By: Lenora Livingston
In my seventy-nine years of living, never once in my wildest dreams did I ever envision myself writing a novel. No, not me, no way! In my school days, I always cringed at the very thought of rough drafts and rewriting themes and term papers. If I couldn’t write it right the first time, forget it. It wasn’t worth writing. Besides my aversion to the technical side of writing, was my acceptance to the fact that writing novels was for creative people and being creative was definitely not my forte.
Oh, how I envied novelists. They can start with a blank page and create a whole novel by building characters and relationships, establishing settings, creating problems and solving solutions, and creating stories within stories. Their creative talent is such an incredibly wonderful gift. My writing background includes writing poetry, short stories, programs for schools, reporting school news to newspapers. I even wrote a history book. But none of this required the kind of creative genes that novelists have.
So, how did I write Where’s Stephanie? I had to let go and let God write it. Because He had already choreographed and presented my story to me, I thought writing it would be easy. I knew what factual parts needed to be written. Researching and recording that information didn’t require being creative, so I wrote those parts without much difficulty. The problem was, there were many parts where I had to create dialogue, plus I had to create events in order to fill in gaps and more adequately tell the story. At first, a very frustrating case of “writer’s block” kicked in and it was extremely awkward to create those parts. However, as soon as I let go and let God use me as His instrument, it felt as if a power much greater than me was in control of my story. It was as if my hand was being led across the paper, writing words that made much better sense than they would have if I had been in control of what was being written. What an awesome experience. I knew what was happening and stayed with it. When finished, I thanked God.
I didn’t need to be creative. I only needed to “let go” of trying to write my story and “let God” take over writing His inspirational story through me. I am so blessed.
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Besides writing two books, Lenora Livingston has written short stories; school programs, including a Character Education Word of the Month program; numerous newspapers articles and community newsletters. She earned her BA and MAT from the University of South Carolina and continued post masters studies at The Citadel. She also studied writing at the Screen Actors Guild Conservatory in New York City under the late playwright Mark Weston. Visit her webpage http://lenoralivingston.com and FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/authorlenoralivingston.