Labored Writing

By Doyne Phillips, Managing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

With the Labor Day Holiday fresh on our minds I drifted off to an evil menace not at all related to the holiday but was awakened by it. Labored writing. I’m not sure how it is triggered, or exactly what could be the cure but I do know it is something we all get a visit from now and then.

Deadlines seem to have a pull on us in one or two directions. Some it makes us sharper and work harder under the pressure. Some of us tend to approach it like a deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Then there are the few of us that tend to a combination of the two. No matter how you are approached it tend to make us labor under the spell.

Deadlines are not always the culprit. The culprit could be nothing more than procrastination. Failure to make a fast start out of the gate may lead to a slower pace down the road. A slower pace could lead to taking a sidetrack in the journey or even a layover at the next stop. Labored writing if allowed could eventually end a journey of delay it for years. How do you overcome it?

Pastor and author Bruce Wilkerson known for The Prayer of Jabez, The Secret of the Vine and several other amazing books also wrote one of my favorite books The Dream Giver. Wilkerson tells the story of a young man’s journey to reach his dream, his vision. Wilkerson tells of the obstacles this young man encounters and as you read, it becomes clear to the reader that these obstacles are the same ones each of us has encountered. Wilkerson does a great job laying out for us what to expect on our journey. As I read it, I was of an age I could look back and easily identify those obstacles of family, friends, worldly encounters and shortcomings of every sort.

Wilkerson also touches on what I believe to be true and that is each dream is a gift. A gift from a Higher Power. A gift presented only to you for you to accept and using your talents to bring it to fruition. I also perceived that should you fail to do so that gift would be passed on to another to carry out that gift, that dream which the Higher Power needs completed in their Great Plan. To be it is a “use it or lose it” process. The vision or gift must and will be completed due to the need of it within the Great Plan.

How does that relate to labored writing? Simply put…

“Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?”  Tim Burton

As labored as writing may be at times we must think of the greater vision, the greater plan. You were not chosen for this because you were lazy. You were brought this dream because you will complete it. I do realize that we are like the Children of Israel. We are tempted, tend to get sidetracked and wander in the desert. But also remember the generation that caused the forty-year delay did not see the dream. It was others of another generation that completed the dream.

When you tell the labor of writing remember you have an opportunity, no one else has, only you can complete this vision. How uplifting!