No, we’re not just being kind about your writing—but would it be the worst thing if we were?

The scariest thing about this (the first! Prompt! In the book!) is having my work, my words, my life, my honesty, in the hands of more people who have ever had it before, and entirely out of mine.

Some stories need to be written simply because they’re a pain in the ass to keep telling out loud. 

Birthing our writing (or any creation) into the world is not dissimilar to birthing a little human. It has to grow organically in us. It needs to gestate. Like anything on the verge of being born, it’ll tell us when it’s time.

How many of us are wearing ourselves out in the name of improvement because we actually feel we’re somehow in need of repair?

Writing and sharing the truth—trusting what is coming through us—is a massive act. Even if we’re in a circle of kind people who we know won’t judge us, the sheer size of what we’re doing might overwhelm us a little bit, or a lot. Can we let that be?

All that my readers (and my soul!) are asking of me is to say what happened, and yet I find myself gripped by my lifelong habit of doing anything but.

That day, my stories didn’t have to float in the space above me any longer, they could live in me. My body and essence were united through my words. For a few hours, I was whole.

Write this junk out of your organs before it begins to rot them. Toss the magnificent garbage outside to rot on its own. You know what they say about one person’s trash…

I find it impossible these days (always?) to end a piece. I have trouble saying goodbye. Ending a conversation. I’m learning boundaries but the hard stop still eludes me.

I didn’t start calling myself a writer until very recently. I know, why not? If I have been writing my whole life and none of it qualifies me, what on earth does?

The best gift I received this season was Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. There’s lots about it that is, well, delightful (you did it, Ross!), but the element that’s inspiring me most this first time through is the simple fact that he wrote a short essay by hand in “smallish notebooks” every day for a year.

There is room in all writing, all art, all the world, for scrutiny. It’s the posture most of us walk around in all the time, with which we approach everything: price tags, newspapers, social media posts. Part of what we’re doing in Soul Writing workshops is dismantling this automatic way of moving through life.

Here’s 10-minute free write I did a few days after a recent surgery, when I was still drug-hazy, largely inert, incisions still hidden under gauze. It’s a messy, staccato, close-in memory of the day: itself a fleeting moment compared to the span of time that has ensued.

Dear Muses, I’m stuck. You know this. You know because you’ve been knocking on the door, calling and getting a busy signal, sending registered letters that get returned. No such addressee. Return to sender. No solicitors. Go away. I’ve refused you.