Why do you write?

Last week, my writing and edits were starting to get on top of me. I was stressed. I felt that my edits were no good, my book would fail, my marketing wouldn’t do any good, etc.

Then I thought to myself, why do I write?

What drives you to put pen to paper?

I write for two reasons,

• I enjoy it
• I really think God wants me to.

Now, do either of those things have anything to do with things like…

• Getting published right away
• Selling truckloads of books
• Fame to rival Richard Castle? ;)

No.

There’s nothing wrong with aiming for commercial success, and I certainly hope to achieve it.

But it’s not my number one goal.

And when you think about it, why would God want me to write? It’s not like He can’t think up His own words. No, God doesn’t need me to write at all. But He wants to take the journey with Him. And He wants me to learn to trust Him.

And what do I define success as, anyway? A relationship of love, trust and obedience with God. That may include a great writing career, a mediocre one or none at all.

My job is to simply do my best, and walk with God through it all.

What about you? What motivates you to write? How do you deal with pressure?

Join the conversation below!

Jessica Everingham is a 25 year-old Australian writer. She prefers the term writer because it’s too hard to say ‘journalist, online training developer and author’ in one sentence.

She loves connecting with readers and writers via Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and her blog.

Her unpublished novel Hating Jeremy Walters was a finalist in the 2015 Frasier Contest, run by My Book Therapy, and runner-up in the 2015 Australasian Christian Writers Contemporary Romance Contest.