John Stevens wrote, "When I trust and respect myself enough to be myself honestly, others respond with trust and respect." To be the writer I want to be is to honestly accept the person I truly am. I must greet my writing with ease and have a commitment to write founded in integrity: Integrity because I honor my own promise to myself to write. When I began this blog I made a commitment to myself to be honest about how I feel. I made a commitment to write my feelings in hopes of creating a place where other writers identify with my struggles of fighting off distractions, having patience to develop the habit of sitting still and writing and in overcoming the fear that has prevented me in the past from clicking publish.
When I write with honesty I eliminate the uncertainty of how others will respond to what I have written. What others think after I click publish means nothing to me because I have been honest about what I think and how I feel. My motives are not clouded when I am honest in my writing. I am not confused by the inconsistencies of my story. If I am writing
honestly there are no inconsistencies.
In my writing the more honest I am about my feelings the more I am inviting the reader to identify with me and the experiences of my life. A writer who writes
honestly has self-respect after they click publish. They can go about their day or crawl into bed with a clear conscious knowing they were honest in their expression of themselves and that is the only requirement of this writer in this writing life.
When I have self-respect as a writer I encourage respectful commentary from my readers. Honesty is like a boomerang it returns what has been thrown out. When I write I am always teaching. I am teaching my readers a possible way to resolve a conflict, I am teaching that it is ok to be afraid and what really is important is what you do with your fear not that you have it and I teach how to take the risk to be honest and build your own self-respect by having the courage to click publish.
When I write I am teaching others how to treat me. I teach them to identify and not compare. With every word I write
I take an action in speaking to others about my personhood. My personhood is what makes me human it is what my readers identify with. I set the tone for what I want my reader's experience to be. The underlying foundation of all my writing is my honest behavior of expressing self. It is in my expression of self honestly that I become all-powerful in my writing. With every click of publish I gain self-respect which is empowering.
Jane Jacobs wrote, "Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems." I write of what it feels like to be human. I write of the experiences in my life that connect me to others who forgive themselves for being human and some who never find forgiveness. When I write I must step back from the feeling so I can express the feeling. I cannot write of despair in the throes of despair. The vocabulary doesn't come because there are no words to express the deep anguish of despair. The language we use is limited, but it is all we have to communicate with each other at the highest level possible.
The conflicts I write come about because it is forgotten how difficult it is to be human. In my stories I write of life where we have impossibly high standards of behavior for each other and for ourselves. Writing conflict is simply writing how a character, a person, has failed in living up to the perfect standard of behavior we have set for them. As marvelous a creature as humans are we thwart our own happiness by never being satisfied and accepting who we are or who others are. The writing experience of this writer's life is that acceptance of self, the development of honest appraisal and a true foundation of self-respect where approval from another person is no longer sought has provided courage, freedom, trust that there is a plan and by doing the action of writing the plan is unfolding.
Being human is difficult, but writing of being human
is even more difficult. In order to write of being human I must detach myself from a human experience and the feelings about the experience allowing myself the space in my mind to reflect. If I am all consumed then there is no space in my mind for anything else to exist. Walking is a way for me to make room in my mind for reflection to exist.
In reflection I can write of feelings that cover me like a pall. I have learned to live with these feelings and accept them because they don't ever leave me for long. Pat Conroy in his writing about his abusive father said, "The scene upset me badly. I had created a boy named Ben Meecham and had given him my story. His loneliness, his unbearable solitude, almost killed me as I wrote about him." Writing non-fiction is an easier calling for writers it is tactical and pragmatic. Fiction writing is psychologically soul wrenching, heart ripping, yet fiction is what most writers want to write. Those of us who dare to write manuscript after manuscript about our feelings overcome, accept and forgive ourselves for being human. Forgiveness separates the writer
from the non-writer
.
When I write with honesty I eliminate the uncertainty of how others will respond to what I have written. What others think after I click publish means nothing to me because I have been honest about what I think and how I feel. My motives are not clouded when I am honest in my writing. I am not confused by the inconsistencies of my story. If I am writing
honestly there are no inconsistencies. In my writing the more honest I am about my feelings the more I am inviting the reader to identify with me and the experiences of my life. A writer who writes
honestly has self-respect after they click publish. They can go about their day or crawl into bed with a clear conscious knowing they were honest in their expression of themselves and that is the only requirement of this writer in this writing life. When I have self-respect as a writer I encourage respectful commentary from my readers. Honesty is like a boomerang it returns what has been thrown out. When I write I am always teaching. I am teaching my readers a possible way to resolve a conflict, I am teaching that it is ok to be afraid and what really is important is what you do with your fear not that you have it and I teach how to take the risk to be honest and build your own self-respect by having the courage to click publish.
When I write I am teaching others how to treat me. I teach them to identify and not compare. With every word I write
I take an action in speaking to others about my personhood. My personhood is what makes me human it is what my readers identify with. I set the tone for what I want my reader's experience to be. The underlying foundation of all my writing is my honest behavior of expressing self. It is in my expression of self honestly that I become all-powerful in my writing. With every click of publish I gain self-respect which is empowering.Jane Jacobs wrote, "Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems." I write of what it feels like to be human. I write of the experiences in my life that connect me to others who forgive themselves for being human and some who never find forgiveness. When I write I must step back from the feeling so I can express the feeling. I cannot write of despair in the throes of despair. The vocabulary doesn't come because there are no words to express the deep anguish of despair. The language we use is limited, but it is all we have to communicate with each other at the highest level possible.
The conflicts I write come about because it is forgotten how difficult it is to be human. In my stories I write of life where we have impossibly high standards of behavior for each other and for ourselves. Writing conflict is simply writing how a character, a person, has failed in living up to the perfect standard of behavior we have set for them. As marvelous a creature as humans are we thwart our own happiness by never being satisfied and accepting who we are or who others are. The writing experience of this writer's life is that acceptance of self, the development of honest appraisal and a true foundation of self-respect where approval from another person is no longer sought has provided courage, freedom, trust that there is a plan and by doing the action of writing the plan is unfolding.
Being human is difficult, but writing of being human
is even more difficult. In order to write of being human I must detach myself from a human experience and the feelings about the experience allowing myself the space in my mind to reflect. If I am all consumed then there is no space in my mind for anything else to exist. Walking is a way for me to make room in my mind for reflection to exist. In reflection I can write of feelings that cover me like a pall. I have learned to live with these feelings and accept them because they don't ever leave me for long. Pat Conroy in his writing about his abusive father said, "The scene upset me badly. I had created a boy named Ben Meecham and had given him my story. His loneliness, his unbearable solitude, almost killed me as I wrote about him." Writing non-fiction is an easier calling for writers it is tactical and pragmatic. Fiction writing is psychologically soul wrenching, heart ripping, yet fiction is what most writers want to write. Those of us who dare to write manuscript after manuscript about our feelings overcome, accept and forgive ourselves for being human. Forgiveness separates the writer
from the non-writer. 
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