Last week I was pretty clear about what I would write about today. Then life happened, as it does, and I changed my mind about that. This week something some things happened that made me do a gut check to make sure I’m going the direction my Heavenly Father wants me to go.

I have embarked on a time of exponential personal growth and I am writing or working on my writing craft as a full-time job. It is exciting and difficult.  I am relearning how to focus for extended periods of time and it’s helping me in ways I hadn’t expected. The yoga class I recently joined has played into this as well. My body finally feels like I have the physical capacity to do the work I need to without hurting myself, and I can feel myself getting stronger every day.

One of the hardest things I’ve encountered in my writing is the requirement to write characters and situations – their choices – that I would never put myself in. Situations that I wouldn’t want someone I love to be in. This is hard, in part, because I fall in love with my characters. It’s also hard because their values don’t always reflect my own. They do stupid or risky things. Things I may not want to see them do, but I still have to write it. They get hurt by the actions of others. I have to write their words, their choices, their loss of innocence, their pain and consequences. You think you cry hard when you read the painful part of a story with a character you have fallen in love with? Imagine what it took to write that. I promise no one loves that character more than the person who wrote it.

Today, I was reading in the Book of Mormon and I came across a verse where Jesus, visiting an ancient people in America, told them to write down the things he tells them so that, when the time is right, their words can go forth to others who need to read them.

“4 Therefore give heed to my words; write the things which I have told you; and according to the time and the will of the Father they shall go forth unto the Gentiles.”

3 Nephi 23:4