How to avoid feeling second best by encouraging others in their journey by Elaine Langford

It's easy to feel second best as a writer. Especially when you see so many others report on their successes while you can barely string a few words together. Though I guess this feeling is often relative. I suspect even those who have some success will look at those with multiple novels or daily social media posts and yearn to be more prolific and popular.

I’ve already noted my current but constant struggle with writing and often wonder if I should pack up my writerly ambitions and avoid doing something else with my time instead. However, I still feel called to be a writer. Although I also feel I’m still missing the path that God is calling down and where I should focus my output. For now, this blog is my only home.

The most frustrating thing is that throughout each month I have loads of ideas about topics to write about. Yet they never get beyond the doom pile of lists onto my poetry or faith blog. Although not working, life still seems to have taken my energy and brain capacity hostage, preventing me from developing these ideas further. What I think I am learning during this time is that popular writing success isn't the only measure of impact as a writer. There are so many options to use writing in our current culture, especially via social media channels. These allow short text output whether as my own posts or as comments on someone else’s.

 

I’ve also become aware of Bible characters that are not the headliners we hear about regularly, but they were a significant part of someone else's story. Peter is a big name in church history, but it was his brother, Andrew, that introduced Peter to Jesus. Paul is well known as an author of many letters to churches in the New Testament. However, it was Barnabus that showed the disciples that Paul (or Saul as he was then) was a changed man after his encounter with God. Interestingly, Barnabus's real nane was Joseph but was nicknamed Barnabus (son of encouragement) by those around him.

I’m beginning to wonder if encouraging others needs to be my focus for a while. I’ve had plenty practice already encouraging my husband through his three theology degrees over 16 years, even though he still doesn’t have an A Level. I also encouraged him to accept an offer to publish his PhD that appeared a couple of years ago. His book, "Unmasking the Angel: Revealing the Spiritual Identity of a Local Congregation", listed recently on Amazon. While this may have contributed to me feeling second best at home, I am mentioned in the dedication, so can claim to have my name in a published work.

Many of the random ideas I have gathered to write about so far have been part of my lived experience but also relate to groups of people that may feel second best in our society. While I continue to find ways to make more space to develop those ideas into poems or stories, I’ll continue to seek social media posts where I can add encouraging comments.

If you are keen to encourage others, whether prolific or ambitious, it’s useful to know that adding comments on their social media posts helps to boost their impact on that platform. Similarly using a reaction other than a simple ‘like’ also does wonder for their profile.  

Perhaps you would like to share how others have encouraged you in your writing journey. If you are writing regularly, are there characters you could highlight as supporters and encouragers of your protagonist to help those in society who are not headliners so they feel more useful than second best suggests?

Elaine Langford is an errant writer living in South East London. She's looking for spare time to restart her writing enthusiasm. Her too dormant blogs can be seen at Faith Bites (when life bites, faith bites back) and Poetry Puddles.