You Are Not Missing Out
You Only Need to MASTER Your Pace As a Writer
“I Love The Thought of Being Disturbed by Own Inaction” — The Breakthrough Challenge 2022
Hello, CRY Magazine Community!
It has been a while!
I’ve been up to a lot lately, but the bottom line is this: Things will never be the same again. In my last article on writing, I talked about having a strategy to improve as a writer in 2022.
This month, I found myself reflecting on when I wanted to start writing:
Was it when I fell in love with the world of fiction in the stories my dad bought me as a little girl?
Was it when I was praised for reading stories so much I thought creating them would be “cooler”?
Or, was it when I isolated myself from the real world as a teenager, where writing stories was my coping mechanism through which I interacted with the fictional world; the only reality I “understood” and engaged with?
In short, “where do I go from here?” is a question that many of us ask at a certain point in our writing endeavor. Yet, the tricky thing is, the answers to all my questions could be a good one to my first.
And the real question implied all along was: Why did I start writing? And, what kept me going?
Amidst the different roads that my life might have taken so far, I’ve set on fulfilling this deep-seated curiosity of a lifetime of creations, while managing the expectations of my parents and the society I’ve grown up in.
What I mean by “Pace” in this context…
I didn’t succumb to the negative feelings generated by the uncalled-for outcome that happened a few days ago to my writing plan for this year, and that was thanks to my “pace”.
This was because I set a goal to “write every day” this year, and I have a bigger goal of completing my current work and creating a few on the way.
In other words, the goal was not to win the contest in itself, but it was almost like a shortcut for the hard work I was planning to put in anyways.
My pace as a writer is my backup and insurance to achieve the results I want.
If I keep an open mind to the possibilities open before me; if I know the one word that defines my writing experience this year and the feeling that I link to it, I should have a better picture and increase my motivation and sense of why throughout this year.
But, how do I measure my pace? Is there a deadline for taking Massive Action?
One of my favorite realizations this month was:
“January is the time to figure things out, and we’re always figuring something out. This month is either a continuation of something or a brand new start to one that is yet to be continued.”
How unfair (to ourselves) would it be to expect it all to be figured out overnight?
Why do we set such unrealistic standards for ourselves when all we need to do is take action?
One day, I may not have had the appetite, and my mom responded with what I think is a saying: “Appetite comes while eating,” and bonus, if it is scientifically proven, I know it worked for me at the time.
In other words, I’ve learned that the same could go for writing, and in that instance, I saw writing as a hunger:
Hunger to create something that makes a change. Hunger for taking the high road when there are ‘shortcuts’ to making change. Hunger for trying even when every door seems to shut down on my face, and an irresistible hunger to take action in a world where the dreamers among us are silenced by society, circumstances, and themselves.
“The world doesn’t suffer because of bad people, the world suffers because of the silence of good people” -Unknown
Among the major turning points for me as a writer were those moments when I could have done something for someone (and for myself) and I didn’t. On the one hand, because of the stories I had about the world, and on the other, because of the stories I had of myself.
The truth is that hunger is of different levels in each of us. The best examples are those in our lives who ‘used to’ fulfill their calling, and others who ‘wish they could’ fulfill their calling.
And then there is us, those who are fulfilling that urge, but we’re haunted by thoughts of comparison, and thoughts doubting our worth as creators and people with stories to tell.
So is there a deadline to take massive action?
Yes. And that is the day when there is no story left to tell the world. That is the same day where there is no more suffering and no more people who need to be heard.
How soon could that day be?
Yet, is there such a thing as a “Slow-Achiever” as a Creator?
One of the many stories I had about myself and achieving is: “No matter how late I’m, I always get there”, and how I used that story to justify every opportunity I didn’t take and every inefficient behavior I did at the time!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to be impulsive or take rash action.
Yet, the complexity of feeling like a slow achiever in a creative field is as accurate yet puzzling as predicting weather in a universe yet to be debunked.
In other words, especially in a creative field such as writing, there is only one certainty we can work with: Instead of focusing on reaching the picture we set of achievement, we need to maximize our likelihood of achieving that picture, and a few practical tips to do that would be:
- Noticing our patterns: The story I told myself excused a bunch of behaviors that didn’t do justice to where I wanted to be as a writer. Making sure I knew what was holding me back from taking massive action into writing was the first step in making sure I knew I was on the right track.
- Not judging ourselves from our errors: True. English is not my mother tongue, but that in no way stopped me from writing pages of my story in my agenda without Grammarly to tell me to watch out for my errors and typos! In other words, we don’t want to let our self-esteem in our work get so fragile that we let every error diminish from our belief in our potential in storytelling.
- Creating new actions for a more efficient pattern: aka the most exciting part. I could go all day inventing all kinds of ways to ensure my efficiency in writing, but how much will I execute? Yet, this is not the stage to be strict -for a change!- Our actions need to be as personal and authentic as possible!
- Assessing ourselves regularly on that pattern: How much did I execute my long list of actions? This month, all of them. I had one action, and I put my all into executing it through all the unprecedented events that happened. What I found most helpful in assessing my new pattern to write was writing down milestones and reflecting on them by writing remarks and describing my experience.
Finally, how do we talk to ourselves as writers?
When reading a work of fiction, aside from the extravagant or/and unique words that we acquire and memorize along the way, aside from the characters that leave us in awe and the message of the story itself, what we register most from a story is the mood.
This brings up the first time I started watching The Handmaid’s Tale series. It was based on a novel (check), it was a hit (check), but as soon as I stepped into the mood of the story, committing to it was getting harder and harder.
At some point, I wondered why I was forcing myself to watch a dystopian world when it wasn't adding anything (e.g. inspiration) to my ‘mood’ as a creator?
As writers, the language we speak to our inner genius could be the puzzle piece we need most. If we set a tone that we do not see ourselves in for our writing endeavor, we will be deluding ourselves instead of earning time to learn about our creative identity;
If the way we speak to ourselves and think as writers doesn’t inspire us to feel heard before trying to do something for others, what is true about our decision to create?
For me, the decision to stop watching The Handmaid’s Tale was part of my truth as a creator.
Have I missed out?
I wish you a fulfilling writing journey this year!
-Imane Ben
