On Trusting Your Writer’s Instincts
If you’re like me, you continually seek out information, tips, success stories and guidance on how to be a better writer. What to do, what to avoid, how others handle challenges and generally navigate the writing life. Part of this is because we seek community. Writing is a solitary vocation.
But I also suspect that part of this is because we second-guess ourselves. We’re looking for a magical key that will guarantee us that our work is good. And what do we mean by good? Accepted by others. Validated as writers. Assured that we can do this.
One would think communicating through the written word wouldn’t be so hard.
But I don’t think it’s the writing itself that is hard.
Rather, it’s expression and self-trust. Knowing what to say. Deciding we’ve said it in the best way possible. Grappling with words, phrases, structure, characters – all while keeping a sense of wonder, magic, beauty, flow. Because writing that moves a reader comes from Spirit and Love and Heart and Emotion. And those things only flow through us when we’re listening, choosing, selecting, trusting, deciding. We only allow those things to flow through us when we’re brave enough to trust ourselves to embody them.
That’s where the struggle comes from. Embodying the work, the story, living with and in it, and giving it a voice.
Accepting that we’re the only one who can say it. Trusting that we’ve communicated and translated the Story we’ve received.
Accepting our destiny. Listening. Perceiving. Intuiting.
Deciding. Being a writer comes down to one thing: deciding. Anyone can just keep on writing.
A writer becomes a writer when she makes the decision that the story is done.
And trusts that decision to be right.
How have you learned to trust your writer’s instincts? Comment and let me know.
On Risks, Pursuing Dreams, Creating a Life You Love
Artists must accept risk all the time. What’s your opinion on risk-taking in creative work and in life in general?
Anytime you’re bringing forth what hasn’t been, you’re faced with risks. Primarily, rejection, but also the risks associated with digging deeper within yourself to expose more of who you are to the world. Be certain: we are not our work. But we are responsible for it and we are the ones who have been entrusted with it. So, there are risks involved in facing our fears about the quality and potential of our work against what the work is in itself and how it is received. Most artists create because that is simply who they are and they can’t imagine life without creating. Creating itself doesn’t necessarily involve risk. But when you take that work out into the world and release it, then you definitely have risk.
There are more important risks to take though and those are the willingness to actually create a life you love. Those risks are life risks – and have nothing to do with whether or not you work in a creative field. It’s so easy to assume that life is just what it is – and not ever get to the point where you not only imagine a bigger life, but actually create it. The biggest creative risk in life is not having created your own life.
How do you create a “bigger” life, pursue your dreams?
When you get to a point where you understand fully that you are Source Energy and that you are here to experience joy – not just occasionally, but most of the time – much of the traditional “risks” begin to fall away. You begin to realize that you really have nothing to lose by pursuing your dreams and crafting a life that brings you joy.
Most of what we learn to fear in life are things that should never be feared, because they cannot actually destroy us. Financial ruin is one of the biggest fears people stumble over when considering doing something that would make them happier and more fulfilled. If you get to a place where you understand that money is simply energy, like the air we breathe and the food we eat, it’s replenishable, renewable, you let go of that intense fear of losing it. It’s meant to flow in and out of our lives much like the air we breathe. You can create money in your life and when you truly learn that, you know that if you lose it, you can create it again. Money becomes a tool instead of a fence. That really sets you free.
If you know that you will essentially be okay, that the Universe will provide, that you are Source Energy and have the power to create your experience, then you open to risks. And how you set yourself free is by becoming conscious of what you think and believe about money. You examine those beliefs, figure out if they still serve you and replace the limiting ones with ones that do support who you want to be.
Essentially, you have to set yourself free to take risks. We hold ourselves back far more than any other force can ever hold us. And what holds us back is limiting beliefs. A belief is just a thought that you keep thinking over and over again. Stop thinking it, stop assuming it’s true and, presto – you change it. It’s a process – you start somewhere and as you open and take more risks, you start dreaming bigger and bigger. You accomplish one dream and it’s replaced by another. It’s a lot like climbing a mountain – what looks so far up and impossible from the bottom of the hill, doesn’t look that way when you get closer to it. Once you reach that place, you look higher, you keep climbing.
So what’s changing is your perspective. And what is perspective? Your thoughts on something.
But how do you get to the point where it’s not just wishing, but reality?
