This newsletter has been a toughie. I have had myriad thoughts about where to begin, what to write about, and how to tickle your writing bone. (OK, it’s a weak play on words, but let’s just go with it.)
In all those thoughts, I’ve deleted every. last. word.
I just couldn’t settle on any one idea or train of thought. Perhaps, though, it’s a little like summer.
Summer is this ever-changing wave of emotional crescendo, mixed with heat (and lots of Georgia humidity if you live nearby), stirred up with a not-small amount of boredom, and then you’re left with this looming question:
Did this season go as I planned? Your brain shouts questions in all caps:
WAS IT AMAZING OR WAS IT AMAZING??
This is to say, there’s a whole lot of expectation bound up in summer. Even though we’re not all teachers or traveling nurses, we somehow expect summer to be so much better (freer, more flexible, easier to juggle) than the rest of the year.
Yet for many of us, it’s actually the opposite of easier. We are a walking tightrope of balance:
Adult kids home from college
Teens who need to get to work but can’t drive yet
Tweens who want to see their friends (but can’t drive yet)
Husbands who still work their 9-to-5 but equally want more time to work in the yard, finish last year’s house project, and hang out with the guys on the back porch
Your usual work
Finding space to actually start and finish a book
Trying to get to the pool (or even a vacation) for once without losing your mind looking for your keys! your wallet! your towel! and why doesn’t this swimsuit fit the way it did last year?!
So you can see why my mind is a mushy and I had a heckuva time trying to decide what to write about.
Here’s where I landed:
Let’s learn together!
Let’s be renewed in our passion for writing (and editing) in a way that keeps us coming back to the desk (even though, yes, it’s summer).
Why Passion Matters
If we’re passionate about what we’re writing, guess what? We will come back to it.
Even if you take a three-week vacation, you’ll get back into advancing that story if you believe in it.
Or if you’ve been dealing with a sick child and you’re not sure the last time you actually went into the grocery store (or out the front door in real clothes), you will get back to writing if it’s something that you think is worthy of your energy. It might not be right now, may not even be this month. But you will fight for the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard when you know your writing matters.
Passion is what propels a manuscript from ideation to full-on line edit. It’s what makes us save a few months’ of our side hustle income to earmark for the final copy edit once we’re sure it’s as tight as it can be.
Let me encourage you that the “p” word both drifts and shifts. Your passions will shift, as I’m reminded in this podcast episode with Brooke McGlothlin of Million Praying Moms.
So, passions shift, and they drift when we’re not paying attention (or too distracted to put energy into them). How do you know if your passions have drifted or they’re just shifting?
Passion Shift vs. Passion Drift
A shift in passion is not necessarily a bad thing. Even God calls people to different seasons (see Ecclesiastes 3 & Ruth 1:1-22).
Passion can shift because you’re being driven by external factors (e.g., a young mom lightens a career mode to be more present with her children for a season), or your internal compass might fuel it.
John Wesley Chisholm, who writes at The Bee, asserts the danger of “certainty without curiosity.”
So, of course, passion can, and in some cases, should shift as we mature, grow, and discover the value of changing our minds.
That would be an example of passion shift.
Unlike competitive driving drifts, which are intentional, passion drifts usually happen quietly, like a furtive glance you almost miss (or do?) the first time someone has a crush on you.
On Creative Genes, Vivek Verma poses the idea that drift has to do with a blur, pressure, and lack of remaining tethered to what (and often who) we love most.
He writes:
We push ourselves creatively, constantly. We say yes to every gig, every idea, every opportunity—because this is what we love, right?
But somewhere along the way, this love also blinds us to the fact that we are a human being too—with real emotions, real stress, and a life beyond the picture-perfect world of our carefully curated portfolio.
The good news is that when our passion drifts, we have a choice. We can choose to rediscover it (which sometimes looks like walking away) or abandon it. I’d argue that if it’s an abandonment, it might be an unhealthy passion or a passion that’s out of balance.
