Tips for Budding Artists

 

My brother kindly pays for a subscription to Woman Alive magazine as my annual Christmas present. This month, it’s had a books theme and one article particularly held my attention.

Emma Randall is an illustrator. She didn’t follow her mentors’ expert yet conventional advice for her career but has found success after taking a year out and following God’s direction. She gives five tips for budding illustrators which, reading them, resonated and I think they very much apply to writers too:

1.       Ask God: What do You want me to do with the talent You have given me?

I think this has to be the key to our success as writers.

It would be so easy to assume the only real success for a writer is publication and sales. But God has a different definition to the world and isn’t held by such a narrow rationale. That’s not to rule it out, as so many of our members prove, but we need to look beyond this one idea.

So what does His success look like for you? Is it a blog post that speaks to one or more people, letting them know they are not alone? Is it faithfully collating and editing the church newsletter? Is it using your specialist knowledge to share technical discoveries? Is performing your own poetry that puts experiences into words that others can’t express? Is it writing sermons for your local church or liturgies for your national one?

Most importantly, have you stopped to ask God this question?

2.       Work hard at it: Be diligent and disciplined

Recent posts on this blog have talked about seasons of writing and times when it’s OK to stop writing. I find it difficult to know when I’m in a fallow period, when I need to allow other things to take priority over writing, and when I just need to be more disciplined! If you have any tips in how to distinguish between these, please share them in the Comments.

I think that’s where having a deadline, a regular responsibility, helps. For me, that means the Five Minute Friday community and this blog, working in other writing as my confidence grows around these habitual commitments.

3.       Always be yourself: Be inspired by others but don’t be a clone

I find this such a hard one.

Even here in ACW. I am surrounded by such talented people, many of them so much further along the writing journey than I am. I wish I was in the middle of writing a sequel to a comedic heartfelt novel like Ruth Leigh. I wish I was a multi talented author of detective fiction and children’s books like Wendy Jones. Or had published a truthful funny account of my job like Fran Hill. Or had the courage to submit my work to BBC Sounds like Deborah Jenkins. Or. Or. I wish. I wish.

I need to accept that God has made only one of each of these people and only one me. Only I write what He has shaped from my life. Time to look up instead of out.

4.       Don’t take criticism of your work personally: Learn from it.

Actually, I think I live in a very kind world and possibly have the opposite problem. Family, friends, the Five Minute Friday Community, my local ACW group all concentrate on being encouraging. Of course, the best criticism is constructive not destructive. But we all need a bit of reigning in, pruning back, redirecting to grow vigorously.

But putting writing out into the public sphere in any way feels a bit like parading naked! Our stories, poems, anecdotes, all carefully crafted and nurtured, are our babies. Just as when our children leave for the first time for nursery, school, or university, we are trepidacious for how the world will treat them. Our words, like our offspring, are a part of us. Reactions and criticisms can wound.

I know I need to step back and remember my blog posts and poems are not my children. How do you deal with criticism? Is it easier when you ask for it than when it is unlooked for? And how do you craft your responses to someone else’s work?

5.       Keep going: Know your worth in God as an artist.

Maybe this is the most important of Emma Randall’s tips.

God has given us this talent for a reason. He puts us in places where we can grow and develop it to His glory. Let’s not bury it in the ground like the third servant in the Parable of the Talents, especially out of fear. The owner in that story must have had confidence in his servants in order to give them those talents to invest – you can hear the frustrated disappointment in his reaction to the third after celebrating the success of the previous two.

How much more confidence must God have in us to given us this talent of writing?

He gave us this urge to express ourselves in word, surely in order for us to use it? He trusts us and wants us to reach our full potential, which is surely another way of saying live our lives in all their fullness?

Liz Manning fits writing around being an Occupational Therapist, BB captain, wife, and mum to two adults. Or perhaps it's the other way round. She blogs regularly at https://thestufflifeismadeofblog.wordpress.com/, has one WIP and more ideas in the pipeline.