Welcome guest blogger, Donna Wichelman
As a fiction novelist, you may have experienced a very
disconcerting sensation. You’ve got a an amazing story—maybe even a killer
idea. You’ve written the synopsis to what looks like a best seller, and you’re
ready to take off on the journey.
Each day, you’re typing away, making great strides, seeing
the plot fleshed out, your protagonist getting into all the right kinds of
trouble. You’ve managed to advance the story perhaps a third of the way into
the novel.
Then bam! Writer’s block sets in big time or your writers’
critique group doesn’t get your vibe, and the universal sentiment is the story just
isn’t working for them. You feel like you’ve just been booted off the bus and
your coat thrown out the window for good measure.
My new release, Undaunted
Valor, was that book for me. It went through three iterations before it
found the right plot for the characters to bring depth and meaning to the
story. Then I listened to a couple of my beta readers about how to fix some of
the loopholes I’d left open along the way.
The phenomenon of heading in the wrong direction isn’t new
for God’s chosen emissaries. Paul experienced a roadblock on his second
missionary journey through present day Turkey. He’d passed through the region,
strengthening the churches in their faith, their numbers increasing. Then bam!
The Holy Spirit forbade them to enter Asia. Moreover, when they tried to go
into Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them.
The Scriptures don’t tell us how the Spirit prevented Paul from going the direction he had
planned. We just know God closed the door. Yet He opened the door into new
territory—Greece and Macedonia—where the people were ripe and ready to hear the
message.
I know the discouragement, the utter feeling of failure. For
a little while, I want to find a deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific
where no one can find me and I can wallow in the deep waters of despair.
Yet if we look back at Paul’s journey, we notice he didn’t
crawl under the nearest rock like Jonah under a tree pouting about rival in
Ninevah. He moved on to Troas and set sail for Greece.
I think we writers can learn a lesson from Paul’s missionary
journey. When we hit that roadblock in our work, perhaps it’s time to listen to
where God’s leading us rather than trying to ram the locked door with a log or
sitting down on the road and throwing a temper tantrum. God may be opening the
door to new territory that hasn’t been explored yet, and He’s ready and waiting
to show you the way.
Blurb for Undaunted Valor, Book 2, The Waldensian
Series
For nature lovers, ski aficionados, travel enthusiasts and
history scholars, the French Alps offer some of the most spectacular scenery
and outdoor recreation in all Europe with its majestic mountain peaks,
cascading waterfalls, unspoiled forests and quaint mountain villages. People
come to get away from the daily grind and rejuvenate their spirits.
But when Alessandro Marianni’s grandmother Luciana is
kidnapped during a church conference in Chamonix, the same landscape becomes an
ominous height to scale, and Jamie Holbrooke and her fiancé Alessandro have
difficulty distinguishing between friend and foe on the race to find her. They
will have to weather a rainstorm on a mountain trail, negotiate a dangerous
waterfall, outmaneuver a car chase, and defy an assassin’s gun in their search.
Will they find their beloved Luciana before it’s too late?
Who will die on the way to the finish line? Who can they trust? And where will
Jamie find the courage to confront her adversaries?
In this sequel to Light
Out of Darkness, the answers will lie in unanticipated places and with
unexpected allies and require Jamie to discover what it means to trust God with
undaunted valor.
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