Hope to Keep Writing: Editing and Answered Prayers

I am in the editing stages of my second first WIP (that might actually become something worth reading). I've gone chapter by painstaking chapter, submitting them to my critique partners for the last seven months. That's probably twice as long as it took to write the first draft.

But first drafts are like this:

Not that it isn't hard. It is. But editing is sifting through all that sand. It's throwing out pieces of broken sea shell, scooping away big chunks of superfluous sand, and going in with a tiny brush to carve elaborate turrets, windows, brick facade, maybe even a moat to go around it that you didn't think to add before.

It's laborious, sometimes tedious. Some days I sit at the screen and stare at the same paragraph for three hours, and I don't know what to do with it until after I've left the computer in frustration and started doing the dishes, which have sat by the sink since breakfast because I was in a hurry to begin the day's editing.

But sometimes there are magical little moments, when I discover a gem I didn't know was there, and editing becomes exciting and energizing and I think maybe I'm on to something after all.

I was mulling over a chapter the other day, really struggling with it, knowing it wasn't where I wanted it to be. I read a line, maybe for the twentieth time since writing it. It wasn't an important line. It didn't stand out in any way. I stared at it until I saw the word, "her." Just a simple pronoun. It probably occurs 1000 times in the manuscript. But this one was different. It added a layer of meaning to the sentence I didn't fully understand when I wrote it, not even when I read it the first nineteen times. This day I saw it for what it meant. "Her," and no one else. Not the whole family.
Just her.
Plot twist.
New motive.
How exciting!
I added one more pithy line beneath it, a line of dialogue, which reveals a great deal about the character of the father, a characteristic the girl doesn't know yet, but the reader does. Now.

I've made maybe half a dozen little discoveries like this during the editing process. The light bulb goes on over a word or phrase, revealing a plot twist (usually a plot hole), and things come together in a beautiful new way.

I don't usually take any special note of these moments. I just squirm in my seat, rub my hands together, and smile wickedly as I type on.

I took note of this one because it felt distinctly like something outside myself, something smarter than myself, had a hand in that. I know there are lots of writers in the great big world who have these moments, but I am always praying over my writing, so when something like this happens, I wonder if God is answering my prayer to show me things I can't see. And then I wonder if God's hand is actually in my creative work, and if I'm being obedient to His calling, not mine, and if He's blessing me for it. I wonder if He's guiding me to the next step. I begin to think that this is not all for nothing.

It could all be my imagination, but it gives me hope. It makes me crave more time with my computer. It drives me to keep at it, even when I have normal things that normal people do that get in the way. I may have a day that's full with bible study, and picking up the dry cleaning, and stopping by the store to pick up ingredients for a meal for my friend who just had a baby. But all those normal things are punctuated by thoughts of my story. Dialogue streaming through my mind as I drive, feeling the sun on my character's skin when I feel it on mine, and using my one precious hour alone to unload it all in the Word document, and read it over four times to make sure I like it.

Whether or not God does anything with it, I think, for me, there will always be writing. It is a part of who I am. It is a part of how I function. The tap has been turned on and it flows constantly for me.