Your response to last week’s article, Hey, Writer – Your Courage is Calling, was phenomenal! Thank you for your messages, and I’m glad my ideas resonated for you. Many of you wrote me to say that the article helped you believe in your voice, and be more courageous with writing.
One writer shared with me a favorite quote. It’s one worth sharing with you:
“There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin.
“You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.”
-Annie Dillard
Oh, yes.
Sometimes, early in our creative lives, we suspect we have something to say. Some of us carry this secret within us and do nothing for quite awhile, though. It’s as if we’re waiting for someone else to reflect our potential back to us, or to give us a permission slip that reads, “Yes. You. Now!”
Your emails last week got me thinking about one of the first times my own creativity was mirrored back to me. I was a senior in high school, and an avid flute student. I loved music, and always suspected that maybe— just maybe… I could also sing?
One day in the summertime, my best friend and I were walking down the boardwalk at the beach. We stopped in to the karaoke place we’d passed many times before. Flush with extra babysitting money, after giggly deliberation we talked ourselves into walking to the front desk. We committed! Each of us picked out a tune and took a turn in the recording booth.
I found that cassette tape recently. I remember singing “Shake it up, ba-by now…” with all my teenaged heart, and I remember my astonishment when I listened to the recording afterwards. My singing? It wasn’t half-bad.
All along, I had suspected that maybe, just maybe, I could sing. And there, on that cassette tape, the one I’d paid more than a few tourist dollars for, was living proof. I did have the potential I suspected I had.
It’s one thing to carry in your heart a secret about your creative abilities you suspect might be true. It’s quite another thing to hear someone or something reflecting it right back to you.
If you’re carrying secret ambitions for your writing practice, or secret desires for your publishing career, you needn’t continue to navigate your writing journey alone. One of my gifts as a coach is to see the shape of your struggles and show you a compassionate, effective path out. I listen very deeply, and share what I see skillfully. My clients often tell me how nourishing it is to have a discerning and wise coach in their corner, someone who knows their personality, the writing mind and the writing industry very well, and is 100% committed to their writing achievement and joy.
Every week I hear from writers how their lives changed for the better, all by shifting a limiting belief, habit or story they had held onto for years. Powered by a newfound ability to let go of the past and fired up with fresh insight and energy, my clients are writing more happily — completing book manuscripts, submitting pitches and stories, and growing their writing careers with more ease and joy than before.
If you’ve tried “30-Day” writing plans and “fix your freelancing” systems but failed, please do not despair. For some writers, all the systems and habits in the world won’t fix their writing challenges.
Some writers need to free themselves up to write by shifting their beliefs, habits and stories. They need to change their writing habits, results and careers from the inside out. If this is you, I am here to help.
Never underestimate the healing powers of a practical + “magical” approach. When you combine writing steps and systems with the inner remedies our coaching sessions offer you — life-giving truth, joy, tenacity and new beliefs, habits and stories, the writing blocks and failures that have iced your heart and frozen your productivity melt away fast.
Not all writers need the same medicine to heal their writing pain. Be honest with yourself, and if you need outer guidance and inner strategies, get in touch so I can help you. With the right kind of writing mentoring, you won’t believe how free you can feel. You won’t believe how capable and powerful a writer you can be.
