The writing process is more important than what you produce with your writing.
April was National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) and each April I commit to writing and publishing a poem every other day. It’s quite a challenge that pushes my creative process and edges.
Every time I do this, I’m reminded that making a commitment to the process of writing poetry is far more important and rewarding than worrying about the poems you produce (and whether or not they are “perfect” or “ready”).
When you write a poem (or any piece of writing) every day or every other day, you have to get into the energy and habit of creating. You can’t worry about how “good” any one poem/piece is. No one poem/piece carries all the weight of perfection or success because another one is waiting right on its heels to come forward, and needs to.
At the end of it all there might be one or two poems that stick in your mind as being well done, but mostly you can’t remember any of them unless you go back and read them again. What sticks is the tremendous feeling of having done it, of having stepped into the flow of creating without debilitating resistance, hesitation, or the delay of perfectionism. What remains is both flow and a sense of completion (not to mention a stack of poems/pieces of writing).
It really is magic. This is how magic works. Something unexpected appears out of nowhere. This happens when you put down your agenda and just create for the sake of creation.
One of the poems I recently wrote was about my grandpa and it was a total surprise to me. It brought back memories of him I’d forgotten and it seemed to come out of nowhere. It also felt like it was only able to come because of the poems I’d written the days before it. The previous poems made room for this, unexpected poem, to arrive.
You might be inspired by an idea or something you want to create, great. That gets you started, but when you enter the act of creation itself you have to let go and be moved by the process. You have to let the process move you.
When you push too hard and start focusing too much on the product of what you are creating, that’s precisely when the inner critic comes in and stops you in your tracks. Stops you from being inspired. Stops you from expressing. Stops you from completing. Stop you from discovering and sharing your wisdom and story with the world.
Wanting to create or produce something (whether it is a poem, a book, a blog, a business or anything else) is a catalyst for engaging life, for joining the larger conversation of creation.
To create is to bring essence into form; it is to make the invisible visible, to bring mystery into something known. It never turns out how you imagine or expect it to be, but something shows up nonetheless — as long as you actually engage in the process of creation.
In our culture, we’ve come to over focus on the product itself and its perfection. We focus on the thing we are creating — the book, the business, the poem, the life vision — and we lose connection to the essence, soul, and spirit behind it. The very thing that motivated us to create it in the first place.
When you focus on the perfection of the product you are creating, the act of creation becomes a chore, something you have to do to “get it right” rather than something you are inspired to do. This is another reflection of the “materialism” of our time and culture. It’s another way we separate soul and spirit from our physical world.
The way to recover the soul and spirit of your creations — your writing — is to commit to the process fully.
In order to do this you need to create a structure of account ability and visibility.
Like me, most of the writers I support are more accountable to someone else than they are to themselves. It’s easy to push a deadline when you are the one who set it. But when you commit to something with someone else it’s a whole different story.
If I wasn’t committed to a collaboration with a friend and fellow poet, which required that I post a poem on Medium in response to hers and so she could respond in kind to mine, I know I would have easily put it off, especially on those days I had too much going on, didn’t feel inspired to write, or sat down to write and absolute crap seemed to come out.
Being committed to her didn’t allow me to stay away from the page or get up and leave it. I had to stay. I had to do something, even if it was something that felt bad, like a shit poem. The funny thing is, it is often those, the ones that I judge the most, the ones that are the most torturous to get out, that people liked and responded to the most.
The other key factor is visibility. We published these poems on Medium (which you can do too). This required us to hit the “Submit” button on a regular basis and send the poem out into the big wide world. Hitting that submit button is an act of completion. At that moment you let go. You stop perfecting
You make room for the next thing to arise. You flow.
If you want to stop worrying about the perfection of what you write and experience flow, completion and creative joy, start with these 3-steps:
- Making a commitment to your process over your product
- Create a structure of accountability and visibility
- Engage in it for a minimum of 30 days
It doesn’t mean it will all be easy. It isn’t easy to show up to the vulnerability of creation and expression all the time. That’s exactly why you need a structure that includes the support of other people.
Follow your desire to create, engage life, participate in the larger conversation of creation, and creative joy will come. It will come from your continual process and not the product(s) you produce.
As poet, Rumi so aptly said,
“Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking and the joy inside will eventually open a window.”