I woke up one morning a few months ago with an idea for a story. As it has happened before, I had a shadow of an idea from a dream I had. I went about my morning and watched our church service on my computer since someone was sick and we were staying home. I didn’t give a ton of thought to the story, yet.

As I listened to the sermon, I was challenged to pray a big prayer. A prayer bigger than I had ever dared to pray. I prayed it… and moved on with my day.

The day progressed and before I knew it, that idea was stirring in my heart. Then it unfolded completely. By the end of the afternoon I had a series of three novellas plotted out (the basic plot points). WOW!

My prayer echoed in my mind. Now, understand there is no obvious connection between this two things. But my heart stirred, would God use this novella series to answer my big prayer?

Honestly, I have no idea. But maybe. So I move forward in obedience.

When I feel so compelled to write something, I know that it is the Spirit’s prompting. So I obey.

The project I was working on needed a rest anyway. (Totally legit – I actually feel more ready now to finish that one than I did a month ago).

So, April started and since I had already been working on the first novella, I dove in. I committed to working on it, and perhaps finish it, by the end of April.

In the writer-sphere there is an event called NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, every November. And to encourage working on your writing projects all year long, the organization has what they call “Camp NaNoWriMo” every April and July. The November challenge is to write an entire novel or 50,000 words. In April and July, you set your own goal, whether it be an editing goal of so many pages per day or a writing goal of so many words per day. I set a goal of 25,000 words, which I figured would be just enough to finish the novella, give or take.

I dove in and started writing.

And the results?

I finished the novella on the 22nd of April (just a rough draft – trust me it’s rough). Crazy thing was I finished the story entered my word count: 24,960. Seriously? Forty words… You’ve got to be kidding me!?

I went back to a scene I knew needed some help. I have a tendency when I write dialogue focused scenes to forget to write the things the characters are doing and always have to go back through and think about and add their motions to the scenes. In about five minutes I had my forty more words! 🙂

I’m so excited to have written this novella. I can’t wait to share it with you all in the future too. It’ll need work, of course. I heard it put this way once: when you write the first draft all you’re doing it shoveling sand in the sandbox so you can make castles later. That’s what I just did. The sandbox is full, so now I can go back and sculpt it into a castle.

I don’t know how God will use this story. But I pray that He uses it to encourage someone or challenge them to live for Him. That’s my biggest prayer for this story and every story I write.

I continue to pray my big prayer that has nothing to do with this story. If God chooses to use this series to answer my big prayer? Awesome! If not, I know He will in another way. Either way, I can’t wait to see how He works it all together like He’s so good and doing!

Want to be one of the first to read this novella which I’m currently calling Into the Flames – Knoxville FBI Book One? Then sign up for my email list now! I plan on self-publishing it and may give it away to my email subscribers, so sign up here!