Action. You don’t have to change your beliefs first. Start climbing. Your beliefs will be challenged as you do. And, you’ll have to either change them to accommodate your new goal or stop climbing. That’s how we grow, that’s how life either gets bigger or stays small. Many, many bigger lives, happier ones, incredible accomplishments never happen because people do not make up their minds and decide that that’s what they want. Decision is so essential to creating a life you love. We tend to wallow in a space of wishing, hoping, dreaming then talking ourselves out of it, tallying all the reasons it couldn’t work, feeling afraid, shrinking because we fear we’re inadequate, not good enough, that we’ll fail – and cycling through this. And what happens? We never decide.
Decide what you want – and a whole new force of energy rushes in.
You can’t wait for perfect timing. Perfect timing doesn’t exist. You start by deciding what you want. Taking action, changing your beliefs along the way, essentially growing into your dream.
Do you have to start small?
That’s a great question. Most advice out there tells you take baby steps. Inch your way along your dream path. For some that’s good, practical advice. It’s not right for everyone. You don’t have to start small. In fact, you may want to start at the top. And by this, I mean start seeing yourself, your life through the lens of who you want to be, what you want to have achieved and live from that perspective. As Mike Dooley says “Dwelling from, not upon, the space you want to inherit is the fastest way to change absolutely everything.” That’s absolutely true.
How to Mindfully Prepare for Your Next Creative Project
We Must Meet Each New Work for the First Time
As artists, we develop style, routines, working habits that shape how we approach our work.
It can be tempting to move on to the next project as more or less a subconscious continuation of the last one. Especially when we’re busy and have little time between projects. We know we’ve done it before and so we assume we’ll do it again the same way. But no two projects are ever alike. What worked so beautifully before may or may not work for this one. Staying open to new processes is essential and one of the primary ways we develop as artists.
Each new work deserves to be met with a creative openness that combines our wealth of experience with fresh humility and respect.
We Think We Create, When In Fact We’re Being Created
If you see your creative project as something that must be done, achieved, strived for, accomplished, completed – you’re looking through a very narrow lens. Projects must be brought forth and brought to their finished form, yes; but they have far more to create in us than we ever create in them.
Each new work brings something to you, the artist.
Each new work develops insight, perspective, experience in you.
Each new work prepares you for the next work.
If you’re not looking at your project with this in mind, you won’t be able to fully receive its blessing.
The Most Important Thing You Can Do is… Listen
There is nothing more important, in fact. Listening comes first, comes second, comes last.
You have to listen to the work, be receptive, interact with Guidance.
If you throw too much of Yourself into your work without knowing where you end and the Work begins, you’ll miss its soul spark. It is an interactive process – you listen to the work, you receive the work, the work reveals itself through your creative process over and over and over again until it emerges and you fade.
Projects Choose You Because They Trust You…So Let Them Trust You
Artists receive creative work from Source. We are conduits. We stand between the Unseen and the Seen. Our gifts allow us to translate the Unseen into the Seen. We do not actually “create” anything. We are provided with ideas, insight, guidance, inspiration, stories, characters, concepts – all because we have been deemed Trustees of this Unseen World.
It’s our job to say yes to our calling.
Each new work counts on us to bring the best of ourselves to it.
Each new work trusts us – more than anyone else it could have chosen – as the right person to emerge itself through.
That’s why we must meet each new work as new work.
Because we are the only one who can greet it.
Tony Scott’s Final Gift
The film industry lost several legends this last week.
Yet it was Director Tony Scott’s decision to return to the Spirit World that sent a shockwave through us.
His death, so unexplained, so obviously self-determined, hit a vulnerable spot in each of us.
Why would someone who was so successful, end his life early?
That’s the first question that registered. It’s a superficial one. It judges – erroneously – that the body of work is a reflection of the whole spirit. Artists are so intimately entwined in our work that we fail to remember that our work is not us. We are not our work. Our work is an expression of part of our spirit.
But only a part.
Most of us only knew Mr. Scott through the finished product of his work. We assume – and far too easily – that he had everything that would constitute the fabric of happiness and well-being. That he had achieved success.
We base that on the assumption that our definition of success is how Mr. Scott defined it.
We may be wrong.
There is a cultural, external definition of success and there is a personal value- and fear-based definition of success. The world gives us the first, we give us the last. And that spot of vulnerability in each of us recognizes that unless we are meeting our personal definition of success, it doesn’t matter how much external success we achieve.
Because we won’t feel it.
