Your Gift of Writing is For You First

Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit down about my writing. Maybe it's just the January blues, or maybe it’s the weight of all those unfulfilled writing dreams I’ve been carrying around for so long. 

I know I’m not alone in sinking into this kind of creative depression from time to time. The challenge is getting out of it. One thing that’s helped me is being reminded that my love of writing is a gift for me first.

Didn’t I start writing because it made me happy? Writing gave me a sense of freedom. I loved the new and powerful insights that arose from deep focus and concentration. It was satisfying and exciting to see a pile of words adding up to a story, article, novel, or potential movie. The act of creation felt as exhilarating as it could be exhausting.

I can forget sometimes that the desire to write is a gift. It's one that opens me up to having a deep relationship with my soulful imagination. Not everyone establishes such a satisfying, internal bond. I have to remember: Writing is a gift to and for me first.

And yet… creativity spinning out creations eventually generates an impulse to share what’s been created. A piece of writing, once written, isn’t truly complete until it’s read. Writing is a form of communication. It relies on giving and receiving. Writing is the broadcast; reading is its reception.

At first, of course, we write only for ourselves, to discover what we think and feel, wondering if we have something particular to say. This is when the gift feels most potent. Most of us invest in millions of exploratory words before we pull something together that we believe is worth sharing, but reaching this threshold, this impulse to share, is almost inevitable for every writer. We reach a point when we wonder: will my gift be welcomed in the world?

When we begin testing ourselves by submitting work to the marketplace, we must not lose touch with our connection to the gift that came to us first. We have so little control over how—or if—our writing will be received. Luck and timing play a larger role than we’re willing to admit. All we can do is research the markets that might be open to our work, send it off professionally, and follow up professionally too. Then we get back to the love of writing, which is the special gift we've been given.

Many writers who are now household names toiled in obscurity during their lifetimes. Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Franz Kakfa, to name a few. What would the literary landscape look like if these writers had turned away from their gifts?

It’s hard sometimes to not want things back from the writing—fame, fortune, raving reviews, multiple book deals, movie options, etc. But that comes from the world’s influence, not the gift’s. 

My gift urges me to listen to my heart, to swim in the seas of my imagination, and to trust it as a source of inner power and fulfillment while the world carries on in its unfathomable ways. What does your gift of writing urge you to do?

I wholeheartedly wish for all of our writing dreams to come true. While we work and wait patiently for that, I honor the love of writing we each carry in our own hearts.


Write from your gift,

P.S. If you struggle with creative depression sometimes, this is a great book to have on hand: The Van Gogh Blues, by Eric Maisel.

Here's the two minute video by piano teacher Sarah Cashmore that partly inspired this newsletter. In it, she answers one of her audience's questions about dealing with perfectionism.