“Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.”
—DAVID BAYLES AND TED ORLAND, FROM ART & FEAR: OBSERVATIONS ON THE PERILS (AND REWARDS) OF ARTMAKING
Do you remember a time when you felt like words ran in your veins instead of blood; when ideas that were knocking around in your head crystallized on a crisp, white journal page; when you couldn’t wait for a few minutes alone to jot down a molten thought you’d held onto all day at work? At some point in your journey as a writer, you have likely experienced the exhilaration, satisfaction, relief, release, and joy of being a wordsmith and have hungered for more.
While each of us writes for different reasons, most of the writers I’ve known share one thing in common: Writing is an integral part of their lives. For some, it’s even their life’s purpose. For others, it’s an important or necessary part of expressing themselves, connecting with others, and making meaning. Writing is an art, but I like to refer to it as a “craft”—which holds the possibility for improvement and change. Writing allows you to delve deep into yourself and to connect with your fellow humans in a very powerful way, which often leads to new corridors of knowledge and understanding.
But life is not a straight line. Things get in the way of the joy and flow: responsibilities, family obligations, stress, hurtful words, competition, overwhelm, internal critics, and more. So while the aphorism “love the journey, not the destination” is so familiar it’s become cliché, I’m saying it here because it is crucial to your success. At the end of your life, I can’t imagine that you will regret taking more time to write and to practice the art you love. The act of writing is a meaningful one. Writers are prone to forgetting the other benefits of the art, because the lure of reward, praise, and outside approval always beckons and sometimes pulls us off our path. We get caught up in the minutiae, urged on by internal demons that suggest we need to achieve more, faster, and with wilder success.
When I was twenty-six I took a great leap into the unknown and attended a low-residency masters degree program in creative writing at Bennington College, Vermont. As an only child with parents who worked full-time, I’d felt lonely if I wasn’t carrying a notebook or letter-writing paper with me at all times. Thus, as an adult, it made sense to pursue a full-immersion experience that might also get me a decent job in a field I loved. I borrowed tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, plus the cost of books and airfare, and flew away from my husband twice a year, from California to Vermont, to attend two-week sessions. Each day of these sessions was packed with lectures, critique workshops, and fervent discussions about writing and literature. I came home positively burning with creativity and literary philosophies, and driven to aspire to the words of our program director, who quoted Alec Baldwin’s memorable words in Glengarry Glen Ross—“Always be closing”—and urged us to put our best effort into all our work. My brain was so full that I could do nothing but unspool it onto the page in the months between the session I had just attended and the next one.
When people asked me what I hoped to do with my MFA, I began to realize that the answer was quite different from the reason I’d begun pursuing it: “To write more,” I’d say.
“But don’t you want to teach or write text books or something?”
I thought I wanted to do those things, but quickly it became clear that writing to create was the pulse that beat loudest inside me. In going through the program, I realized that there was profound meaning in apprenticing myself to an art that was already my great love. What I took away from that program, more than anything else, was that writing is not just a means to an end but a way of life, of processing information and experience, and of expressing oneself on a regular basis. Where would we be without the powerful work of writers like Plato, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, or Ann Patchett? The single consistent “magic ingredient” I took away from all the writers who taught or lectured to us—including such noted and award-winning writers as Sven Birkerts, Amy Bloom, Joyce Maynard, Rick Moody, and many more—was that hard work coupled with a deep passion for the art (versus laboring toward an end product) led to more success than any other formula. I graduated with certainty that it is meaningful to write for reasons other than financial gain and publication.
The outcomes, or products, of your work—completed writing, publication, acclaim, or awards—are merely proof of the different stages you’ve reached in this wonderful calling.
Alongside being a writer, I’ve now been teaching writing in one form or another for over a decade, and time and again I see writers struggle with a variety of harsh voices, challenges, and demons. The difference between the happy-but-struggling writer and the writer who gives up or falls into despair is that the happy one finds ways to love the journey and knows that a writing practice is worthy because the act of putting words on the page is a transformative, profound, important, meditative, and sometimes bold process.
If you hope to keep writing your entire life, you must love it. If your love for the act of writing has wilted like a bloom in the light of practical reality—if exterior or interior critical voices or the obligations of your daily life are keeping you from enjoying it—it’s time to reassess and remember why you started this enterprise in the first place. You owe it to yourself.
I’ll bet that if you’re reading this book, writing has been many things for you: a haven, a place to speak freely, a safe space, a corridor of discovery, a way to challenge yourself, a journey into deeper parts of yourself and subjects that matter to you, and maybe even just something that you’ve always been good at, that you can or would like to make a living at. If you’re reading this book, you’re well on your way to claiming, or reclaiming, those things.
This book will be gentle and kind and compassionate. It will give you tips for coping, strategies to stretch yourself, and reminders of your worth and value. But it will not coddle you. It will not support your excuses or reasons not to write. It will not treat you as a victim of circumstances.
There is really only one true aphorism in writing: Writers must write. How you do it, where, when, and why are all up to you. But if you say you want to be a writer, and especially if your aim is to publish, you won’t get there by talking or dreaming alone.
