by Christina Miller, @CLMillerbooks

You know that feeling—the one that hits the moment you realize your story’s in trouble. 

Maybe you’ve crafted your characters and written a few chapters, but their backstories suddenly feel contrived. Or you just finished act two and realize the middle sags lower than your college-apartment couch. Worse, you discover you took a wrong turn in act one, and you have to scrap most (or all) of the book and start over. 

That’s when the feelings come. Dismay, incompetence, a sense of loss, maybe embarrassment, inadequacy. Panic, if the book is contracted and the deadline looms.

Then, if you’re like me, you take about thirty minutes to race through the Five Stages of Writerly Grief:

It can’t be as bad as I think. (Speedread the manuscript, denying the severity of the book’s problems and assuring yourself that it’s just fine, no matter the evidence to the contrary.) 

Why does this have to be so hard? (Throw all your how-to-write books across the room. Kick the desk. You’re still mad, and now your foot hurts.)

God, if you’ll help me fix this book, I’ll donate my advance to an orphanage. (Do an internet search for nearby orphanages, later to recognize that God isn’t going to make a book bargain with you.)

I can never fix this book. I’m going to miss my deadline. I’m finished as a writer. (Grab the leftover Easter candy and curl up on the couch to binge watch your favorite series, although you know Peeps and chocolate eggs won’t make this sad feeling go away.) 

This book has serious problems, but the Lord has called me to write, so I have to get to work. (Gather the writing books from the floor and stack them on your desk again, fully accepting that you have a lot of hard work to do.)

A few years ago, I signed a contract to write a historical romance novella in a collection for a Christian publisher. Even though my father was in and out of the hospital during that time, fighting multiple organ failure complicated by Parkinson’s, I was on target to hit my deadline. Then my dad’s last day came. When the tissue donation was complete, the funeral was over, and our out-of-state family went home, it was time for me to put the last touches on my book and send it to my editor.

Or so I thought.

Maybe it was the stress of my father’s illness, but this book was not good. At all. I realized this on Tuesday, and my deadline was Sunday. 

I deleted everything except chapter one, put my life on hold, stayed up late. Grabbed the Peeps. 

My brother, Jeff, the microbiologist (the heroic one—the one who develops new medicines to save lives while I am writing kissing scenes) was concerned. He called our cousin Michael, who’s a Hollywood screenwriter. “I’m worried about Sis. She has to write 20,000 words, do revisions, proofread, and hand in this book in five days.”

Our cousin didn’t share Jeff’s angst. Michael knew the biz. “She’s a writer. She’ll get it done.”

Michael also knew that, when you’re a writer, you caffeine up, face the problem, and find a solution.

Unless you can’t.

It took time to figure out where I’d gone wrong. Solutions and word count came, but not fast enough. I wore out my ACFW critique group with my neediness. My brainstorming team cringed every time my messages popped up on their screens as I pleaded for help. My mom faithfully read each scene as I wrote it, staying up into the early hours of morning each night, encouraging me and scanning for errors and inconsistencies. My husband lived on peanut butter (he’s dangerously handsome, but the man can’t cook).

Sunday came. I had to finish and send this book, but I still had a chapter to go. 

About five in the afternoon, I froze. My brain was so foggy, I couldn’t write the next sentence. I knew that if I could just write that next line, I could finish the book. But none of my How to Get Unstuck tricks (which I shared in a previous MBT blog post) worked. It was my black moment. I had nothing. 

The clock continued to tick. I was done, out of time. I laid my head on my desk.

And remembered the secret of the secret place.

I’d learned about it years before, in a little self-published book called (unsurprisingly) Secrets of the Secret Place by Bob Sorge. I recalled the book’s premise: Matthew 6:6: “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

  I knew the Lord had reminded me of that verse. I got up and shut the door as the Word said to do, marveling at the fact that the closed door put me into the secret place, where God the Father waited for me. 

He met me there. 

I don’t know how long I stayed with the Father there, but it was long enough for Him to give me what I needed: the next line. My fingers flew on the keyboard, typing words I didn’t craft. Words far more polished and poignant than anything I could write. It was the most beautiful sentence I’ve ever written, before that day or since. Beautiful in cadence, content, and emotion, but also beautiful because the Father came through for me in the secret place and gave me words from His heart.

That day, I learned that the Lord waits to help us in the secret place. I also learned that He is a far better writer than I.

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Embracing His Past

Stunned to learn he has an adult son, widower Harrison Mitchell’s eager to track him down and build a relationship. But when he uproots his life and moves to Natchez, Mississippi, he’s hit with another surprise: his new boss, Anise Armstrong, is his son’s adoptive mother. Now he must win her trust to prove he deserves to be a father and grandfather…and possibly a husband.

Author Christina Miller’s idea of a perfect day involves a southern beach, a stack of books, and a glass of sweet tea. Years ago, she left her job as an RN to work in the church her husband pastors. She also became a writer—and sometimes she gets to write on the beach. Christina is a Love Inspired author, Bethany Global University (Bloomington, Minnesota) graduate with degrees in theology and missiology, church secretary, worship leader, and children’s ministry teacher. When she doesn’t have her nose in a book or her toes in the sand, you might catch her visiting an antebellum mansion, opening her early-American home for Dinner Church, or teaching at a women’s conference. Christina lives on her family farm with her husband of thirty-four years.