Do Stories Matter?

Hello, my lovelies!

There are just a few days left in November and if you’re doing NaNoWriMo you’re no doubt scrambling to write that last several thousand words.

But it’s times like this when the doubt really starts to set in and you’re wondering if your story matters. What is the point of all this? Why are you still writing this?

What good are stories really? I often ask myself in my darkest moments. They’re nothing more than fiction- lies masquerading as something important and true. Why waste so much time and energy investing in something that is only make believe?

And then I remember.

Life Sucks:

Sorry for being so blunt, but you can’t deny it, can you? Life isn’t pretty. It’s one big mess after another.

I don’t need to rehash it all here but my teen years were pretty dark ones. And that’s coming from someone who would say she had a happy childhood. My parents are amazing and my home life has always been incredible. I still live at home and I have no intention of changing that any time soon.

But still, life is life, and even the happiest of us get blindsided.

I got lost. I didn’t know who I was anymore or who I was supposed to be. I stopped really living and just started surviving. Some days were better than others but all the nights were the same. After my sister went to college I was alone at night consistently for the first time in my life. And as someone who thinks way too much that was dangerous.

I threw myself into my stories and other people’s stories because that was the only thing that made sense. I finished my first book in that time- a book of light and hope and optimism, which were all things I was searching for.

We’re All Looking for Light

My relationship with God crumbled then. I fought to hold onto it but something was missing- there was a disconnect. I got saved when I was five and when people talk about returning to your first love or having childlike faith I know that they’re talking about. I remember what that was like. I remember how God transformed my family, how miraculous it was. And somewhere in those years I lost it. I wanted it back but I didn’t know how to go about doing that.

I was convinced that if I went to the right church service or prayed the right prayer it would fix everything. I was looking for a “God moment,” like in the movies, where the character prays and God fixes everything. In that instant everything changes.

I knew it could happen because I had seen it happen before. And since it wasn’t happening there must be something wrong with me. It was God’s will for me to have a relationship with him, I knew that. So if something was keeping me from that it had to be me.

I was obviously broken. And I didn’t know how to fix myself.

Story Time:

I don’t remember how old I was exactly but I was in my late teens. I bought a book at a discount story for $2.99- more than I would ever pay for a paperback I hadn’t read before (I laugh now as I write this, thinking of all the full price paperbacks I’ve bought since).

But I started reading it in the store and the main character spoke to me. She told me I wanted to read her book- I needed to. So I bought it.

I read in the car on the drive home and kept reading for the rest of the afternoon. I took breaks to spend time with my family and get stuff done but I kept going back to the book. I read most of it that day. The only reason I stopped was because it was the Saturday before Daylight Saving and we had to be up early for church the next morning.

I finished the book in church that Sunday, before the service while my Mom and Dad practiced to lead worship later that morning.

It was a YA contemporary romance. The main character falls in love with an actor who plays sparkly vampires in Twilight-esque movies. They bicker constantly but each needs the other for something else so they come to an agreement to tolerate each other. The tolerating turns to love and it’s adorable.

And in his mercy, God decided to use this book to change my life.

I’m Getting to the Point, I Promise:

See in the midst of the bickering and falling in love the main character was breaking.

She lost her brother- in a different way than I had lost mine, but I understood what she was going through. She was falling apart inside but pretending to be fine. And she was looking for God, looking to get rid of the disconnect that was between herself and him.

I saw myself in her. And as her trip to Ireland and falling in love with a sparkly vampire brought her healing, so it did me.

She finds God in the end. She finds him in such a way that she realizes he’s been there all along. She has her big “God moment” and she knows things are going to be okay.

But here’s why I needed this story- the book has an epilogue, set two years after the end of the book- after the character’s big moment. And she’s still broken. She’s healing and she’d growing closer to God but she’s not there yet.

And sitting in church that Sunday, reading the end of the book, I knew God had inspired the author to write it for me. I knew he had always been there for me, that I may be broken but there was nothing keeping me from him. And I knew that healing was going to take time. And that was okay.

We Need Stories:

I had heard everything I learned from that book before. Pastors had preached it in sermons. Wiser, older people had said it to me in an attempt to encourage me. I’d heard others talking about the principles in conversation.

But I needed a book about vampires, and crazy old ladies, and mischievous nuns to really make the message sink in. I needed a fictional character to go to Ireland to find God so that I could too.

We need stories because they speak to us in ways other things never can. They say fiction is telling truth with lies and I wholeheartedly believe that.

Stories teach us things, show us things, remind us of things. They build us up and take us places we’d never get to go otherwise.

