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Thursday, December 22, 2005

Are you a writer? No. Well kinda.

Hi my name is Sabrina Fox. Some of my ACFW friends know me as Sabrina Butcher. While I'm sure there are only four people in the world that have any interest in hearing me ramble, I'm going to give this blogging thing a shot.

If you write you're a writer. Period. Words spoken by Karen Ball at the 2005 ACFW writers' conference in Nashville. Karen said that one of her pet peeves is when someone asks if you're a writer and she hears "Who me? No. I mean I write, but I'm not published." I had to laugh. Not an hour earlier I had a staff member of the hotel ask me this question. I think my answer was something like "Oh no. Well kinda. But I'm not published."

Why as writers do we need publication to validate our writing? My Grandma Bonnie used to write poetry and then later she wrote her life story. I asked my grandma once if she ever tried to get published. She told me that she didn't have time for such things. She was the mother of nine children (can you even imagine) she worked outside the home once the kids were older. I'm sure she didn't have time for such things.

She wrote for the fun of it. To have a creative outlet. Seeing her words on paper brought her joy. Why can't I be that content? Why do I feel like I need to have someone tell me my words are golden and need to be published before I feel like an actual writer? I don't know the answer to that question, but I've come to realize that even if I never get published I'll always write. Editorials, church bulletins, love notes to my husband. Anything. Why? It's simple. I'll write because I'm a writer. It's what I do.

If I don't post before next week have a very Merry Christmas!



3 comments:

Unknown said...

Woo hoo! I get to leave the first message on your blog. Nah nah! Good job, girl.

Honestly, I think we all struggle with our identities as writers when we haven't been published. Remind me to tell you the story of Nancy Tuttle sometime. The short version is she felt called to write but never had anything published before she died. But afterwards, her son (who had just recently come to Christ) was greatly blessed by her writings and had them published. It was my first book-editing project. We never know exactly how God plans to use our calling to write.

When God calls us to write, that's what we're to do. We can't control whether or not we get published outside of doing the things we need to do (work on craft, make contacts, etc.) What we can control is the butt-in-chair time. :)

Malia Spencer said...

You go girl! Now I can add your blog to my links page. :) And we can have fun leaving messages for each other. Hehe.

I was wondering how long it would be before you would start blogging, not too long obviously.

I know you're a writer who has a lot to say and whatever God puts you through on the road to publication it will be because He has some lessons for you to learn first.

I'm living proof of that. :) But I believe it will happen because the dreams are there placed by the Master's hand, not our own. We just need to remember He's in charge, not us. And that's the hardest lesson of all to learn. I'm still struggling with it but God willing, I'll learn it and stop going around the mountain and get my health back when I do!

Jenny said...

Whoo hoo! Hey! Jen stole my whoo hoo! But then you can never have too many whoo hoos. So, writer girlfriend, WHOO HOO. And, for the record, I knew you were a writer, even if the bellhop didn't;-)
But now that you've joined the world of bloggery, you are official. You have to write and that makes you a writer for sure--see, now you have cyber validation!
Welcome to the club. I'll be watching for your next post.
Abundant blessings!