Every writer has had the same or similar demands on his time as you do. I once interviewed author Ingrid Hill, a published mother of twelve children—that’s right, twelve—who not only wrote and published but had just won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Everyone has some variation of demands stemming from work, spouses, family members, children, carpool schedules, health challenges, needy pets, ailing relatives, challenging friends, mortgages and assorted bills to pay, and so on. Excuses are a way of keeping yourself “safe” from the demands of a writing practice. Writing isn’t just time-consuming; it can make you feel vulnerable and raw, and can bring on intense emotions. Suddenly, you’re exposing yourself. People are seeing and hearing you as you really are. No doubt you feel a certain responsibility for sending your words into the world and even sometimes for just committing certain intense thoughts to paper.
And yet: Writers must write.
Writers are the people who find a way, no matter what, to keep writing, polishing, and persisting. You are no different than all the other writers in the world.
No excuses. No one will do it for you. Your writing practice is in your hands.
1. Why do you write? Have you ever sat down and asked yourself this question?
Take out a notebook or open a new document on your computer or tablet. Make a free-form list—that is, don’t stop and think too much about what you’re writing—and write from the gut. No reason is better than another. Write as many reasons as you can until you feel done.
Now ask yourself: What are the top five reasons?
2. Compose a second “negative” list. What stands in the way of your writing? What fears, habits, beliefs, or critical voices are trying to drown your desire to write?
For each item on the “negative” list, use your top five reasons for writing to “cancel out” the negative. In other words, use your reasons to trump your fears.
Here’s an example.
NEGATIVE: I’m afraid of being criticized or rejected.
A TOP FIVE REASON I WRITE: I want to make a difference to others through my words.
You may find that your fears and doubts are simply the mirrored reflection of your desires and that the cost of not pursuing your writing dreams will be far worse than any fear you might hold. When you reframe a negative in a positive light, it’s much harder to hold onto it.
3. If you don’t feel like writing at this moment, meditate. Sit quietly with your eyes closed, focus on your breathing, and let the words in this chapter enter you. The goal of this meditation is to make you feel centered, inspired, and ready to write.
Part of sustaining a healthy writing practice is taking good care of the vehicle you’re in—your body. The job you are tasked with can be treacherous for your body, and it’s often difficult to stay limber when you’re anchored to a desk, so it’s crucial that you get up and move not only after a long time spent sitting but at regular intervals during the writing process. Any time you’ve been sitting for an hour or more, your body makes preparations to go into “shutdown” mode—essentially, it’s preparing for death. Yikes!
Pause to take a quick walk in a beautiful, calm, and quiet place near your home or office, whether that’s on your lunch break or after several hours spent writing. As you walk, focus on feeling your feet on the earth. Improve your posture by lifting your chest and chin. Tell yourself you’re on a journey, you’re walking a path, and you are right where you need to be. Allow this chapter’s message to sink into you and change your writing, your self.
When you return, do one thing for your writing self that fills you with happiness, whether it is writing related (cracking open a fresh Moleskine notebook) or just pleasurable (breaking off a chunk of chocolate to enjoy as a snack).
by Martha Alderson, author of The Plot Whisperer books
The relationship you have with your writing directly reflects the relationship you have with yourself.
Love your writing. Love yourself.
Hate yourself. Hate your writing.
When you write fiction or memoir, your journey as a writer often mirrors your character’s development. In the case of a memoir, it does so literally, as you are your book’s narrator. As your character is stripped of everything or sheds an old personality or belief system, you also suffer anguish and doubt. I’ve consulted with writers who experienced major health complications in the middle of writing a particularly personal story and struggled to get well. I’ve experienced my own dark times, which always reflect how I’m feeling about the journey of writing: It always translates to the journey of life and the Universal Story. As I say in my book The Plot Whisperer, “All of us face antagonists and hurdles, hopes and joys, and by meeting these challenges we can transform our lives. I have come to believe that every scene in every book is part of a Universal Story that flows throughout our lives, both in our imaginations and in the reality that surrounds us.”
When I discovered how the Universal Story works, I came to understand that I’m not a victim and that the events that happen to me as a writer aren’t out to hurt me. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: Writing invites self-exploration and evolution. As I dig for meaning in my words and stories, and find what’s true for my characters, somehow I always manage to dredge up wounds from the past and unearth parts of myself I never expected to dredge up. In striving to understand my character’s inner motivations, I discover many of my own. As I experiment with my character’s fluctuating emotions, I challenge myself to act differently.
The deeper into a story I write, the more perilous the journey always becomes. After years of starting and stopping and starting again, I finally learned how to bypass the drama, the struggle, the angst—and that’s through surrender. Today, with each writing challenge I face, I find out more about who I am, and through my writing, I heal myself.
To love the journey, I must separate from my ego, expectations, dreams, and desires and detach from the outcome. To feel truly alive, action is required of me at this moment. Not someday in the future—right now. I need to write strong. To write with clarity. To take responsibility for my writing. To show up, face my fear, and continue writing in spite of it. Facing oneself is never easy. Loving oneself can be even harder. When we do, the emptiness inside us fills.
Live on the edge. You won’t fail. The Universal Story always delivers exactly what you need so that you can become who you intended to be on your way to liberation.
When I let myself be who I am and love who I am, I delight in the transformation in and around me. I love the words I write right now. There is never an end, simply a new beginning. I write without judgment and in ways that bring me pleasure.
We all long to be heard. I’ve learned that longing for a future with a prize-winning, best-selling story leads to heartache. Give up the illusion that you have any control over the future. Rather than longing to be heard, long to hear. Listen for words whispered from the other side of the veil. Feel an easy joy about your writing. Separate your worries about what comes after for when you’ve finished the book, and simply listen to your heart, in this moment, right now.