Little Motivations

I was reminded between Sunday School and morning services two weeks ago this coming Sunday that Ash Wednesday is February 17.

The person who reminded me is the same gal with whom I work on Lenten devotional books for our congregation. We also worked together with an artist in the congregation (no, it wasn’t me) to put together an Advent devotional for 2009.

The Advent devotional is still fresh in my memory. It seems like just last week it was finished. So I was startled to be asked if I was ready to do the Lenten devotional.

“What?” I said. “Already?”

She very properly pointed out that from that day, we had five weeks to get things in order if we were going to do a Lenten devotional. Wow! Talk about being blind-sided!

So part of my writing time the last couple of weeks has been given to the 2010 Lenten devotional. I’m responsible for typing the contributions of other members, for layout and for providing the master copy from which the church secretary – God bless her! – makes the booklets for the people who want them.

But I also write one or two, so I’ve been giving a little bit of writing time to that, too. So far, I’ve almost completed one that will be a two-page entry and have an idea for another that could be two pages.

Writing devotions is a lot different than writing fiction. Some skills are transferable, but some of what works in fiction doesn’t work quite as well for a devotion. Especially if the devotion is short, which these usually are. It’s always interesting to see what prompts a devotion, then to see how it changes and grows in the writing process.

I’ve been painting ACEO horse paintings lately. An ACEO is a trading card sized painting and the only qualification is that they be 3-1/2 inches by 2-1/2 inches in size. No bigger; no smaller. Think baseball trading card. That’s how big they are.

One of my studio goals for 2010 is to paint one of these every week for the year. I finished numbers 3 and 4 today and number 5 is nearly finished.

Painting ACEOs provides energy and motivation for painting larger portraits, some of which take weeks or months to complete. They’re like running to the mailbox and back for someone in training for a marathon. (Those of you who live in the country will know about running to the mailbox and back! Ah! What a pleasant memory….) A little success that’s usually fairly easy to achieve.

That’s how I see writing devotions. Complete thoughts in written form that have a message to me that’s independent of whatever they happen to tell the reader. What they tell me is, “Yes, you can finish a writing, beginning to end, get it polished and get it published.”

When novels take months or even years to get right, the little successes of writing a devotion or a blog post can be the difference between firing up the computer or letting it sit idle while I do something else.

The ACEO horse paintings are motivation for those times when enthusiasm for the big projects is lagging.

Doing the devotionals for church each year are motivation for those times when enthusiasm for The Great American Novel is lagging.

Praise God for those little victories, quickly won.

What’s your motivator?