When you approach your writing or art zone, is there a part of you that feels selfish? Maybe a voice in your head accuses you of being self-absorbed. Shouldn’t you be doing real work? I know the feeling!
When choosing my project for this season’s Write ON, I had lots of choices. I could do something practical:
- Work on making Your Artist Knows the Way an ebook and audio book. (stay tuned)
- Write my newsletter pieces. (already doing that, so it’s going to happen no matter what)
- Develop a new class I want to offer. (always exciting to make something new for you!)
But none of those felt right.
Another option arose. I could chronicle the experiences I had on my recent trip to Paris and Portugal. I had so many insights about my life, art and writing. Clarity about who I am and how I want to live this next chapter of my life. Delight over random things that ignite something new in me. Where does all that inspiration go if I don’t write about it?
This kind of writing didn’t feel immediately useful. And I wasn’t up the work of making something for the public. It’s rare for me to make a project out of something just for me. Just for fun. Just to milk the experiences for even more insight and delight.
I like to joke that I am the ‘lower the bar’ coach. I’ve seen that most of us make more progress when we lower our expectations of output or outcome. Here was my chance to lower the bar.
Writing just for me
My intention for this writing project is to show up and see what’s there in my memories. To free-write the way I did when I started writing in 1994. Loose, open, curious. Present, staying with it, for 15 minutes or more. I’ve added this to my morning coffee time before I go into work mode. Lit by a candle, cozy on my studio loveseat, I give myself this space for reflection and discovery.
Four weeks in, I asked Write ON members what they notice about themselves as they work on their projects. What’s different? What’s present?
I was amazed at the answers. I heard how writing helps us digest our thoughts and feelings. That even the challenges were accepted because it helps understand the writing better. The range of gifts that writing gives us reminds me that any writing project is valid, even a private project.
Writing only for myself gives me space for all parts of me. The lover, the bitch, the awe-filled adventurer. While I’d rather pretend I wasn’t still angry about an experience, writing out what I wish I had said was satisfying and restored something in me. Then there were the fun surprises.
When I was in Paris, I visited the Postal Museum. The stamp panorama showed a collection of French history. Art, science, history, architecture, the great people who made that country, in hundreds of tiny art works designed to be sent around the world. I wrote so much about my lifelong love affair with mail!
Shocked at how moving it was, I have been revisiting it in my head. When I wrote about seeing the stamp panorama and delighting at the wall of postal caps from around the world, I felt more ME.
The truth is: writing is selfish. We are taking ourselves away from all our other roles. We are delving deeply into what we think, believe, feel and want. What could be more about the Self than the process of writing anything? Even if it’s for an audience, it’s coming from deep inside you.
We often think we need permission to write for ourselves. I believe we sometimes need a privacy fence for those projects that linger in the wings, waiting to recognize that it’s more than okay to write whatever we want, just for us. Go ahead. Be a selfish writer.
What did this spark in you? Share your thoughts below.
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