Our values and our fear and what we believe about ourselves determine how much we feel and believe in our external success. We can meet the external definition time and again, but if it is not the same definition of success that we hold for ourselves – it won’t create the fabric of our happiness.
That’s what scared us most when we heard that Mr. Scott jumped from a bridge.
We saw in that flash of news a reflection in the mirror. What if what we’re pursuing really isn’t what matters to us?
What if all this success that we’re after, all this climbing up ladders and walls and mountains and cliffs, is going to lead us to jump off a bridge at 68 years of age?
What if we’re getting it wrong?
That’s the fear that met us on Monday. A fear we each need to address. Because our lives are NOW. What we are doing now is what is weaving the fabric of our happiness – or not. And no external definition of success can change that. We’re each responsible for defining what success in this lifetime means to us.
We don’t know why Mr. Scott chose to leave it all behind at this point in his life. We don’t know what pain, what fear, what disappointment, what wound, what thoughts, what alternative future led him to return to the Spirit World. His reasons remain his.
What we can do is take the gift of his life and honor it by making decisions today that align with what really matters to us.
We can let that be Tony Scott’s final gift to us.
How to Keep Your Creative Energy Flowing
Creative work is generative work.
This means we are continually bringing forth something that didn’t exist before.
We are where the spark of Source energy meets its shape and form.
Even in artistic mediums that are well-worn and ageless,
we express creative energy in a way that is uniquely specific to us.
We’ve all experienced those periods when we are uber productive.
And for some creatives, their work allows them to naturally follow these ebbs and tides.
But many of us are required to produce creative work on a daily basis.
This takes a continual, reliable flow of creative energy.
And self-awareness to manage it.
Once you’ve been engaged in full-time creative work,
you soon realize that you have to learn how to keep creative energy flowing.
Creatives have wrestled with this throughout the ages,
“seeking the muse”, “finding inspiration,” etc.
What we are looking for is how to balance inflow of creative energy with outflow.
How to listen and be still to receive, then to interpret and to express.
How to balance ourselves as the conduit and the instrument of our work.
How do you find the best way to balance your creative energy?
1. Don’t fight the way nature made you.
What I mean by this, is that your personality and
how you naturally work best, is the way you are meant to be.
If your creative energy feels as if it’s flowing, it is.
Don’t change yourself just because other artists do it differently.
2. Learn what you need to nurture your best work.
How much downtime? How much time in nature?
How much time away from creative work or around diverse creative mediums?
How much sleep? What kind of music? What kind of films?
What do you need on your desk or in your studio?
Who do you need around you?
How much time present and away from social media?
3. Learn what you need to avoid.
What interferes with your ability to receive creative energy and “hear” the work?
For me, I need to avoid reading novels when I’m in the midst of writing one.
Partly because I don’t want transference to occur unconsciously and
partly because I don’t want my mind focused on another storyline.
Is there certain music that disrupts you? Movies to avoid? People to avoid?
Other creative projects that will divert or dilute your focus?
4. Learn when to wait and when to forge ahead.
There are times when you have to wait for the work to be ready
to reveal itself to you. There are time when you have to be in action
(that means at your keyboard, in your studio) for the work to “talk” to you.
We each receive work differently and sometimes differently throughout the
same project. You have to be paying attention.
You have to be present to the work even when you are waiting.
5. Learn when your characters need a break.
If you’re a writer, you need to learn to pay attention to when your
characters need a break from the scene, the story and from you.
You are there to support, coach, guide and elicit the story from them.
But let’s face it, characters get just as worn out and fed up as we do.
Give them a day off sometimes. They’ll reward you for it with fresh
energy and insight.
6. Learn when you need a break.
Technology has made our creative processes so much faster and efficient.
It’s tempting to think that this is the pace we need to keep up.
We’ve gained much from computers and digital technology; but
we’ve lost something, too. And that is the breathing spaces between.
We can create faster now, but we lose time where in the past
we would have paused.
We need to take breaks, step away from the project. Let it steep, let it rest,
let it have the breathing space it needs.
We need to take breaks to let ourselves have the breathing space we need
as well.
Keeping energy flowing is foundational to a creative career.
We will burn out if we work in spits and bursts, push too hard for too long and
do not take the time to master our own creative energy flow.
Burnt out creatives are miserable, because they lose part
of themselves that sustains their journey on earth.
Take the time to self-reflect and respect what your spirit needs
to balance creative energy.
creative inside out 