I don’t know what my life would look like without this book. I’m sure God would have found some other way to speak to me- he’s God, after all, and I know now he never would have given up on me- but still, the process would have taken so much longer, been even more painful than it was without this book.

God uses stories. I don’t know why. I guess because he’s merciful like that- he’s willing to use the things that make us happy, that we allow ourselves to get lost in, to speak to us. He’s willing to use those things to reach us when nothing else can.

Even if you don’t think your book has a strong message, like the book I talked about does, that doesn’t matter. My best friend likes to tell me about the spiritual truths she finds in Doctor Who and Star Trek and Stargate.

You don’t have to set out to tell your readers something. Just know that if you write with the intention of telling the truth your readers will find the truth they need. If you’re writing your story, trusting that even in its messy state, God can and will use it, then that’s all that matters.

Conclusion:

We are just days away from finishing NaNoWriMo. November is almost over and hopefully your novel is too. You’re almost there. You’ve got this.

And yes, that novel is a mess. It’s an utter nightmare right now. No one will ever make any sense of it, right?

Wrong. You will have time to edit and polish and rewrite. Right now you’re getting words on paper and that’s enough.

But be encouraged. Someday this messy, messy first draft is going to be something beautiful. It’s going to be something that changes lives. Someday a very lost teenager is going to read your book and God is going to use it to fuse back together all the broken pieces.

And until then all you have to do is keep writing. The only story that can’t change someone else’s life is the story you keep to yourself.

I hope to see you on Friday for some bookish fun. Until the next time we meet, don’t forget to live happily ever after <3

~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess

P.S. Let’s Chat! What stories has God used to change your life? Which ones still continue to bring you healing?

Someday, Somewhere: A Mid-Novel Pep Talk

Hello, my lovelies!

It’s day twenty of NaNoWriMo. It’s so hard to believe that there are only eleven days left to November! It’s around this time when the doubt really starts to creep in and I need someone to remind me of the important things and keep me grounded.

So without further ado, I would like to offer you some encouragement and remind you that someday, somewhere someone is going to read your book and:

-Compare themselves to your main character

-Claim it was written for them

-Compare themselves and the love interest to their relationship

-Make the hero their role model

-Use it to get them through a rough patch

-Tell someone it is their favorite book

-Write their own book because it inspired them

-Write fanfiction about your characters

-Dress up as one of your characters for cosplay or Halloween

-Make fandom posts about it

-Give it a fandom name

-Connect with people simply because they all love it

-Make Pinterest boards and Spotify playlists and Facebook groups about it

-Draw fan art

-Talk about how they need to make a movie based on it

-Underline their favorite passages and read them over and over again

-Give copies of it to all their friends for birthdays and holidays

-Write reviews of it for their blog or vlog

Your story will impact people in ways you never imagined it would. It will become as part of someone else’s world as your favorite book has to yours. It will change lives and probably even save some. It will get people through unimaginable horrors and help them face the day or week or month or year ahead of them.

There are people out there who need this story. People who need your characters and what they go through. They need the message your book will offer them, even if you don’t even know what that message is yourself.

This story doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be spectacular or the next great American novel. It just needs to be. With all its heart and quirks and every last bit of you that you pour into it.

People need that. People need you and they need this story. And while this is your story and you don’t owe it to the world, you do have something to offer it. Don’t ever doubt that.

Your story will make the world a better place for people. You will bring them light and hope and joy. You will give them an anchor in the darkness. Your story has the power to change lives.

So keep writing, dear one. Through the doubt keep pressing on. You’ve got this. You will get this story written and it will be worth it.

On Monday I’ll be talking about how God used stories in my life. And of course Friday will bring another movie review. I hope to see you for those.

Until the next time we meet don’t forget to live happily ever after <3

~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess

P.S. Let’s Chat! What are some ways you honor your favorite books? What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced this month?

Dear One, You Are Enough

Hello, my lovelies!

Lately I’ve become more protective of fairy tales. It’s weird really and hard to explain, but I’ll try.

See, lately I’ve found myself feeling the same way for Snow White that I do a close friend. She’s special to me, the one fairy tale I’ve never felt connected to before. But between my Western Snow White Novella and my Snow White/Robin Hood Adventure Comedy, I’ve come to spend a lot of time with her in the last few months.

She’s grown on me. Become a part of me. She means something to me that I never imagined she would. And because of her I’ve started to realize why I love fairy tales.

Survivors:

What do Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty, the Goose Girl, and Rapunzel all have in common?

They’re survivors.

Snow White is almost murdered by her stepmother- a woman so cruel and vicious that she wants to not only see the girl dead but feast on her organs- and yet she manages to escape, to get away and make a new life for herself.

