much of my writing. So I just started writing that story. I don’t remember if I knew where I wanted it to go. If I knew how it would end. I just started writing it. And a year and some change later, I was finished. I never did an online of that story, a storyboard or anything like that. I just picked up a pen, because I started writing it by hand before eventually switching to a computer, and wrote what came to mind. And I mean to tell you, I was fascinated by what came to be from that random exercise…still am.
More recently, I decided to give it a go at writing my first TV pilot. The story idea was inspired by an old movie from the eighties, a business that recently shutdown and Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal, along with shit that’s happened in my own life, and I came up with this kick ass series idea. Granted it took me awhile before I actually started writing it, I jotted the idea down and a storyline and events that happen in the pilot, so all I had to do was come back and fill in the dialogue and stuff. Then when I actually started writing this pilot. I repeated it in my head several times before it actually made its way to paper. And yes, even in this day and age, I actually started it with paper and a pen. I was amazed at how ideas just started coming to me. For example, initially I had the opening scene take place in the main character’s apartment, yet getting close to the end of that scene, I switched it to her boyfriend’s apartment. That just made more sense to me to support the dialogue that popped in my head for that scene.
I’ve also done this another time, gosh it was eight years ago now, when I was prepping to enter into a screenwriting contest. Of course I procrastinated on that like I always do, and one of the requirements for that contest was to write a treatment for a movie in addition to writing a full length screenplay. I literally wrote the script in three weeks, I believe that was also inclusive of studying how to write a script. I had already started a short story that I was writing, and I decided to turn it into a script instead. On the day I was due to turn that script in, maybe it was a couple of days before, but the point is, it was very last-minute, I wrote this one page treatment in like an hour. I had no idea what to write, I just came up with something, and again, as I was writing the story literally began to unfold as I typed it. And before I knew it, I had a page-length treatment for an amazing story that I’ve loved to see on the big screen someday. It was so good.
So, I said all that to say, it can happen. I can write something out of the blue. I’ve done it before, several times. So why in the heck am I always getting so nervous when I have to do it again? It’s faith over fear time, faith over fear.
Speaking of faith over fear, recently I was scrolling through Instagram, and by recently, I mean last night, and I came across this reel of this man who was saying to read Ephesians 1: 17-23 everyday, at least once a day, for six months and see how your life will change…or something like that. So this morning when I got up, I opened my Bible to Ephesians chapter 1 and read verses 17-23. It was talking about asking God for wisdom and some other things, but the thing that stood out to me this morning about that passage was the part where it stated something like the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us, lives in me. That stood out to me because I said something similar to someone before. I said that the same power that God used to create the world out of nothing lives in us. I’d based my statement off of what I’d read in Genesis and here there was something similar in Ephesians.
That passage of scripture can mean a lot of things, but I think when it comes to the gifts and talents that God has bestowed upon all of us in one way or another, it means that I have everything I need to succeed. And so, I just need to practice. I need to practice with confidence, practice with abandon. I need to run on, see what the end will be. I cannot be afraid of failing. I cannot be afraid of writing badly. I will fail. I will write badly. But I’ll also get over it and go on to write again. So I just have to keep reminding myself of that, because I’ve said that many times before, but some circumstances just make me forget. Or maybe not forget, but doubt. When things don’t go my way, exactly when I want them to, when I expect them to, that just leads to doubt.
But I think the only way to get over doubt, or at least be able to handle it better is doing that thing you’re afraid of while you’re afraid of it. I have to confront that thing, operate in my faith and still have it fail anyway. Because it’s one thing to have faith and believe and the thing comes true. But it’s entirely another to have faith and believe and it doesn’t happen. It’s entirely another when what you thought was going to be a celebration, ends up being grief and disappointment. That’s the time you need that, “Have you considered My servant, Job?” type faith. I also believe if you’re goal is to get closer to God and do His will, practicing that type of faith is unavoidable. I’ve already written two single-spaced pages and I haven’t even been writing an hour yet. I have seven minutes till an hour, so maybe the two hours was a bit too much for me tonight. I think I set it at two hours because I was factoring in writer’s block. When I have writer’s block I can’t just go like I’m doing now (I just rolled into the third page). I’ll be tripped up and have to find a way to un-trip myself up and that solution usually comes by way of not writing anymore. Putting it off for another time, maybe even another day. And that brings me back around to why I started this writing practice. It’s just a way of reminding myself that girl, you can write. It’s already in you. You hear that, me? Okay it’s two minutes before the hour has come and I know I’m shy of the time, but I’ma just stop right here.
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