Starting to write is always the hardest. There are so many possibilities, while at the same time it can feel like there are none. And your idea of what’s going to come out is never that same as what actually does. In my work as a writing coach and mentor, I’m always saying, “write what wants to be written.” I even have a signature writing exercise designed for this because it’s critical to starting, developing, and staying committed to your writing practice (click here if you want to try it out, it’s my gift to you).
Writing what wants to be written is easier said than done, especially if you have a deep need to do it “right” or to say something important, witty, desirable, and profound before you even start. Not to mention the desire to be liked, admired, or simply acknowledged by other people for your daft placement of words. Writing what wants to be written is antithetical to writing for external validation. There is nothing that will freeze you more before a blank page than needing others to approve of and like what comes out, even you.
I’m not saying that having other people like your stuff isn’t great, it is. Who doesn’t want to be liked and admired for their creative endeavors? Yes! I’ll be the first to admit that I do regularly check my recommends, comments and followers. And I dream of being on the NY Time’s Best Seller List. We all want to be seen and acknowledged. But there is a difference between needing it and enjoying it as a badass bonus when it comes your way because you did what your little expressive heart loves to do.
When you allow yourself to simply follow your creative expression without it needing to do or be anything other than what it is, you experience your own divinity.
You actually become a Creator. You, like God or Goddess or Source or Creator or Creatrix—whatever term you use—commit the act of bringing essence into form so that it may live a life of its own. That’s Creation.
And the truth is, you have no control over what happens to it after that, especially once you’ve pressed the “submit” button and published it in some form. As Elizabeth Gilbert recent told me, “you have no control over how you exist in other people’s imaginations.”
You can never write what wants to be written when you have and agenda—the word at its root literally means, “list of things to be done.” There is no surprise, no revelation, no mystical arrival when you have expectations or a specific plan. This is especially true when you haven’t yet found your voice or if you are in the beginning stages of cultivating and developing your writing practice.
This isn’t to discount focused, planned or thought out writing. It’s great. It’s important and serves us all on a daily basis. What I am talking about is accessing and cultivating a relationship with your creative voice and spirit. The one that is simply what it is. The one that is enough, has something important to say, and is valuable simply because it is here, alive, expressing itself through the uniqueness of you.
For far too long, I thought there was the writing I naturally did and loved to do, and then there was the “real” writing that I could never seem to figure out how to do. Now to even think of it, or what I even thought that was, boggles my mind. All my writing IS the real writing. All of your writing IS real writing whether you’ve been published or consider yourself a writer or not.
So if you want to start writing and you haven’t, throw your agenda out the window, take a breath, put your pen to the page and start with one word. The rest will follow and its fun to not know where you are going or how’ll you’ll arrive, but I guarantee you will.
And even if it scares the hell out of you, sharing is validation. It’s the act itself, not the result that comes. If you show up, write, and share it, it means that you have become the validator of you.
Start now…click here to to get your get your One Word Can Set You Free Guide as my gift to you, so you can write what wants to be written. The world is waiting for your words!