This writing thing and my own process has taken me just about ten years to be comfortable with. While I love to write, I was always looking for thee method that would make me feel like a real writer.
You know… those you put on a pedestal and think they lead this all so glamorous life and their writing flows out the end of their fingertips with no effort what-so-ever?
When I began sharing my writing with others, first via a column in a local paper, then my blog, and four books that have followed, I got caught up in trying to find the right way to do this and the one that would make it feel effortless.
I’ve read oodles of blogs, articles, and books about the creative process. Oftentimes I’d follow the advice of one author or another thinking this was it – this was thee way. But it would fall to the way side eventually. Nothing stuck.
But I kept at it, and I keep at it. What does my process look like? More importantly, what does it feel like? It’s messy and it causes lots of ups and downs of a roller coaster of emotions in my life!
But I’m not quitting.
As I near the end of the fourth draft of my second memoir, Wisdom Found in the Pause, I see that writing for me is so much about working through my own time and my own process. In other words, I gave up trying to buy into what others are doing that works for them.
It has nothing to do with how other writers write or their own process. There truly is no right or wrong way to do this.
The only way is to keep working at it. Keep trying it on for size.
I realized today that I started working on my current manuscript two years ago this month. And for many of those 730 days I found myself internally beating myself up wondering why I don’t yet have a published book.
Today I cut myself a huge piece of slack cake! Because I really understand now that this book wasn’t meant to be born yet. I see it so clearly as I continue to revisit and edit what I’ve written to date.
In large part, I’ve been working through my own inner process of healing and capturing in my everyday life what I’ve learned from the over 55,000 words I’ve written so far. It’s taken me this time to do just that.
But I’ve never stopped writing.
That’s the thing. Writing helps me to process life. To process what I’m feeling. To help me heal. To bring me to another level of awareness. To get comfortable with where I was, and where I’m going, and then share what I’ve discovered with others when that right time feels right for me.
What a new level of awakening this is for me today and it feels pretty dang good. And I do think I shall have to post this particular post next to my writing desk for that day, which oh yes, will no doubt come again…when I question my own process….because it is part of the process of a creative life!
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