on audience, contentment & creating

You’ve wanted to quit this whole writing thing a dozen times in the last ten years. 

Phrases like “you should be further along,” or “she published a book only three years into her public writing life, and you’re on year ten” or “does this effort even matter?” haunt you as a writer. 

You will spend hours on an essay, and it will be skimmed in under a minute by most readers.

You will wrestle with a story and the right words and the near paralyzing vulnerability only to be told “this is not good” by an editor. You’ll cry a little, or a lot. Vow never to write again, wake up the next morning and work on the edits anyway.

You will make so little money, if you’re making any at all. Covering the hosting fee of your website will feel like a victory and a justification to your husband that your little hobby isn’t a total financial drain. If you can afford a coffee with your earnings you most certainly ‘gram it, because any evidence that writing brought a tangible return is satisfying. 

You will anticipate the publishing date of an essay, on the site you were so thrilled to be accepted by, for months - thinking it will bring in likes and comments and new followers and that thrill of seeing the share number go higher and higher. It will not.

And then on a normal Tuesday your work will, unbeknownst to you, be shared somewhere by someone and you will get some new followers; but on that same Tuesday you fought with your husband and felt bitterness toward your children and absolutely nothing about your real life changed. Followers won’t unload your dishwasher for you, they can’t apologize to others on your behalf, and they have their own houses to clean.

That essay on friendship you threw together in one sitting will go somewhat viral, something you never saw coming. You’ll tell yourself you are happy so many people are tagging their friends to tell them how much they love them, but you’re secretly hoping they are tagging their friends to follow your work. Pride and selfless service will war with another all the time. 

You’ll have moments of contentment, and mostly these will come as a surprise. When your closest, real life friends read your writing and text to tell you they loved it - that’s the best. When another mama tells you she feels so understood. When your friend from the internet hand writes and sends a card in the mail from across the country and makes you cry with her kindness. 

When you truly feel like you told the story about your life in Jesus, not just Jesus in your life. Inch by inch, you’re learning the difference.

“So that’s the journey of my writing,” you think to yourself. “To just keep getting out of the way. To tell a better story, a bigger one.” You know this is much easier to say than to do, that much you’ve learned in ten years. The addictiveness of being relevant will chase you - or you will chase it - and no matter how many times it comes up empty you’ll still be tempted to think, “No, this time I’ll find what I’m looking for.” 

And then, in the sacred quiet of the early morning, you’ll realize, even for a moment, you already have it. 

You have a good, good Father, a Creator who wove creating into your soul and just the obedience to sit down and try, to show up, to pray that you would know this God more after you’ve written than you did before, that’s the victory. 

Because your audience is just one. It always has been, it always will be. 

Something about the publish button will make you forget this, will tempt you time and time again with its promises of that elusive feeling you’re chasing, that thing that’s wrapped up somewhere in the mix of a desire to matter and a desire to love Jesus well and a desire to be loved by others.

But it will let you down again - that publish button - and you’ll go back to your kitchen table, back to the quiet, and there he’ll be again, your audience of one. He’s charitable and kind and consistent in a way no one else could ever possibly be. You’ll get back at your efforts to tell stories that illuminate Him, in all the hard, in all the good, in every breath. Because you’ve learned, you know, that’s the only time you’ve ever truly felt like you’re doing what you were created to do. 

//

This essay is an exercise in second person writing, inspired by a prompt from Ashlee Gadd, who shares the whole exercise in Rhythm. Sign up to get this prompt and 51 others right here!