Ready To Write?

::10 commandments to kick start your copy::

by Jeanette LeBlanc
www.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 its
holy wonder.
Pay attention, writer. Your craft depends on it.
[two: Show Instead of tell]
Dont tell me that youre scared. Show me
how your heart is trying to climb out of your
chest, how youre leaving a trace of cold
sweat on everything you touch, what the
darkness tastes like when youre 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
ve senses and then push beyond that. Involve your gut,
your ery 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 ow.
Brian Clark
[three: write it like you speak it, yo]
Dont try to write like somebody else. Write like you.
Do you say aint and gonna? Then do it. Have a particular
afnity 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 wouldnt 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. Its the only one youve got.
[four: seduce the muse]
This is the other secret that real artists
know and wannabe writers dont. 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 lings.
Ideas come. Insights accrete.
! Steven Presseld
[FOUR: Seduce the muse]
The muse. Shes 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.
Dont 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. Youve
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 re you possess.
Hold it to the light. Examine its 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. Its going to resist being
brought out of the shadows.
Dont turn away. Write it down. Youve 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 its 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 rst 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 rst, so if you
dont trust me yet, go with that guy. He did okay for himself.
Its okay to breathe a sigh of relief. Youve just been given
permission to suck. Thats hugely liberating.
Let it be okay for your attempts to not reach perfection the
rst (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.
Its there, I promise.
[Eight: trust your voice]
No one will know what has passed
through meI 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 Ill 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, youll 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 y. Let it get messy.
Dont 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
shouldnt 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.
Youve got this.
[the End]
Advice? I dont have advice. Stop aspiring and start
writing. If youre writing, youre a writer. Write like youre
a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of
the country and theres no chance for a pardon. Write
like youre clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles,
on your last breath, and youve got just one last thing to
say, like youre a bird ying over us and you can see
everything, and please, for Gods 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 were not alone.
Alan Wilson Watts