This is a two-day posting. For today’s topic it’s about the “feast” in writing. Have you ever sat down to write something and story after story is sitting there ready to write. In fact, you have so many of them you’re overwhelmed with were to start. This is like the feast.

As writers we have to discern what we need to write about. A great place to start would be to pray asking for God’s help in knowing what should be written about first. So discernment is the key. We need to listen closely what our Heavenly Father has laid on our hearts to write.

I think I struggled with this head on without realizing it. The first full completed draft of Mari’s book is sitting in a “folder” collecting make-believe dust. Although, at the time, I thought telling her ENTIRE story was the right way to move forward. But then reality hit me as I kept being told the book I had written was fine for friends and family but that’s about it. I was crushed. All that time spent was for not. To be honest, I cried and almost gave up on the dream of publishing her story.

Once the pity party was over, I read some helpful advice. This person told me that to make her story more interesting to the general public was simple. I need to implement fiction techniques into her story. The problem was I had no idea how to do that. Me write fiction, not in a million would I do that.

But I decided to give it a try anyway. I mean, what did I have to lose. So I went to writing the first chapter infused with fiction techniques. I resubmitted it for critique and all of a sudden it all turned around. But then it dawned on me. To implement fiction techniques through the whole story would take my 100,000 word book and triple it if not quadruple it. So that would most definitely not be the way to go.

Then it struck me. What was the one thing more than any other I’ve had feedback on that seems to have made the most difference or impact? Mari’s hospital story. Those 16 days could be turned into a full length book and I already know her story resonates with people just from the responses alone I’ve received.

So yes, you could say I had one ginormous feast of things I could write about which then brought me to the simple words spoke during those 16 long, yet short, days.