Similar to Verma’s opinion, I do think that our passions are what drive us in our work, but they’re also divisive when it comes to how we prioritize our lives. We must become better at prioritizing our everyday life so the passion remains within a boundary of our own making.
Talking to your family, your friends who know you well, and even other creatives can help you recognize where a passion is competing with your life priorities or where it’s simply shifted. And sometimes, what we think is a passion drift or shift is actually just a timing thing.
Brooke McGlothlin knew for two years that God was leading her to let go of one passion project so that she could embrace one she’d already let go of.
Earlier, I mentioned the idea of walking away from a passion to see if it’s truly a passion. In McGlothlin’s case, that’s exactly what happened; she spent time away from one to embrace another, and then felt like her purpose was dual in nature but her time didn’t support two passions at once. So, that’s when she knew it was the right choice to transfer Million Praying Moms to the leadership of someone else. Someone who could devote herself singly to that one ministry.
How to Know When to Walk Away
Sometimes, we have a passion for a particular genre or a project we’ve devoted hours of energy toward. But for whatever reason, we aren’t moving forward — it can feel like we’re just treading water.
That’s a good time to ask yourself some reflective questions (scroll to the end for some ideas), and keep asking them until you come to a conclusion.
It’s also a time when you can seek the support of those closest to you. Often, what we’re reticent to admit, our loved ones know long before we do.
We must keep in mind, too, that walking away doesn’t have to mean letting go forever.
This is a concept I’ve been learning and re-learning throughout my adult life. I’ll give you a recent example.
In my work as an editor and a freelance writer, occasionally projects just lob themselves into my inbox or come through a writing acquaintance, and they’re clear yeses. I’m pretty good at knowing what I love and when something is right.
Like a thrift store find that’s unbeatable (it’s exactly what’s been in my mind, fits a need in our home, and has the right price tag), I’m a quick decision-maker if I know. If you know, you know, right?
About six months ago, I had the opportunity to team up with others in one of my writing groups to publish a book. It was a deeply personal book, one of which I’d only be writing a chapter (great news — I didn’t have the margin to write an entire book at the time). But I knew I needed to get buy-in from my family and ask if they were okay with it. (Some of the stories I would tell included some of them.)
They gave me the go-ahead, along with a few conditions, and I headed toward my publishing goal. Gave my commitment, added some publishing dollars to it, and met my deadlines.
But then, as the launch date neared, I realized it would involve a trip we hadn’t planned on or budgeted for. Still, I kept trying to make it work. I’d research plane tickets, knowing the solo drive wasn’t high on my priority list. I arranged to stay with a friend who lived in the same state, although not terribly close by. (It’s what I could make happen.)
I almost bought a plane ticket about seven different times over the next month. Every time, it seemed like something was stopping me. We’d recently set a new budget, but I hadn’t accounted for this, and I could write it off as a work expense. (I was trying to rationalize this; we’ve all been there, right?) But the money still needed to be fronted. Money I hadn’t made or saved up yet.
Eventually, I decided it wasn’t going to be in my future; the launch could go on without me. After all, nine other writers would be involved. Who was I to think it mattered if I was there? (Imposter syndrome, anyone?)
So I told my husband it was fine. I was a little disappointed, but the logistics weren’t working. We would also have just arrived home from a family vacation, and this trip would have had to work within three days of that trip (which is why the airfare was through the roof). I had already committed to something on the back end of that week. It just didn’t look feasible.
I let it go.
I kid you not when I tell you that the very same day I decided to let the opportunity to travel and be part of the launch slip away, I got a ping in our authors’ Facebook group.
As a last-ditch effort, a week earlier, I had asked if anyone else happened to be from Georgia or if they were driving through. A quick Facebook search told me what I didn’t want to hear.
Authors were from all over the country: Indiana, Florida, California, to name a few. Nobody else from Georgia, and I doubt they’d be coming through. Plus, no one responded.
But that same day, the day a week after my inquiry and the day I’d decided to let it go, one of the authors said she was flying through as a layover right near me. She asked if I could get to Atlanta by such-and-such date, and if so, we can ride together, room together and ride back.
