Writing is a solitary act, but there are many sources of support available to you if you look for them. It’s important to orient yourself toward seeing and embracing the visible and invisible support available to you, rather than focusing on what you don’t have or what isn’t going well. This is what allows you to create a sustainable restorative writing practice and settle into a writing life.
The sources offered below can help you discover what is available to you and help you understand that different times call for different things. Having an array of supports is necessary. What follows is not a definitive list, but rather a starting place for thinking about and exploring the different sources of support that you might turn to for guidance to keep you going on the toughest days and to remind you, that while you do this work alone, you are never alone.
Faith and Self-Trust in the Generative Fountain Within
One of the most valuable resources and supports in a writer’s life is faith and trust in your own generative voice and inner imagination. When you truly write from your soul and cultivate a nurturing and loving relationship with your creative voice and imagination, there is always something to be expressed.
The page becomes the ultimate place of truth where nothing is held back. Trusting and having faith in this generative fountain within you, the one that’s always there to support you and the life you are here to live and express, is critical.
Cultivating Embodiment in Your Writing Life
Deep writing comes from your body and not your mind. You must be physically present as a writer to merge with your stories. Your body holds everything you’ve ever done. When you connect to and listen to your body, you write in a whole new way. What you write cannot just be abstract, untethered, only of mind and thoughts. It must be embodied or it will not reach out and touch others.
Cultivating embodiment practices as a necessary part of your writing life, such as walking, stretching, yoga, dance, deep breathing, and even intentional shaking, is deeply important and is a great source of support.
Connecting with the Earth to Heal Your Creative Self-Doubt
There is no life, no source of life without the land. At every moment, every place we are, the Earth rises up to meet us, to hold us and support us. At every moment the Earth offers us everything we need to live. In this way, we are never alone, we are never “out of place.”
Writing is an act of “place-making” because it allows us to find meaning and to take our place in the landscape of our lives. In order to take our place in the landscape of our lives through writing, we have to take our place in the landscape where our feet are planted. We have to connect to the natural world around us.
The daily texture and meaning of our lives is created and constructed from the places we live–the weather, the geography, the plants, animals, and trees. And the people and communities living there are shaped in different ways by that land.
If you live on the coast you know the tides. If you live in the mountains, you know the dark build up of storm clouds that bring sudden thunderstorms. Living in the fog and shroud of the redwood forest canopy for the last ten years, I now know what it means to move forward without being able to see fully. The landscape has helped me learn to slow down, to trust each step, and to enter the unknown.
Good Reading Habits Make Good Writing
Reading is a great resource for writers. Reading and writing go hand in hand, and it’s often said you can’t be a good writer without also being a good reader.
Reading allows you to hear other writers’ voices and helps you distinguish your own. And most importantly, reading inspires you to write. Most writers write because of having read something that moved them deeply or carried them into a whole different realm or perspective.
My own writing is often a response to, or further engagement with, something I’ve read–a line, a story, a concept, an idea created by another is often what moves me to sit down and write. If I’m feeling stuck or uninspired in my own writing, I usually turn to other people’s writing for inspiration and guidance. And I often steal lines from others to get my own writing started.
Relationships with Other Writers Provide Accountability and Inspiration
I always have some kind of community support for my writing. It’s one of the most important supports in my writing life. Sometimes it’s a writing group or class (or an MFA program), sometimes it’s a coach or mentor, sometimes it’s a writing partner or friend, sometimes it’s all of the above.
Because writing is known as a “solitary profession,” writers, especially new ones, can often think the goal is to get to the point where you don’t need any outside or community support for your writing. But as you’ll often hear me say, “we can’t see ourselves by ourselves.” We need other voices to help us hear our own, we need other people to reflect back to us what we can’t see in our own work. Having writing relationships and communities is deeply important to a writing life. (That’s why I created the private and group programs I do to support writers).
Relationships with other writers or writing mentors and coaches provide accountability and inspiration. I’ve come to know that it’s often easier for me to show up for other people than it is to show up for myself. Being in a writing group or working with a writing mentor or coach means that I stay connected to my work even if I’ve been slacking on my writing commitment, or I’m in a slump, or can’t seem to find motivation to work on a bigger project I’m developing. They also provide a safe place to get feedback and direction when I can’t find my own way.
When choosing a writing group, a class, a coach or mentor, or a writing buddy, be sure to know what kind of support you want and need and what kind of support they can provide. I got fired by my very first writing coach. She told me I “wasn’t ready.” But the truth was, I was ready, she just wasn’t the right fit and I didn’t know it. She never gave me any direction, which is what I needed, so each week I showed up not knowing what I was supposed to have done. She never asked to see any of my writing, so I didn’t know if writing coaches actually looked at writing or if that was only editors. I kept time in our sessions, and each time I walked away feeling more confused rather than inspired. If she hadn’t fired me, I most certainly would have fired her once I realized I could. Because it was new to me, I thought I was doing something wrong. I didn’t know that she wasn’t a great coach, wasn’t right for what I needed, and that there were many different options out there.
Use (Just Enough) Technology to Organize and Provide Structure to Your Process
Organization is an important structure of support for your writing, especially as you move beyond your journal and begin to develop your writing to be shared more broadly with others. To be able to share your work and make it more visible, there’s no getting around needing to make it digital and to keep it organized.
Finding things in your journal or on your computer can prove to be difficult. The same goes for managing a lot of material when you’re working on a book or a bigger project. There are some systems out there that can help with this.
No matter what, I recommend having some kind of organizational structure that supports your process and enables you to come back to and find your writing easily and helps you manage a lot of material.
Exploring different software options will help you begin to utilize software to support your individual process and needs.
Consider these questions to discover supports for your writing practice:
- What systems of support (faith and self-trust, the body, the earth, reading, community, and software systems) do you already have available to you?
- What supports do you need to add or enhance?