Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you.
Proverbs 4:25
Not too long ago I was alerted to a new comment on one of my old blog posts.
I had to read my entry for context before responding, and found myself frowning. At the time that post was written, I had a thing for semicolons.
What started out as a harmless reply attempt turned into a critique and edit session. I whipped that thing into shape, replied, and was just about to sign out, when the link to another old post caught my attention.
Hmm. What’s this one look like?
I pulled it up and rolled my eyes, asking, “Tanara, could, you, possibly, add, one, more, comma?” The actual writing? Don’t ask.
That one ground into presentable submission, I attacked a few others. Some of them were so bad they fought back.
Though my schedule’s already packed, I convinced myself something had to be done. But before I could commence Operation Edit a Hundred Blog Posts, the following verse came to remembrance:
“Behold, I will do a new thing, shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19
As an unpublished novelist, it’s tempting to make sure every public word I’ve written lives up to my ever-increasing standards for writing. It may seem a worthy endeavor, but at the end of the day it’s simply a prideful attempt at perfectionism.
To learn and write new things, looking forward and not behind, is to let God guide and grow me.
He won’t make roads in the wilderness and rivers in the desert if I choose to camp there with my own little pickax and water bucket. And I can’t move forward if I keep tinkering with what’s done and over with.
Should I edit my novels? Of course. Year-old blog posts? No.
Glimpses into my writing past should result in praise for what God’s done since.
The foundations of a road have been laid, a riverbed hewn, a writer made better and growing still.
A writer determined to keep moving right along.
Your turn: When are you tempted to dwell in the past? What helps you to move forward?
