A Love Letter to Writers

1) She asks if her ideas, her story is silly. I can't answer that for her. Only she can. I see her as a miracle, a jewel, a divine creation. How can anything silly come out of that?

 What I hear? Self-doubt and limiting self-beliefs likely based in criticism heard and internalized along the way? When you ask if your story is silly, dumb, stupid, say it out loud. My story is silly. How does that feel? Sound to you? Truth? I am silly. Really? Are you sure about that? Be careful what you say about yourself. Your spirit hears your every word.

2) She asks if she should waste her time on the story -- is it worthy? What I hear? Should I waste my time showing up for myself and my story? Am I worthy? Again, only she can answer that. When you're visited by the muse and the story won't leave you alone, there are mighty forces beyond simply you wanting this story manifested. If not by you, the story goes unwritten.

3) A meltdown around the Recommitment phase. This is too hard. I don't get it. I can't do it. When I grab her by the shoulders to help ground her back in the here-and-now and out of the past of other difficult times in her life, I encourage her to view what is happening to her in the light of the Universal Story. She's being called to show up and do the work. Internal antagonists block her way. I ask her to reclaim her own individual power. Suddenly shining out from hiding and fear, the light of her spirit flickers and hope seems to fill her body as she shakes her head and straightens her shoulders. She looks at me as if I'm not there as the truth of who she truly is reawakens. She exclaims how she's never heard of such things. In her smile, I know she's tapped into a truth she's always know and only now is beginning to remember again what once she knew for sure.

4) She's writing today because I asked her to commit to writing everyday. If her commitment to me helps her show up for herself, so be it. When we commit to others, our spirits are listening. When we let down ourselves by not valuing our commitment to ourselves, we hurt our own spirit.

5) She apologizes before she begins reading. It's not very good. I haven't written forever. This is my first stab at writing again after years of doubt. It's rough. Not very good. Don't ever apologize for yourself, for your writing. You're showing up, doing the work. Hold tight to your own personal power. Don't let the demons of doubt and poor self-worth overpower your deepest beliefs. Sure they may be hiding in the muck and gore of your backstory wound. The belief in your splendor lies there, too. You know it. At least your spirit does and is patiently, heartbreakingly patiently waiting for the day you remember it, too.

What I understand now after having spent more than a year painstakingly healing my own backstory wound is how wrong I've been. I write in the Plot Whisperer books about the protagonist (and thus, the writer, too) reclaiming her own personal power that she'd relinquished along to way to a false belief system, betrayal, hurt, pain, criticism, judgment.

Yet, seizing your own personal power often leads to a crisis because the use and development of your own personal power belies the real truth. Standing in your own personal power puts you in direct opposition to someone else's power and ends up perpetuating duality = struggle.

The real strength lies, not in your own personal power. Rather, your real strength and the source of all strength lies at the heart of the Universal Story -- in the power of love.

Silence the Beastie Critic in You

Two plot consultations in two days with two writers struggling with the same dilemma I see more than any other and could very well be the deadliest writers' flaw of all. An overzealous critic silences the creative process in general and especially so in the first draft.

2 Bits of Advice: 

1) I encourage you to keep going. Do not go back and start again. Rather, pick up where you left off and write all the way through to the end. Write early in the morning before the critic has awakened -- your beast, so to speak. Do not read what you've written. 

2) Give yourself positive affirmations about your writing. Write them on post-it notes and post all over the house = on your bathroom mirror, the refrig, etc. Tell yourself:

• I am a great writer
  
• I enjoy the creative process of writing my thoughts down on paper for others to enjoy
  
• I marvel at my ability to fill up a blank page with valuable information
  
• I am grateful for the creative muse to visit me and inspire me and allow words to flow from me to the page. 

Continue with your own messages to yourself.

Reprogram your belief system. Don't give in to the belief that you are not good enough, that you are not a writer or whatever else you are now currently saying to yourself. See yourself sitting down writing and enjoying the process, enjoying seeing the words flow, enjoying seeing your imagination become reality. Visualize this over and over and over again as you're driving, brushing your teeth, hanging out. Believe in yourself as a writer.

At first it will feel false, soon it will be real.

Turn off your critic. Allow yourself to be a true writer which means you appreciate the creative process and that the right words do not always come out the first time, that you cannot always convey what you imagine for your story the first time. Writing is a process. Get the words down. Later you can go back and be brilliant.

Finish first. Remember what you are good at. Forget everything else. Writing is all that matters now.