Being a Writer

The fear and the elation of exposing your insides

Just printed it for the first time. In love with it and scared of it simultaneously.

I printed the latest draft of my completed fiction book today, a psychological suspense novel. I love it. I love my characters and I can’t wait for you to meet them and for them to be real for you and everyone else, like they are to me.

I’m a little nervous because I’m about to commence a read through and I will find errors, places that don’t work and no doubt, much that could be better. There will be more to do before the manuscript hits the desk of my insightful editor in a couple of weeks.

Then, after she’s been over it and nutted some things out that could be better again, there will be more improvements. It’s quite the process, but that doesn’t bother me.

My struggle as a writer is more about feeling vulnerable and exposed because I’ve shared things that only previously lived in my head with everybody. I’ve voluntarily hung it out there, shown all my dirty washing for better or worse.

Clearly I want to be seen, read, heard, understood, or I wouldn’t do it. I’d just write for joy and burn it. But with the desire to share and connect comes a very strong fear of being judged.

I think it may be one of the most paralysing fears of modern life, the fear of being judged as not good enough. Yet somehow creatives, writers keep putting the work out there. The desire to be be seen overcomes the fear of hurt, and most times, the fears were unfounded.

Do you write? Do you journal?

Journalling lets you exercise your personal creativity, record your ideas, and see your insides out of you on a screen or paper, without exposure to anyone but yourself. Exposing your mind contents for your private appraisal can be super informative!

Looking at your thoughts and feelings put into words, gives you a whole different view of everything. It can help you locate your core truths amongst conflicting feelings as you read back and see themes emerging. It can put everything in perspective as you look at your insides from a little distance away, organised into a format for review.

Writing out pain, hurts, shame and fears, feeds the self-supporting, compassionate part of you, especially if you hand back responsibility for others' actions to them in your writing. You can also just have a vent if you need one, in a way that hurts nobody.

Hopefully, you’re not labouring with great pain right now, but if you are, I recommend adding writing for release to your healing. On a regular basis check your words for self-critical thoughts or patterns, unhelpful beliefs, or stories you tell yourself that do not serve your higher good.

Write or type them and print them out. Then take them to a safe place to watch them burn as you consciously release them.

Author Mina Murray wrote that journaling is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time. I've also heard it said that to journal is like living life twice - understanding your day in words, consciously processing your experiences more fully.

There are many different methods of journaling.

The most common is probably a free-flowing stream of consciousness, perhaps daily, to see what comes out for you, what's top of your mind and what keeps coming up for your attention.

If you’re not into sitting down for a big write (many people are not) there are simpler and easy ways to make use of the benefits of journaling without embarking on an epic saga. Point or bullet form journaling takes much less time than free- flowing writing sessions.

It’s where you just write a brief phrase per line, like a list, putting down your thoughts, feelings, memories, or recording what occurred in your day and perhaps the insights you’ve had. You can also more easily come back repeatedly to point- form writing over a day, week, or month, picking up where you left off.

A one sentence per day journal is a tiny commitment that offers some benefits of therapeutic writing and sums up so much, very succinctly. It’s an interesting exercise because it causes you to look back on your day and notice the one most significant thing, or standout theme that emerges. A one-line journal gives you vivid snapshots of what was happening for you over time.

You might simply write the date, accompanied by one sentence. You can keep a one-line journal in most ordinary diaries, so you don’t need a special book.

It's sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees in our minds. Writing can be like coming out into a clearing, then looking back, finding you can now see the shape and patterns of the forest of your thoughts and feelings more clearly.

You can make out the individual trees and see how they fit together. You may even see new paths through the trees emerging.

The theme I played writing this piece was a song that was recorded by Wanda Jackson more than 60 years ago. I think it’s a kitsch kind of cool retro track. Enjoy.

Love to you,