Nathanial Garrod

The Resolve

I set this goal for myself at the beginning of the year. I want to have over 100 views a month here on candidfiction. I feel in years past, I’ve just kinda written whimsically and in passing. But the past few months, I have really been realizing how much  I need to write. And I just need to write and have the thoughts on paper. Or digital pixelization. Whatever.

All of last semester, I wanted to write, I strived to find time in which I could fit the thing I love most. The thing I think I do best, when I care about it. Yet everytime I made time and sat down, I got distracted by Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter. I was daunted by the blank page and afraid of writing the wrong thing. Afraid of failing.

When I was at home, I had so much on my mind and so many things I wanted to write about. I thought that with enough time to enjoy, to process and to be able to look back I would be able to write it down.

I returned to Oklahoma and immediately headed to Passion, which was an incredible experience that I am yearning to write – that I need to write and process through. So many things happened at Passion that made me think of Marcus Merja (for those who don’t know, he’s the main character in one of my novels), and his story. So many things happened that made me think of my story, of the toil and pain that has gone into that tale. So many things happened that reminded be of the burning desire I have to finish that story.

To cap it all off, on the last day, Louie Giglio spoke about our calling in Christ. During the week there had been a lot of discussion and focus on ending slavery in the world. 27 million people in the world today are slaves. This number is bigger than any number ever in history. And while so many things were happening, so many people were realizing they wanted to devote their lives to actively working in careers to end slavery, I was sitting to the side. I know it’s okay to want to do things other than the “ministry,” and I have reconciled with the fact that my calling is not in that direction. Giglio said something along the lines of a Jon Acuff post from a few years back, a reminder that the world still needs doctors and engineers and scientists and writers. And writers.

Oh.

Hi.

So here I am feeling like a loser for not writing anything for God knows how long, and not posting anything on candidfiction since late December. Almost a month now. And this has been the pattern.

It wasn’t enough that it came up at Passion, I thought about it last week when Craig was speaking. And it came up a little bit this week.

It is like everywhere I go, the fact that I have not been writing for fun, for free, for me, it has been haunting me. Following me. Begging me. So now here is the challenge: to get all my work for school and work done in a timely fashion, to be not tired, and to use the untired time when I have no work to get some writing done. Specifically, I want to be posting on candidfiction every other week, and producing 1,500 words on my novel every month.

If there are topics you’d like me to cover in my posts, I happily accept suggestions via comment, tweet, facebook, text or e-mail. Really however you get ahold of me. Let’s see if I can do 100 posts this year!

One Comment on “The Resolve

  1. Morgan
    January 23, 2012

    …and writers. Oh. Hi. Im glad you are writing because I highly enjoy reading your writing. You are incredibly gifted with your words…don’t ever stop!

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This entry was posted on January 16, 2012 by in Uncategorized.

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