Changing The Narrative – Learning to Sing a New Song

Did you set any New Year resolutions? Are you still keeping any? More interestingly, did you expect to?

From past experience, I didn't expect to keep mine either. So far, I’ve not done too badly. I have been thinking about writing a few times in January and have attended the first ACW Trellis and local group meetings of the year. Though, how long that will last, is yet to be seen.

Isn’t it odd? As writers, we’re very good at controlling the stories we tell. Authors and other fictional writers will carefully map out the progress of their story arc and character development. Poets will dig deep to find just the right word or phrase to evoke the emotion we want our readers to feel or capture the event details we want them to visualise. Even when writing factual pieces, choosing which stories to include and which to leave aside is in the writer's control.

Embracing the ‘happy ever after’ trope, we often put our characters or poetic voices into scenes and scenarios that will bring a positive outcome. We want them to be heard, supported and have a purpose. We make it difficult for those that work against them. Yet when it comes to our own hopes, dreams and abilities, we dumb them down. We compare ourselves to other’s progress, believe that we will not succeed or be recognised.

When we pray for others, we usually pray for hope, mercy, peace and success on their behalf. We fervently ask that their difficult situation will not turn out negatively, or that something will change for it to turn into an unexpected blessing. When we ask God to intervene in our own lives or writing, what do we pray for? Do we have that same hope and expectation for ourselves that we have for others?

From my previous posts, you can tell 2024 was not a great year. Just before Christmas, I was offered life coaching sessions to address some of my neurodiverse difficulties at work. The coach encouraged me to reframe my view of my circumstances positively. Rather than saying, ‘I can’t do X or Y’, I was encouraged to explain what things I’m good at or where I can succeed.* To help myself and others to know what accommodations may help, I was challenged not to focused on what didn't work, but capture answers to the statement, ‘I work at my best when…’.

The coaching style reminded when I was last preparing a sermon on the Psalms. Reading through, I was struck by Psalms 33, 96, 98 and 149 that use the phrase, ‘Sing a new song’.^ A third of the Psalms are laments, where people cry out to God for relief from difficulties and often the end in worship and praise. I wondered if ‘sing a new song’ was a spiritual challenge to those time we get stuck in lament. A way of saying, ‘change the record’, or ‘change the perspective’. I'm not saying we shouldn't be sad. However, I know I can be guilty of moaning, just a little too often and not counting my blessings.

As writers, the words and perspectives we use is important in our writing. It’s important when we think about ourselves too. I’m certainly planning to review these as I continue to review my commission. Rather than sigh under the weight of repetative procrastion or Blank Page sydrome, I want to find the topics that make me want to grab my pen in the middle of the night, or take a voice note on my phone, so I don't miss that nugget of inspiration.

How about you? Is there a new way you could approach writing? How could you reframe your perspective of yourself or maybe your writing journey so far? How could you look at life differently? How could you learn to ‘sing a new song’? Maybe you have already changed how or what you write to learn a new song. Why not share it with us.

Notes

Images all the author's own

*Similar to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy principles, often used in counselling. These can be reviewed on the NHS EveryMind Matters web site.

^The screenshot is from Isaiah 42:10, referenced in a post on my Faith Bites Blog in 2015

 Elaine Langford is an unexpected More Than Writers blogger and hopeful of finding ways to be more confident in her life and writing. She hosts two personal blogs, Poetry Puddles and Faith Bites, reflections on faith issues, hoping to add to them soon.