WRITER'S BLOCK: INTRODUCTION

You are typing away on your computer for what feels like hours now. Your mind wonders through these ideas and you begin to get lost within the words on the screen. You have a vision. You know exactly which direction you want to take it. You are typing so rapidly and the backspace key becomes almost unnecessary. Sentences become paragraphs, and paragraphs become pages. The thoughts are just flowing through your hands as each finger presses a key. You are finishing up a thought, ready to begin the next when suddenly your mind draws a blank. Your fingers that were constantly moving, come to a stop. The cursor blinks at you. You stare at it aimlessly, anxious to move it away again. Your brain flat lined. The thoughts are not coming to you anymore. What was raining into your mind is now drying up and in need of hydration. The dreaded cursor continues to blink, and your hands back away from the keyboard; writer’s block. You knew it was bound to happen, you have prepared yourself for it’s appearance, but you never thought past its grand entrance. “How can I make it go away?”. That question becomes all you can think about. Frustrated, you wildly press your fingers into some keys and create a jibberish mess in front of you. That is what your brain feels like. You’re lost in an act of creativity, where it feels like there is no way back. Writer’s block: how can you get rid of it?

Writer’s Block: Blocking the One who really writes our story.

Good morning everyone & Happy New Year!

Today is our introduction day to our first study of the new year: Writer’s Block.

How many of you have dealt with Writer’s Block before?

How many of you have been stuck in a similar scenario as the one above?

I can tell you it is one of the most frustrating moments that a writer could ever run into.

But, it does happen.

More often than you think.

These moments also occur in our faith.

The lives we live are stories being written by God. Every detail is carefully crafted and thought out. The Lord sits at His computer and types away a novel dedicated to each and every one of us. His fingers quickly move about His keyboard. His sentences become paragraphs, His paragraphs become pages, into a novel with a title of your name and the words “Written by God” engraved underneath. Each thought comes together. Piece by piece He gives life to your story. But, the difference between God’s writing and our writing is that He never gets writer’s block. He knows your plan and your path and He types until it is finished. No slamming at the keys, no flat lining, no blinking cursor, just a wonderfully written work from start to finish. I imagine He has a book case, stretched along the wall behind his work space. That’s where He places his works. When His writing is finished, He turns around and finds a special place for your story. Now, all He has to do was wait for you to pick up the book.

But you don’t pick up the book. It sits. It collects dust from all of the times you chose not to take it. And it’s not because you forget to, no. It is because you thought you could write your own story, better than the one already sitting on a shelf for you. You, instead sit at your computer, type away with your own thoughts and plans for yourself. You use the thesaurus to spice it up a little, too. You decide you were too good for proof reading, and spell check is not needed. You don’t hit ‘save as’ either because odds are things will work out just as planned. You write and write with no limits at all. Your mind keeps going and your fingers frantically hit the keys, filling the pages with YOUR plan. You get all the way down to your last few paragraphs and then the dreaded cursor appears. Writer’s block? How? This time, though, it’s not because your brain flat lined. You didn’t run out of ideas or thoughts, you ran out of God. Writer’s block: you blocked out the Creator. You left His book sitting on a shelf and never bothered to open it up.

Writer’s block? Yes. Writer’s block. We all tend to hit this point in our lives. The time in our lives where we believe our vision is better than His. The time when we decide to guide our own feet rather than letting Christ walk us through. We drive a wedge between us and the Lord’s truth. It is like we are in a war zone. We put up a blockade, except God is not on the other side firing shots at you. He’s waving the white flag. He is saying trust me, I have a purpose and a plan for your life. “Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11). Why do we run in the other direction of that? He promises that He has a plan for us, a plan that is divine and perfectly written and yet we chose to run the other way.

This new year, people will clean out their refrigerators, head to the gym, try out a new hairstyle, and maybe even start a new hobby, and we are going to overcome our Writer’s Block.

This year, instead of running the other way of God and His plan for us, we are going to head directly towards it.

We are going to stop blocking out the Writer of our lives and Let Him in.

We are going to let Him write!

Writer’s Block came to me through my own personal struggle of blocking out the Lord. I created a study around my own experience. I used the steps I took to overcome my “writer’s block” to create this study. I pulled specific scripture and examples from my life and worked them into Writer’s Block.

The next month will be broken up into sections. We will look at life’ cursors, and answer the question of ‘where did our writer’s block begin?’. We will then start to edit our final drafts and look at the steps we need to take to get to a polished final copy. After the editing is through, we will finally submit it to Him and start living out our Writer’s block free life.

Each day a new piece of each section will be shared with you through social media and a blog post. Somedays there will be journaling activities, while other days the activity will be interactive.

On our Writer’s Block page, you will be able to download printable worksheets and activities to use throughout the study to keep in your study binder.

If you haven’t completed your binder, head over to our study binder page where you can download and print the resources that Lines of Faith has put together for you. Then once you have completed your binder, you can start filling it up, faithfully with the Writer’s Block study.

(All of your Writer’s Block notes and worksheets can be kept under the Lines of Faith Study tab in your Lines of Faith binder. These tabs can be downloaded, too!)

Now that the study has been introduced and our binders are ready, it is time to begin the Writer’s Block study!

Let’s start our new year off together by overcoming writer’s block!

Let’s walk through this study and learn how to let Him write in our lives!

A new year means a new direction, let your new direction be letting God be the writer of your lie.

Again, Happy New Year & Happy Studying!

MKG

Today was just a small preview of Writer’s Block, you can read more on the Writer's Block About page.

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