Nothing you write is ever wasted

I promise, soon, we'll get back to the shallow Danica I know and love... after all, tomorrow is an important milestone day. Just to have fun, I'm going to have a little contest. I keep finding duplicate books, so I'll send you one of my duplicates if you guess correctly the milestone we're celebrating tomorrow. :)

Back to my title... I sent off my first set of goals to my change coach today, and I'm pleased to report that I'm halfway there. Although my blue highlighter has run out of ink. :( I'm totally jazzed about this story again, and I see places where I can, if I choose, insert an inspirational thread. Considering my hero has lost his faith in everything, it wouldn't be too hard to have that everything be explicitly about God, now would it? However, that isn't the round of edits I'm on, so that will have to just jell over in the corner of my brain.

As I was highlighting, I needed some background noise, plus I'm feeling guilty that I have all these writing CDs from conferences that I haven't listened to. However, since I was too lazy to get up and get my CDs, I pulled out one so dear that I have it burned on my hard drive. Just clicked a few buttons and I was listening to my beloved JSB and his talk entitled "Breathe Your Song".

I get something different out of it every time, but the main thing from tonight was the thought that nothind you write is ever wasted. I'll be honest, I am incredibly depressed that I have ten books written and none sold. (And okay, yes, I admit, more than a couple of them are unsubmitted) One of my topics of obsession is often that I feel like I've wasted so much on books that will never see the light of day. But you know, to very much twist JSB's words to suit my own purposes, everything I write serves a purpose. Maybe it's to keep me from murdering That Man. Maybe it's to keep me from duct taping my children to a cactus. Maybe it's part of learning the craft of writing. Maybe it's to learn persistence. And maybe, because my ego demands I say such a thing, it's because the rest of the world fails to recognize what a genius I am. It's okay, you can vomit now.

The point is, it's all woven together to help me become the writer God intends me to be. Bell quoted Romans 8:28, which says, "And we know that in ALL THINGS God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." I added the emphasis on all things. I wish you could see my Bible-when I looked up the verse (I'm a scripture skeptic-if you quote it, I have to see it for myself) in my Bible, I have the whole verse underlined, and all things super circled. That means, in Danica-speak, that it's super important to me. Funny how I'd forgotten it in my moments of despair.

It's so easy to get mad at a scene that isn't working right, or a book that just doesn't feel like it's ever going to be good enough. Whether it sells or not, there was a reason for writing it. Maybe it was because, even though we think we are the most brilliant human beings since the Aztecs, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done before we're ready. And maybe it's because the world isn't quite ready for us. And maybe there's a few more lessons tucked in the pages upon pages that will be written over the course of our lifetimes. Some will see the light of day, and others will remain behind the scenes, having served a purpose that perhaps only God will ever know.

You can count on the fact that I will be adding this to the list of "Things I will be grilling God on when I finally see Him face to face."