“The design set in the soul has more value in the long run than any plan cooked up by one’s ego or career sanctioned by one’s culture.” —Micheal Meade, Fate & Destiny: Two Agreements of the Soul
You are here for a reason. You’re not here at this time by mistake. There is something, even if it’s simply an essence, a character, a force, or a way of being that is meant to be expressed through you, and it is necessary to the world’s becoming as well as your own.
If you’re called to write, there is a deeper longing to exhale something of your soul into this world. This is your unique voice. You may not know specifically what that is, that’s what writing reveals.
You must connect to, honor, nurture and continually act upon that desire to exhale something, because it’s critical to who you are and why you’re here. That something is the gift you’re here to give at this critical time of great cultural and climatological change.
The world needs language and stories that offer transformation, possibility, and openings into deeper understanding and connection. Storyteller and mythologist, Sharon Blackie emphasizes this and says, “stories show us ways of reimagining ourselves.”
And as my own writing guide and mentor, Deena Metzger, writes,“we need languages and literatures that do no harm, that offer refuge, that honor and sustain interconnection, community, and the vitality of life and the survival of all beings, and their co-existence.” This kind of language and literature can only come from the individual and collective soul of life.
Being connected to the truth of this and what it means for you, is the source of your motivation to write and your ability to make doing it, and sharing it, a priority.
Writers, especially new or unpublished writers, often have a hard time claiming the term “writer.” I’ve often heard the term, “so-called writer,” as a way to disparage not being published or not having a writing life that looks like something seen on TV, in the movies, or on the New York Times Best Selling Author list. There is no “right” way to be a writer. Go ahead, stop trying to be a “so-called” writer and go ahead and claim yourself as a soul-called writer, as someone who is called to express something meaningful, even if you don’t yet know what that is.
You’ll never fully know the long-term impacts and effects your writing will have in the world. You’ll never be intimate with that, but you can be intimate with your commitment to having followed your soul’s call to become, and to express and share your deepest self.
If you want to stay motivated and build a sustainable writing practice, you must create a loving, abiding relationship to your soul’s desire to exhale something into this world and nurture that desire over productivity, perfection, or outcome.