Becoming a writer requires far more than learning how to write. It requires developing the discipline to keep writing when you are not inspired, learning to withstand criticism without surrendering your voice, and accepting that not everyone will understand or approve of what you create. For me, it also required giving up comparison, approval-seeking, perfectionism, and the constant need to explain myself.
I had to give up things I did not realize were interfering with my writing. Some of them had nothing to do with the mechanics of writing. They had to do with how I saw myself as a writer and how much authority I was willing to give other people over my work.
If you are wondering what you actually have to give up to become a writer, the answer is not simply free time, sleep, money, or a social life. Some of the hardest things to surrender are psychological: approval, comparison, perfectionism, constant accessibility, and the expectation that writing should always feel good.
These are twelve things I had to give up as I became a more disciplined and independent writer.
1. I Had to Give Up Explaining Myself as a Writer
At some point, I had to stop explaining why I wrote something the way I wrote it.
A reader does not have to like my work. A reader does not have to understand my intention. A reader does not have to agree with my interpretation of a character, scene, subject, or idea. Those are all legitimate responses to encountering somebody else’s work.
What I had to stop doing was treating their discomfort as an assignment for me.
If you read something I wrote and hated it, that is unfortunate for you. You are allowed to hate it. You are also allowed to close the book, leave the page, or move on to something else. What you are not entitled to is an explanation from me that makes you feel better about disliking it.
There is a difference between communicating clearly and defending yourself endlessly.
If my writing is genuinely unclear, I can examine it. If there is a legitimate technical problem, I can correct it. But if the only problem is that somebody did not like what I wrote, I do not owe that person a defence brief. Writing is an exchange between the writer and the reader. I control what I put on the page. The reader controls what they think about it.
I had to give up explaining myself because I finally understood that another person’s dislike of my writing is not automatically a writing problem.
2. I Had to Give Up Writing for Other Writers
I had to stop writing with another writer sitting on my shoulder.
Would they think the premise was too simple? Would they criticize my sentence structure? Would they disagree with my approach to characterization? Would somebody with more followers tell me I was doing it wrong?
That kind of thinking will cripple a writer.
There is a difference between studying the craft and writing for the approval of people who also happen to practise it. Writers should read widely, study structure, understand narrative, learn from excellent authors, and take legitimate criticism seriously. None of that requires surrendering your own voice for theirs.
I am not writing to pass an examination administered by other writers.
I am writing.
That distinction matters to me. A writer who is constantly imagining another writer’s reaction before putting words on the page is no longer writing freely. The work is being filtered through an imaginary audience before it has even had the opportunity to become itself. Yes, of course they deserved a seat, I just had to give them a seat somewhere else.
3. I Had to Give Up Proving My Writing Wasn’t AI
I eventually had to stop wasting my energy trying to convince people that something I wrote was written by me. Especially my popular Tiktok and Pinterest Word Vault slides. Majority of my vaults are basic tips we all learned in High School (well those of us that actually paid attention or went to class).
If you think my work was generated by AI, you are entitled to your suspicion. If you think it was written by me, fine. Either way, I know who wrote it. I am not going to spend hours constructing an elaborate defence of my own authorship every time someone decides that polished prose must have come from a machine.
Believe whatever you want to believe.
Write the book. Revise the manuscript. Develop the character. Fix the pacing. Research the subject. Study the craft. Publish the work.
The lesson here is not that writers should ignore legitimate questions about authorship or publishing ethics. The lesson is that I had to stop allowing accusations and assumptions to consume the time I needed for the actual work. Work that helps to feed my family. Writers already have enough work to do.
I had to give up proving myself to people who had already decided what they believed. I was never one to care what others thought of me and I refuse to start now.
4. I Had to Give Up Waiting for Inspiration to Write
This was one of the more important lessons I learned about developing a real writing practice. I had to stop believing that I needed to feel like writing before I could write.
There are days when I am inspired. There are days when the words come quickly. There are days when I know exactly what a scene needs to accomplish before I sit down. But there are also days when I would rather do almost anything else. Laundry, putting away the dishes or groceries… seriously anything other than sit down at my laptop.
The work still has to be done.
A writing practice cannot depend entirely upon emotion. If it does, your production becomes subject to whatever mood happens to occupy your body that morning. Discipline does not mean that writing always feels good. It means that I have learned to sit down and do the work when it does not.
Inspiration is wonderful. It is not a writing schedule. It is not a business model. And it certainly cannot be the only thing standing between a writer and their blank page.
5. I Had to Give Up Responding to Every Comment
I had to accept that I cannot respond to every comment on WriterTok, Pinterest, my blogs, and every other place where my work appears.
I am one person.
There is no enormous editorial department sitting behind me. There is no social media team answering comments while I write another chapter. There is no assistant monitoring every platform while I develop the next project.
It is me, Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.
