Table Of Content

Writing To Find Yourself Learning To Be More Authentic Through The Art of Writing Allison Vesterfelt Copyright © 2014 Allison Vesterfelt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying form without written permission of the author, Allison Vesterfelt Interior Design by: Author Launch of Nashville, Tenessee Cover Design by: Author Launch of Nashville, Tenessee Cover Photo by: Author Launch of Nashville, Tenessee Editing by: Stephanie May Wilson Proofreading by: Daniel Weatherby Contents Introduction: Writing To Become .......................................................... 5 Chapter 1: Learning To Show Up ........................................................... 10 Chapter 2: Learning To Listen To Yourself ........................................ 20 Chapter 3: Learning To Wrestle ............................................................ 33 Chapter 4: Learning To Be Okay With Imperfect ............................ 47 Chapter 5: Learning To Let Go Of Control ......................................... 55 Chapter 6: Learning To Speak Up ......................................................... 66 Chapter 7: Learning To Connect With An Audience ...................... 76 Chapter 8: Learning To Rest & Play ...................................................... 86 Chapter 9: Learning To Hope ................................................................. 91 Introduction Writing To Become This is not a book about writing to sell. It’s a book about writing to become. That is the goal here. To write and to become ourselves. This is not a book about how to write a bestseller. So, if you’re looking for that book, you might not find what you’re looking for here. Don’t get me wrong. I hope you do write something beautiful, maybe even something with such universal meaning that millions of copies are sold. Nothing would make me happier. We need more books like that in the world. But, if you ask me, selling a million copies of your book is not the most rewarding part of writing. And unless your goal is to get rich quick, it doesn’t need to be your first priority. Our first priority must be to find ourselves on the page. Then, if we sell a million copies, or if we don’t, we’ll be okay. We have something money can’t pay for—a sense of who we are and where we fit in the world. Everybody wants to be a writer. But not everybody wants to do what it takes to become a writer: to show up without pretense, to listen to themselves, to lean in and wrestle, to let go of control, 5 to speak up and connect with an audience. The act of writing won’t change you, it won’t even necessarily help you. But the art of writing, the practice of writing—that will turn you into a better you, if you let it. Writing is healing. Writing is cheap therapy. Writing can help you find yourself. That is what brings me back to this terrible, treacherous, in- credibly painful, slowly-but-surely process day-after-day. Not the number of copies I’ve sold. It’s the knowledge that writing is in- trinsically valuable. I tend to get out even more than I put in. This is what I try to stress to the writers I work with on a daily basis. I spend over half of my time working with writers to help them brainstorm ideas, craft their writing, re-craft their writing, edit their writing, re-arrange or reorient their writing or just plain overcome creative blockages. Most often, writers confide the main thing keeping them stuck is that there are already so many people ‘out there’ who are saying exactly what they want to say, in exactly the way they want to say it. “There’s no point in my writing” they tell me, “It’s just going to add to the noise.” Due to the number of writers who tell me this, and the number of times I’ve felt it myself, sometimes I wonder if writers are born with this insecurity embedded into their bones. Or maybe we are just people—and this is a people problem, not a writer problem. But let me tell you what I try to look in the mirror and tell myself, daily: “You are altogether unique. There is no one else like you. Say- ing, ‘my voice is unnecessary’ or ‘It doesn’t really matter’ is equiv- alent to saying, ‘I am unnecessary’ or ‘I don’t matter’.” If you 6 believe that—and sometimes I wonder if we all do, in a way—you are not alone. See if, for today, you can just show up. That might be enough. You’ll see why you matter so much.” This is why I write, ultimately. Not to sell books or to get a bunch of traffic to my website. The minute I lose sight of this is the same minute I lose my will to put words on the page. Have you ever noticed how desperate everyone is to get traffic to their website? If you’re a blogger, or if you exist in the online space at all, I assume you have noticed this. How could you miss it? Everybody wants it and all of us are pandering for it like a gaggle of elementary kids after the explosion of a pinata. There’s only so much of it. We must have it. We’ll do anything to get it. We’ll write best headlines, concoct the smartest copy, have the most brilliant SEO. We’ll tweet and Facebook and pay for adds. But have any of us stopped to ask why we want all this traffic any- way? Has anyone considered what we want to say before we try to get people to listen? This was a frustrating and demoralizing realization for me recently: I spent years trying to get people to listen to me before I knew what I really wanted to say. This isn’t much different, really, than a middle school girl trying to get the popular kids to pay attention to her before she really believes she’s worth the attention she’s asking for. She buys all the right clothes, says all the right things, puts herself in all of the right social circles and situations. But when it really comes down to it, she has no idea who she is. I’m thinking of my own inner-middle school girl as I write this. Perhaps you are too. If that’s the case, ask yourself: What is going to make you happier—being “popular” or being known? Being known, of course, is deeply satisfying in a way being popular could never be. I didn’t used to know that, but I’m discov- 7 ering it as I discover myself. There’s nothing wrong with wanting or getting a lot of traffic on your blog. There’s certainly nothing wrong with wanting to sell, or selling, a lot of books. Getting traffic can help you secure a book contract, it can help you make money from ads, it can help you get your message out there—which are all important. Selling books can bring you income, which can allow you to keep doing what you love. The more books you sell, the more people you entertain, the more people you inspire, the more people are changed by the courage it took to tell your story. But book sales are not the point. Book sales are simply the fruit, the natural by-product of understanding yourself and your message. This is true for the middle school girl I mentioned above. The sense of belonging she craves isn’t wrong. It just won’t satisfy her the way she thinks it will. The same is true for you, as a person and as a writer. Getting traffic to your site, or even selling a million copies, won’t fulfill you if you don’t know who you are and what you want to say. A sense of belonging is the natural by-product of becoming oneself. If you try to belong first, and become yourself later, you will lose yourself. If you find yourself, you will discover, remark- ably, exactly where you fit. That’s what we are going to do here, together, over the course of the next nine chapters. We are going on a journey to discover ourselves. The result may be that you sell a million copies of your book—or not. But by that time, my gut says sales simply won’t matter to you quite so much. You’ll have what you were looking for all along. Maybe there’s a formula for writing a bestseller. In fact, I’m certain there is, although I don’t know it. Even still, I would not gain any pleasure by sharing it here with you. A “Bestseller” in- 8 struction manual may be valuable, but let me tell you what is more valuable: knowing yourself. Seeing yourself. Feeling comfortable in your own skin. Understanding the value you have to offer to this world. For that reason, this is not a book about writing to sell. It is a book about writing to become. That is the goal here. To write and to become ourselves. 9 1 Learning To Show Up I’ve spent most of my life trying to be the funniest, the smartest, and the most interesting writer. Now I realize the best writers in the world are the ones who show up— exactly as they are. It was a slow realization, really—I had no idea who I was. You would think a person would wake up to this rather quickly, the way you realize you’ve lost your keys or you’ve misplaced your favor- ite sweater (when was the last time you had it? Tuesday, you think. Yes, it must have been Tuesday). But it wasn’t like that at all. If you had asked me about the last time I’d “had” myself or known myself, I couldn’t have told you when. This impacted every corner of my life, no matter how much I tried to pretend it didn’t. I always felt a little lost in relationships, first of all—like I was going with the flow of what everyone else wanted, but didn’t really know what I wanted or needed; and even when I did know, I didn’t know how to communicate what it was. I always had this underlying sensation I was invisible. At first, writing and blogging felt like the most incredible solution to this problem—like I finally had a place in my life where 10