I always thought myself brave. As a child, I grew up on stories of heroes and heroines, shepherd boys and giants, hobbits and shieldmaidens, rangers and assistant pig keepers. They were the stories that shaped me, molded my character, taught me to be brave.

It wasn’t that I was never afraid. Oh, I feared all right. I feared large crowds, strangers, speaking in groups, and goblins invading my room at night. In fact, I slept with a little sword made of aluminum foil by my bed. My dad made it for me, handcrafted my very own Sting, and in the making he taught me a great lesson. Even though I was afraid, I could be brave.

He taught me that I couldn’t let fear control me. I couldn’t run from it. I couldn’t hide beneath the covers until morning drove it away.

I had to stand my ground.

And face it.

And in facing it undaunted, I could be brave.

It was a good lesson then, and it is a good lesson now. It is one that I, as a writer, have to learn over and over again. Each time I set my fingers to the keys, each time I open a Word document and stare at the blinking cursor on the blank page, each time I read the words I have written and wonder if they mean anything to anyone at all.

Maybe that’s why fear crops up from time to time in my novels. They are fantasy tales, so my heroes and heroines battle impossible circumstances, overwhelming odds, and the occasional monster. Plenty to fear, right? A different sort of fear than the sort we might face. But while we may not battle monsters of flesh and bone, we face battles aplenty of our own.

Recently, I stumbled across this paragraph while reading through the manuscript for book three of the Songkeeper Chronicles. It’s still in the draft phase, so this may not even make it all the way through the publishing process, but the words pierced me right to the marrow. I had reached a stagnant phase where I was writing purely to get words on the page, struggling to carry the story along, and feeling like every ounce of creativity had withered within me.

Then I read these words.

The griffin on the other hand, was very much alive. She could feel his gaze like a knife slicing beneath her skin. For a breath, he halted beside her, touching his wing to the top of her head. A benediction, it seemed. Or a comfort. But there was nothing comforting about the words he whispered in her ear. “Tell me, little one, when did you allow fear to become your master?”

Then he was gone.

And the cold of the night settled around her.

– Book Three, Songkeeper Chronicles

When did I allow fear to become my master? When did I forget to be brave?

Fear of failure can be a huge stumbling block for a lot of writers, I believe. (Though it doesn’t apply to writers alone.) Fear is a cage, whereas creativity is wild, fierce, and free. They cannot coexist peacefully. Fear stifles creativity, chokes it into nothingness.

So once again, I had to remind myself to stand firm. To face the fear.

And in facing it undaunted, to be brave.

I almost ran with the word fearless for this post, because we would all like to be fearless, wouldn’t we? Can’t you picture it? Standing atop a mountain peak with the wind billowing the hair back from your face while you scream your fearlessness to the skies.

But true fearlessness is rarely possible. Being undaunted is. When you stare in the face of the fears that assail you and choose to go on despite of them, to keep on standing in spite of them, to press forward through them, that is more than being brave.

It is being undaunted.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to let fear be my master. I don’t want it to slither in and gather me in its coils like a constrictor, until it squeezes every ounce of creativity and life from within me. I want to live undaunted. To approach each day, not with the expectation of being fearless, but of being ready for fear to come and of standing firm despite it. Looking it in the eyes. And remaining undaunted.

How about you?

Once again, things have grown eerily quiet on this blog. So much so, that I have to admit I’ll honestly be a bit surprised if any of you will even see this post. There’s a part of me that wants to apologize for the silence and promise to do better in the future, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it.

You see, I have been living this summer.

Now I can already see you all scratching your heads and smiling (oh so patiently) in my direction. “Well, of course you have been living, Gillian. We only like to watch shows about the walking dead. We don’t actually believe in them. Now run along like a good little author and keep the blog posts coming …”

Here’s the thing.

So much of our lives as writers are spent in our own heads. We walk around in a bit of a cloud—a story cloud, if you will. Our minds are wrapped up in characters who don’t truly exist, running lines of dialogue and conversations that will never happen. We traverse paths and wander lands that have never before been seen. We dream up life and death, hope and despair, challenge and adventure, victory and defeat.

It is little wonder that writers are notorious for absent-mindedly gazing off into nothingness, because that “nothingness” is filled with a world of adventures that no one else can see. Imagination is a beautiful thing.

But this summer, my friends, I lived.

For three months, I spent hours in the saddle working with an awesome wrangling team to teach kids about God and horses. I talked and laughed with kids and was reminded of just how precious they are in His sight. I watched students learning to live their faith day in and day out. I mourned loss and rejoiced in the community of a family that goes beyond simple blood-ties. And in the dark of the night, I bared my soul to the Maker beneath a crown of distant stars.

Each moment was a blessing, and each day was a gift.

In January, I wrote a post about how I couldn’t settle for just one word for this year but wanted to choose a thousand words instead. At the time, I had every intention of exploring that concept and writing posts about new, exciting words for the year as they came to me. Well, here we are, three quarters of the way through, and I am finally writing a post about a word. Have you guessed it yet?

Live.

Oh my friends, I want to live this year.

I mean truly live.

Live fully. Deeply. In the moment. Not just for the moment, because when all is said and done, that’s such a shallow way of living, and I wish to dive deep. To be wholly present in every moment of the day. To take it all in, breathe in slowly, and bask in the gift.

The world we live in is broken and hurting and twisted, and so often that’s all we can see. But it’s also incredibly beautiful. A breathtaking creation. Sometimes, I have to force myself to stop and look around. Not just to rush on in the hectic pace of the day to day, hurrying to get the next thing done and taking the wonders around me for granted.

If you ask me, we spend far too much time looking forward to the next moment of excitement, rather than being truly grateful for, or truly experiencing, the moment that we’re in.

I don’t want to do that anymore. For me, living in the moment might mean setting aside my phone and disconnecting from the online vortex that’s always trying to pull me in, so I can better connect with those around me. It might mean setting aside a good book (gasp!) so I can catch up with a friend and invest in their life. It might mean missing a blog post … or two … or several months’ worth … so I can engage more in the day to day, maybe have a chance to reach out to someone who is hurting.

And maybe even admitting this makes me a terrible author, but it might mean unplugging the writer side of my brain every now and then and emerging from the storyworld to live fully in my world for a time.

Time, my friends, is a valuable currency. There is no guarantee how much we have left. But rather than being frightened by that knowledge, I hope to use it to inspire me to live fully for Christ and invest in the things that will last, on the moments that impact my soul and the souls around me. I mean to spend my time well.

To live.

Will you join me in truly living this fall? Let’s be grateful for each day we have been given. Let’s enjoy each moment with all of the challenges, ugliness, grace, messiness, hope, sorrow and joy that come with it. Let’s live and live well.

Do you have any ideas for ways that you can live more fully invested this fall? I’d love to hear your thoughts!