And considering that they are One and Three and Three and One, I am still the one sitting here doing the typing. Eventually, I had to recognize that responding to everybody is not the same thing as building a writing career. A writer can become so occupied with acknowledging the audience that there is no longer enough time left to produce the work that created the audience in the first place.
That distinction matters even more when you are building a writing business or publishing independently. Attention is a resource. Time is a resource. Creative energy is a resource. I cannot spend all three responding to everybody and then wonder why the writing is not getting done. I had to give some of that access back.
6. I Had to Give Up Needing Everyone to Understand My Work
Not everyone is going to understand my work.
Some people will misunderstand it. Some will interpret it differently from how I intended. Some will dislike it. Some will not care about it at all.
That is part of publishing. That is also part of being an artist. A writer who requires universal understanding will spend more time correcting readers than writing books. I can clarify something when clarification is necessary. I can acknowledge a legitimate misunderstanding. What I cannot do is force every reader to see a story exactly as I see it.
Once a piece of writing leaves the writer, readers encounter it through their own experiences, expectations, beliefs, and assumptions. That does not automatically mean the writer has failed. Sometimes the reader simply is not the intended reader.
Learning that distinction gave me considerably more freedom.
7. I Had to Give Up Comparing My Writing Journey to Somebody Else’s
I had to stop comparing my chapter one to another person’s chapter twenty. That sounds simple until you are watching somebody else announce a publishing contract, celebrate thousands of sales, collect awards, build a massive following, or accomplish something you have been working toward for years.
Comparison does not merely make a writer feel behind. It can begin to influence what the writer is willing to create.
I know because I caught myself looking sideways before I looked at the page in front of me. That is when comparison stopped being harmless observation and started becoming interference. God gave me the vision. God gave me the pen. God gave me the opportunity to serve Him through the people He has entrusted to me.
Their journey is not my assignment. I do not know everything that happened before the achievement I am looking at. I do not know what sacrifices were made, what failures occurred, what opportunities were available, or what season that person is actually in.
More importantly, it is not my business. My responsibility is to steward what I was given. That became much more productive than staring sideways.
8. I Had to Give Up Believing Everything I Write Has to Be Good
Not everything I write is going to be brilliant.
There. That needed to be said.
Some things I write will be strong. Some will be average. Some things will require substantial revision. And most ideas will look considerably better in my head than they do on the page. A lot of that spiritual material will be heavily discarded. That does not make me a fraud. It makes me a writer.
You cannot produce exceptional work while being terrified of producing imperfect work. The willingness to write something imperfect is part of learning how to write well.
Revision exists for a reason. Drafts are needed. Editing exists for a reason. Drafts exist for a reason. The goal is not to sit down every morning and produce literary perfection. The goal is to continue producing enough work that the exceptional pieces have somewhere to come from.
A writer who refuses to produce anything imperfect eventually produces nothing.
9. I Had to Give Up Taking Every Criticism Personally
I had to learn that criticism is not a single category. Some criticism is useful. Some is technically accurate. Some identifies a weakness I genuinely failed to see. Some criticism is based entirely on personal preference. Some people simply do not like my style. Those things are not interchangeable.
I had to learn to listen without surrendering my authority over my own work.
If someone identifies a legitimate weakness, I can examine it. If someone offers a perspective I had not considered, I can think about it. If someone simply dislikes what I do, I can allow them to dislike it without reconstructing my entire writing practice around their preferences.
A writer who cannot hear criticism cannot grow. A writer who obeys every criticism cannot develop a voice. There has to be a middle ground. The goal is not to become immune to criticism. The goal is to become discerning enough to know which criticism deserves your attention.
10. I Had to Give Up Thinking Writing Should Be Easy
Writing is work.
I had to stop romanticizing the process to the point that difficulty felt like evidence that I was doing something wrong.
Sometimes writing is exhilarating. Sometimes it is frustrating. Sometimes a scene comes together so naturally that I barely notice the time passing. Other times, I have to fight with a paragraph and my brain cells for far longer than I think should be necessary.
There are characters who refuse to cooperate. There are scenes that have to be rewritten. There are ideas that collapse after months of development. There are books that require more research than anticipated. All of that is still writing. Sure, the ugly part of writing, but still writing nonetheless. Difficulty is not proof that you are not a writer. Or a bad writer.
Sometimes difficulty is simply just the work. The professional part of writing is not that the work becomes effortless. It is that you become capable of continuing when the work is difficult (that deserves a t-shirt or frame).
11. I Had to Give Up Trying to Please Everyone and Compartmentalizing Myself
This was bigger than it seems.
I had to stop comparing my journey to everyone else’s, but I also had to stop trying to make every part of my life fit neatly into separate categories.
I tried to marginalize my ministry from my writing education. I tried to separate my writing from my experience as a sister. I tried to separate my womanhood from my motherhood, my motherhood from my identity as a daughter, and all of those things from my identity as a child of God and a minister.
