Honor Your Writing, Honor Yourself
By Brooke Warner
Some readers will know that I have the great privilege of working closely with Mark Nepo, the great poet and spiritual teacher and best-selling author of many books, including The Book of Awakening.
Mark’s work has deeply influenced how I think about writing. His teachings are about life: cultivating the courage to risk; staying present to what is; why we need each other to thrive; and how we can pay attention to what brings us more alive. All of this connects deeply to our writing lives because writing requires courage, presence, interconnectedness, and at its core it also enlivens us.
These concepts only touch the surface of Mark’s teachings, so please delve deeper into his work if you don’t already know it. I’m moved to write about Mark because of his recent interview with Mel Robbins.
He spoke about honor:
I love the original definition of the word honor. Honor means to keep what is true in view. I love that: to keep what is true in view. So . . . how can you personalize the practice of honoring? How do you keep what is true in view about what you know about yourself and your gifts? [T]he first step for any of us is the word trust. Trust literally means follow your heart. So, to follow our hearts in a daily way, what brings you more alive? What is heartening? Forget about whether it’s a career or a project or just what do you do during the day or that brings you more alive. Just do more of it.
When it comes to our writing, it can be hard to keep what’s true in view. As memoirists, we are truth-seekers, but truth is fraught. It’s a scary proposition sometimes even to stay the course. We start to be consumed by doubt, imposter syndrome, comparison, exposure, outcome. To stay the course with our writing, we must find support systems. We need community, accountability, and deadlines, but we also need to honor our truth of our lived experience in all its messiness.
I hope you’ll watch Mark’s whole interview with Mel Robbins because he’s a deeply insightful human being whose work gets to the core of life’s meaning. That I extrapolate so much from him about writing has to do with how I’m surrounded by writers. Every single week, I celebrate the published books of my authors on my press, and every single week I witness people who are at earlier in the process, struggling. I also get to see people at various stages along the way—working toward their goals, shedding the shackles of their self-imposed limitations, saying yes to themselves, honoring their work, and honoring themselves.
When you write, you do honor yourself, and perhaps that’s why I bristle at the notion that writing memoir is selfish. I think, in fact, there’s nothing less selfish than the quest toward self-understanding, and the gift that results in the offering of a final book to readers. Memoirs are gifts of encouragement, gifts of resilience, gifts of the human spirit so that we all might know that we can keep going and get through.
If you’re writing right now, please share what helps you to stay the course. If you want to write a book and you’re struggling, what is standing in your way? If you’re a published author, what is the biggest fear you had that never came true?
