Consuming vs. Creating

Can I be brutally honest with you this morning? Chances are if you’re reading this email right now, you’re living with me in a world where it’s approximately one billion times easier to be a consumer than it is to be a creator. (*my calculation)

Here’s what I mean.

It’s much easier to buy a homemade pie at the farm shop or grocery store than bake your own. Far easier to watch a good movie than to write a screenplay and turn it into the dream movie in your mind. Much easier to pick up a cheap journal/planner on Amazon than to create your own. Far easier to read a book than it is to write one. Exponentially easier to live the life someone else has mapped out for you than to carve your own authentic way. And let’s be honest, it’s much easier to scroll Instagram or Pinterest than do pretty much anything else at all.

Which is probably why, this week, a big part of me has wanted to give up writing altogether.

Thankfully, I realize this particular week and the next are extra full of big life changes (aka. not a good time to make big life decisions or throw away years of hard work at the drop of a hat). Thankfully, I have you opening these emails of mine on Friday mornings and encouraging me to keep putting positivity out into the world every week. And thankfully, I’m well aware that I shelled out $200 a few months ago for a spot at the writer’s conference coming up next month to be able to pitch one of my manuscripts to a literary agent. And I also know that the query letter that gets me in the door to her (the one I’ll lose $200 without submitting) is due in just two weeks and I don’t have a good draft of it yet. So, I keep writing.

This is the messy middle I told you I’d always share with you.

The truth is, while I’m excited about my next book, my last book wasn’t great to me. The cover image came out a little muddier than I’d hoped. It didn’t get rave reviews. I’m not even sure how many copies it sold. And for some reason, everytime someone tells me how much they loved it, how many life dreams it opened up for them, I struggle to believe them. It wasn’t my favorite and now it’s out there on shelves and in the hands of some of the people I love and respect most in the world, and I wonder if it’s even good at all. So I kind of want to stop writing.

Except for the signs.

Signs like this one that came just this week— On a day when I was feeling particularly uninspired and uninspirational, I got a text from a friend asking me what I thought about her idea for a new website and blog series. Her idea was altogether wonderful. I told her how important it was, how much I believed the world really needs her story, how many people it would set free, and I offered that I’d love to help her get started if she needed encouragement or help. I told her: “I even have a whole book with tools, tips, and motivation for women who want to write a book, start their own blog, or just get everything down in their journal.”

To which she responded, “Um, why is it still just a manuscript?”

I told her it was the manuscript I’m editing and preparing to pitch to a literary agent in a couple of weeks. What I didn’t tell her is that I haven’t touched it in about a month now and I’ve been losing faith that I should pursue it at all. But then I remembered how much joy I’d felt creating those tips and tools. I was suddenly in the presence of my former self who got herself up super early every morning for a month to get all of it down and sent out to my “Mamas Who Write” group and then loved talking with them all about how much those tools inspired them and kept them writing. So I wrote back, “I can send it to you. Would you like to read it?”

And I realized something.

Every single time you or I pull back or step away, every time we get afraid and convince ourselves we’re not good enough, someone misses out on something that could really help them. And the world misses out on a wonderful creation. It might not be the first thing we create that’s a wonderful, life-changing contribution to the planet. It might not even be the second. But if we create the things bubbling up inside of us and keep creating them no matter what, we will eventually have something valuable to contribute. Something someone truly needs. Something that would make someone’s world at least a little bit better but wouldn’t have made a bit of a difference if we’d stopped creating. The choice of whether we make someone’s world better or not is ours. 100% ours alone.

So, can I be frank? I think you should go for it already.

We need your authentic life, your custom planners/journals, your felted animals, your hand-thrown mugs, your screenplays, your paintings, your stories, your Christmas ornaments, your poems, your homemade pies. Whatever “it” is for you, go for it. Don’t stop. If you stopped this week or last week or a few years ago, walk yourself back to that spot right this very moment, my darling, pick up where you left off, and go for it already. No guilt. No shame. Only onward.

I’m right here with you, going for it, too.

💛

& if you need a little inspiration. . .

Here’s a simple pleasure type of creativity-booster I’m loving right now: Oh Reader magazine. I love reading my favorite articles in the big stack of back issues lying on my shelf and anticipating a new issue coming in the mail every few months. (The newest one #013 just arrived this week and should be available in Barnes & Noble stores really soon.)

P.S. If your heart’s been breaking over the fires in Hawaii recently and you’ve been looking for a way to help people in Hawaii dealing with so many challenges and so much heartache right now, here’s a nonprofit really helping people on the ground, according to a colleague of mine who lives there.

It’s the one I donated to. 💛