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There come episodes in everyone’s life where a change must take place. It can be an individual decision or an event happens outside the control of the individual’s ability to prevent it which forces the change. I’ve come to one of those cross road decisions and it was hard to make as it has been a part of me for several years: the FaithWriters challenge. When I was still employee servicing Veterans I became intrigued with their stories of being in the military and began writing them down. I interviewed over 10,000 Veterans and also learned that I could not write so I joined a local writing club and FaithWriters.
The two became separate in my goals, however. The local writing group gave me a face-to-face critique and I eventually became the co-author of four books and its president. FaithWriters gave me an opportunity to share my faith and hopefully bless others at the same time. Never claiming to be an expert writer, particularly now, I did progress to this level and one Editor’s Choice from becoming a Peter Principle member (no, I’m not saying the Masters’ members are Peter Principle quality – only I might be). But features of FaithWriters have changed. Some for the good and perhaps some for the not so good.
As I mentioned I was one of those contributors to FaithWriters who like to write, tried to share their faith and loved to bless others. It was a real challenge in the Advance group to be in the top five when there were 30-40 some entries. But the rules and circumstances started to change. First it there were paid editors which was good, then the rules for each entry changed and new, and welcomed, members of FaithWriters came on board. For some reason the contributors to the challenge contest started dwindling to the last challenge only ten entered. But also the comments changed from “this is a blessing to me” and “thank you for sharing this” and “this is technically okay, however…” to the latter being the vast majority of the comments.
There were included in this new group of critiques/commenters an individual who was generally one of the first to give a mini-thesis in the positive/negative/positive approach which technically is good but the final analysis was always “this doesn’t meet the expectations/standards”. After her comment there was rarely a positive one given. When someone is led by the Spirit in writing, even with tears of joy while doing so, this type of consistent response is not a blessing or encouragement. After 129 challenge entries over almost six years to seldom submitting secondary to the above it is time to move on. My wife is now president of the local writing group, I am retired, and that book about Veterans’ stories still lies in the computer begging to be finished. It is with sadness and somewhat with relief that I bid all my fellow writers farewell to the challenges and look forward to continue reading for those blessings.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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