Weekend ...questing....

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

In the fall of 2020, we braved the pandemic to attend the 25th Anniversary Heart of David conference.  It was a real blessing in the midst of the crazy, but I really connected with the talk from one of the speakers, Stephen Roach, who had begun an arts collective called The Breath and the Clay.  who spoke of creativity and faith.  I participated in an online writer's conference sponsored by them later that fall; ultimately, I joined the collective myself, just for the prod to continue creating faith-based work.

This past weekend, The Breath and the Clay sponsored another writer's conference; the first in-person writer's conference since the pandemic.  My Sweet Babboo gave me his blessing, and, since there was still space available after we got back from our Florida trip, I signed up.  It was a small conference, with about 30 folks attending, including the presenters.  It was in a lodge up in the mountains of North Carolina...Moravian Falls, actually, if any of you are familiar with the history of that area.

The conference venue

I drove myself, so you know I REALLY wanted to go, but it was totally worth the trip.  I left with a question I wanted to get answered...am I really a writer, or am I just someone who noodles around with writing?

I printed out a good bit of my writing...a lot of which I have published either on Beer Lahai Roi or my sewing blog, Sew Random, over the years.  Two things struck me as I was pulling the lot together...1) Most of my writing is derivative; it starts with something else, like a Bible story or a fairy tale or some other well-known (or not so well-known) source; and, 2) Most of it was really old.  Like, 10 - 20 years old.  Now, I have been blogging away and writing here and there...like getting the curriculum for my beginning Bible study class recorded...but the actual fever to sit down and write a piece hasn't hit me in a while.  I had attributed it to the fact that pretty much none of my writing has found an audience (not that I don't love you, my few and faithful readers, but there really aren't' very many of you, lol).  I kinda thought that, if I was a Real Writer (TM), I would have some...outlet...for it by now, other than the seeds sown at random on the blogs.  I had a long talk with myself over the whole thing and resolved that, if it did indeed prove out that I had the chops to write...maybe not spectacularly, but solidly, I would put more effort into doing it.

The whole weekend was amazingly affirming.  I left feeling like, yes, I AM a Real Writer...even if I don't have a lot of Real Readers.  And I realized my number one weakness is a lack of discipline.  Not just in writing...in life in general.  

It's hard for a Tigger to thrive in discipline; Tiggers don't do structure well. And I have gotten very...self indulgent...over the years since I HAD to have discipline going to keep four kids fed and in clean clothes and where they needed to be.  It was something of a come-to-Jesus moment.  I'm going to have to relearn the skills again.

Because that's the only way I can get the discipline to work on the writing again.  It may take a bit for that to trickle down to something that's visible to folks watching from the outside, but as long as I keep trying...it will get there.

The first step is...going to bed on time.  I'm something of a night owl, so that's going to take some work.  

And discipline. 

Here we go.