How writing works for me

This is how writing works for me.

I start writing. 

I don't have a plan. 

I simply start with whatever is given to me. 

A question. A thought. A memory. 

And I see where it leads. 

It's like stepping into the unknown, following a dark path without a flashlight.

It's like stepping off the edge of a cliff, unsure if I can fly--thinking I can't fly--but stepping into the air anyway, urged by some inner compulsion to test gravity and the rules of the universe.

The words that come from my pen onto the page serve as wings. They keep me aloft. They're like a bridge taking me from one thought to another across the dark chasm of unknowing.

I never know before stepping into the void whether I'll fly, whether I'll make it to the other side without falling into the mire.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I keep taking that step: curious to see what happens, wanting to know if I can still fly, or just wondering where the step will take me today. 

Each day is different. I see the world differently each day.

Yet each day is the same: the fear and doubts never go away. 

What am I doing? Why am I doing it? 

Questions and more questions. 

A blank page. 

A pen in hand. 

How will I answer these questions today? 

Where will the path lead? 

And will I have the courage to carve a new path out of the silence, to follow wherever it leads?

Sometimes I need to slow down, to put my pen away, to take the moments in the morning that I'd spend writing to think instead or read or just watch as thoughts drift by like clouds that pass... 

Sometimes I'll simply hold my pen, not writing, wanting to regain my strength and faith in the process of writing. 

It's the process of writing each day that gives me the chance to discover what I need to say. 

The Only Thing That Matters

I sent off another story yesterday. Now I’m wondering if I sent it to the right place. It’s how the self-doubt starts.

In a few weeks, if I don’t receive a response, the question will shift in a subtle way. It will become something very different. It will turn into “Was it ready to send out?" And then “Did I need to do more work on it?”

And all of a sudden, like a trap door dropping beneath my feet when I least expect it, the question will become: “Was it good enough?” Meaning, of course: “Am I good enough?”

Maybe each of us asks this question, or maybe it’s only me questioning my own worth as a writer.

Even after years of writing, I notice, I find myself still seeking reassurance from an external source that what I do is valid, that the words that I put down on the page are legitimate. It’s as if I need to hear a voice say, “Yes, the words are fine. You are good enough.”

In the end, though, writing isn’t a question of whether anybody else thinks we’re good enough or that our words are fine. Rather, it’s about determining just how much writing means to us, regardless of how others might view our work.

If your writing doesn’t thrill you or make you happy or move you, well, you don’t need to ask anyone. You know. And then it's a question of why it's not pleasing you... or what you can do to make it more thrilling, more moving. 

Sure, sometimes you may make a mistake. You may think your story is ready to share before it’s actually ready to go out into the world. That’s okay. We all make that mistake.

Does your story still pull you into it?

If the answer is yes! then keep working on it. Send it out again.

But if it has lost its pull, put it aside. Work on something else. Let the story simmer on a back burner. Wait for it to cook a little more. See how it develops.

You have to trust your opinion, not someone else’s, to decide when your work is ready to send out. It’s your choice. The fate of your work rests in your hands.

Try to remember this: silence—even rejection—is not always about you or your work.

Ask yourself how you can sustain your work in the face of silence and rejection. How can you keep writing?

Sometimes it’s just learning to ignore the silence and critical voices.

Sometimes it's just this: keep your hand moving across the page.

In the end, with or without recognition, with or without readers, you’ll write because of one reason: your need to write.

That’s the only thing that matters, really, and the only reason to keep writing.

A Writer’s Self-Worth

 Every writer reaches a point in the writing process when he hits a wall, swims into a net, gets snagged by a shoal, and is unable to swim past it.

Whether it’s loss of confidence in one’s writing, fatigue from spending too much time with words, hand cramps from carpal tunnel, emotional resistance to investigating one’s imagination, physical discomfort from sitting too long, or eye strain from staring for hours at a computer screen—one or more of these walls can lead a writer to question his worth.

And questioning one’s worth as a writer can lead to questioning the worth of one’s words, which can lead inevitably to questioning what value your work has and if there’s a point to putting words down on paper at all.

When such a moment comes, it drains away the writer’s love of stories, passion for searching for words and truth, eagerness to find something new that no one has ever found before or written in quite the same way. It’s all forgotten.

The moment a writer hits such a wall, he can feel stuck in quicksand, believing that he’s written his last word, that he has no more strength to swim another stroke. There are no more words left to give. Why, he wonders, did he get into the water in the first place?

As soon as I hear myself asking such questions, I can become discouraged. Our society places so much emphasis on riches and success. If you’re not a NY Times Bestselling author—in the top ten!!— you’re a failure. And if you’re a writer struggling financially, it’s easy to think you might have been better staying in law school.

Such thoughts raise red flags and alert me to when I might have hit a wall and need to do the backstroke to regain my perspective.

I have to remind myself that writing isn’t solely about earning money. Few writers can support themselves with their work (though it would be lovely for the rest of us if our work gained sufficient acclaim to support us). Writing, rather, serves as a way for me to understand the world and my life. It is a process of exploration, a tool that lets me see and learn and discover new things about my relationship to the world and myself.

The criteria for measuring our success don’t have to be how much money we report on our tax returns each April or how many books we’ve published in the past decade. Instead, we might ask how much we’ve learned in the past year about writing and life. We can look back at the past year and see the number of journals on our shelf and feel that we succeeded simply because we faced a blank page day after day and managed to put words down. We are successful writers because we understand something differently, something that we might not have understood without having written.

On days when I feel like I’ve hit a wall, I tell myself (again and again) that writing isn’t about worth or financial gain. It’s about exploring and discovering things that I never knew before putting my pen to paper. It’s about trying to wrest meaning from a world that often seems to lack meaning or whose meaning is hidden beneath the surface of events.

The next time you feel yourself hitting a wall and questioning your self-worth as a writer, remember your words do have value. You are a writer worth all the effort you’ve given to make sense of the world.

Hitting the wall doesn’t have to signal the end of a project or, on a deeper level, a career. More likely, it’s just a temporary pause, a sign that something needs to change.

Sometimes a writer simply needs to alter his direction and shift his perspective to see a particular problem from a different angle and discover a path past it.

Start with a question: What do you love about writing? (Or: What did you used to love about writing?)

Find what you love about the process... and go from there.