Your Writing Legacy

 

Everyone is a writer. We all write. Every day! We write emails, texts, posts and comments on social media, we jot notes, and if we work outside the home, we have writing of some kind involved in what we do.

 

However – writers don’t write for the fun of it, or to stay connected with friends, or because we have to produce a memo, invoice, or report for work. We write because we have a passion to do so, we’re driven by a compulsion. Our writing will be a big part of the legacy we leave.

 

We all leave a legacy, things that people will remember about us. If the only thing people had to go on regarding the life you’d live was contained in anything and everything you had written, what would it say about you?

 

Social media has been a blessing to me. I’ve reconnected with childhood friends. I keep up with family members, via facebook posts and pictures, who live elsewhere. If someone were to determine what kind of person you are from your personal facebook, what would they think? Or by your tweets or texts or blogs? One of my pet peeves is people that air their dirty laundry, or use social media to attack others when they wouldn’t confront a person to their face.

 

By the same token, people may judge our character and personality by our writing. I’ve read some books, and seen movies made from books, by successful writers and have remarked to my husband, “Is this person possessed? His/her books are always about the macabre, or twisted, evil things.”

 

I write about topics that affect people deeply: abortion, drug and alcohol addiction, abuse, loss of faith, divorce, adoption, and other things. I write not because I’ve experienced all of those things, but from being in ministry for years, and working with people who have experienced these things. I want to, hopefully, show God in the midst of human suffering.

 

God is still God, He rules and reigns even when we don’t understand or question His existence.

Green-Eyed-Monster Envy

Envy means: to bear a grudge toward someone due to coveting what that person has or enjoys." In a milder sense, it means the longing for something someone else has without any ill will intended toward that person.

 

Jealous means: apprehensive or vengeful out of fear of being replaced by someone else." It can also mean watchful, anxiously suspicious, zealous, or expecting complete devotion. The last is normally applied to God.

 

As writers, do we compare ourselves to other writers? Of course we do. Do we envy others’ success? Are we jealous at others’ accomplishments in the writing field? The answer is probably yes, we all suffer from the green-eyed-monster to one degree or another.

 

First of all, I knew there’s a difference between envy and jealous, so I copied and pasted the above definition from a site titled Envy vs Jealousy. I like the envy definition better as it applies to this blog.

 

I belong to several writers’ groups and websites. I enter contests on a regular basis. I crave honest, constructive critique. I want to learn and improve. But I must admit there are times when I read winning entries and I think What?I write better than that! Or, my entry was better.

 

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, winning entries are selected because of taste, or likes and dislikes of judges. And, I’ve learned that it isn’t always the content of a story, which could be more intriguing, entertaining, shocking, heart-wrenching, funnier, etc, but judges score on the crafting of a story.  

 

How skilled and knowledgeable is your writing craft? Constantly seek to improve. And cheer on your fellow-writers. There’s a principle of “sowing and reaping” that’s addressed in the Bible. To reap anything, we must first sow. I encourage you to sow seeds of delight in others’ success, and I assure you, you’ll reap a harvest eventually. But don’t pigeon-hole God on how and what you’ll reap. Leave that to Him!

 

Write on, my friends and fellow writers. Write on!