Devil Whispers

My dream has always been to be a traditionally published author. When I started writing fiction as a teenager that was one of the only ways to have your fiction read. I read R.L. Stine as a kid, Christopher Pike as a teenager, and graduated to Stephen King as an adult. My heroes were all traditionally published authors. It was natural that I would take the same path as they had. At least, that was the thought, however, my path was unlike those three. I shouldn’t have been surprised, after all, we all have our own separate journeys.

That journey wasn’t a straight line, as there were twists, turns, and much backtracking along the way. First, there was the lack of success with building my portfolio of published short stories to prove to literary agents that readers wanted to read my work. There were publications, but not as many, nor as frequent as I desired.

Eventually, I felt as if I had enough credits to my portfolio to entice an agent into representing me. I was sorely mistaken. Rejection after rejection for book after book followed. I switched from writing middle grade horror to adult horror and faced the same results. The early years of this blog chronicle that journey and the struggles I had along the way.

I have written about rejection in the past (here’s the link), but it’s been a while. Years of rejection, of hearing that you’re not good enough from a group of people, can have a devastating effect on self-esteem. For years, I walked around in a perpetual haze of gloom that I wasn’t aware of. At the time, I was working a job that I didn’t like while dreaming of escaping to a world as a full-time writer. A world that wouldn’t let me past the gatekeeper. Full truth? I don’t know where I’d be today without my wife and children. In my eyes, they were the only thing I had done that was worth anything.

That’s the devil speaking, whispering into my ear that I’m not good enough. That I’m not worthy. Negative thoughts are the devil’s work. Helping me forget about the blessings I had in my life. I should have ignored those whispers. Instead, I let them fester over time, eventually becoming a plague of the soul.

Roughly two years ago, I began to ponder what it was that was holding me back from becoming the writer that I knew I was destined to be. Those whispers came again. This time hissing sweet nothings into my ear about the tactics that other horror writers used that I had refrained from in my career thus far.

You see, I’ve written more middle-grade fiction than anything else in my life. In fact, I know I’m destined to return to those campy tales of horror in the very near future. That topic is for another day, however. There aren’t many middle-grade authors that curse in their writing, and for good reason. Those books have to be parent or librarian approved.

There was also the matter of my faith as a Christian. I have always kept a clean tongue, though it was speckled with imperfections more often than I’d care to admit. Simply put, profanity and Christianity aren’t cohesive. There was a reason I had kept it out of my writing, even for a more mature audience.

According to those whispers, I was holding back and only needed to stop doing such to reach my full potential. I indulged those devil whispers while writing Reel Ghosts and continued doing so in the first draft of The House that wasn’t There. As I stated in my previous post, cleaning the profane language from the first draft of The House was my penance for the sin of giving into temptation.

Cursing in my writing went against all that I stand for, which is to be the man God has envisioned me to be. It’s not about me. It’s about Him. That’s the truth for me. Be true to yourself without abandoning your beliefs and values. I know that isn’t an answer that will sell a million copies or put me on the bestseller’s list and that’s okay. It’s about being able to look at myself in the mirror every day. It’s about trying each day to be the man my children think I already am.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow, like, and share. Remember to follow your dreams, even if they terrify you. “I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13

Stephen Roth

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