God, Growing, Rejection, Risk

Growing: Encouraging Personal Growth

Jeanne Takenaka

Unless you try to do something RW Emerson

By +Jeanne Takenaka @JeanneTakenaka

***Hubby and I took a few days away, so I don’t have a regular blogpost ready for this week.

With that being said, I have been contemplating the idea behind this quote. I’ve completed three rough drafts that have the potential to become full-fledged books. If I revise and polish and submit them.

I stretched myself with the first word I wrote for my first book. I—the woman who never thought she could make up a plot, imagine up characters and dream up dialogue—wrote my first story. With a lot of help from God. And guidance from friends.

As my third story marinates for a bit, I’ve discovered a hesitancy to take it through the process to completion. I suspect I’m nurturing a fear of rejection.

So . . .

It’s time to try to do something beyond what I’ve mastered and refine this story. Pour more of myself into it and see what God does with it. If I  entrust the end result to Him, I don’t need to fear rejection or anything else. I’m going to grow as I walk through this stretching process.

What about you? What have you tried to do beyond what you’ve already mastered? What was the end result?

Published by Jeanne Takenaka

Award winning aspiring novelist, Jeanne Takenaka, writes contemporary inspirational fiction that tackles real life issues with a heart to draw women closer to God and those around them. She lives near the mountains in Colorado with her amazing husband and two exuberant boy-men. She loves being God’s girl—always learning about His grace, hanging out with friends and enjoying a great cup of coffee. When she’s not writing you can find her with a camera in her hand, looking for #alittlebitofpretty in her days.

7 thoughts on “Growing: Encouraging Personal Growth”

  1. Jeanne, you are amazing! I always think of God as the great “Imaginer”–able to speak things into creation. Writing is a wonderful gift–our imaginations get to “write” something into being and glorify our ultimate Creator and source of our imagination. God bless. You go, woman!

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    1. God IS the Great Imaginer, isn’t He? I love that He speaks things into creation. It’s beyond me to fully grasp His ability to do that. I think it’s pretty amazing how He gives writers stories and ideas and truths to write and share with others. Thanks for your encouragement!

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  2. I’m sure you will have that success in your writing.

    How am I going beyond? I’m preparing to abandon my search for an agent and a traditional publishing career and go the SP route. It’s not really what I want to do, but after getting some completely contradictory responses from agents, and spending a year doing rewrites on what was already a pretty decent book, I realized that I’m chasing the shadows of ghosts.

    And I don’t have another year to waste. I’m already running out of energy.

    So, we’ll see.

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    2. Andrew, knowing you, this decision wasn’t arrived at lightly. I will be praying for you as you step out into a new adventure toward self-publishing. May God give you all the energy you need to grow in this season!

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  3. One thing I did not master: playing the organ. I took two years of lessons during grade school. My parents finally gave up on getting me to practice. Now I wish I could play.

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    1. Terri, I took piano lessons for about six months in second grade. I self-taught from there, but I never got very good. It’s one of my regrets too. But, I guess it’s never too late to learn, if we want to badly enough, right? 🙂

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