What do you do when life throws you a curve ball and you’re expecting an easy one over the plate? Sounds like a simple question, but if you ask five different people, you’ll probably get five different answers. Like—
- Bob—hit a homerun
- Jim—step away from the plate
- Tom—lean into it
- Angie—get mad and take your ball home
- Susan—wait for the next pitch
Obviously Bob and Jim have never had a really hard curve ball thrown at them. I think I like Angie’s answer…except if I do that, then no one will ask me to play ball with them again…As far as I can see, Jim and Susan have the right answer.
Sometimes life comes at us so fast and hard it steals our breath away, taking our creativity with it. So what should we do when that happens? I don’t know. At least not what you should do. We’re all different and we handle life’s challenges differently. I know what I do, and maybe it’ll help some of you out there who are struggling.
First of all, recognize we’re not always in control of our circumstances. God is. And He knows what we’ll face long before it happens—nothing catches him by surprise. So lean in to Him and give yourself time to process the circumstance. For some that will be a week, others longer.
But I have a deadline!
Sometimes a deadline and being super busy helps. It did when my mother passed. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes when we’re going through a difficult time, we can’t focus. We’re satisfied if we get one thing done all day.
Accept it. Accept that you’re not going to be able to meet that deadline, and contact your editor and let her or him know. I don’t know any editors who wouldn’t cut you some slack. If you’re Indie published, push your deadline out, give yourself breathing room. Your creativity and focus will return, but sometimes we need to back away from everything, do mundane tasks until our hearts and minds heal. And they will. But you have to give yourself time.
Not sure why I wrote this particular post this month, only that I felt there were writers out there who needed to hear that sometimes we have to take time to heal from life’s curveballs.
Investigative Services Branch (ISB) ranger Ainsley Beaumont arrives in her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, to investigate the murder of a three-month-pregnant teenager. While she wishes the visit was under better circumstances, she never imagined that she would become the killer’s next target–nor that she’d have to work alongside an old flame.
After he almost killed a child, former FBI sniper Lincoln Steele couldn’t bring himself to fire a gun, which had deadly and unforeseen consequences for his best friend. Crushed beneath a load of guilt, Linc is working at Melrose Estate as an interpretive ranger. But as danger closes in on Ainsley during her murder investigation, Linc will have to find the courage to protect her. The only question is, will it be too little, too late?
Award-winning author Patricia Bradley continues her Natchez Trace Park Rangers series with a story about how good must prevail when evil just won’t quit.
Patricia Bradley is a Carol finalist and winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, and three anthologies that included her stories debuted on the USA Today Best Seller List. She and her two cats call Northeast Mississippi home–the South is also where she sets most of her books. Her romantic suspense novels include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. Obsession, the second book in the Natchez Trace Park Rangers series, released Februrary 2, 2021. She is now hard at work on the third book, Crosshairs.
Writing workshops include American Christian Fiction Writers online courses, workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference, the KenTen Retreat where she was also the keynote, Memphis American Christian Fiction Writer group, and the Bartlett Christian Writers group. When she has time, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.