Out with the old by Susan Sanderson

New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time for looking back over the past year and looking forward to the year, which is about to begin.

2019 has been an eventful year in many ways. I know that many people including me have attended more funerals than in other years. Whether this is inevitable with increasing age and the demographics in the UK I am not sure.

Some of us made resolutions at the beginning of the year, including setting out our writing goals. I wonder how many we achieved. There are a number of expressions, which remind us that it is not our own goals that count, but rather what God wants us to do. “Man proposes; God disposes.” More colloquially, “God laughs when people make plans.” And a promise from the book of the prophet Jeremiah 29: 11 “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

After more than seven years as a blogger, I still haven’t worked out what I should be concentrating on as a writer. I enjoy blogging and find it easy to write fairly short pieces. Writing poetry is rather like solving a puzzle. The words have to be more carefully chosen than for prose. If a particular form of poem is intended, there are rules to follow. Poetry perhaps requires more discipline than some forms of writing.

Unexpected activity on a Writers' weekend - drawing something we could see

What I have gained from my membership of the Association of Christian Writers (ACW) may be different from what I had hoped for when I joined over five years ago. However, I have made new friends and have been encouraged by what they have shared of their writing journeys. I have benefitted from events and group meetings I have attended. My confidence in my own ability as a writer and whether I have anything to write about has increased. (Apparently insecurity is part of the territory for writers!) And I have enjoyed reading the output of other members.

That’s enough of looking back! What about the future?

If you are a writer who is setting out tentatively, wondering whether you will ever achieve publication, here is some advice from someone, whose own published pieces of creative writing are limited to the occasional letter, poem and article. Keep writing. Learn what you can about writing by reading, listening and finding things out. Look out for opportunities. Perhaps articles are needed for a church or community magazine or newspaper. A publication for people with a particular hobby or craft may be a possible outlet for your work.

If your ambition is to write a book, be prepared to work and rework your original ideas. (I have at least one book started and abandoned for the time being.)

Don’t forget to enter competitions. There are writing groups on the interweb as well as ones whose members meet together for mutual support and encouragement.

Whatever else we do in 2020 let us all, as Christian writers, offer words of hope to those around us, who may not see beyond the doom and gloom.

Susan always wanted to be a writer.  In 2012 she revived her interest in writing with a project to collect the kinds of sayings, which were much used in her childhood. Blogging was intended as a way of improving writing skills, but has become an interest in its own right.  Susan experiments with factual writing, fiction, humour and poetry.  She does not yet have a book to her name. Her interests include words, languages, music, knitting and crochet.  She has experience of the world of work, being a stay-at-home mum and an empty-nester.   She is active in her local community and Church, where she sings alto in the choir. She and her husband live in the north of England. 

Follow her on Twitter @suesconsideredt