The Battle in Life, and In Writing

I have a young friend who is working toward a goal. My young friend took a small, hopeful step toward the goal.

Immediately another person belittled this small step, saying in so many words, “Why did you do that? You don’t have any way yet?” And this person added a small laugh. You know the type of laugh–it holds scorn, but if someone were to mention it, the answer would be, “I’m just joking. Don’t be so sensitive.”

I’m grateful to say that my young friend has a healthy enough ego to recognize the disparaging nature of this person’s comment. Some of us don’t recognize it. Some of us wonder what is wrong with us, what we are missing and question our right to have our particular goal or dream.

Just a FYI: when you hear someone tell you, “Don’t be so sensitive,” in those words or similar, know that you are being told not to be the person you are. It isn’t that you are too sensitive. It is that the other person is uncomfortable with your feelings. Yes, I was often told that I was “too sensitive.” As a child with a tender spirit, I wondered what was wrong with me. It took me some forty years, authoring a number of emotional and well-received books, and an editor admiring my sensitivity, to realize that being sensitive was a gift, my gift. It was me being me. And it made me a writer.

The only sound advice I can give to the young writer is to tell him to have faith in himself.

Howard Fast, novelist and television writer

That is sound advice not only for beginning writers but for seasoned writers, and for anyone stepping out to accomplish any goal. It is something I have to daily (sometimes hourly) remind myself. Dwight Swain, in his book Techniques of the Selling Writer, puts forth that all you really need to write is the urge to write. I’m going to say that is a start, but add that you need starch in your backbone. You need the gumption to answer all manner of critical, defeating comments, from within and without, that are going to start coming at you the instant you step out toward your desire. Mr. Swain gives examples that are hilarious. I’ll give a few of mine:

“Aw, you don’t have the education to write.”

“That is a stupid idea.”

“You really think that?” Said with horror.

“You’ve tried before. Just what has happened?”

And those comments are just from within my own thoughts. They come like an onslaught of arrows, to which I’ve learned to hold up my shield, as it says in Ephesians 6:16: “…take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

I pray for God’s guidance and tell myself, “Let’s just see…” That is enough to get me started into the creative space, where my aim is to let myself play, experiment, listen to and express what comes from my heart.

What qualities and/or conditions are most valuable to a writer? Spontaneity. Freedom. The opportunity for unstudied, impulsive roving through the backlands of his mind.

Dwight V. Swain, writer and teacher

Don’t you just love that word–backlands? Instantly the spell-checker/grammar checker flags it, but that is how Mr. Swain wrote it, and as the author, he gets to decide. It is his creation.

Once again I begin the process of starting a new book project. I begin by play, by letting myself see what I’m feeling and thinking, and asking what I’m seeking. Most of all by acceptance of today and of myself, just as I am.

Blessings,