Why to Write When It Feels Like No One Is Listening
By Brooke Warner
I’m very privileged to have a close working relationship and friendship with the poet and author Mark Nepo, a man who Oprah Winfrey has called one of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time.
After his meteoric rise that happened in 2010 when Oprah chose Nepo’s The Book of Awakening to be one of her “ultimate favorite things,” he said something to me I’ll never forget: “I’m just so glad that I kept writing back when no one was listening.”
This reverberated in me, perhaps most profoundly because of the number of writers I work with every year who reach a crisis point, led by the voices of their inner critics that say things like, “Why are you bothering?” “No one is going to want to read this.” “Who cares?!” These messages are so pervasive that they seem almost to be the air writers breathe. Which is why Mark’s simple expression of gratitude has stayed with me all these years as a reminder for why we should stay the course.
Here are 5 things to be inspired by from a story like Mark’s, one in which he had a breakout success many years into his writing career:
1. You never know when people are going to find your work. Oprah discovered The Book of Awakening ten years after its first publication. The fact that he had so much work already out in the world is undoubtedly what allowed him to soar in the way that he did. You can get a big break, like an endorsement from Oprah, but even with something like that, you have to have done (and continue to do) the hard work and discipline of writing.
2. If you let the critical voices get the best of you, you’re accepting defeat on someone else’s terms. Your inner critic is a bastard, so let’s just get that out of the way. It does not want you to succeed. It wants to keep you small. I’ve witnessed a lot of writers allow their inner critic to talk them out of pursuing their creative dreams. It’s the single most widespread creative tragedy I know of.
3. It’s important to cultivate inner validation in your work. This one is big. So many writers want to be heard, but they’re looking for outside validation to tell them that they’re good enough, or they’re measuring success based on who else cares about their work. Writing whether or not anyone is listening means you’re writing for your own expression, desire, creativity, gifts—and people finding it, and/or finding it important, is secondary.
4. The only way to be successful as a writer is to publish. This is obvious in terms of how we measure success, but so many writers sit on their work—waiting for what? Mark published lots of books on very small houses over the years. He’s been incredibly prolific, and he writes to publish, as well as to process, to teach, to connect, and to commune. But in this mix must be publishing because it’s the only way to gain readers (listeners). Be consistent about getting content out into the world (and that includes with your Substack, your social media, and other digital strategies you might have—content is content!)
5. You have to be your own best listener. If and when no one is listening, and whether it’s true or not that no one is, you need to feel the way your message affects you. If you know the feeling of flow, then you know the feeling of connection and resonance with your own words. It’s powerful stuff. Addictive even. Feed on this rather than the words of your inner critic.
Here at Memoir Nation, we aim to support you to cultivate your inner champion and to find creative ways to hush your inner critic. You can write and publish your memoir, and you will if you believe it into being.
Remember, too, that the number of people who are listening will shift as you grow and get your work out there. You may start with ten listeners, then grow to a few hundred, then to a few thousand or more. Even the most famous and widely published authors started with a first piece of writing and a first published book.
Yes, you can.