Writing by Heart

By Megan Adelson

I lived my entire life without Jesus until my early 30s. It was a long, turbulent 31 years—and then, in 2020, I became a Christian.

And everything got worse. A lot worse.

Every hour of every day—for three solid years—was a brutal wrestle. Between 2020 and mid-2023, I was holding onto God, or what was some semblance of God, by a strand. I was in a never-ending boxing match with the devil, and just like the great Muhammad Ali triumphed against nearly every opponent, the devil was knocking me out every time.

Though I was a new Christian, the message of spiritual authority was not new to me . . . far from it. The Word promised I could resist the devil and he would flee. The Word instructed me to renew my mind and take all thoughts that are not from God and make them obedient to Christ. The Word admonished me to armor up against the devil’s schemes. Jesus promised me that He had given me the authority to “trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy” and that nothing would harm me (Luke 10:19).

Yet, I found myself lying there in that forlorn arena, bloodied and broken, time and time again. I came to what seemed like the most reasonable conclusion: The devil was bigger than God.

I desperately wanted to believe the words of Jesus, but I didn’t.

Little did I know that June 17, 2023, would be the last day of the enemy’s reign over my life. With coffee and Bible in hand, I found a YouTube video of Jaco Booyens delivering a sermon of sorts at a local church. Jaco is a well-recognized speaker on the horrors of human trafficking and an uncompromising man of faith, and on that day he got all up in my kitchen. His petition felt like an adrenaline shot delivered directly into my bloodstream.

“Are you fighting the same demons you fought last year? Four years ago? Ten years ago? If you’ve been praying about dealing with this or that for a while, the enemy does not respect you yet. He respects Jesus, and he’ll respect you . . . if he sees that you actually identify as a saved son of God.”

Quite a provocative and brutally honest dictate, but my walk with the Lord has never been the same since.

“Exercise your authority over darkness,” I had heard. “Recoil back to the Word of God." Same message I had heard a million times, just in a different voice—I needed to hear it from Him said in that way before I could take what I knew and make it who I am.

Here’s the point. Many authors and communicators are so concerned with composing an original, groundbreaking message that they lose sight of what their readers and listeners, often subconsciously, are really looking for, which is an original voice. That’s great news because you already meet that criterion. For God to create any two voices that are the same is an impossibility.

What makes a message unique and worth reading is not necessarily novel information, but a voice that readers have never heard before.

Here’s the catch: Voice is useless if it’s not authentic, and, though a tough pill to swallow, some people just won’t prefer your voice. Not everyone prefers mine, but that’s not the person I think about as I write, and praise God, I am comforted that if I can’t get the message across to someone, somewhere out there He’s got another Jaco Booyens up His sleeve who will!

You’re that someone for somebody, but if you hide your inner Jaco, your readers won’t see you. They’ll see a version of you that sells you short and shortchanges the impact of your message.

I have a pretty bright personality but also a benignly self-deprecating sense of humor with a pinch of sarcasm to taste. I’m comfortable making light of all the ridiculous things about myself because I’ve actually come to love them. I love to laugh at my own expense, and I want others to feel free to do the same (though I do have boundaries).

Though I’d like to think I consider my audience before I offer myself as the proverbial punching bag, I’m unwilling to remove vulnerability and authenticity from the table. They’re the very core of who I am, and to retreat from or dilute them goes against every grain of my being. The effect it has had on my relationships is counterintuitive.

No one awkwardly or conveniently disappears out the back door because they don’t know whether to help me or laugh with me. The response is quite the opposite. Instead of scrambling for a way to coddle me, they see something else: an affection for the fragile nature of humanity—bumbling creatures who are just trying to figure out this thing called life—undergirding its shameless display.

It frees them from hiding behind the shadows of counterfeit personas that have promised them a false sense of protection. As Stephen King says in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, this is my Ideal Reader (IR). Diluting the voice that only you can offer your IR robs her of freedom, and suddenly, your IR isn't so ideal anymore.

My IR is discouraged because she grew up in a home that punished vulnerability and is now slowly dying from the façade of superhuman strength. My IR never has a good cry unless it’s within the four walls of her bedroom. My IR is unseen and unknown because she doesn’t even know herself. My IR is imprisoned by the illusion that others expect something from her that she can’t give. She’s had the breath knocked out of her, and what she needs now is a breath of fresh air. If I want to give her something, I have to go a step beyond telling her who I am; I need to show her.

Authenticity is not synonymous with honesty. It’s true that you can’t have authenticity without honesty, but you can have honesty without authenticity. An honest person is a speaker of truth. An authentic person is a liver of the truth. This is where authenticity meets likability, and the likable person is a vulnerable person. You can’t divorce authenticity from vulnerability. Your IR will appreciate your work to the extent that you demonstrate who you say you are, both implicitly and explicitly. Don’t be afraid of your “isms”—your IR is counting on them.

Let me be clear: Airing my laundered “isms”—even the right isms that give something to someone—comes with fear and trembling. It demands a departure from imitation and a grand entrance into exposing the very depths of our souls to someone else. It necessitates a willingness to “be found out.” And by the way, that specific fear is usually a projection of the inadequacies we see in ourselves onto what we think others must also see in us.

The fear isn’t bad. It’s good, but only if you push past it. If you aren’t doing a little tango with your dance partner called healthy fear, you might be playing it safe. I know I’m on the wrong track when some measure of healthy fear is missing as I write. Healthy fear takes me out of the honesty zone and into the authenticity zone. I can disclose true things all day long—what I’ve done, what I’ve seen and past events that have transpired—but if I stay in that zone, I haven’t given the reader much . . . just an autobiographically-flavored history book.