Um, dream yes! Automatic yes!
I tell you this story to illustrate the power of passion. It can drive us, but it cannot take over our priorities. It must be harnessed, balanced, and ever checked.
And sometimes, it must be let go so it can return.
I’m still learning this; how about you? How are you learning in your current writing context?
Deep Dive into Fun & Pragmatism
Because this was a weightier topic, I wanted to end this newsletter on a lighter and more practical note.
First, the lighter part.
Lately, I’ve been skipping lunch because I just can’t be bothered. It is summer. (Season of fun for all, right? Remember?) I do not want to be saddled with cooking midday when I’m trying to juggle all the things.
Enter new recipe that I made up last week — and it was AMAZING! Summertime AMAZING!
Here you go; if you like shrimp, you’re welcome. If you don’t, I have a vegetarian option.
Poblano Shrimp
Ingredients: 16/20 shrimp - 2 lbs; poblano pepper (2); butter (2 TBSP); avocado or olive oil (1-2 TBSP); salt & pepper or a garlic/salt-pepper seasoning like this one (I could eat it on toast and be happy; we put it on everything.)
Steps:
Heat up a sheet pan at 375 after you’ve put a block of butter and the 1-2 TBSP of oil on it. It’ll melt and heat in the oven.
Dice the poblano.
Once the oven is heated, take out the sheet pan and add your shrimp, which you’ve already tossed with diced poblano and seasoning. (I did a quick defrost of my frozen shrimp by putting it under cold water in the sink while the oven heated.)
Throw the shrimp mixture on your sheet pan and bake for 5-8 minutes. I didn’t even flip my shrimp, and it was incredible.
You can eat it warm or put it in the fridge to throw into salads, make shrimp rolls (like a lobster roll but less $$), or just straight from the container when you have no time to think about what to eat for lunch.
Veggie option
For those non-shrimp lovers, I also made this and loved it.
Soak a package of dried beans overnight (I used chickpeas, but you do you). Next, drain them and throw them into your Instant Pot and cover them with bone broth (I used chicken, but of course, a true vegetarian option would involve a vegetarian broth — use whatever you have and prefer). Add the same seasoning from above, stir, and set the manual button to 12 minutes.
Let it release naturally, and you’ve got chickpeas to throw into a salad, eat as part of a vegetarian rice bowl (we almost always have leftover rice in the fridge), or even use for homemade hummus if you feel like going the extra mile.
I jarred a lot of my chickpeas to keep in the fridge; the rest of them, I threw into a container with some light olive oil/Italian-ish dressing, chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, a quarter of a red onion, and I have a salad I can eat straight from the fridge.
Now, for the pragmatism: reflective questions to help you discern where your writing has turned from passion to drift or shift.
Do I love this project/job/pursuit 70% of the time?
Is this project/job/pursuit causing me anxiety most of the time, some of the time, or so much time that it’s competing with my off time so that I can’t enjoy what I usually would?
Do I find myself thinking about other passions, projects or pursuits that I’d prefer to be doing right now, or do I stay distracted by these other pursuits (maybe a volunteer job or a less income-producing project) rather than getting straight to my current commitment? Is my side hustle way more appealing, and is there any way I can do that all the time?
Have I found that I have nowhere to go in this current project? Do I feel like I may be at a dead end? (If so, it’s time to loop in a trusted friend, mentor, coach, or someone who knows you well and can help you see what you’re possibly not able to see anymore.)
Has this taken up time I’d like to devote more to my family, friends, or other relationships?
These are the questions I’d ask myself if my passion started to wane or disrupt my everyday life. Remember: We’re all in a learning cycle — it’s okay to ask for help, re-learn something you thought you’d already learned, or even put something away for a while so you can evaluate it from afar.
Whatever you do, I hope it’s deeply restorative and resonates with your values and priorities.
Until next time,
Brooke
P.S. That collab project I mentioned earlier? Stay tuned. I’ll be sharing a cover reveal soon!
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