Last week I wrote about procrastination. I have an update. I have not conquered procrastination. I’m not sure anyone has. But I did finish the second draft of my next book. Apparently, writing helps.
The Problem With Thinking About Writing
Writers can spend an impressive amount of time investigating why they aren’t writing. Resistance. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Childhood. Possibly Mercury. We worry about whether the work is good enough, whether we’re good enough, and whether we should wait until we feel inspired, rested, confident, or ready. Meanwhile, nothing is getting written. There is another approach: sit down and write.
That idea followed me into Monday night’s Start Writing Now webinar. We had returning writers and people joining us for the first time. Some introduced themselves as writers. Others said they were “aspiring writers.” I objected. If you write, you’re a writer. You don’t need a license.
Before You Write
We began, as always, with the Self-Acknowledgment Hug. It isn’t an affirmation. It’s a promise that before you ask yourself to create something, you aren’t going to turn against yourself because of what shows up. Then we moved into the Word of the Day Practice. We thought of something lovely and let images appear, followed by words. The important part is not to judge the words or even try to understand them. This is harder than it sounds. The conscious mind likes to supervise. Creativity has enough trouble without having to defend itself before it has done anything.
Dolly Understood
As I was working on this blog, I learned that Dolly Parton had died. Almost immediately, clips of her performances and interviews began appearing everywhere. One came across my feed in which she talked about knowing you are enough. Naturally, I thought of the Hug.
Before we ask ourselves to create something, we acknowledge ourselves. We aren’t trying to prove that we’re talented enough, creative enough, successful enough, or worthy enough. We begin with the understanding that we already are enough. This does not mean everything we write will be wonderful. That would be convenient. It means we’re allowed to write it.
Apparently, Jamir Is a Writer
At the beginning of the webinar, Jamir told us he wasn’t really a writer. He just liked to write things creatively. This seemed suspicious. A few minutes later, from a cluster of apparently unrelated words and images, he wrote:
The hummingbirds chirped as Ben read the paper book next to the tree on the grass of the ocean waves. Ben read the book as the cat had been cooked. Out in the sun, the cat had been brave. The natural scenery of it all, only life could save.
There’s rhythm. There are images. There is also a cooked cat, which raises questions. But there’s a story.
I encouraged Jamir to keep going and see where it took him. That’s one of the things I like about this Practice. You don’t have to know where you’re going before you begin. Sometimes knowing where you’re going merely gives you something else to worry about. You begin. Then you find out.
Not Quite Empty
Jaclyn gave us another version of the same lesson. She had been very sick with COVID and hadn’t written much for a couple of weeks. That evening, she was so tired she almost didn’t come to the webinar. But she came. When it was time to write, she discovered, as she put it, that “the tank’s not quite on empty.”
Her cluster began with art and somehow produced flowing, gown, corset, stone garden, strong arms, faint, Heathcliff, passion, and gravestone. Surprisingly, the tank contained an entire Gothic novel.
Then she wrote:
Heathcliff was her “fire station,” her safety net, the strong arms that caught her when she felt faint.
The passion between them was as strong as the gate of the stone garden fence.
Her face was a work of art, worthy of being admired from the floor of any museum.
Her dress was vintage. A corseted gown, voluminous and flowing, and it hid the weakness that had crept into her legs from having spent so much time inside and away from the light of her love.
It was this memory that Heathcliff carried with him every day.
Every time he visited her gravestone, accompanied by her faithful hound, for such a hound was he that he could never, would never forget his love for thee.
All of that came out of five minutes of writing on an evening when she nearly stayed home. Not bad for empty.
You Don’t Know What’s There
Another participant began with the same exercise and wrote something so personal that when she read it aloud, several people were crying. I won’t reproduce it because it belongs to her. What matters is that she didn’t come to the webinar intending to write something profound. She started with a word. The story took her somewhere else.
That evening, we had people who didn’t think they were writers, people who normally wrote nonfiction, people who were exhausted, and people who had never tried creating a story from a single word. They all showed up. They all wrote. And they all found something they didn’t know was there.
That’s the strange thing about writing. You often don’t know what you have until you put something on the page. You don’t have to feel ready. You don’t need the perfect idea. You don’t need unlimited energy, confidence, or even a plan.
You need enough to begin. Sometimes showing up is enough.
And so are you.
The Next Webinar
Sometimes all it takes is a safe place, a little encouragement, and a willingness to show up. Join me for our next free Start Writing Now webinar and discover where a hug and a word can take you.
Here’s to your personal success,
Professor Marilyn Horowitz
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