A Word For Writers

I will take this opportunity to say what I have to say about being woman and writing. And what I have to say, I learned from living my life. The title of my memoir will give you a clue — The Writer’s Vow — and I hope I can say what I have to say with a bit of elegance, while still acknowledging that each of us is living the demands of whatever life we are living. I honour this. Life is challenging and for good reason. It causes us to dig a little deeper into our interiority to discover greater power to generate more ease, balance, and well-being for ourselves and others.

Make no mistake, we are the creators of our lives, not the victims of our creations. And whatever we have created can be un-created and re-created through the power of our own choice. What is required is a belief that it is possible.

Many moons ago I stepped away from the idea of a writing routine and moved toward the idea of a daily writing practice. Who wants another routine?

Daily writing practice is a different idea than writing every day. Daily writing practice is time you carve out independent of what you do with that time. It can have any sort of content you find important. The writer’s voice within you will guide you if you are willing to listen and this is the space you make for listening. I discovered the pleasure of my own company in this writerly space of reconnecting to the little girl in me who loved to write. For her, it was play. I somehow learned to take my writing seriously enough to hold a space for that girl to play in writing.

In order to move toward a daily writing practice, I had to face the fact that organizing my writing around so-called life simply wasn’t working. (Anyone reading this cannot assume I was privileged in this notion. I was a single mother of two sons with no financial support working two jobs and going to school. I daresay that this is about as hard as it can get for a woman of my kind.)

So there came a day when I decided to organize my life around writing. To do this I had to shore up my self-esteem and feel worthy of the possibility. There were sacrifices to be made but the things I sacrificed were mostly the things I complained about anyway. I also had to understand that being wife, mother, employee, student, daughter, sister … are roles I play and not my vocational calling. Being wife is not a vocation. Being mother is not a vocation. And as a human being, I am called by a gift seeded in my soul, just like every other human being. And I get to discover what that is by showing up for myself.

Sure, it's hard sometimes, but if you have the vocational call on your soul to write then not answering that call is harder still.

Take courage!

Here’s what I said to me:

• 1. Get real! Why are you alive? Is writing a vocational call for you or just an idea you like to imagine? Are you willing to learn what is in you to give and then give it? Will you show up? Do the work?
• 2. Make writing first. It doesn’t mean you won’t mother well, or let the house burn down, or not do what is yours to do in daily life. This is about how you see yourself and the world of relationships you exist in. Clear perception is a function of self-love. Everyone benefits and nobody is harmed by you becoming more you.
• 3. Circumstances do not matter. Where there is will, there is way. You just need to trust yourself, listen deeply, and practice writing. The rest will take care of itself.

To mature as writer one must first mature as woman.