That did not work. I cannot effectively amputate pieces of myself and then expect the writing to remain whole. Everything I have experienced affects how I understand people. Those experiences affect how I understand conflict, family, betrayal, loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, power, love, suffering, redemption, and faith. Those things are not separate compartments. They are all parts of the person holding the pen.
God gave Me the vision. He gave Me the pen. He gave Me the opportunity to serve Him through the people He has entrusted to me to feed and serve.
I had to stop looking at somebody else’s journey and wondering why mine did not resemble it. It was never supposed to. I also had to stop trying to make myself digestible for everybody else. I am a woman. I am a mother. I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am a child of God. I am a minister. I am a writer. I don’t need to remove one identity to make another acceptable.
The writing became stronger when I stopped treating those identities as competing parts of myself.
12. I Had to Give Up Trying to Please Other Christians With My Christian Fantasy
This one required a different kind of surrender. I had to stop writing my Christian fantasy books with the question, “Will other Christians approve of this?”
Probably not. And they are allowed not to. My Christian fantasy is not built around the expectation that every story must be soft, pleasant, sanitized, and free from darkness. My stories contain conflict. They contain violence. They contain bloodshed. They contain revenge, witchcraft, betrayal, evil, consequences, and people making terrible decisions.
That does not mean I endorse those things. Far from it.
Depiction is not endorsement.
A story can portray murder without endorsing murder. It can portray witchcraft without instructing readers to practise witchcraft. It can portray revenge while showing its consequences. Literature has always depended upon this distinction because a story cannot examine human behaviour honestly if every behaviour depicted is automatically treated as something the author approves.
The Bible itself does not remove evil from the narrative. Scripture contains murder, warfare, betrayal, idolatry, witchcraft, sexual immorality, political corruption, violence, family dysfunction, vengeance, oppression, and the consequences of disobedience. It also contains obedience, mercy, justice, repentance, redemption, sacrifice, love, and restoration.
That contrast matters. Consider Saul and the woman at Endor in 1 Samuel 28. Scripture does not hide the existence of witchcraft. It records Saul’s disobedient decision to seek out a medium and presents the encounter within the larger account of his rebellion against God.
Consider Samson in Judges 13–16. His story contains violence, revenge, betrayal, lust, vengeance, and extraordinary physical conflict alongside questions of calling, obedience, weakness, and judgment.
Consider David. His story includes warfare, murder, political conflict, adultery, grief, repentance, worship, and kingship.
The existence of darkness in these accounts does not turn darkness into righteousness. It gives the reader something against which righteousness can be understood.
This is one reason I do not believe Christian fantasy has to eliminate every uncomfortable subject in order to remain Christian. A writer can portray something without prescribing it. That distinction is essential to being a writer and a Christian writer at that.
How can a story meaningfully explore courage if there is nothing to fear? How can it explore justice if there is no injustice? How can it explore consequences if nobody does anything wrong? How can redemption mean anything if there is nothing from which someone needs to be redeemed?
The biblical record itself does not answer those questions by pretending evil does not exist. Jesus also did not present His coming as the destruction of the Law and the Prophets. In Matthew 5:17, He says that He did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil them.
Psalm 19:7–14 likewise presents the law of the LORD as something that converts the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes.
The point is not that every Christian writer must write dark fiction. They do not. The point is that I am not going to erase darkness from my own stories simply because someone else believes Christian fiction should never contain it.
There is room for tenderness.
There is room for confrontation.
There is room for mercy.
There is room for justice.
There is room for grace.
There is room for stories that force readers to look at uncomfortable things and decide what they believe about them.
My writing does not have to resemble somebody else’s understanding of what Christian fiction is allowed to be.
Some readers will love it.
Some will hate it.
Some will call it too dark.
Some will decide it is not for them.
And that’s the whole point here… that is their choice and they are free to make that decision.
As long as they also know I am free to keep writing.
What I Had to Learn About Becoming a Writer
When I look back at these twelve things, I realize that none of them required me to become less serious about writing.
They required me to become more serious about it. I had to stop confusing approval with success. I had to stop confusing criticism with authority. I had to stop confusing inspiration with discipline. I had to stop confusing comparison with progress. I had to stop confusing accessibility with responsibility. Most importantly, I had to stop believing that becoming a writer meant becoming acceptable to everyone.
It does not.
Becoming a writer means becoming willing to do the work, develop your craft, protect your voice, accept legitimate criticism, revise what needs revising, and continue creating even when the work does not receive the response you hoped for.
For me, it also meant accepting that my writing cannot be separated from the woman holding the pen. I am not interested in writing a version of myself that is easier for everybody else to consume. I’m a big pill to swallow, always had been and probably always will be.
I want to write honestly.
I want to write with discipline.
I want to write with conviction.
And I am willing to let the reader decide what to do with the work once it leaves my fingertips.
That is what I had to give up to become a writer. I pray that this helped you or guided you in some way.
Stay faithful, stay quirky, and stay writing.
With love and fire,
V.S. Beals
Writer. Watchwoman. Woman of the Word.
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