How I Brought Joy Back to My Writing, Part 1
“Wonder,” created with Midjourney AI
I wanted to share the journey I went through writing my last blog post, "Why creating your own path can feel awful," because it's been quite a ride. This piece started as an article about the concept of surrender--what it is, its benefits, and how to use it. I started working with surrender last June after reading the work of Tosha Silver, and it's been making a big difference for my anxiety. So I wanted to share what I've learned. I began a draft that seemed promising--but then got stuck for months.
I worked on the piece on and off over three months between getting Covid, getting shingles in the aftermath of Covid (would not recommend), two plane trips (one planned and one unplanned), holiday parties, and a friend's death. I returned to the piece occasionally but mostly avoided it out of the anxiety of not knowing what to do with it.
I didn't understand why until I started reading Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write with Confidence by William Kenower.
From the beginning, this book spoke directly to me. Kenower talks about writing as a "deep form of self-acceptance." As writers (though this can apply to any art form), we care about what other people think because we want to share our work. But at the same time, the work comes from our interests, imagination, and experiences and is inextricably tied to who we are. So any rejection of the work can trigger our own shame and self-rejection.
Therefore, the key to writing with confidence was to trust our interests and not place other people's opinions before our own. To that end, he suggests following our feelings and paying attention to what feels good when we write and what feels bad. Think of it as using the KonMari method on one's writing and asking, "does this spark joy?"
Writing always feels good when we follow our curiosity. But it feels bad as soon as we start to worry about what other people would think. So then we'd try to slog through the work or procrastinate out of anxiety.
That's exactly what I've experienced in the last few years. I would get ideas for what to write, but the overthinking and self-editing would set in when I went to the page. I worried whether my writing was original enough, valuable enough, enjoyable enough. Since working on self-acceptance last year, I have become more aware of my anxieties and their origin in low self-worth. But every time I thought I'd overcome it, I'd fall back in again.
So I decided to practice noticing how I feel when I'm writing. Using my work-in-progress article on surrender as an experiment, I discovered several reasons why I'd get stuck:
1. I need to include my stories
Whenever I asked myself, "What would I write if I could write anything?" I always felt pure joy at the idea of sharing my personal growth experiences.
Most of my blog posts have been about sharing these experiences, but I resisted this approach for a long time because it's different from how most nonfiction writers teach. They mostly write impersonally, drawing on the authority of researchers, prominent teachers, or professional experiences. So I felt I had to remove myself from the picture to be taken seriously.
Every time my writing started to flow and feel good, I would try to write an impersonal article like this one, and get horribly stuck. Then after being frustrated long enough, I'd go back to writing about my experiences, and the words would flow again. Writing impersonally didn't feel good, and thinking I had to do that to succeed felt especially shitty.
Fearless Writing taught me that we have no control over what we're interested in--we can only follow it. Writing what we think other people want makes the work less alive because our passion is missing. It may or may not be true that more people would take an impersonal approach seriously, but I have to do what's right for me. So I finally accepted that having my stories be part of my work is okay.
2. I can only teach what I've experienced
In addition to writing impersonally, I noticed it didn't feel right when I tried to teach other people's work. Of course, I do write about what I've been learning from others, such as in this post. But when I tried to teach something I had yet to experience fully, I never felt confident in it. Still, I kept trying because this kind of content fills the Internet, and I thought I should be doing it.
When I returned to my draft, I realized I couldn't teach a concept when I hadn't lived with it, seen its results, and understood it in my worldview and language. Until then, I couldn't stand behind it and share it as my own because I didn't know it as a lived truth.
3. I have to put it into my own words
For any concept I've learned from others, it's hard not to explain using their terms because it's where I learned it. But other people's words contain more than just a concept. They include a worldview and teaching style different from mine, even when I resonate with their ideas.
For instance, Tosha Silver, whom I mentioned earlier, is a spiritual teacher who talks about surrender in terms of trusting your higher self and the "Flow" of life. While I believe in those things, I don't like asking people to believe, and I wasn't sure how to encourage the practice of surrender for its own sake. I realized that I hadn't lived with the practice long enough to explain it in my own words, and it was important to me to do so.
For whatever reason, writing my lived truths is where I find my confidence. That doesn't make me a versatile or fast writer, but it makes me trustworthy. That's not a bad thing.
Other people's opinions
After having these insights on why I get stuck, I learned that worries of "other people's opinions" came in many ways that weren't always obvious. Sometimes they show up as fear of criticism. Sometimes they were voices of other writers and teachers on how to succeed online. Sometimes they were societal norms I struggled to deviate from. Sometimes the thoughts were wordless, and I only felt their impact as stress in my body.
It's not that other people's opinions and guidelines aren't sometimes helpful, but we get into trouble when we place them above our own thoughts. We need to trust ourselves first in order to differentiate helpful advice from unhelpful ones. Otherwise, all we can do is follow and then wonder why we don't like where we end up.
I thought I had finally broken through my challenges around writing, but there was one more thing holding me back, which I wasn't conscious of until I felt the effects as episodes of extreme fatigue. I will discuss the story of that breakthrough in the second and final part of this series.
What about you? What are some areas in your life and work where you aren't yourself because it's not the "normal" or profitable approach? What approach would spark more joy? Let me know in the comments.
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