What does it take to be a good writer? Besides the imperative to write exceptionally well—which goes without saying—an author’s most vital asset is authority.
You have to write in full confidence that you really, really know something that almost no one else knows. You have a message, a mission, a mandate.
Like the angel Gabriel sent to Mary, you have been chosen to produce something immensely important, and so you do it with all your might, all your gifting, all your authority. You pull out all the stops and you go for broke, and nothing can stop you. You are the freest person on earth.
You open your mouth, or your notebook, and what comes out is the truth, full of grace, beauty, power. Something is burning inside you, and you are the fuel and your pen is the wick.
Your message may be one word, one thought, one breathtaking idea, but you deliver it again and again in as many different ways as you can conceive, because you never grow tired of it and you must proclaim it because this message is who you are and that is what gives you authority.
This is how you must approach the task of being an author. Be utterly unbridled, utterly radical, utterly yourself. You have a job that you must do, or else die, and no one else will do it for you. Essentially, no one else will even help you. You are all on your own, for that is part of the calling.
The very nature of your work is that it can arise from you alone. It is not the work of a committee, or a board, or a government. It is the work of one solitary, naked, profoundly free and courageous soul speaking with utter abandon.
This is the only way your words can reach millions of other lonely, beleaguered souls who need to know that they too, by very nature of their isolate, incandescent individuality—their identity as divine Image-bearers—possess God-given authority.
“The crowds were amazed at His teaching, because He taught as one with authority” (Mt 7:28-9).
(AI image generated by Midjourney)
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