How do you pursue the quest for bettering your writing? What inspires you to search for the words, the expressions, the scenery, the action, the depth in your characters that rivals real life? How? What methodology? Why?
Of course if you recognize your work as drivel, you desire to improve. If you assess your work as passable, you want to get it better. But what if you truly like your work? And don’t authors have to like their work in the end? I mean, come on. Why work for days, weeks, months, sometimes years to submit a novel you think is worthless?
This isn’t to say we writers don’t doubt we can type a single worthwhile word when we stumble over them, not “feeling” them, not knowing where the heck this story intends to go as it stops dead. We shudder. We ache. We cry. We pray. We wonder. We fear. We worry. We threaten to quit. We give up momentarily. We sigh. We wait. We start again.
When do we conclude this is the best we can do? Never? Do we go on and on with our own “red pen” attacks and fuss and pick at the words as if they’re old grapes? What tells us it’s time to stop? Just stop already. Let someone else pick it apart. Or stuff it in a drawer, hide it in a file, stick it in a box and shove it under the guest bed or up in the attic.
What makes you better?
Father, I repeat this over and over again because of its incredible truth: apart from you I can do nothing. Only you can inspire more, better. Thank you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Into the Fire 
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