I started my career as a novelist when I was thirteen. That’s right – thirteen. One January afternoon, I sat down at the computer, opened a blank document, and started typing. My first impression was that it took forever to fill just one page. But I chipped away at it, and I finished my first book when I was fourteen. Trust me, I was pleased with myself! I felt that I had poured my heart and my soul into it, and I proudly presented it to my siblings – and was rather crestfallen when they weren’t impressed. When they told me it had no plot. When they told me that I desperately needed to develop my characters.
You know, I could have given up. I could have said, “Skip it! I’ll leave the writing to the experts!” But I didn’t. I went ahead and wrote a second book. Actually, it wasn’t that much better than the first. It still lacked a believable plot, and the character development was abysmal. I could have given up again. But I didn’t. Instead, I wrote a third book. And then a fourth. And finally, a fifth.
By this point, I was sixteen, and it had been about three years since I’d first started writing. And I still hadn’t produced a decent book. I crafted words and plots in my head and tried to write them out. Dozens of stories flowed out of my fingertips, but I found that I was best at beginning books. Finishing them was quite another matter. My fifth book had been better than any of the others that I’d finished, so one day, when I was eighteen, I began its first major revision. If you would have told me that that was the first of six revisions that I would put it through, I would have laughed at you – and probably given up on the spot. But – I didn’t.
With fear and trepidation, I handed it over to be read by people with different tastes than me, and their reaction was relatively positive. I could hardly believe it. It had taken seven years, but I’d finally produced something worth reading. Within a couple of months, I’d finished up another book I’d been working on, and it was met with overwhelming positivity. I was ecstatic.
But as I thought back over my journey of learning to write, I knew that though I’d put blood, sweat, and tears into these narratives, it was the practice that had gotten me to where I’d gone. I couldn’t have sat down as a now twenty-year-old and written either book if I’d chosen to give up after my first failure – or even if I’d never tried. While the maturity that I’d gained in those last seven years definitely contributed to those successes, they hadn’t come out of nowhere. They came from practice.
If you would have told me that I was going to be twenty before I turned out a book that I could be proud to read aloud when I first started this crazy journey, I wouldn’t have believed you. And it would have been discouraging to hear.
But the truth is that practice is what makes perfect. Most of us aren’t born with giftings that they are just good at. They have to practice those gifts. I have. Don’t think that I haven’t thrown hours and hours at learning to play the piano and guitar. But practice doesn’t come by sitting around and pretending or imagining that you’re doing something. It comes through doing it. Even if you feel like a failure at first. Even if you need to improve. Because honestly, if God calls you to something, start practicing now so that you’ll be ready when you land in the place where He’s calling you to.
He spoke to me years ago and told me that I was going to lead worship. So I have trained myself in leading worship, selecting setlists, and guiding my awesome band as we play together both in the home and in public. I know that on that day when I land where God has called me to be, I want to be as ready as I can be. So I’ve practiced, because practice is what makes perfect.