How can you expect to challenge a reader if you aren’t being challenged yourself? There isn’t a single writer out there, bestselling authors included, who is immune to the fear of giving himself away. I’m certainly not immune to it. Not even close. In fact, you better believe I’m swallowing a dose of that healthy fear right now as I share—or show you—my most defining “ism”: an unbelievable talent for ditziness. If I’m going to speak on authentic writing, I guess I should practice what I preach, don’t you think?

The stories I have are golden and too many to count, but my most recent blunder is a crowd favorite. After two years of racking my brain on why every white article of clothing I owned came out of the dryer stained and unsalvageable, I (very) recently discovered that I had been using fabric softener to wash my clothes and never realized it. For two years. It’s one of our favorite “only Megan” tales. Suffice it to say, I stun my closest friends and family daily and have even been petitioned to create an Instagram page devoted to it (never in a million years!)

Earlier, I told you about my bent toward playful self-derogation. Now, I’ve proven it to you, and that’s what your IRs are craving. Subconsciously, they are looking for the proof behind the pudding, not because you risk losing credibility (though that could certainly happen), but because you risk losing them. Just because you’re writing about you doesn’t mean it’s about you. It’s always about your reader; they reap either the benefits or the costs of who you present yourself to be.

So, in what ways do witnesses benefit from my dopey debuts? They make them smile. They make me approachable and accessible—and believe me, this takes no effort on my part. I couldn’t curb it if I tried. It flips the cultural and societal profile of a Ph.D.: that she is always sharp as a tack and that, surely, her intellectualism comes with a side of common sense!

Most of our thinking and behaviors are learned. By example, I want to take my audience on a journey of unlearning shame and teach them new ways to live and be. I aim to see them drop their guards because I want to set them free, but I have to walk the walk. If I do that, I’ve accomplished my “why.”

Your IR is the beneficiary of your why. My why is simple: To take what was once her greatest source of shame, pain or humiliation and subvert it into the things she loves the most about herself.

What’s your why? The whole purpose of writing a book is to meet a need. What are your IR’s needs? What is he seeking? What kind of questions does she have that you have the answers to? What about you sets you apart as the keeper of those answers? How are you going to prove it to him? A reader who knows who is behind those pages of black ink will also know why she should listen to you. Make no mistake, the moment you become an author is the moment you become a teacher, so put your teaching hat on.

I’ve coached many authors—often gifted leaders, speakers and pastors—who spend a great deal of time wringing their hands over how to translate a spoken message into a written one. I find myself in awe of these leaders. They can receive a 24-hour notice that they have to saddle up and speak in front of hundreds of people the next day, get on that stage and nail it.

Yet I have observed a fascinating pattern with these remarkable industry leaders: As soon as you sit them in front of their computers to write, four hours later they have made a lot of progress . . . staring at the screen. It’s a classic case of unnecessary overcomplication because let me tell you, these same authors floor me with the eloquence and clarity with which they speak the message God has put on their hearts to share with the world. Then, in the same breath, they’ll lament, “I just don’t know how to put it on paper!” My response is always the same: “What’s wrong with how you just said it?”

Whom do you mentor on a regular basis? If she asked you to tell her all about your book, what would you teach her? What would you want him to walk away with? If you were to design a class that unpacks the fundamental principles and heart of your message, what would your audience hear? Write that.

There are a lot of opposing perspectives out there on the feasibility and efficacy of writing the way you talk. I agree with many of the experts on one thing: The written word and the spoken word are different art forms. Speaking has an edge over writing because you can convey emotion and tone with greater ease. Where I disagree is that writing the way you speak should be avoided altogether, and here’s why: Writing allows for subtraction, addition and revision; speaking does not. The “bookspeak” can come later, and believe me, it will because as I always say, the best way to write more content is to write some content! Words beget more words.

As you write, it’s useful to envision the reactions you hope to elicit from your IR. Remember, he is predesignated as an avid consumer of your work. He already likes the real you, even if you don’t know who he is and he doesn’t yet know who you are. You don’t have to be intimately acquainted to build a relationship with him. The foundation—which is you—is already there. You just have to build on it.

If your IR met you at your book signing, how well would the real you align with the you she imagined behind the book? How wide would that deviation be? Are you the writer she fabricated in her mind’s eye? I’ll be Captain Obvious here—you will always be a bit mysterious to her absent a face-to-face interaction or personal relationship. She can gather only so much about the writer from your book, and every reader has her unique lens through which she will interpret the author; nevertheless, your readers expect some degree of congruence between who you are on a page and who you are on a stage.

So, before you write, you need to get clear on your IRs and what about you endears you to them.

What makes you funny? What are those lovable quirks? What about you is a little affectionately weird? After your reader finishes your book, how will what they have learned about you compare to what your spouse knows about you? Your family? Your closest friends and confidants? Of course, what they know about you will always exceed the knowledge of your average reader, but make an effort to close the gap as much as is possible and appropriate.

You’ll need a medium in which to build rapport and some likeness of intimacy with your reader. This is done through the art of storytelling. The most reliable recipe for a boring book is one without personal stories. Don’t swim in the shallow waters of a fact-centric snooze fest. Let the reader into your world. Invite them into your mind. Offer your whole heart.

They want what you have so give it to them and remember: Readers aren’t just reading your book. They are reading you!