Your Writing Matters

Mood Tools Week 8: The Power of Choosing to Believe

Your writing matters.

Not the writing you think you’re supposed to do, mind you, but the writing you feel most called to do.

The writing that fascinates you.

The writing that—god forbid—makes you smile.

It’s easy to forget, so consider this a friendly reminder: Your writing matters if it matters to you.

Your novel doesn’t have to solve world peace or land you an advance to matter. It just needs to mean something to you:

If it makes you laugh, it matters.

If it keeps you curious, it matters.

If it’s a puzzle you’re itching to solve, it matters.

If your writing matters to you, it matters. Period.

Trouble is, for a writer living under the capitalist delusion that value can best be measured in dollars and the literary delusion that often disdains work that isn’t serious or important enough, it’s an act of faith to hold tight to the truth—and it is the truth—that your writing matters if it matters to you.

So how do you develop such brazen creative faith?

By starting small, of course.

At the end of your next solid writing session, take a moment before you return to your non-writing day to say: “My writing matters.”

Then said it again before you get started the next time you sit down to write. “My writing matters.”

And definitely say it at the end of your toughest sessions. Maybe even repeat it a few times then: “My writing matters. My writing matters. My writing matters.”

Add my writing matters to the mantra collection you stared in week 6 or start collecting the talismans of week 7 in earnest because it’s tough to deny that your book means something to you when you’re surrounded by trinkets you bought to remind you of that very book. Truth be told, mantras and talismans are really just the tangible counterparts to the very intangible tool of deciding your writing matters.

Recently, a greeting card called to me from across a bookstore, so I went in for a closer look. The card was part of a series of three greeting cards that each contained a line inspired by Metta meditation, a loving-kindness practice that uses a short script of wellbeing phrases as a tool to focus.¹ The front of the card I'd spotted included a painting of a girl reading a book at the base of a tree under this simple message: May You Be Free.

This joyful image was designed by Johanna Wright. Interestingly enough, when I looked the artist up to credit her here, I learned she recently published an illustrated journal called MAGIC AND MINDSET that I couldn't order fast enough--I'll keep you posted after I read it!

I’m currently wrestling with the end of a draft that wants to be written about as much as a toddler wants to sleep after Trick-or-Treating, so I bought the card and displayed it on my desk as something of a plea to my muse to set my ending free.²

I’m not suggesting a mystical power is at play here. But I am suggesting that once we’ve decided that our writing matters—even a novel with a recalcitrant ending³—our minds circle back and back and back to our books, in much the same way our hearts have to keep circling back and back and back to our choice to believe that our writing matters.

Because even though choosing to believe our writing matters is perhaps the most powerful tool we have to support our writing mindsets, it’s a choice the world will force us to make again and again and again, so repeat after me (even if you have to whisper): My writing matters.

Now keeping saying it until you believe it’s true.

My writing matters.

My writing matters.

My writing matters.

Because it does. It absolutely does.

Take Away from Mood Tools Week 8: Your Writing Matters

Your novel doesn’t have to solve world peace or land you an advance to matter. It just needs to mean something to you.

1. Metta is a a lovely practice that can be personalized to reflect the the qualities you’d like to focus on as you meditate. For more information click here.

2. For the love of Pete and all his friends, please let me crack this ending soon.

3. Seriously, muse—I’m begging you!