Natural Boundaries

There are certain rules of craft that seem to apply to all writers. For instance, nouns and verbs will always carry more power and immediacy than adjective and adverbs. This is true in literary fiction, urban fantasy, and memoir. Every writer, no matter what they write, will have to learn these universal truths. And you will learn them the only way anyone can learn anything: through experience. I can tell you and tell you to use more nouns and verbs than adjectives and adverbs, but nothing will teach you that like the experience of writing a clear, honest sentence without one single descriptor. But every writer must also find her own craft. What works in your stories or poems may not work in mine. These little essays I write have a craft all their own. Having written a bunch of them, I’ve learned what works in them and, probably more importantly, what doesn’t work. Knowing from experience what doesn’t work saves me a lot of time. The page always begins blank, after all; I could, theoretically, write anything. Knowing what doesn’t work narrows my focus considerably, and as I find my way through an essay I can more easily spot that path of thought that is heading nowhere.

I do not mean to suggest that success is all about what we don’t do. Success is always about what we say yes to. This is true for the whole of life. I can only live, I can only experience, what I say yes to. I’ve said yes to a bunch of things that wasted my time, that drained me of my enthusiasm and optimism. I have said yes to so many of these things that I published a whole book recently about not caring what other people think of your work. That’s something I spent a lot of time saying yes to until experience finally taught me not to bother.

Except even that book really isn’t about not doing something; it is about what’s available to us when we choose not to worry about whether other people will like our work. Just as a writer uses her craft to leave room for the reader’s imagination, so too learning not to care about what other people will think of your work leaves room for your own genius. Your genius requires complete freedom; it cannot be confined by the artificial boundaries of shame, the fear that what you have to offer might not be worth offering. The only boundaries you should honor are those imposed by your own aesthetic, the path to which life has taught you again and again to say yes.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.