What You Have

Ninety percent of what you need to tell the story you most want to tell you already have. It does not matter if you are eight or eighty, you already have everything you need except that other ten percent, which we have come to call craft. Many writers are taught the exact opposite - that they are born with ten percent and learn the ninety. This is not surprising; humans are forever teaching each other that we have nothing until we acquire it. Your imagination will provide you with every idea you will ever need. It is a ceaseless and loyal servant. Your desire to communicate summons this imagination and focuses it. The clearer your desire, the more useful the ideas your imagination provides. Nothing is required of you other than to train your attention steadily on what you desire to share with other people.

Nothing, that is, except trust. This is what most writers are really learning - not character development or strong verbs or showing and not telling. Do not underestimate how quickly you can halt the flow of ideas from your imagination. Trust is the open channel through which these ideas flow. To clamp this hose is to cut ourselves off from creation, from life’s source, and the pain that accumulates from this one choice grows commensurately acute.

Until released. There is a kind of ecstasy that accompanies the return to trust. It can be addictive in its own way, and the artist must resist the temptation to recreate this artificial pleasure. The artist must accept his pleasure as the constant flow of focused thought as he must also accept himself. You were not born a blank slate. You are not clay to be molded by time and circumstance and the sharp edges of experience. You are a conduit for creation itself, ninety percent light, and ten percent shadow so the world will have some form.

Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion. "A book to keep nearby whenever your writer's spirit needs feeding." Deb Caletti.

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