Driving Lessons with Guest Lynn Blackburn

Hello, Seekerville. Cate here. I'm so excited to welcome my friend Lynn Blackburn as our guest today. Lynn and I met when we sold our first books to Love Inspired Suspense through Harlequin's Killer Voices contest.

Lynn has some really excellent thoughts to share with us today. I hope you'll join me in giving her a warm Seekerville welcome!

Lynn is offering reader's choice of one of the books from her Dive Team series to a U.S. resident.

Driving Lessons

It’s hard to turn a parked car.

Ever heard that one before? I can’t remember where I heard it first, but it’s so very true. You can be in the car, behind the wheel, motor running, ready to go. You may even have the brute strength to force the steering wheel to make the tires twist on the pavement.

But the car? It hasn’t moved, and it’s not going to until you put that baby in drive.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

If one of your goals is “write more” then you’re going to have to put this writing thing in drive and actually WRITE.

If you’ve been writing and the goal is to land an agent then you’re going to have to actually query one (or three).

If you’re ready to go to a conference or take a course then you’re going to have to set aside some money and some time.

God is Sovereign and He can do anything, but as a general rule when He gives us a dream, a calling, a passion, He expects us to get our rear in gear and do the hard work that comes with following Him.

All that stuff going on in your head? That’s you sitting in the driveway with the car running. Not going anywhere.

You may have gone to bed one night with an idea and awakened with a fully fleshed out plot. You may know your characters better than you know your friends. You may have dreamed up a world to rival Middle Earth.

Guess what? Dreams don’t get published. Documents do.

You may have written the book, the poem, the article, the Bible study, the short story. It’s been polished and critiqued until it’s a lean, mean, written machine. You think it’s time to send it out into the big bad world, but for some reason you’re still waiting. You keep thinking it’s possible there’s more you should do to it so you keep tweaking it.

Guess what? Possibilities don’t land agents. Proposals do.

But what if you’ve done all that? You’ve been writing. You’ve been to conferences. You’ve queried agents. Maybe you’ve had some nibbles, or even some big bites, but your hands are sweating on the wheel because you have no idea where you’re going.

You want to do to the right thing. Want to make the best use of your time. Want to please the One you write for.

Should you revise the story again? Pitch to that other agent? Go to the conference close to home or the one with the focus on your writing? How on earth can you know?

This is where it gets tricky.

Because the path you’re supposed to follow and the one I’m supposed to follow won’t look the same. We have different abilities, situations, passions and interests.

What God wants to do with your writing will be unique. So if you’re writing and you’re scared about where you’re going, remember this…

You steer where you stare.

They teach us this when we learn how to drive. You can’t stare at the sides of the road or you’ll mess around and drive off in a ditch. You can, and should, glance around you, but ultimately, you need to keep your eyes to the front.

When it comes to your writing, you need to stop worrying about the others driving around you, quit staring at the steep edge you’re afraid you’ll fall over, and keep your focus on the One who already knows your ultimate destination.

He hasn’t taken you on this road to leave you stranded in a ditch.

Keep focused on Him. Keep the car in drive. And hang on for the ride!

Grace and peace,

Lynn H. Blackburn loves writing suspense because her childhood fantasy was to become a spy—but her grown-up reality is that she's a huge chicken and would have been caught on her first mission. She prefers to live vicariously through her characters and loves putting them into all kinds of terrifying situations—while she's sitting at home safe and sound in her pajamas!

Her Dive Team Investigations series kicked off in 2018 with Beneath the Surface and In Too Deep (A SIBA Okra pick and Selah Award Finalist). The 3^rd book in the series, One Final Breath, released in September 2019. She is also the author of Hidden Legacy and Covert Justice, which won the 2016 Carol Award for Short Novel and the 2016 Selah Award for Mystery and Suspense. Lynn lives in South Carolina with her true love and their three children. You can follow her real life happily ever after at www.LynnHBlackburn.com and on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay 

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay