Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!
In this week’s solo episode, I chat about why many of us avoid writing or look for permission to write. I also share tips around how we can move forward and write anyway.
Find Julia Cameron’s book, The Right to Write, here: https://juliacameronlive.com/books-by-julia/the-right-to-write/
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Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Episode 85: A Permission Slip to Write
Jo: Hello, my lovelies. Welcome back to Episode 85 of Alchemy for Authors: A Permission Slip to Write.
So this is another solo episode and you will likely be hearing a few more solo episodes for me in the near future. I have some interviews lined up, but I’m just pulling back on that a little bit as I make a commitment to myself to find more time to write. So I’m sure you won’t begrudge me that. I’m also going to skip a little bit of my usual intro because it is just me here today. I shouldn’t really need to introduce myself. But the topic for today, as per the title, is me talking about why it is that we often don’t allow ourselves to write, to do the thing that we’re drawn to do, that we’re passionate about, that lights us up inside. And this pertains not just to writing, but to anything really, when we find that we either sabotage our opportunities to do the things we love, or else we allow everything else to take precedence over them, and so we push them to the very bottom of our to do list.
This concept came about in a few parts. So just to give you a little bit of a backstory, for myself this year has been a really tough year to get any of what I would call writing done. Now it doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, I just haven’t been writing my novels which is what I really want to be focusing on. I’ve been writing newsletters and emails and letters, and I’ve been writing for the day job and for other personal mundane reasons. But creative writing, the thing that really gets me excited, the reason that I started this podcast and I committed to being an author, I have not been doing very much of that this year. I have a book, Broken Lies, that has been sitting there on my computer since the beginning of the year edited by my editor. So it’s been through its final professional edit and just needs me going through and tweaking anything and fixing any other little thing up that I want to and changing things around. And I have barely started on that. I keep pushing it aside. And on a normal day, if you were to ask me why I’m not doing that, or why I’m not writing my next paranormal cozy, which was also on the list for this year, I will likely, at any moment in time, give you a long list of reasons as to why I’m not writing.
It has been a tough year, I will give myself that grace. It has been a tough year, particularly mentally, emotionally. I’ve been suffering from a lot of burnout, not writing related, and that in itself has meant that I’ve been sick on and off as well. And so physically, it’s been tricky. The mental emotional overwhelm of this year has certainly taken its toll and I find it incredibly difficult to write through things like that. But my number one go to excuse is always going to be I don’t have the time. And to be fair, I have an incredibly busy life. The last few months in particular have been insane crazy busy, with very little down time, hence the burnout, hence the overwhelm and getting sick. But I am well aware that not having enough time and all these other things that I use as excuses for not doing the thing I love, are just that. They are excuses. I am sure too that you probably have a list of go to excuses that you use if you are going through a period of not writing. At the crux of it though, I think we would all agree that the reason we’re not writing when we want to be writing, or we say we want to be writing, is fear. And I will get to talking about that a little bit more.
So this has been playing on my mind that I have not been doing much of that thing that I really love. And I find myself getting really agitated and annoyed about that, and resentful towards anything else in my life that I feel like is taking away from my opportunity or ability to sit down and write. Again, those are excuses. I know that deep down, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling that way.
Recently, I’ve also been talking to a few people who feel a similar way to me in that they love writing. They haven’t published a book yet, but they’ve written or in the process of writing books and they’re looking at getting them out in the world, but something has them stuck partway through. Like me, they have a long list of excuses that they can draw on if somebody were to ask them, Well, why haven’t you finished that book? Or what’s holding you back? But one that I’ve also been hearing lately is the self-doubt around Am I too old? And I find this one really interesting because if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I’ve had a few episodes where I’ve talked with people who haven’t started really committing themselves to writing their books and getting them published and all the rest of it, until what we would consider much later in life – in their sixties and their seventies. And most recently I talked with Babette Hughes who was in her eighties or nineties. So, if that is one of the excuses that you’ve been holding on to, it’s too late for me, I’m too old, it might be time to go back and listen or re-listen to those episodes and reconsider if that is really true. I always go back to the wonderful concept that Becca Symes penned: Question the premise. Question your premise. Question all those thoughts that go through your head, all those excuses as to why you can’t do what it is that you want to do.
Another reason this idea came to my mind about how it feels that we oftentimes need a permission slip, somebody to give us permission to go ahead and do those things we love, to go ahead and write, is because I have recently been rereading and looking at one of my all-time favourite books by the wonderful Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. And the book is called The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. The copy that I’m holding right now, I think was published in 1999, and I think I had a copy in my early twenties. I remember reading it when I was in Canada. And at that time in my life, as per most of my life, I had that dream that I wanted to be an author. I wanted to make a full time living as a writer. I wanted that to be my thing. I had so many story ideas percolating in my head that I wanted to get down on paper, and I was doing next to none of that. And that is the story of my life, in that most of my life I have talked very seriously about being an author and being a writer and done very little of the practical aspect of putting pen to paper and fingers to keyboard.
This book, however, is amazing. And yes, I absolutely adore The Artist’s Way. I’m sure many of you listening to this have read it. If you haven’t, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. But there is something about The Right to Write by Julia Cameron, and her essays in there around this idea of holding back from actually writing, this deep need so many of us have or permission to actually allow ourselves the self-indulgence, or what we believe seems to be a bit of a self-indulgence, to write. This book covers it all. And so I was looking at it recently and thought that now was the time to share some of my thoughts around this in the hopes that maybe somebody else who is out there listening to this, feeling that maybe they’re stuck a little bit, whether they call it writer’s block or procrastination or something else, that today’s episode, today’s conversation will help maybe give you the kick in the pants that you need to get back to the page.
Now I’m going to start just by reading you the back blurb of the book, simply because I think it beautifully articulates the basic reason why we should be writing. Now Julia tends to believe that everybody has an inner writer within them, or her book has led me to believe that’s what she thinks. And I would agree that we absolutely all have the potential to write, but not all of us have the calling or the need or the desire to write. And so I am speaking today to those people who do have that desire, that writing overall gets them excited, makes them happy, gives them energy. So keep that in mind as you listen to this, the back blurb of Julia Cameron’s book, The Right to Write.
“We should write because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in. We should write above all because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.”
Now, I thought that was really beautiful. Some of you might think this is a little bit woo woo, but I myself do believe, or do feel, that writing is quite a spiritual practice for me. Oftentimes it feels more like channelling stories that have been before, rather than coming straight from my imagination. Characters seem to take on a life of their own, and they don’t always listen to my demands upon them. They will fight me on it. And so not only do I find the practice of writing an opportunity to connect with something greater than myself, it does help me also understand myself and the world around me. Each of us is going to have our own idea around what writing offers us, but I just thought I would share a little bit of that with you.
My belief and the reason that I in part started this podcast as well, is that as Julia writes in her book, “Our writing life cannot be separated from our life as a whole.”
Granted I have not done very much creative writing this year. When I talk about writing, I tend to mean creative writing more than anything else. However, writing is so deeply interwoven into all aspects of my life, whether I’m writing or not, that they really can’t be separated. And what can make me angsty and moody and just not a very nice person to be around, is when I feel like those threads are becoming a little too thin. Because writing is such an integral part of my life, to be pushing it aside for things that don’t fill my soul the same way is almost self-sabotaging for my soul, or that’s how it feels to me anyway. But, like I said, like many of us, I avoid writing. I avoid writing at all costs. It is amazing how things that I absolutely loathe doing in my day-to-day life, like laundry or cleaning or cooking and all those wonderful domestic household chores and whatnot, takes precedence when it comes to me having the opportunity to actually sit down, get my butt in the chair and get the words on the page, all of a sudden those look mighty inviting.
Now part of it I think for me is that I love writing so much. I spend a good portion of my day-to-day, in my day job and doing this podcast, talking about writing. I have always talked about writing, more so than the doing aspect. I do wonder if sometimes, because I love it so much, that in itself is a reason to avoid it. Because for me, and my lovely ADHD, I get that wonderful dopamine hit just from the anticipation of doing it. The ideas around the doing it, the ideas around what I can create, the novels I can publish in the future, is much more exciting to daydream about than the necessary practicalities of sitting at my computer for days, weeks, months on end. I think for myself, and maybe you resonate with this, I want to write. I really do. But I don’t necessarily want to write. What I mean by that is I don’t necessarily want to go through the gruelling aspect that sometimes occurs when we sit down and start writing. Writing can be hard. Particularly when we put a lot of pressure on ourselves for it to be perfect, for it to be right out the gate amazing. Particularly it is hard when we right off the bat start comparing ourselves to other authors, to other books, when we allow that inner critic and our self-doubt, our imposter syndrome to overtake and drown out just the pleasure of writing.
When I’m teaching writing in the classroom, I always start with trying to get the student to remove themselves from the words on the page. I do a lot of quick writing sprints to help my students get out of their own heads, so that they can start writing and be okay with a messy, ugly, nonsensical mess that they’re going to have on the page when they’re forced to write without being allowed the time to think about what they’re going to write about. So I do a lot of quick sprints where the only rules are you must be writing for the whole time. I don’t care at that moment in time about spelling or grammar. I don’t care about writing a masterpiece, I care about words on the page, and those words can be as mundane as I don’t know what to write about, repeated over and over and over again. Because, from my experience, something that happens when we just allow ourselves to write without getting stuck in our head about creating something, is that somewhere along the line, our flow kicks in and we reach this place where words do start to flow. Where sentences do start to make sense, and we connect to something that can be quite beautiful. Those words could turn into a poem or an idea for a story or a character sketch. But only when we allow ourselves to show up messy.
The hard parts of writing, that sometimes I think we might avoid, are in the things like it showing us parts of ourselves that sometimes we might prefer to remain hidden. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable to write. Or to write well, at least. Because when you’re open and you’re vulnerable and you share a part of yourself on that page, you’re tuning into a special part of human existence that I think other people will connect with. They’ll resonate with. Our vulnerability, showing up vulnerable on the page, is where that real beautiful, juicy stuff lies. That’s where the real gold in our story is. But knowing that, and I’m sure we’ve all experienced that, that vulnerability on the page and how magical, but also terrifying it can be, it can be a little bit nerve wracking, the idea of having to do that again, of having to go deep, of having to peel back those layers of ourselves that we’d rather remained hidden. Particularly if in the back of our mind, we’ve got the idea that we want to publish this work and share it with an audience. We see ourselves reflected not only in our protagonists, but in our antagonists. And that can be quite confronting. Particularly if you’re somebody like me, who writes gothic suspense, a sub-genre of horror. Noticing those aspects of your antagonists in yourself can be a little bit hard. But as we know, acknowledging your shadow self isn’t all that bad. Joanna Penn talks about it beautifully in her book, Writing the Shadow, and she came on to Alchemy for Authors Episode 78 to talk just about that if you need a refresher.
But I just wanted to share, I do know that writing can be painful. It can be cathartic, but it can also bring up sometimes trauma, we can sometimes relive those things that we’ve repressed through our characters and the situations they find themselves in. It can also test our confidence in ourselves. We write ourselves into a corner and don’t know how we’re going to get out. We battle with what we might call writer’s block. Or that idea that maybe our last book was the one and only book or the best book that we’ll ever write and we’ll never do as well as that again. We come up against all those beliefs that at some point in time, we believed about ourselves. Or those words that somebody in our life said to us that was negative, that said, you’ll never amount to anything. You don’t know how to write. How can you be a writer? You don’t know how to spell. We’ve all had those voices in our head. That can come up every now and then when we’re doing something that feels a little bit risky to us, and writing can feel risky.
Writing for all its beauty, and when it’s going well, there is nothing in the world like it, in my opinion, it is just magic. But it also makes us face head on our inadequacies. The only way that I know to get around that is to give ourselves permission to write without censorship.
Most of us, I think, are encouraged to write this way, to write first, get the words on the page, and then go back and edit later. But I know not everybody works like that. I have a good friend who edits as she goes, and that works for her. I am not saying there is a one and only way of doing anything. You do most definitely on this writing journey need to find what works for you best. But there is a place, I believe anyway, for writing without censorship. For allowing those perfect words to come maybe a little bit later. If we’re finding in particular that we’re blocked from writing, that we’re not able to start, that it is causing us anxiety every time we sit down in front of the computer or with a pen in our hand, then maybe we need to give ourselves that permission to write ugly, to write bad. Just to write. Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way recommends doing three pages of longhand stream of consciousness every morning. She calls them Morning Pages. And that’s almost just a way to get all that rubbish in your head, all those doubts, all those to do lists, all that garbage just floating around there, out of our system onto the page, so that we can clear some space for the beautiful words that we really do want to write. The importance, I think, anyway, is that we do write. Even when we have every excuse under the sun not to write, that we do write. Because there’s something about the process of writing that once you start, you want to keep going. Sometimes this can take a little bit longer. Sometimes we might need to set a bit of a schedule that I’m going to show up to the page and just try and write, I said, try, these 15 minutes or this half an hour every day from this time to this time. And maybe those first few days, it really is a struggle and it’s like pulling teeth. But maybe by that third day, something clicks. It’s by showing up that we kind of give our subconscious permission to just let go, to open those floodgates of creativity, to unlock those story ideas and all those wonderful words that we’ve been wanting to put on paper that we didn’t even know about. It’s by showing up that we’re, in a sense, giving ourselves permission that it’s safe to express ourselves. Because if you are serious about this journey of being a writer, then you absolutely do need to commit in one way or another to getting some words down. Thinking about writing, and I’m talking about this from experience, is only going to get you so far. It is not going to get your stories and your ideas it’s out into the world, and it is not going to give you the voice that I think you are probably looking for or that your soul is crying out for. Hence, you want to deep down write.
Writing is that conduit for sharing your stories. And when I say your stories, I mean sharing your voice, the things that have happened to you, so even if it’s dressed up in different situations and different characters. In a way, it’s your legacy that you’re leaving behind.
I have written books where it has been absolutely excruciating all the way through. When I wrote Unspoken Truths, I found that really, really difficult because there are some really dark themes in that book and I was drawing on some of the trauma that I had experienced myself. And although, yes, it was very cathartic, by the end of that book I felt incredibly burnt out. And when it came to writing the sequel, I started several times, and fear held me back. I just didn’t want to go through that again. It just seemed like so much hard work. And at the end I was absolutely exhausted and burnt out. When I came to write Broken Lies, when the time was right, and a good deal of time and other books had to happen first, it wasn’t half as hard as I imagined. The story itself had a completely different tone to it. I’d already exercised most of the bad experiences in the first book, and I was in a much happier place in my life, and so therefore it was actually a lot easier. However, as you’ll remember from the beginning of this episode, that is the same book that I am now stuck on editing, doing the final edit for, that I have not yet released in the world. So obviously I still have some blocks there, otherwise I would have had that book out much earlier this year.
When I wrote my paranormal cozy though, Hades’s Haunt, and I’ve talked about this extensively in a couple of episodes in Alchemy for Authors, that book was a pure joy to write. The reason being, I wrote just for fun. I had absolutely no expectations. There were no paranormal cozy books that I had written before to compare myself to. There was no book one. This was book one. I had no idea if I could write this light hearted, clean, happy, fun type of story. I was used to literary fiction. I was used to dark, gothic, suspenseful, lots of people dying. But because of that, I went into the entire project of writing Hades’s Haunt with zero expectations, zero expectations of anybody reading the book. I knew I was going to publish it, but whether people read it or not, no big deal. This book was purely an experiment. I was completely unleashed and free to get as weird and wacky and do whatever I wanted. And that’s what I did. And I had so much fun writing that book.
Strangely enough, or maybe not so strangely, because, you know, with manifestation and that, this tends to be the way that we work. I really loved that book, and that book was really well loved by a lot of other people. It is my best seller to date. I was not expecting that, but when you’re feeling good about your written work, something about it tends to attract other readers who feel the same. And yes, this might be sounding a little bit woo woo. If you want more information about this, go back and listen to the episode where I chat with Renee Rose. She talks about manifestation and she talks about the power of loving on your books. And let me tell you, it most definitely does increase sales. My previous books, Unspoken Truths and whatnot, I would write them, I would be proud of them. I would put them out into the world and never want to look at them again, because part of me, I think was kind of scared about what other people would think about them. I was still finding my feet as an author, and because so much of myself was hidden in the layers of those stories, it made me kind of wanna hibernate from the world a little bit. I had pinned too much of my identity on those stories, and that’s what made me scared. Hades’s Haunt, I had no expectations. There was nothing so deep and tragic in there that I was embarrassed or scared of people seeing. And, I really didn’t care one way or the other, whether people liked the book or not. I just knew that I had lots of fun writing it. And like I said, as it turned out, that book is really well liked, so yay.
Where I’m having difficulty though, and this is what can happen, and an example of getting back into your own head, is the fact that that book was always going to be a trilogy, simply because I purchased the covers for a three-book series. And so whether people read the books or not, I still wanted to write the three books. In the next book, the second book in the Hades series, I have not started yet, and I am finding that I have that little voice in the back of my head sneaking in going, ah, yes, but what if this book isn’t as popular or as well liked as Hades’s Haunt? Already I can feel myself starting to set standards for myself and it’s going to take a little bit of work mentally, my mindset to really release those expectations again, so that I can make the second book, which will be Hades’s Hex, another really fun writing journey for myself, because really that’s what this should be about.
If we are writing and it is not filling our soul in some way. We should maybe reevaluate whether we should be writing, whether this is really the thing for us or whether we’re going about it wrong. If you’re wanting a little bit more in depth into the nuances of your psyche and what might be your real writing whys, then if you haven’t already, I recommend you go deep dive into the Enneagram and the works of Claire Taylor, because she tackles this subject amazingly well, in such a cool way where it might be that you have been following a trajectory in your writing career that was not actually built for who you are and what your inner desires and fears are as well. Getting clear on that is going to probably make the writing process so much more enjoyable for you.
The truth of it is, and Julia Cameron reiterates this in her book The Right to Write, is that sometimes we make too much of a big deal out of writing. Yes, there are many people out there listening to this who make their living, and so writing those books, getting them out in the world, that carries quite a bit of weight. You’ve got bills to pay, maybe a mortgage, family to look after. So I get it. There is that weight. But if we identify too closely with the works that we put out, if we make too much of a big deal out of it, we’re going to stifle our creativity and possibly even stifle our sales, because that will come through in the words that we write and the story that we write. When we come at our work with energy and love and excitement, trust me, you are going to achieve so much more, and it is going to be such a better experience for you.
Sometimes it might be that we’re not showing up to the page because it really does feel that all the other aspects of our life are taking too much from us. Now, this is really where I’ve been at for majority of this year, really. And the last few months in particular. There has been a lot of drama going on in my life. And despite the fact that one of my favourite quotes is keep the drama on the page, I personally find it really hard to show up to the page when my mind is stuck on dramas and high emotion and all the rest of it.
There are going to be times in your life where it just does feel too hard. You’re exhausted from something, you’re feeling burnt out or you’re feeling overwhelmed. I have done an episode on this, The Importance of Rest. And despite the fact that this is a lesson I have to keep reiterating with myself, I still stand behind the positive effects that rest can have on your productivity and your creativity. Sometimes we need to give ourself permission to not write, and you’ll know when that is. If the idea of writing makes you feel sick inside or anxious or overwhelmed then maybe now is not the time to write. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never get back to the page. It just doesn’t It means that there are some basic human needs that you need to meet for yourself first before you’re able to do that.
The other night I took myself out for an artist’s date. Now this is another concept of Julia Cameron’s. It is a way to fill your creative well. It is where you commit to doing something on your own, taking yourself out for a date on your own. And you are going purely to soak up the amazingness in the world, or this is how I see it anyway, to refill that creative well. So choose going to a place that usually inspires you or that you think might inspire you. I did exactly this. A month or so ago, I booked a ticket to a candlelit concert of a string quartet in an old church. I am not a church person. I love the looks of many of them. I think they look really cool, but as I’m not a religious person, the last time I was in a church was I think, to attend a funeral when I was a teenager. That’s how long it’s been.
However, the idea of going to this cool looking old church that was architecturally designed based on a 15th century church, of which I live here in New Zealand so there’s not a lot of things out there that are that old here in New Zealand, but it was architecturally based on a 15th century church, I think in England. And to be filled with candles, now granted they were flameless candles, but they were still pretty awesome replicas. To listen to a string quartet play renditions of Coldplay and Imagine Dragons songs. Now, I thought that was kind of cool. It was 8:30 Friday night. Now I am a homebody, I’m not going anywhere on a Friday night, normally I’m recovering from the week that was, and 8:30, although I’m more of a night owl, I’m not an out in public night owl, so this was definitely out of my usual routine for sure. But I went along by myself to this beautiful event, this candlelit concert. I had a ticket to sit in the very, very front pew of the church. There were flameless candles everywhere. I’ve put a couple of pictures up on Instagram, so you can check those out. And I just listened to this beautiful music and was wowed by the amazing different techniques you can do on violins, viola, and cello. Like, it just blew my mind.
And some of these songs, because music is one of these very, very special things for me, that it definitely inspires my soul and gets my creative juices going. Some of these songs reminded me of different eras of my life. So some of them were from my teenage years. Some of them were from more recently. And I sat there and I just immersed myself in the whole atmosphere of the place, the tall vaulted ceilings, the beautiful stained-glass windows, the flicker of the candles, and this beautiful music that needed no microphones or anything to be heard throughout this huge church. And I could feel my creative well being filled. There were times I was crying, then I was just so moved. There were times I was just smiling and swaying to the music. And through it all, my writer self was so alive, thinking about how I was going to be describing this church and this feeling somewhere along the line in some story that I have no idea about at the moment. But I know that that experience is going to somehow embed itself into some of my writing somewhere down the line. And being at night and being dark and being quite a gothic setting, yeah, it was just perfect for me.
So although that wasn’t me putting pen to paper, in a way, I was still writing. All writing is writing. Sometimes, and I’ve said this before on the show, writing is thinking. Writing is experiencing. Writing is all of our life. Every aspect of our life lends itself to writing. It’s the way that we look at the world and the things that we notice. And sometimes the things that we don’t notice. It’s the conversations we overhear standing in line. I got some juicy ones, I’ll tell you that, as I was standing in line to go into this church. I had my phone out in front of me and was busy jotting things down in my notes section. It was all creative fodder for who knows what, but was I ever inspired to get writing? Oh my gosh, yes.
If you are finding that you are tired, and you’re burnt out, and you’re overwhelmed or there’s things going on in your life, there’s some drama and that, that really, you just don’t have it in you to sit down at the page, that is okay. But do consider doing something restful. Don’t just push on through. Sometimes we need to, for our own mental health and wellbeing, take a break. But also consider having an artist date. Maybe our well is well and truly dry because I mean, heck, that’s what can happen when there’s drama and stuff going on in our lives. It can suck the beauty that is in the world out of us so we don’t notice it. And we need to get back out there. And I have the phrase: “Look at the world with writer’s eyes”. And that means going deep. It means seeing through the lens of a writer or an artist. See the colours and the nuances around us that other people miss as they just go through the day to day. That is how you’re going to be filling that well. That is going to help you get back to the page. So, if it is because you’re feeling uninspired, then this is your permission slip to get out there and find a way to be inspired.