Cinderella is treated not just as a servant, but a slave by her family. In some versions of the tale her own father is alive and condoning the treatment of her. But she doesn’t let that tear her down, doesn’t let that destroy her. She manages to remain good and sweet and loving despite all the evils around her.

Beauty trades herself for her father’s freedom, but even before that her life is far from ideal. Her own family hates her, despises her, barely tolerates her. And yet she puts herself into an even worse situation because she loves her father- her dear, sweet father- and in that sacrifice she is able to find love. To find hope.

The Goose Girl is supposed to have nothing but goodness; is that not how the life is a fairy tale princess is supposed to go? But instead she is sent away from home- far, far away. She’s tricked into giving up her rightful place as princess and becomes nothing but a forgotten servants. Her only friend is killed so that she is really and truly alone. But she comes out on top. She never gives up and in the end she wins.

Rapunzel didn’t grow up in the tower, not in some of the original tales. She was sent there after she got older. She was just starting to grow and then her very life was taken away from her and replaced with a tiny tower cell. Later, the man she loves is taken from her too- cruelly, painfully- and in some versions she is left to give birth to twins on her own. But she succeeds in the end. She finds her husband and her family again.

Fight:

We’ve become washed with this idea in society today that women need to be strong and fierce. We have this idea of what that looks like and oftentimes we aren’t that person. We aren’t warriors.

Except fairy tales taught me that I am.

All the examples I gave have one very important thing in common- they never give up. Life puts them in the most horrible situations and they don’t stop. They don’t decide life is too much to live, they don’t stop hoping that goodness will come someday, they don’t give up.

You Will Survive:

A friend of mine sent me a graphic a while back the simply says “You’re strong and you’re able.” I made it my lock screen almost immediately and it has stayed the same ever since. Even after I got a new phone I downloaded the graphic again so that I could keep that reminder there where I needed it.

Life sucks. I’m not going to lie. Sometimes I look back on all I’ve been through and all it’s done to me and I marvel that I even got through it. I'm going to talk a little bit about what that has looked like for me next month but it won't even begin to cover it.

Why does life have to be so ridiculously hard?

I don’t have an answer to that question but I know that it gets better. You will survive. You will get through this as long as you make up your mind to. You don’t have to get through it today or tomorrow or even this month. But as long as you make up your mind to survive, I promise you that you will.

It’s Enough:

I feel like we’re told that fairy tale princesses do nothing. They’re passive, people say. They need to be more proactive, stronger, fiercer.

Most authors retelling Snow White give her a sword at some point. That makes her stronger, I think is the idea. They want Snow White to be a warrior.

But she already is.

She manages to escape the man her stepmother sent to murder her. She finds people that needs her and throws herself into make their house her home. She takes a situation filled with darkness and brings light to it. She not only survives, she thrives at a time when she was supposed to wither up and just stop living.

I don’t know what exactly anyone else’s definition of a warrior is, but Snow White is mine.

You Are Enough:

I like to think of my blog posts as love letters to a friend. You, my lovelies, are important to me and even when I’m talking about writing or freaking out about a book I just read, I think of every post as a conversation over tea. I think of us sitting across the table from each other, laughing and talking and enjoying life.

And as my friends I want you to know you are enough. Getting out of bed each morning on a day when staying in it seems like a better option is enough. Admitting you don’t have the strength to get out of bed to face the world and you need to stay in it for another minute or hour or even day is enough.

The fact that you are trying, the fact that you are fighting, the very fact that you are still breathing, your heart is still beating, is enough. You are enough.

You are a warrior not because you slay dragons but because you refuse to let them keep you down for long. You are a warrior because you try to slay them, no matter how exhausted you are, no matter how much your mind is telling you this is a battle you will never win. You keep trying.

And for today, that is enough.

Conclusion:

The saying goes that every girl dreams of being a princess. Maybe that isn’t actually true of every girl but I know that every girl can be one in the sense that every girl is a survivor.

Whether your life is like Snow White’s, Rapunzel’s, Cinderella’s, or someone else’s, it’s never dark enough that there is no longer hope. The sun will come again if you only hold on. You will survive. You are a warrior. You are strong and you are able and you will get through this.

So chin up, princess. The crown falls off if you don’t hold your head high.

But if it does slip, that’s okay. Just remember to pick it back up and start all over again. You can do this. Whatever today brings, you’re strong enough to face it.

I hope to see you on Wendesday for a special "First Day of NaNoWriMo" post. And if you haven't entered the Princess Tales giveaway there's still time!

Until the next time we meet, don’t forget to live happily ever after <3

~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess

P.S. Let’s Chat! Who is your favorite fairy tale princess? In what ways has she inspired you?