By Dawn Shipman
“The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way, where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.” As a reader and writer of fantasy, I love this poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It calls to my heart and reminds me that our lives—even if we’re not hobbits adventuring on dangerous and mysterious pathways—are, indeed, journeys. Where we ultimately end up most often depends on daily choices we’ve made. Do we turn left at this crossroad or go right? I believe this is especially true in the life of the Christian writer.
Since you’re reading this, I assume that you, like me, have had a desire to write, perhaps for many years. Your dream—the desire of your heart that God placed there—was to put words on the page that would somehow influence the lives of others. Maybe you knew from the beginning what you wanted to write, or maybe all you knew was that you wanted to write something! Maybe make some money at it someday! But whatever our goal, we eventually jumped in, and the journey began.
We learned rather quickly that guidance on this path was necessary. We’d have to learn how to get past steep, forbidding mountains (publisher’s editorial boards?), avoid life-sucking quicksand (one-star Amazon reviews?), and battle the trolls of disappointment, discouragement, and, sometimes, downright depression (marketing, anyone?!).
No one ever said it would be easy.
As with all quests for great and good things, there are barriers to success, and enemies to avoid. The original of all enemies wants nothing more than to push us from our path. But we’ve read that story, and know how it ends. And as with our hobbit friends, we don’t fight these battles alone. We have a Guide who has never left us and who has brought others along to hold our hands, point the way, and help carry the load when we’re too tired to take another step. We find them in classes, in critique groups, and at writers’ conferences. Hold these people close!
Genius is great, but skill can be learned, and skill is essential on this Road. To grow our ability, we study—reading the best stories for inspiration and craft books by those who have gone on before, lived to tell the tale, and now show us how it’s done. And we keep our eyes on the prize, because at the end, in this and all aspects of our lives, we want to cross the finish line a victor. We want to proclaim with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:7–8 ESV).
Work hard, my friends, but enjoy the journey!
Dawn Shipman wanted to be a writer since her high school Creative Writing class. Since then, she has written and published articles, short stories, poetry, quizzes, plays, and, most recently, a YA Fantasy trilogy—Lost Stones of Argonia—published by Elk Lake. When she isn’t writing, Dawn loves reading, riding her horse, and exploring the God-graced beauties of the Pacific Northwest. Dawn will be teaching two workshops at the upcoming Cascade Christian Writers Fall Conference, “The Christian Author’s Journey” and “Why Write Fantasy?”
