i think i’m ready

I think I’m ready. Ready to start drafting again.

You see, I have this idea—this bright, new, shiny idea, and I don’t think I can ignore it any longer. This new story idea came to me in the middle of a long hot summer, the very summer I finished revising A Memory Made Real, and ever since then it’s been patiently waiting for me to respond to it. To start writing. 

I believe that ideas are alive in a very real sense of the word. In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, she talks about how ideas are constantly swirling around us, waiting to be “escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.” These ideas—as alive and vibrant as they are—can’t come into being on their own; they need a human partner to collaborate with. So they flitter about from person to person, landing nearby every once in a while, waiting for us to notice them. 

Can’t you see them now, these little pings of inspiration? I imagine each idea with delicate butterfly-shaped wings, translucent and rich with color, fluttering near our heads and whispering in our ears, just waiting for us to say yes. 

Too often we miss these ideas because we’re not paying attention; we’re too busy, too distracted. And even on those quiet occasions when we do notice an idea that wants to work with us, that’s usually when the self-doubt starts to kick in: Who am I to think I could do such a thing? To make such a marvel? 

I felt that doubt with my first book and with my second and third too. And sure enough, I feel it with my fourth. With each book, this doubt takes a different shape, but there’s something familiar about it, too. It’s those same old worries, those ancient feelings of inadequacies we all carry around inside us. We’re all singing the same worn-out song, the same fearful tune, and yet somehow we’re still surprised when someone else gets to the chorus and says, “I’m scared too.” 

Holding out your hand to a new idea and allowing it to gently land will always feel a little scary because there’s something unknowable about it, something hushed and divine. But it’s precisely that marvelous truth that makes my heart beat right out of my chest; it’s my own divinity responding to the divine. 

So I will start writing. 

I will choose to capture this idea with both hands and a brave and willing heart. I won’t get spooked and shoo it away. I won’t think that someone else could do it better. I won’t question my ability to hold on to such a big and beautiful idea or wonder if I can handle its fragile wings with enough tender care. And I won’t dismiss the time and effort it takes to make something out of nothing—I will embrace it.

I will create, just as I was created to. Just as we all were. We were designed to receive inspiration and to see it through by a loving God who is never finished creating. Who sends us ideas with butterfly wings that flutter and whisper and prod and poke until we look up and hear His voice telling us that it’s time. Time to listen. Time to create. 

I think I’m ready. 

No—I know I am. 

Ready to start drafting again. 

To write this new story. 

And to start a new chapter in mine.