Ready To Write?::10 commandments to kick start your copy::

by Jeanette LeBlancwww.peacelovefree.com

[ONE: PAY ATTENTION]

“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Mary Oliver

[one: pay attention]

Everything that surrounds you is a story worth telling.

Wake up. Take it all in. Way Deep. Even the boring and mundane bits. Especially the boring and mundane bits.

You cannot write this life until you begin paying attention to it.

Grab it all and soak it in and recognize it for the divinity that it is. Be Present. Take Note. Offer Gratitude. See life in all it’s holy wonder.

Pay attention, writer. Your craft depends on it.

[two: Show Instead of tell]

“Don’t tell me that you’re scared. Show me how your heart is trying to climb out of your

chest, how you’re leaving a trace of cold sweat on everything you touch, what the

darkness tastes like when you’re forced to swallow it, what the trees are murmuring in

Sanskrit behind your back and how the wind is feasting on your skin.”

Andrea Balt

[two: Show instead of tell]

Good writing makes us feel. We get lost in the experiences of people and characters totally outside of ourselves. We smell what they smell. Feel what they feel. Hear what they hear.

Chronology is important, yes. We need to know who did what, and when they did it. But to really engage your reader, you need to embrace the notion of showing them your experiences in a way that makes them intensely real.

Go deep inside the moment you are sharing. Engage your five senses and then push beyond that. Involve your gut, your fiery intuition, your eternal bravery. Your reader will react. I promise.

[Three: Write it like you speak it, yo]

“Write like you talk, except better. Better words, better arrangement, better flow.”

Brian Clark

[three: write it like you speak it, yo]

Don’t try to write like somebody else. Write like you.

Do you say ain’t and gonna? Then do it. Have a particular affinity for profanity? Go for it. Call everyone sweets and darling? Find the perfect term of endearment for your readers and take it all the way to town.

Clearly, there are industries where the liberal use of the word ‘clusterfuck’ wouldn’t go over well, but it most cases if channel your real-life voice, your words will automatically come across as more authentic and true.

Own your voice. It’s the only one you’ve got.

[four: seduce the muse]

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we

sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings.

Ideas come. Insights accrete.” ― Steven Pressfield

[FOUR: Seduce the muse]

The muse. She’s a tricky bitch. Slippery. More than a bit of a tease.

But if you pay attention, if you learn her pleasure zones, if your court her as she deserves to be courted and when she shows up pay her the most exquisite, divine kind of reverence, she will give you exactly what you want. And when a writer and her muse are dancing together the way they are meant to, it is pure heat. Unadulterated, holy creation at work.

Don’t just wait for her to come to you. The muse expects effort and persistence and some serious love-making. So twirl that hair and start batting those long eyelashes. You’ve got some seduction to do.

[five: face your fear]

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to

speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

― Natalie Goldberg

[five: face your fear]

What is the one thing you are most afraid to write? The thing you will avoid at all costs?

Face it. Stare it in the eye with all the fire you possess. Hold it to the light. Examine it’s contours, and see how it looks all illuminated like that.

The thing you are most afraid of is the think you most need to write. It will push back against you, guaranteed. It will try to make you cower, run and hide. It’s going to resist being brought out of the shadows.

Don’t turn away. Write it down. You’ve got this.

[six: find the universal moment]

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think

much as you do, care about many of the things you care about. You are not alone.”

― Kurt Vonnegut

[six: Find The Universal Moment]

Our lives are all unique. Our experiences intensely individual. Not everyone who reads your work will have lived and loved and lost exactly as you have. But they will have lived and loved and lost, guaranteed.

Within each piece of writing there lies a core of universal truth. Grief always knows grief. Uncertainty well remembers uncertainty. Love always recognizes love.

Channel deep enough to access that universality and tease out it’s layers. Your readers will recognize themselves in the midst of your stories, no matter how unfamiliar the subject matter. And in that recognition they will respond and feel known.

[seven: first drafts suck. live with it]

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

Ernest Hemingway

[seven: First drafts suck, live with it]

First drafts are most often steaming pile of cow dung. Truth.

There. I said it. Of course, Hemingway said it first, so if you don’t trust me yet, go with that guy. He did okay for himself.

It’s okay to breathe a sigh of relief. You’ve just been given permission to suck. That’s hugely liberating.

Let it be okay for your attempts to not reach perfection the first (or even second or third or tenth) time around. Let it be crap. Breathe in the freedom of that.

Then dig deep and mine what you have for the gold within. It’s there, I promise.

[Eight: trust your voice]

“No one will know what has passed through me…I write because there are

stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life… I write out of hurt and how to

make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the

only real home I’ll ever have.” Natalie Goldberg

[eight: trust your voice]There is no one else on earth with a voice exactly like yours.

Nobody who could ever tell your story exactly the way you can.

Nobody who knows what it is to have lived this life that you have lived. Your voice; your perfect, unique, irreplaceable voice. The world needs it, yearns for it.

Unbind the ties that keep you holding it tight inside. Let it out. I cannot wait to read.

[nine: trust your reader]

“Your reader is intelligent.  He proved that by learning

to read.  So take a few risks.  Trust that he'll get the point.”

A.C. Grant

[nine: trust your reader]She is smart. She knows what she wants.

If she is reading your words – any of them – she has already signed up for the journey.

But in order to keep her with you, you’ll need to trust her fully with your story, with your heart, with your truth. You must have faith that she will understand.

If you hold back she will know.

Picture her with you, face to face, her hands in yours. Look her in the eye. Now trust her to hold your story.

It is safe. I promise.

[ten:be uninhibited]

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the

center.”

Kurt Vonnegut

[ten: be uninhibited]

There are no rules of writing that matter as much as the truth in your voice. The pulse of your spirit.

Honor that. Let it loose. Let if fly. Let it get messy.

Don’t hold back. There is nothing to lose. This is time to enter your own wilderness, to invite yourself to the party. Do not be too concerned with what anyone says you should or shouldn’t do, or how you should or should not do it.

Just let go. Throw your arms back and take the leap. Be Bold. Be Free. Be You.

You’ve got this.

[the End]

Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write

like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to

say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our

brow and know that we’re not alone.”

Alan Wilson Watts