Definition of a Discipline
Absurd statements can sometimes reveal erroneous trains of thought. We might laugh at someone who says, "I want to be fit and muscular, I just don't have the talent for it." That isn't a valid excuse to avoid the gym. We know that bodybuilders spend vast amounts of time and energy to shape their physique. It comes with sacrifice and effort. Yet that is not how many approach the subject of writing. They bemoan a lack of talent, which is a vague term that indicates a special knack or aptitude that they project upon the great artists. While it is true that some are gifted with greater talent (whatever that means), it is generally worthless unless it is accompanied by a long process of disciplining that natural ability. If one lacks the genetics to build muscle, they may find doing so to be an impossibility. The good news is that almost everyone has some ability. The bad news is that our inner critic tells us that we are the unfortunate individuals that do not.
Let's give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and assume that we have something valuable to offer to the world from our imagination. Later we will deal with the question of whether, and how, this can be true. Before any of this, we must answer two simple questions. They are not difficult, but the articulation of your answers will be a lighthouse to you in a dark and crashing sea.
First, can a fictional story bear any real worth to its writer or reader? Our subconscious mind knows what is worthwhile already, but our rational mind, which makes us doubt, needs to be dealt with on its own terms. Even if a piece of writing is purely for the sake of entertainment, you must believe that entertainment lifts up the human soul. If you don't believe it brings significant and lasting value, you will or should soon give up the endeavor. Root your efforts in what you deem transcendentally valuable.
Second, are you willing to commit to this project? The goal to offer something of worth must be pursued with conscious effort until its completion. This is the meaning of a discipline: short-term pain is accepted in exchange for future earnings. You must accept the unpleasant truth that you are not as good as you could be at your craft. Many of you are cripplingly aware of this, and it is why you do not write. Don't let it stop you; use your dissatisfaction with your present ability to push through the discomfort of improving yourself. Your creative muscle is either strengthening or atrophying. You'll either face the unpleasantness of lifting those weights, or you'll be unhappy with yourself for avoiding the work you know you should be doing. So go lift some weights.
The Old Doubts
"Fine," you say. "I'll take your advice. I'll place my butt in the chair and actually write." So you do. And let's say you are able to avoid the immediate beck and call of the Internet (this time). You actually open your word processor and start tip-tapping at the keys. You write three new pages. Great! Your self-discipline has paid off! But sloth and distraction were merely the threshold guardians of a new world of challenges. Here most people will encounter a series of voices that can shut down anyone. Do not be mistaken, even an experienced writer will become weary of hearing the whispers of the Old Doubts. The common ones are:
You've used up all your good ideas; you just don't have that special spark that allowed you to make your best work anymore.
In the end you don’t have what it takes to make something meaningful in the lives of others; all this time and energy you’ve poured out into a dead thing has been a selfish dream that could have benefited those around you; and instead all of it will be given up for an incomplete disappointment, a failure, of what you were striving for.
That others are actually talented, and you are just a fraud; look at their divine inspiration that flows effortlessly from their fingertips without any pain or struggle, while you are muddling about like a caveman; after all, if you had it in you, you’d be able to do things as well as them, but you just lack that pure talent.
Consider all these whisperings and realize that most of them are excuses for giving up. Some of them are valid concerns. But if you are on the right track of making something worthwhile, know that they are destructive thoughts. Where do they come from? Lack of self-confidence, one might answer. It is not. Their source is pride. Pride is the kind of viewpoint which is wholly concerned with the Self. You'll find that all of the Doubts above are actually self-focused because they do not consider your gifting as a gifting, but instead as a means of self-expression. And that will lead to nowhere but agonizing over the selfish vice of pride, which loves to masquerade as humility and self-reflection. You need a paradigm shift to understand your writing as a divine calling. With it, all the Doubts will blink away like shadows under daylight.
A Definition of Passion
Time for a detour. Should you suffer for your art? There are some artists who seem to get away with creating without any struggle at all. These artists are called "Passionate." They are the blessed and rare. Know this: nothing worth doing will be easy all the time. Passion is love. But that means it will sometimes be more sacrifice than pleasure. It is okay to not find pleasure in your passion all of the time. This does not mean that you should no longer commit to it, nor that you are no longer called to it.
The word passion at one time meant suffering. The phrase the "Passion of Christ" brings to mind images of the extreme torture wrought upon the Son of Man. Passion plays, once a widespread theatrical entertainment in Medieval Europe, were stories of that pain and sacrifice. This passion (suffering) on the part of Jesus Christ was out of love for the people of the world whom he had come to redeem. So it is not without cause that I define "Passion" as an unconditional love willing to take on extreme suffering for the making of something valuable.
God-like Love: Subcreation
As an author, you find yourself in the unusual position of being the Creator and self-sacrificial Redeemer of your creation. J.R.R. Tolkien, lauded as the world's greatest fantasy author and a reverent Roman Catholic, described this god-like power as Sub-Creation. We are careful here to acknowledge the ultimate authority of our Heavenly Father, who has given us imaginations to imitate his own divine imagination. But in that imitation we may truly love our creations. Could this be a picture of the relationship between Creator and Creature? Out of love springs forth a thing that has, within its plane of existence, its own free will and soul. It cannot contradict its Creator, yet seems to have ideas of its own now and then.