I think many of us have been trained to be self-conscious about our writing, to think of it as a self-indulgence. When we’re at school and we’re students, we have to write, our teachers make us write and our teachers pull our writing to pieces with red marks against spelling and punctuation and word choice and all the rest of it. Writing is work, sometimes when we’re growing up. To write outside of a classroom setting almost seems self-indulgent when there are so many other things that people will tell you are more important to be doing. And if you believe the lies that many will say, you can’t get rich being a writer. Again, I dare you to go back through the episode list of Alchemy for Authors, because I have talked with a few bestselling authors that are making six figures. That self-consciousness though about your writing, sometimes we just need to let that go. In the very beginning, what you write is actually none of your business. Get words on paper, get that flow going, make it your business when you get to the editing part. But if writing is something that speaks to your soul, it’s more important that you just show up and do it.
And if you’re one of those people who cringes at the idea of calling themselves a writer or an author, let that go. Because if writing calls to you, yes, it is part of your identity. And this is different from saying that you shouldn’t identify so closely with your books. That’s a little bit different. But if you’re listening to this, then my guess is that writing is part of your identity. If you’re thinking about it a lot, even if you’re not doing it, then it is part of who you are. And so it stands to reason that you need to drop that self-consciousness around calling yourself a writer. Lose the excuses of, but I can’t spell, but I’m no good at grammar, but I’m this old, or look like this, or this ethnicity. You need to lose all that. Those are purely excuses. Another quote in The Right to Write by Julia Cameron goes like this:
“The minute you start writing, your odds of being a writer start to run one hundred percent more in your favour. You are already a writer. You’re writing, aren’t you?”
So I hope you got something from this episode. It was really just me giving you a pep talk that if for some reason you’re not writing, go out there and write. That sounds too easy. I get it, but this is your permission slip. Lose those excuses. Enjoy your life. Share your life on the page. Share the things that make you sparkle throughout the day. Share the things that make you angry throughout the day. Get those on the page too. It is all creative fodder for who knows what, but your words have importance. And if you are drawn to the writing life, and you are not writing, then you’re doing yourself, and other people who might lay their eyes on your stories and your words later on, a huge disservice. So take this as your permission slip to get back to the page, get some words down and enjoy the process of being a writer. Because whether you fully believe it yet or not, you are a writer.
So if you enjoyed today’s episode, I would really, really, really appreciate it if you could leave a review, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, talk about it, tell others, tag me on Instagram or Facebook, any of those amazing things make me very, very happy and encourage me to keep showing up here to chat with you all.
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As always, you can visit my website to get a transcript of this episode. On the website, if you like gothic suspense, you can sign up to my reader’s newsletter. I’ve got the link there and you can get a free copy of my short story collection Between the Shadows. Or if you go to the Alchemy for Authors part of that website, and you’ll find the tab at the top there, you can sign up to the Alchemy for Authors newsletter and get a free PDF of Manifestation for Authors: Tips and Tricks to Supercharge Your Author Life.
So again, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I hope you’ve got plans to get some writing in today or this week at least, and maybe consider taking yourself on an artist date. Julia Cameron recommends taking yourself for an artist date at least once a week so that we don’t find ourselves in the position where that creative well has run dry. So I think that’s a really cool thing to aspire to. If you have taken yourself on an artist date or you do because of this episode, I would love to hear all about it. You can email me at jo@jobuer.com or leave me a DM or message through Instagram or Facebook at Alchemy for Authors. So on that note, I will leave you to a wonderful writing week ahead, my friends. Until next time. Bye for now.
Artist Date, author mindset, imposter syndrome, writers block, Writers Eyes