I write because I like creating something from nothing. Molding an entire world. Filling it with potential. Plunking in characters that I love and setting them free.

Sound familiar? Does it remind you a bit of Genesis 1, and how God must have felt at creation?

I’m not suggesting that what I create is even remotely as phenomenal as what God produced. My point is that the creative process (writing, painting, building, managing, organizing) can serve to make us appreciate more how much God loves us and watches over us.   Let me share a few very rough examples as a writer:

Example: I generally have my characters’ personality traits and histories down pat, and I always have a general idea of where I want the story to go. However, as these characters come to life on the page, they sometimes head in directions or make decisions that surprise me.

Anybody else ever experience such diversions, digressions and detours by their characters?

But, like God surely must do, I place touchstones (obstacles, new opportunities, people, objects) on the path that’s making me frown so that my characters can return to the destiny I have in mind for them.  Why?  Because I love my characters.

Even the “bad” ones. Just as God loves all His children.

Example: My characters sometime stretch my patience as I’m driving alone in a car. They all talk at the same time, and want things from me: a better setting, more dialogue, more page time, a romance or encounter with another character that I didn’t have in mind.

And, because I love them, I try to accommodate their wishes, but all the while I bear in mind that I can’t always deliver or give too much, as it might serve to move my characters too far from their intended purposes and potentials. I wonder if God ever feels this way.

Example: In my first novel, Crossing into the Mystic, my protagonist Grace is caught in a love triangle (Okay, actually a love quadrangle, because she also loves a ghost, but that’s a whole other article…). Even as she tackles ghosts (or are they demons and angels in disguise? Avoiding a spoiler here….), she finds herself falling for two guys. We’ll call them A and B.  I want her to end up with A, but B is begging to be chosen.  I love them both. After all, I created them both. So, I care about B enough that even as I close that door for him, I open another door that promises more opportunity than he can see at that moment. But I know he’s going to be happier in the long run.

Hmm, sounds a lot like that open door that God provides when we don’t get Plan A, doesn’t it?

What about you? Ever gain a new appreciation for Genesis 1 when you write, paint, develop a project, run a business?