Writer’s block is a blessing disguised in a blanket of stress and anxiety. The mind is
working and working yet nothing is being produced. Growing up being told how intelligent and
smart I was seemingly created this expectation in me that anything I should want to do or write
about should just flow from me. Why wouldn’t it? If I’m smart it means I have the capacity to
convey my thoughts properly. I learned growing up in a Christian household that the world was
made up of two kinds of people: Christians and non-Christians. This pattern of thinking didn’t
just stop at Christians. Soon it spilled into other areas of life: nerd or jock, sports or music, for
me or against me. It became black and white thinking. When it came to writing I was typing
black letters on a white page and yet all that mattered was grey.
On a sunday afternoon I had opened my journal to begin exploring the earth that had yet
to be destroyed by a flood. The character of Noah intrigued me as I began to look at his story but
not just as a flood story but as a creation story. I knew there was a connection here, the parallel
between Eden and the ark Noah was to build but it had yet to be revealed to me. After a paltry
and seemingly contrived beginning I stopped writing. The writing felt forced, not inspired. A
week, maybe even a month went by of feeling blocked. All I wanted was a cup or even a drop of
inspiration. I didn’t have this problem before while exploring the original creation story. I
thought maybe it was a one and done thing. But God wasn’t done.
To get my mind off my writer’s block a friend invited me over to just hang out, eat,
maybe watch something. That “something” ended up being The Chosen. While watching the
show my mind began to process things and slowly as I thought of certain practices shown in the
show it led me to think more of the flood narrative and its importance to the creation story. For
one reason or another the number seven brought me back to Genesis 7 and four verses later the
floodgates opened. When I read, “Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty
days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have
made,” (Genesis 7:4 NIV) I saw the full creation story but I saw that it was being reversed. And
over the course of two to three days God was pouring out revelation out like the flood waters that
were covering the earth. I saw the creation story being perfectly inverted as God was setting the
stage for redemption through a second creation. After those two days I had written ten pages
detailing the account. Over the course of several months I wrote another fifty pages on Genesis 8

I knew here that it didn’t matter whether or not the flood had actually happened because the
narrative had already convinced me of God’s brilliance of narrative through inspiration to
mankind.
Since then I have learned that writing is a process of listening more than anything and the
best way to hear clearly is to start writing even if I don’t know what I want to say. I learned that
it isn’t my voice I’m writing from. Knowing to submit to the quiet and still voice of God has
made me a better writer. Now I understand that I don’t have to have it all figured out before
writing