Is your love of writing conditional?
Is your love of writing conditional?
Many writers hope their writing projects will grant them this secret wish.
On Monday, I sat in a recliner with my leg propped up, nursing the three yellow jacket stings I got on my Friday morning walk, and hoping to come up with something brilliant.
Several ideas had potential, but they quickly fizzled out.
Then I wrote the first line of this post and realized I didn’t need to write about a topic. I needed to write about questions.
Here are the three questions writers most frequently ask me:
Is this good enough?
How can I make this good enough?
What must I do to publish this book?
The practical concerns embedded in each of these questions are important. You need to know the bar you’re shooting for.
But beneath them frequently lurks an issue brilliantly portrayed by Rythea Lee. In her reel, an ambitious writer talks about everything she hopes to accomplish. Afterward, a wise part asks, “And then what will that give you?”
So many writers think that after publishing a book in a certain way or experiencing a certain kind of acclaim, they’ll finally feel like their lives matter, and they’ll be good enough. I’m not pointing fingers here. That desire to relax after reaching some pinnacle of success is one I’m familiar with.
Here’s the problem with this belief.
Worthiness is an inside job. You either accept your worthiness as something you’re born with or see it as something that needs to be earned. People from invalidating environments where love is conditional are likelier to equate their worthiness with their accomplishments. This is especially true for trauma survivors.
Writing can increase your worthiness by reminding you of who you really are. But all publishing and awards get you is a temporary mountaintop high, followed by a desire for more.
Got published in a small literary journal?
Now it’s time to pitch a bigger venue.
Landed a spot in your dream publication?
Your next one should go viral.
Up and up we shoot, hoping to reach the literary stars.
The competitiveness of this field can magnify the feeling that love is conditional. We’re constantly told how hard it is to secure a publishing deal and that more—or different—is always needed, especially when it comes to memoir—a genre where the line separating art from life thins.
Most memoirists enter the field later in life. They’re learning to write a book about their lives by writing a book about their lives. Most feel perpetually behind and race forward at an all-consuming pace, hoping to catch up. But that pace is exhausting, which can make the inevitable rejections we all face even more daunting than they already are.
When we focus on the bar and the outcome, we forget why we started writing in the first place.
For most of us, writing makes us feel more alive. We are more present. We feel more authentic. As we create, we inhabit the worthiness that already exists inside us—even if we don’t know what it all means, or it‘s deeply emotional.
When we forget the bullshit of the business and do what we love, we tap into the magic that writing can give us. This doesn’t mean you can’t strive or have goals. Instead, dig deep and explore why you’ve set your goals. Are they part of your life’s purpose, or are you trying to earn your right to exist?
For many of us, the answer doesn’t fit into that binary. We feel called to write, and some deeply wounded part of us secretly hopes that some imagined success will give us permission to relax.
That permission was granted at your birth. Give it to yourself now.
As you do so, nourish the creative aspect of your mental health by relaxing your ambitions if only for a few hours (or minutes). Then connecting to the joy and aliveness your writing life gives you. Will it make your work brilliant? Possibly. But even when it doesn’t, what you write will be true, and maybe that’s more important.
So how can you connect with the worthiness at the center of your creative life?
Ask yourself the following questions:
· Why did I start writing in the first place?
· What about my writing life makes me feel most alive?
· What would I work on, even if no one reads it?
· When in my writing life do I feel like I’m doing the holy work of finding and expressing an important truth?
Let your responses center you and guide your writing practice. To help others do the same, share your answers in the comments below.
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This Week’s Podcast Episode
Join me and Lara Lillibridge, author of Girlish, Mama, Mama, Only Mama, and The Truth of Unringing Phones, as we explore the impact of estrangement on the memoir writing process, how to protect your heart as you write about painful experiences, and the power of publishing your story, as well as the a-ha Lara had about which part of the writing process actually heals you.
Episode Highlights
1:00 COVID’s Impact on Our Creativity
3:15 Structuring an Estrangement Story
8:45 Crafting a Nonlinear Memoir
15:00 Protecting Your Heart as You Write
How Estrangement Impacts Us
24:00 The Healing Power of Publishing Your Story
30:23 Lara’s Best Writing Advice
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Lisa, you've touched on something so true and crucial here--not just to writers, but to all of us who conflate self-worth with accomplishments, which I suspect is the vast majority of us in Western (especially American) culture. It helps me dig through my resentment and queasiness about all the self-promoting work it takes to have a shot at publication and get to the true jewel of why I write--to feel more present, alive, and connected to the world. Publication feels like recognition, which, on the surface, looks like connection to the world. But like you say, it's a fleeting sensation that leaves us ultimately wanting bigger and better. When we're in touch with the aliveness writing gives us, publication feels like a side bonus instead of the only bonus. Thank you for your clarifying post!
Hi Lisa, I started writing at first to structure my thoughts, my aims, my dreams, my to do’s. But I discovered writing could do more for myself. Writing down my thoughts that wandered through my brain. But too trying to write observations, becoming quiet, to communicate, first with myself, later on with others.
The contacts, the reflections, the reactions with and by other writers make me most alive.
Even if nobody would ever read it, I would keep writing the story of my life. My health issues from last years, my childhood issues…
When have I the feeling of doing the holy work? When I can sit quiet, and go deeply into my feelings about certain moments in my life, as I did with some EMDR-sessions with my psychologist.