October 2018 – Write 2 Be

“Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the Vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry.”

~ Habakkuk 2:2

Write the vision and make it plain post

So I was listening to the Steve Harvey Morning show the other morning and it was the end of the show when he usually imparts some words of wisdom for his listeners. This morning he talked about writing your goals and your vision down. He made a point that (and I’m paraphrasing) writing down the goals helps you to visualize the vision in a way that you can’t visualize it if it just remains in your head.

Hearing that made me think about when my focus had gotten off track before and all of the times that I have been thrown off my writing flow it had been during a time frame where I had stopped writing down my goals and my dreams for one reason or another. For someone like me who is a planner, and who likes to have most things planned out to the tee it is hard for me to operate when I don’t have things planned out. I struggle to tow the line between planning things out excessively and not planning things at all to try and not be so obsessive. I think that I’ve realized that I need the structure of planning things out because it is how I am able to see the bigger picture.

There are plenty of people who like to tell me how unattainable my dreams are and all of the reasons that none of them will ever materialize into reality. I will even admit that sometimes I let their rejection of my aspirations deter me from the end goal. However, having them written out, having a vision board that shows me what my end game is, having a certain amount of belief in my overall vision, is what focuses me in the end. It’s not that having a physical representation of my dreams quiets the naysayers, but rather it helps me tune out their voices of belittlement (most of the time anyway) and persevere in the vision that I have, the purpose in which God gave me.

It is so much easier to fight for a dream in which you can visualize what it would look like to reach that goal. It’s true that you can’t see years into the future and that there’s no real way to predict how it all will turn out but you still have to keep your eyes on the road ahead of you to get yourself to the next part in the journey. If you have nothing to aim for, no goal in your sights, then what are you really working towards. Can you see what the end goal will be? Can you visualize your journey? Visualize and believe in yourself! The season you’re in right now is not the season that you will stay in forever!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Back in the writing flow of things (27)

So I know that I’ve been missing in action and it has been quite a while since I last wrote and I didn’t mean for it to take me so long to get back in the rhythm of things but you know how creativity strikes, or rather in some cases doesn’t strike. I had hit a creative wall and it wasn’t necessarily a lack of ideas, but a lack of knowing how to focus my ideas in a productive manner. I actually think that a part of my issue is that I have too many ideas and in a perfect world I would be able to do the work of ten people all at once and be able to get all of my ideas off the ground and running all at the same time. Alas, this is most certainly not a perfect world, and I am only one person with only two hands and I can not multiply myself the way I need to in order to get a lifetime worth of accomplishments done in a short period of time. I suppose if I hadn’t spent a large amount of wasted time second guessing every idea I’ve had, and every dream I’ve wanted to go after then I could have produced more of my ideas by now.

I got a boost of writing motivation when I participated in this writing challenge in September. It was Tara-Nicholle Nelson’s 10 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders (you can find out more about by looking it up through Facebook) and it was a very cathartic experience doing this challenge and left me feeling surprisingly vulnerable, but in a good way, because that was the reason I did the challenge. It’s not like I haven’t been a part of writing groups in the past (albeit not for long) or have done challenges such as this one but I never really allowed myself to really be vulnerable in them and I was more of an observer in those and less of a sharer. With this challenge I actually shared a bit of myself, and while I admit I could’ve shared a lot more (something I have to work on) for me it was still a huge step. I got to interact with some extremely talented individuals who allowed themselves to be equally as vulnerable.

I feel like I’ve been missing that interaction with other creative minded people because at one point in my life I was consistently in the orbit of a couple of select people who were creative like me and we bounced ideas off each other and gave each other feedback. Then suddenly the few select creative minded people had vanished. I mean they were still around but their lives blossomed into a different direction and they moved away and got busy and their careers bloomed and they went on to find groups of other creative minded people where they were now at and I was still stuck. It was no one’s fault or anything, just that it was their turn to bloom and grow and it wasn’t mine (yet). I still love them and I root for them but I had lost that outlet and I haven’t found a new one yet.

The recent challenge I did got my creative brain really flowing again and I loved every day of it and the people that I connected with there. Now I’m in the right mind-set to prepare for National Novel Writing Month and that excites me so much because I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to participate this year for lack of creative inspiration. Now if I don’t write here anymore this month it’s not because I’m not writing at all because I’ll be outlining my novel for NaNoWriMo. I will also be blogging at least three times a week in the month of November as I go through the NaNoWriMo experience and hopefully a few of you will join me in doing NaNoWriMo as well. Until next time…. Keep Writing!