I had no idea I was presiding over the first meeting of the No Guilt Club last Sunday until someone spontaneously announced that we writers in quarantine need a No Guilt Club. There was a resounding “aye!” from the group, made up of callers in this past Sunday’s Live Q + A for writers during COVID19. You can listen to the whole thing below, or check out the highlights in this post, which include a few useful practices you can do on the spot to help with the challenges of writing during social distancing.
What were we deciding not to feel guilty about while stuck at home and dealing with a global pandemic?
No guilt over not writing. We’re moving to what feels like YES, YUM, ZING! What feels warm. Joyful. Nourishing. Needed. We’re moving away from “should.”
No guilt over not using this supposedly extra time to write the Great American Whatever. You might have time, but that doesn’t equal creative bandwidth, not with everything you’re dealing with emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally.
No guilt over choosing what gives us joy over what doesn’t (especially if writing falls under “doesn’t”). Maybe you just want to journal. Or color. Or bake. Or binge watch something trashy that you normally never allow yourself to waste time on.
No guilt over our words not being the “right” words for this time. Writing the silly thing. The funny thing. The less-than-perfect essay.
No guilt over changing our plans and moving the goal post further out. It’s not a great time to be sending work out on sub. It’s not a good time to expect a novel to get finished, unless that feels nourishing to you.
No guilt over doing lazy things.
No guilt over playing. With words, with food, with time.
We all agreed that this was an especially good time for journaling. See the Inspiration Portal for some great journaling exercises that you can download and work with right now.
We also talked about a simple gratitude practice for writers.
Gratitude For Your Writing
Whether you’re writing a ton or not at all, a way to re-establish yoru connection to your writing is to simply be grateful for it. I recommend writing a short list or reflecting on reasons you are grateful for your writing, your creativity, your imagination. These are amazing tools to have that so many do not. You are one of the lucky ones: you carry this medicine inside you all the time.
You can incorporate this practice into your daily writing routine to give it more structure (by the way, structure is a key component of building and sustaining a flourishing writing practice).
What are you grateful for? The ability to imagine a better world, the stories you can think about and write in order to escape for a bit? The way writing helps you make sense of the world?
Gratitude is a game changer - I’m sure you’ve read some of the research. It’s quite the self-development trend right now, but it’s popular because it works. People are beginning to see how much simply practicing gratitude can create massive mindset shifts. So even if you’re blocked, I bet you can be grateful for your imagination, your creative spark, or just story in general. This re-establishes or affirms your relationship to your creativity. Don’t take it for granted. Give your writing some love and it will love you back.
Speaking of love….
Lovingkindness Meditation Practice For Writers
In an effort to focus on feeling nourished, we practiced some lovingkindness meditation with phrases specifically suited to our coounity. You can do the whole practice here, guided by me. These are the phrases we worked with:
May I / we be happy.
May I / we be healthy.
May I / we be inspired.
May I / we be in flow.
We first repeated the phrases to ourselves, then widened it out to all writers on the planet, struggling as we are to keep the flame of our creativity burning during the COVID19 epidemic. This sense of being part of a community while also first giving love to ourselves is a good exercise in maintaining that balance we have as writers too: love for ourselves, our work, and the readers who interact with it.
One thing I mentioned was that, in addition to tools like gratitude and meditation, we can’t forget that for writers:
Writing is self-care. Writing is wellness.
Journaling, poetry, word play - all of this can be viewed as a mental health practice.
So no guilt when you shut the door or turn off you phone and write when your family is asking for more, more, more from you. You’re a member of the No Guilt Club now, remember?
What is the point of writing right now?
The call circled around many different things, but at the end of the day, the kicker was really this question:
“What is the point of writing right now?”
I answered with the words of Harold Thurman:
“Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
If you’re struggling with feelings of pointlessness, like your words don’t matter, your stories don’t matter, your thoughts or opinions don’t matter, remember: you’ve got an invitation right here, right now, to the No Guilt Club. No guilt over what lights you up. And if that thing isn’t writing right now, rest assured that it is feeding your writing in ways you can’t yet possibly know.
What lights you up? Do that.
Curiosity is the key to Flow. Go down whatever rabbit holes you fancy. There’s usually a story once you hit the bottom.
Hang in there, friends-
