You know you're a ...

You know you are a Contemporary writer when… your characters could live next door.

You know you are an Inspirational writer when… you encourage the discouraged.

And, you know you are a romance writer when…two lives create a chemical called love and you write about their chemistry.

***

A professor asked his class, “Who are the people you’re most afraid of?” Forty percent of the class said Christians.

That tells me almost half of that class wouldn’t read my book; how uninspiring!

I once saw a picture of the Statue of Liberty when she was under reconstruction and completely surrounded by scaffolding.

I visualized the statue representing freedom, just as Jesus claims to offer. However upon further introspection, I began to see that scaffolding encasing Lady Liberty, as the traditions, practices and judgmental attitudes which enclose Him. My passion is for the reader to see Him.

Inspirations are wonderful surprises; they lift us up, touch every part of our being and can transform our life forever. My writing inspiration came after my husband Greg and I had moved from the city to a small town. I had suffered a life threatening stroke and knew I had to find a healthier place to live, to recover and to begin the healing. Ironically this was also the time when our youngest child, a daughter named Laura, was going off to college. Purposeless held my hand.

In the midst of this transition, someone told me to read The Prayer of Jabez for thirty days and that my life would change. On day twenty it did. At first I thought God must have mixed me up with someone else. Although, I loved the movies when the main character was a writer, I never imagined it could be me. Once I opened my mind to this possibility, I soon discovered that a new seed of hope had been planted in me. I began by writing my memoir. When I was about six weeks and sixty-five thousand words into it, I was so bored with myself that I wondered if I could make something up.

And then - BOOM! I’m not kidding, out of nowhere, came this run-on thought—movie like, that made me pause it around three in the morning. I hurried to the kitchen, made popcorn, poured myself a Coke and rushed to get back to it, hoping it would still be there—it was.

The next morning I was so excited to tell my daughter about my experience. We were driving home from vacating together. She looked at me like I was a foreigner, and then scowled when I got to the part about this professor who gets one of his students pregnant and has no desire to marry her.

“And, she decides to give the baby up for adoption.”

“Laura”, my voice began to quiver, “most of the story is about him and how he struggles with rejection and abandonment.”

“Mother! I can’t BELIEVE you would write about a professor having SEX with one of his students!”

Obviously, she was stuck on the sex part.

“I know,” I had moved on.

Even more obviously, my excitement was not climbing into her skin.

“So, does he find his birth mother like you did?” her tone softened,

“No,” I started to cry, “But he does find his father.”

"You’re crying about a guy in your head?”

“I know, but aren’t you sad, yet happy for him, too?”

“Mother, you’re weird.”

“I know and I think I’m going to get even weirder.”

Silence said a lot of things to both of us for quite a few miles.

Five years later I have one manuscript in its final draft and two first drafts almost completed. This has earned me the clout in my house to be weird.

Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. 1 Chronicles 4:10

Please share with me an inspiration you’ve had, I’ve love to hear it.

Blessings,

Helen Little