#296: How to Deal with Anxiety While Writing

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

We love being able to. To answer your questions. And so this month on the podcast, we're going to answer a few of the questions that came up during our 2021 Kingdom Writers Conference. So I hope you enjoy this episode. It's quick to the point, but it's answering a question that another Kingdom writer, just like you had. And I'm guessing many of you have the same question as well. We have a question about what to do when you have anxiety, when you sit down to write. How do you deal with it?

I think the first thing I would do is just really spend some time in prayer, you know, just. Just asking the Lord before you even start to bring calm to that storm. You know, that as he. He's in the disciples boat, you know, as they're out on that. That lake, you know, and the storm rises up and yet he. He with a word says, peace, be still. And I would really just start my writing knowing that, you know, some of you know who Donald Miller is, wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz and has done stuff with other sectors of business as well. But he, I. What he said really stuck with me. He says, you know, there's going to be resistance. When I sit down and put my butt in the chair, there's going to be resistance. But he says, but I call BS on the resistance. He says, I just sit through it and I know it's coming and yet I'm going to write. And there's something that, as you persevere, something breaks and you get into a flow if you'll just hang in there. But I do believe there's a very real spiritual battle occurring, and that's why we need to bathe our writing session in prayer.

Yeah. So I was going to encourage you that, you know, if we wait till ideal conditions to write, we probably won't write anything. Right. And so sometimes, you know, we have things that come up, emotions, and I don't know exactly your situation and all that you've been through, but take the snippets of time that you can find maybe, you know, whatever you can. A sentence at a time, a paragraph at a time. You know, a book is written one sentence at a time, right. That forms a paragraph, it forms a chapter. It forms a book and so capture all of those even little snippets of time. Even if you feel like you can't stay in the flow for as long as other writers, don't compare yourself to other writers too, because your situation is different and it's unique. And that's okay. You know, you can be who you are. But also get a prayer team. So there is a very real spiritual battle. We have a blog post you can just go to training authors.com and look up prayer team. Two or three people is all you need that you send requests to once a week about your writing. Get people writing. Because I have. I have personally faced severe attacks when I've. Especially when I wrote my book Broken crayons still color. And when you know it, that's the one that's that God's used the most.

You may have heard of John Piper, the author, founder of Desiring God, John Piper. I don't know how many books he's written. It's got to be like 70 plus books. The guy is prolific. But I've heard John Piper multiple times say, I quote, I'm a really slow reader. And he's said it enough times that it's almost like he views it as a handicap for him. Like he wishes he was a faster reader. And I don't know how fast of a reader he is. It could blow me away. But all I know is that he's mentioned it. We all have these little shortcomings, but I think it's almost a good thing because it's something that allows the Lord to get more glory for the things that are produced. It's as if, like Paul had that thorn in his side and he prayed that it would even be removed. And yet the Lord says, no, I'm going to keep it because my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in weakness. And so, Kevin, rejoice in any shortcomings you may have. We're all there. We all have one thing after another that we fall short in. God's going to be glorified in your writing.

So I hope you enjoyed that quick answer to a question and that you were inspired, inspired to move forward in your calling to write. Now our 2021 conference is over. We titled it Battle Plan Helping you move forward in God's call to write. But you can still get access to all of the presentations, plus the 13 bonus trainings@dommywritersconference.com battleplan and the reason we're making this available ongoing is because we've gotten so much great feedback and if you get it for only the Priestly Pens bundle, that is a bundle of trainings that helps you integrate God into every part of the writing, publishing and marketing process, you will be blessed. So it's just $47 and you can get it@th kingdomwritersconference.com battleplan and we thank you for joining us today. We're I will talk to you next time. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you as a Christian writer have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories and in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.