Mar 10
16

Listening to the Voice in Your Head that Tells You to Write

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While at the  San Francisco Writers Conference last month, where I served as a volunteer, a “book doctor” and a panelist, I had the opportunity to hear several great keynote speeches. Typically I’m not too interested in the speakers at conferences; they tend to be novelists of one sort or another. They focus on the craft of writing fiction or their particular niche, and this typically has little to do with publishing nonfiction. However, I took note of one thing in particular that thriller writer Steve Berry, author of The Paris Vendetta, said during his talk.

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Posted in Write Nonfiction NOW! writer's block writing by ninaamir 1 Comment

1 Response to "Listening to the Voice in Your Head that Tells You to Write"

  • Leslie Musoko says:
    March 23, 2010 at 6:48 am

    Nina, great topic! Here is an extract from one of my books – Divinity Dawns, I went a step further and wrote about those voices!
    When the hard times come by so do the voices in one’s head. You enter the first stages of madness and learn how to talk to yourself. At first you think this is the beginning of the end, people watch you and say that ‘you have lost it’. The only advice I can give you from the benefit of my experience is hold firm and fight with everything you have got. I entered this phase in my life after my problems became overwhelming. I was alone and had been that way for quite sometime relying solely on the Lord and the warmth he had given me. I reflected upon the revelations in my life and felt it would be weakness to fall back into the normal life we all lead of seeking security and guarantee in the things of this world. Yes! It would be nice to know that there was a job out there paying the bills, a house and wife to come home to but the way in which one went about getting those things was also important. In the bible the was a time when the disciples of the Lord wondered whether or not it would be possible to feed the masses that followed their master and in those times the Lord showed them that when in need he was able to perform miracles out of nothing. In the spiritual world this is the same wisdom we all have to adhere to. It is weakness to give up hope and fall into the arms of man hoping that he would save you from despair. I knew immediately that this was not an option for me for when it would be all over and I would be again feeling the strength and warmth that comes with positive things then on reflecting back to the doubt and shame in my weakness I would feel that I had let the Lord down. I thought of how Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a glass of water to quench his thirst and I knew that I could not make the same mistake, for if I had learnt anything from the spiritual world it was that a day could make the difference. I felt that if sleep came and I closed my eyes for a few hours when I woke up again my fortune would have changed and I would have renewed strength and energy to cope with the turmoil of despair.

    Time eluded me as I waited for better times in the confines of my apartment and with the Lord’s guidance I found the strength to go on my knees and pray for my salvation. I prayed earnestly for the Lord to help me out of depression and give me the strength to cope with my mishaps. I was entering into winter and the festive celebrations that followed with no guarantees for the future except prayer and hope that my time would come. I decided to give my burden to the Lord and lay in bed waiting for calmness to settle in.
    ‘Do not fight the voice,’ I told myself, ‘make them work for you and victory would be yours.’
    And as if in answer to my prayers the voices in my head became words with meaning. Then a thought of the past came rushing to the surface like water in a newly opened fountain. I remembered my life long dream of becoming a writer. I remembered the many stories I had told my brothers and sisters. I remembered the books I had read and my travels, the revelations and the times gone and those to come. I had tried on several occasions to write a book without success as I was always tied up by work or other distractions in my life. The short stories I had written in the past amounted to nothing and I could never get enough words to fill the gaps or make up the characters to match my imagination. At this point it occurred to me that I had a story to tell of my spiritual experiences in life. They had amounted significantly over time and would be of benefit to others. I got up from bed on this cold morning in November and wrote the first pages of my book realizing immediately that it would be a long journey in to my life.
    I can tell you now that if there is anything I have learnt through the hardship of time and the longsuffering in the spiritual world is that we should not be defeated by the voices in our heads. We should make them work for us and let the Lord guide us in everything we do. I learnt through the pain and suffering that it was a lot easier to handle the travail in life by accepting each day as it came by and surviving through to the next without a thought of the guarantees or securities invested in the future. Today I can tell you that my story is told of the escapades of my spirit through each day of survival. I never planned to write about this day nor is this a rehearsed pattern of events. It is just another day in the life of my spiritual diary which I wish to share with you.

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