by A.C. Williams @ACW_Author

Writers are weird. We see the world through a different lens than most people. Every interaction, every surprise, every event in our lives becomes fodder for a story. We keep track of distant memories in exacting detail. We notice the things everyone else dismisses.

Whether we are actually on the fringes of the popular crowd or not, after years of constantly hearing how odd and bizarre our minds are, we can’t help but feel like outcasts. When you don’t fit in, it’s normal to see yourself as “other.” Unusual. Defective in some way. At least, that’s been the case for me and for the majority of writers I know.

We’re just used to being the black sheep in every community.

And that’s okay, I suppose. It’s certainly not the end of the world if you don’t have a reserved seat with the popular kids, but I have long suspected that hearing how weird, how different, how odd we are throughout our lives influences how we see ourselves.

I tried for years to fix myself, to learn to be organized the way other people around me were. I attended training courses for time management. I spent hours trying to learn directions so I wouldn’t get lost all the time. I intentionally tried to focus on one idea at a time without chasing the squirrels of my imagination all over the place. And all it caused was frustration on my part. Maybe I gained some knowledge in all of those areas, but I’m not sure I was able to actually use any of it.

Somewhere along the way I guess I just accepted that I was dysfunctional in some soul-deep capacity. I was “a creative” and that made me quirky, and it wasn’t that I disliked being quirky. But I do think I put myself in a box because of it.

But in recent years, I’ve discovered something. I don’t even think I recognized that I had done this to myself, but I had spent so many years thinking less of myself that I forgot what it meant to love who God made me to be. Maybe I never knew how to begin with. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to acknowledge the parts of my personality and my unique skills as gifts God gave me for a reason. Maybe they’re not like anybody else’s gifts, but that’s okay. God made me to be me, not someone else. So why should my gifts be the same as someone else’s?

And the more intentional time I’ve spent thanking God for making me the way He did, something amazing happened with my writing: My primary problem character suddenly stopped being so problematic.

This one character has given me the runaround for 30 years. This girl is my greatest headache. Or at least, she was. I’ve spent decades trying to capture her voice, and she always eluded me. I never knew what she wanted. I could never represent her on the page in a way that felt authentic.

And then, after 30 years of struggle, it was like she suddenly introduced herself to me. Suddenly, she was speaking to me like all my other characters do. I could hear her voice. I could see her actions.

It took me a little while to understand why, but once I figured it out, it changed the way I looked at my characters and at myself.

I spent so much time trying to change myself so that other people could understand me that I forgot a very important truth: God made me to be creative. God values creativity because He is creative. And God values me.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean we embrace our sin nature. That’s not our identity, and if we are trying to claim something Scripture says is sinful as part of our identity, we’re off base. But if your mind is wired to be creative, don’t make fun of yourself. Don’t try to change yourself just so other people will accept you.

If God made you to have a quirky view of the world, embrace that. If God made you with a brain that loves chasing squirrels and Dad jokes, embrace that.

You have a perspective that nobody else has, and when you accept that, it brings your characters to life in a way that is impossible without it. My problem character had always been very much like me, and the more I censored myself, the more I censored her. The more I tried to act like a Very Mature And Responsible Grownup, the more boring she became. Because if people wouldn’t accept or understand me as my own goofy self, nobody would accept or understand this character either.

But when I finally allowed myself to accept the love God already had for me, I was able to extend that same love to my characters. I was able to see them for who they really are under the surface of what the plot needs them to be.

All that to say, don’t try to be anyone else other than who God made you. Maybe you’re goofy. Maybe you’re forgetful. Maybe you laugh too loud and play too hard and your eyes go crossed in math classes. Don’t pretend. Be you. Let God love you for who He made you to be. He doesn’t make mistakes, so it wasn’t an accident when He crafted your beautiful creative brain.

A.C. Williams is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. Author of more than 20 books, she keeps her fiction readers laughing with wildly imaginative adventures about samurai superheroes, clumsy church secretaries, and goofy malfunctioning androids; her non-fiction readers just laugh at her and the hysterical life experiences she’s survived. If that’s your cup of tea (or coffee), join the fun at www.amycwilliams.com.