It’s Tuesday (which means it’s not Monday, in case you didn’t know), and so you may be asking yourself why a post by that neurotic, crazy person you accidentally followed that one time is showing up a day late.

Okay, full disclosure: I completely forgot I didn’t have a post ready to go for Monday, and so I woke up Sunday night in a cold sweat remembering that I had nothing to post on Monday, but I was too tired to lug out the computer, and so I just decided in a sweaty, panicky haze that I would post on Tuesday, and so here I am (yay for run-on sentences!).

This post was inspired by “Why Write” from the fabulous Alea (psh, I did not steal my blog post title from her at all, please don’t be absurd). Her post got me thinking, and this post is the result of that thinking (yay for weird sentences that are hard to read!).

(I’m about to be more vulnerable and honest than I’m comfortable with, and so please bear with me.)

Why do I write? What am I hoping to gain from it?

Is it worth all the awkward conversations with people who want to know what I’m going to do with my life (e.g. Person: “So, Rosalie, what are your plans?” Me: “Well, right now I’m working on getting a manuscript ready to pitch to publishers next summer.” Person: “Ohhhhhhhh, that’s… interesting…?” OR: Person: “So, Rosalie, what do you write?” Me: “Speculative fiction… it’s basically science fiction and fantasy.” Person: “Oh. Huh. Fantasy, really?)?

Is it worth the hours spent on maps and character development and editing and subplots and rewrites and networking?

Is it worth the thought and heart and imagination?

Is it worth staying up late when I have to get up early?

Is it worth that punch to the gut when I get a rejection?

No, it’s not. Not if that’s all that writing is–just a time consuming, fun thing to do that might (might) get me semi-famous. If it is just about the stories or a hope of fame or money, it isn’t worth wasting another breath on it. I can stop here, delete Penprints from the internet, chuck my notebooks into the trash, and wipe my computer of all my stories and do something more meaningful, something worthy of my short time on earth.

But writing is not that, not to me.

Writing is my hobby and my passion and my worship and my gift and my ministry and my path.

Writing is how I relax. Some people like to scrapbook or collect things or bake or play with cars or hike or paint. I like to write. I enjoy it. I enjoy building worlds from nothing and drawing maps and researching things like the limits of the human body and writing dialogue that makes me laugh and wondering “what if…”. Writing is my hobby.

Writing is something that gets me excited, something that gets my spine tingling and fingers itching. I blurt out random bits of my stories to my sister. I show my maps to my brother. I scramble after a notebook like a rabbit on caffeine (Out of Time series reference, peeps) when I get a new idea. Writing is my biggest passion beside Christ.

Writing is quickly becoming one of my favorite ways to worship God. When I write, I’m drawn closer to God. I can see Him, and it puts awe in my bones. We talk about my ideas (which were all His first), and more and more I find myself writing for His glory, that He might be known and seen in what I write. When I write, I look at my God and praise Him. Sometimes, when I can’t express my love for Him any other way, I write. Writing is one of the ways I worship my Creator.

Writing comes fairly easily to me, but it’s not something I can keep. God gave me the ability and the passion, and I give it back to Him. It’s my offering to Him. It’s my first-fruits, my best and dearest, and it belongs to Him. Sometimes I feel like a kid whose dad gave her some paper and crayons, and she colored the paper and then gave it to her dad saying, “I made this for you!”. Writing is one of my gifts from God, and it’s one of my gifts back to God.

Writing is one of the ways I’m most adept at reaching others for Christ. God has used posts like When I Almost Died & What I Have to Say About It and 3 Ways to Glorify God in Your Writing to touch other people’s lives. Letters and stories are some of the ways God uses me most to bless others. Writing is one of my ministries.

Writing is what I feel called to do, at least right now. God has given me quite a few stories to write, and until I sense Him leading me to something else, I’m going to write them. I’m going to keep blogging on Penprints because I believe God has put me here for a reason. I’m called to serve my Christ, and for now, this is how I’m going to do it because this is the path I’ve been set on.

That is why I write.

What about you?

Writer’s, why do you write?

Non-writers, what are your gifts? What is a hobby of yours? What are some ways you worship God? What is one of your ministries?