You're here because you value writing. You value sharing the sparkling, pulsating messages and stories within your luminous heart. I'm so glad you showed up because these are the things that matter to me.
In this post, I'm sharing how to
- write better,
- be more of yourself,
- and let others benefit from the seeds of spirit within your essence.
Write from the heart
Live your life and share about it once you have a tiny bit of perspective or even during the questioning phase along the way. Digest your own life, as Natalie Goldberg once wrote. Writing practice can help you with this.
Be real, honest, and open. In this way, your essence cracks through the illusions.
Be You
Use writing practice to find your voice, your message, your style
- Keep exploring, writing from the first impulse, the first thoughts
- Be curious, then be creative
- Be creative, then be curious
- Play, play, play all the livelong day – don’t take yourself too seriously (key for releasing #artisticangst)
- Get out of your head and into your heart. Repeat.
Write, Write, Write
You'll feel so much better if you do it. Stop talking about it and do it. Stop writing about wanting to write and get to scribbling. The more you practice, the better you get. The better you get, the easier it becomes.
There's grace that arises to support you when you take action. It shifts the energy to support you, brings you good books, resources, and articles, and introduces you to wonderful people, teachers, collaborators, fellow scribes, and artists. Write, and the whole world writes with you... oh wait, that's not the lyric... but it can be.
Perfection is an illusion. Perfection is not excellence.
Excellence looks for what is good, appreciates it, and does more of that.
Perfection is rigid and impractical, looks for faults and tries to correct or fix.
Excellence is generous, life-affirming, and comes from the heart.
Take Daily Action
Write one good word on a page. If that is what you make time for, feel great about it. No guilt, no shame, no obligation. One good word can make you ponder and light a fire in you! This is how we take one meaningful step.
Creatively, it will fill you with so much energy, life force, and imagination.
Want to do more? Then do more. It's really that easy.
Practice writing each day. Practice sharing each day. Stretch a little. It's soooooo good for us.
Becoming a writer, a better writer, and a writer who writes from the heart happens by taking a pen in hand, placing fingers on the keyboard, and making your marks on the page.
It also happens by taking in other people's work, and considering how they did that thing that makes you say, "I'd like to make someone feel the way that piece of writing makes me feel."
Get Better and Better as You Go
First drafts, editing, revising – each of these are unique and wonderful parts of the process of writing. You get to know yourself as you go through each phase. Personally, I love revisions as much as first drafts.
Many people write a lot of material in their first draft. I've always written lean and then built out the work layer by layer. Sometime I'll write about why that's my process. (What can I say? I'm a poet koan haiku contemplative by nature.)
Finding your voice happens with practice. Then over time, you develop your style. And you figure out how to flex and flow with these, going deep and wide in balance and alternation.
It's the kind of thing that you can enjoy for your whole life.
Sharing Your Writing
Letting others see through your lens is a huge part of why we share our pages. We publish our work on whatever platforms we like in whatever format we prefer because of our desire to share.
You'll probably try lots of ways of sharing. I used to deeply appreciate great blogs in the early days of blogging. It was meaningful and easy to connect with cool people who weren't interested in being a copycat. It's harder to find these blogs organically, especially ones that are not overrun with stupid flashing ads (now you know how I feel about that).
Publishing and sharing your writing are life-shifting. I find them wonderful. Sometimes that makes people nervous. That's okay. You won't die from being nervous. Share in small ways over and over. It gets easier.
I'll be sharing a lot about how to stretch ourselves through sharing practice and offering it as regular workshops.
Writers, authors, bloggers, vloggers, content creators
No matter if these are your vocation or you use writing and content to support your livelihood, taking daily action and practicing consistently makes it easier to create from, write from your heart. It just does.
I've led a lot of writing workshops and practice sessions, and my favorite thing about these is when someone doesn't believe they are much of a writer - and then touches down deep into the nitty gritty details of their life and delivers a piece of writing that surprises them. They take their own breath away. I've seen it over and over.
And it gets easier and easier to share - even if the message feels edgy.
Develop Your Voice and Style
Through writing practice, sharing practice, and getting comfortable with not sounding like an artificial automaton (Robot, Generic, Imitation Vanilla), life and your writing becomes something BIGGER. You are unique. You came to life to show us the Divine Consciousness through your lens. Are you willing?
It's not even that we have to sound drastically different from others, though we definitely can.
It's about bringing your heart frequency, your heartbeat, wing thrum, va-va-voom into your creation. Do you know what that is? It's what happens when you let go of fear and dance like the magic you are on the page. And it doesn't matter your subject matter, your genre, or your format.
Beginners Mind
When I was a beginner writer, the only thing I did was read books and write from my heart.
Was it good writing? Some of it. I kept practicing day by day, stretching myself. It took me years to finally write a story to its end (mostly because I didn't want it to end!). Poetry was my natural element, and a heckuva lot shorter, hence easier to finish.
Forget about writing needing to be anything other than for the SATISFACTION and JOY it gives YOU right now. And if that is all it ever amounts to, do you know how beautiful that is?
Think of it like this... you get to sit down, grab a pen, a cuppa something nice, and get to know yourself on the page. Let's face it, we are the one person we are always with in this life. Do you appreciate yourself? Maybe it's time to explore the things that really matter to you, dear light.
Support Systems
By having SIMPLE systems, we get into our creative joy because we aren't wasting energy and time on distractions and worrying.
Systems and small daily actions compound satisfaction into freedom.
(#worry is super low vibrational and completely unhelpful. #tipoftheday: remove worry from your vocabulary)
There are simple systems for creating, sharing, and monetizing.
And commitment, or intention, is a key support system.
How easy does it become for you if you are committed to writing and speaking from your heart - instead of the stinkin' thinkin' and hype our society has accepted?
I'm committed to helping shift the Collective Consciousness and Conversations into higher frequencies. More of us see through the illusion of fear and are coming into the space of REAL CREATIONARY POWER.
I'll share some systems that support me in another post.
Make Your Own Heart Sing
What about writing makes your heart sing? How do you let your little light shine brighter and brighter through language, story, and the rhythm of it all?
Write wild and weird. Write tame and docile. Play with it like a kid and know there is no wrong way to actually do this!
Enough for today. Let's meet again soon!
Andrea Mai ~ Dao Wei