Serving an Audience as an Ethic of Writing
As we create with god-like powers, we want to avoid the sabotaging trap of pride. Our gift of writing is exactly that: a gift. As the parable of the talents illustrates, we are the stewards of our resources and have a duty to multiply them. So what good can we do through our writing? What is the purpose of making fiction? Hopefully you have an answer already. I found my own answer in articulating the value I am providing to my reader. That is an answer which can be profoundly motivating and clarifying. Writing, ultimately, cannot be a means of self-expression, exclusively, without turning into gibberish. This is the failure of abstract modern art. While form and color may communicate much, if a painting is directionless and meant to be given meaning by the viewer, then it has failed. The sole purpose of the written language is to communicate. If you cannot communicate an idea from your mind to another, then why are you writing? Even if the only reason you write is to clear your own mind and set your ideas straight, you are writing with an audience in mind: namely, yourself. The purpose of writing is to communicate an idea, even if the audience is simply our own fractured mind.
It is unlikely that you want to write a story for yourself alone. You have an idea that you believe valuable to give to others. So should your guiding ethic be to serve your audience? This at least shrinks pride. By fixing a particular person as your audience you will be forced to write clearly (to communicate). This improves your writing. You will also avoid the other pitfall, which is writing for what an audience can give you (e.g., attention, money, awards). This is only if you write with the intention of delivering something valuable to your audience, which necessitates that you be specific. It may not be necessary, but it is generally helpful to imagine you are writing to one person in particular.
Therefore, if your purpose in writing is to serve an audience, you will be much further along than most. We have looked at what the proper view of writing is in relation to ourselves (an articulation of thoughts, not a means of internally spiraling self-expression), and in relation to our neighbors (an act of service, not a bolstering of one's fame and pride). Both are important. But we have an incomplete picture. The fullness of a Christian writer's understanding of what the purpose of writing is - and the unconscious effect that it has upon oneself - is dependent on how it impacts one's relationship with his Creator. This is the Primary Ethic of writing.
The Antidote to Pride: Worship as the Primary Ethic of Writing
Just as soon as one has decided to write for their audience instead of to them, one will be attacked by the Old Doubts with even greater ferocity than before. This is because you are on the right path. If you were on the wrong one, you might be filled with self-loathing, but you would not be assaulted with doubt. As before, dwelling on those doubts is actually a self-centered thought process. Merely deciding to write for others will not rid you of those doubts. It will increase them. Yet you must stop thinking about your crippling lack of ability.
There are two strategies for doing this: Option A, you can tell yourself repeatedly that you are already a master of your craft and that your work is perfect. This kind of wanton self-deceit will lead to stagnation of your skill and internal frustration. The frustration will bloom into bitterness as the narrative you indoctrinate yourself with grows increasingly disparate from reality.
Option B is to devote the act of writing as a part of your spiritual walk. Learn to see writing as an act of worship. Notice how putting our actions under their rightful authority evaporates self-centered ambition and doubt? Every thing we do is either drawing us nearer to the kind of life Jesus led or else it's drawing us further away. Count your efforts. When we see the supercharged meaning of what we actually do with our time, we gain eyes of humility. Then that humility frees us from the prideful voices that tell us our gift is not good enough. It recognizes our gift as a calling.
An objection can be made here. Is it truly a calling? Or merely a desire? But I use the word gift intentionally. Being the stewards of everything given to us by our Creator, our ability (be it small or great) to write falls under this category. The parable of the talents exhorts us to use our giftings profitably in honor of God (thus recognizing his ultimate authority and glory, i.e. worship). If our desire to write is not an accident, then it is a calling.
Mastering Your Internal Critic
We have already dealt with the Old Doubts. But another level of nuance can be added. The internal critic raises both bad and good concerns. Sometimes discomfort with your work is a warning that you must heed - or else pay the consequences. So while you dismiss the self-centered doubts by reframing your perspective, you must pay attention to your subconscious mind which is trying to indicate where you have gone astray. It is your guide who sees what your conscious mind cannot. You must become a judge. Learn to discern between selfish doubt and the discomfort of a subpar result.
If the writer is bored, the reader will be too. Boredom springs from one of two sources: Either nothing meaningful is happening in the story, or else it is told in such a way that what should be meaningful falls flat. This kind of boredom must be distinguished from restlessness. It may feel similar to boredom, but really you just don't want to do the hard work of creating when you could be a glutton for entertainment (i.e. dopamine in the form of YouTube, TikTok, music, etc). The key to defeating restlessness is not to indulge in it, but to fix steadfastly an objective in mind and then to pursue that objective until it is achieved or you find another objective more worthwhile. Restlessness is the lack of pointed purpose.
Your Internal Critic raises uncomfortable truth along with the Doubts. Dismiss the Doubts, but do not dismiss the Critic. He is looking out for you in his own way: he knows that you are about to expend a significant amount of your limited resources on this endeavor. He can let you know if it's valuable enough for that sacrifice. He can be a brutal enemy if you deign to ignore him - or your greatest counselor if you listen with a discerning mind. He is your super-rational advisor - the Creative Judge guiding your work.
Make That Which You Know to be Good
Practicing a discipline for the sake of the discipline is not very motivating. Instead, recognize the beauty to which your soul responds. Try to create something like it. In so doing, dedicate it to the Lord, and shoot for something beautiful. If you succeed you may draw others toward the ultimate source of that goodness. If you fail after sincere effort you will at least find a little bit of that goodness embed itself within you. Or you've thought through a difficult concept. Here's a simple piece of advice that can only be followed when all of one's priorities are solid: Focus on making what you know to be good. Once again, Pride will try to steer you off the path. It will try to get you to write for fame and attention. But this is the stifling spirit that critiques and constantly asks if your work is worth it. A humble man devoted to a noble work is a better thing than a lauded one chasing whims. When you reframe your efforts, not as a sacrifice unto the work itself, nor as a means of collecting awards and money, but as an act of worship - then, of course, it is worth it. It is because He is worth everything.
Some really good things to consider here.
Though I would say, in regards to one of your points near the end, that one can still be lauded and remain humble. I don't see humility and receiving praise as mutually exclusive.