The Writing Speaker? - by Liz Carter

Do you find speaking easy or difficult, as a writer?

I’ve been giving this a bit of thought, lately. I’ve been recording some radio and podcast interviews about my new book, and doing a couple of talks, but this is not a natural thing to me. Instead it’s a thing of terror, rearing up at me and leaving me with sweaty palms and a thumping heart. Because I’m not a speaker – or at least, that’s always been my internal thought process about the whole idea. Even standing up in church leading the intercessions leaves me a shaking wreck. My dad is a vicar and both my parents preached at church as I grew up, so I was set a good model, but always felt I wasn’t enough. It’s a strange thing – I feel like the words come easier for me when I’m writing, but when I’m speaking they get lost somewhere in the ether and I’m unable to retrieve them and make them dance to my tune. It’s frustrating. 

Yet as I wrote and submitted this book I was aware that publishers expect writers to have some kind of speaking platform, as well as a writing one. I was afraid I would let them down in this – not only because of my worry about speaking, but because my chronic ill-health condition forces me to lay low much of the time, therefore speaking engagements are few and far between – and more often than not I flake out of them, too sick to manage. So I wondered if it was possible to be a writer first and foremost, and an occasional somewhat reluctant speaker, or if you actually have to be a speaker with an active and vibrant schedule/ministry in order to get your work out there. 

I’m not sure I have answers to this, but I do wonder if we sometimes beat ourselves up, as writers. We think that we must undertake so much work to promote ourselves; we must keep an active social media presence, website and market ourselves and our work all the time. We can become consumed by this, to the extent that we have no time left to do the one thing we love to do: write! Perhaps for some of us the speaking and the marketing come easily and are enjoyable, but for others they may feel a burden – especially for those who are struggling with life in some way. Perhaps you feel like you can never be enough, as I have felt in the past, and therefore there is no point in continuing your writing journey. You’ll just never get to the stage others seem to get to with their shiny platforms, so you stop trying. 

Yet in God’s kingdom, matters are turned on their heads. The weak are strong, the strong are weak. There is little room for the burdensome ‘must do this’ in God’s economy, if whatever ‘this’ is is unreachable for you today, or any day. It’s amazed me how God has worked through my own book launch, when humanly speaking things seemed impossible, because I was stuck in hospital at the time. But God doesn’t do impossible, and I wonder if today God is speaking to some of you about your own writing, about where you are with it, and how you see yourselves in the larger story around writing in our society today. Maybe you need to hear the words, ‘You are enough,’ and the assurance that God is delighted with you and your writing – however erratic, however short, however unfinished, however unpolished. God loves your heart, and your passion for writing – so don’t let that become encumbered by a heavy weight of feeling you must do more. 

Of course, many of you are speakers, and wonderful ones, and it’s delightful to enjoy all the talents of this group of Christian writers. But let’s not beat ourselves up when that’s not us, or let it hold us back. I’m thankful that God is somehow getting me through these things, but it’s not going to launch me into a glittering career in public speaking 😊 and that’s OK!

What about you? Do you find speaking easy or difficult, as a writer?

I just want to write

Make words dance with delight

Soar through joyful heights

As letters speed to flight.

I just want to write

Spin dazzling tales of might

and lilting words of bright

To lift them in their night.

But maybe I'm not right

My talent just too slight

My words destined for blight

Don't want to be in lights!

Yet you set me alight
With words of pure starlight
You are my Ignite
You bathe me in your light. 

Photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash

Liz Carter is an author and blogger who likes to write about life in all its messy, painful, joyous reality. She’s never known life without pain and sickness, and wonders what it feels like to breathe freely. She likes Cadbury’s and turquoise, in equal measure, and lives in the UK with her husband, a church leader, and two crazy teens.

Liz is the author of Catching Contentment: How to be Holy Satisfied, which was published by IVP in November. This book digs into the lived experience of a life in pain, and what contentment could possibly mean in difficult circumstances.  You can find it here.