I’m 19 days into my Creativity Challenge and after a stellar first week where major writing was happening and I felt my writing mojo come back, everything seemed to come to a screeching halt. I don’t have any desire to open my writing, my thoughts are jumbled, and I feel like I’m slipping farther and farther away from being the writer I want to be.

I think the problem ultimately stems from the fact that I really don’t know what kind of writing I want to do. I flip-flop between Christianity and mainstream. From chick lit to romantic suspense to tween fiction. I feel like I have all these amazing ideas and all these amazing characters who want their stories heard, yet I can’t find it in myself to pick just one story, stick with it, and write.

If I were to just sit down and write all the story ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for the past few years, I’m sure the number would be in the 30s. Some of those stories are lame and I need to just trash them. Some of those stories would require hours and hours of research and interviews to make it authentic. Some of those stories seem so good, they make my head spin. And they all fall under some different type of genre.

For all intents and purposes, I want to write for a Christian publisher. I know the types of books I want to write will be centered around faith and the struggles that entail. I don’t want to write cheap Christian fiction, where the protagonist never seems to struggle much with real faith issues, such as purity and this tug-of-war played with worldly ideals. I want to write a different type of Christian fiction, something I haven’t seen too much in Christian novels.

Since that’s settled, I now have to figure out what story I want to write.

• Do I want to write a chick-lit novel, which means writing with a lot more sass and humor than I usually do. My personality is perfect chick-lit, but honestly, I can never seem to get my sassy personality to show in my blog. I feel like I’m much more subdued and serious on my blog. (Am I? Or am I sassy?!) I have tons of good ideas for this one but I really feel that it takes a special writer to write good chick lit. And I consider good chick lit to fall under Judy Baer and Kristen Billerbeck’s stock. (And if you haven’t read a book by them, you are missing out.)
• Maybe I want to write for a teen audience. Deep inside of me, tucked in a place that nobody gets access to, is this passion for teenagers. It’s a small flame and something I don’t talk about a lot. There’s just something about teens, especially ones who struggle with faith, that gets to me. If I wrote a book for this audience, it would definitely be a little risky since I want to talk about real issues that real teens face. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything, just because it’s Christian fiction.
• There’s a part of me who wouldn’t mind writing a more romantic type of story, a la Denise Hunter and Rachel Hauck. A story with a more serious side to it, but devoid of all the cheesiness many romance novels have. Just a powerful story about redemption and love.

I’m still not sure what my niche is. And I’m not sure how I can keep writing if I don’t know this very vital part of my writing. But I do have a more concrete idea of what three genres interest me the most.

Now it’s up to me to just write. I have stories. I have an abundance of stories. Now I need to dig through these stories and find the one that suits me the best and that I feel I can write the most honest about.