Dear Ones,
I've been working on my Write of Passage written and video bio. It’s for students to get to know all the mentors and choose which sessions they want to attend. Think of any reality show where contestants have to show off their schtick, so the audience knows who to root for.
But we aren't competing with each other! (I always think of that cheesy line: "I'm not here to make friends! *cross arms, twist from the sideview.*)
In real reality, it's more like the Great British Bake Off or Masterchef Jr, where contestants mutually cheer and support each other. We have been reviewing each other's bios and sharing tips on how to film ourselves well.
Here's a sneak preview of mine:
If eyes are the windows to the soul, then writing is the hidden passage to the tender ego. It’s why writing is so scary: we are stripped of the social armor built to protect ourselves. But that’s also why writing is so rewarding–what better way to understand who we really are?
What to expect (from my Write of Passage mentor sessions)
Our Perspective sessions are designed to nourish your inner weirdo so you can flourish as a writer. It’s the part of you that burns inside knowing you have a mission, but you're not quite sure how to express it.
[…]
Once you start, you will:
Write faster and more by fretting less
Welcome instead of dread feedback
Find your personal monopoly with passionate confidence
[…]
As you can see, I went the sales copy route and made some Big Promises!
There's about 5-6 hour-long mentor sessions, and the best ones usually allow half that time for breakout rooms and Q and A.
So...I only have 3 hours of material to deliver on all these promises. Bold move Cotton! Bold move.
But I've been thinking about the writing student's mindset for the past year, since I finished my first Write of Passage cohort.
What commonalities kept folks writing?
The Big Hypothesis is that writers who accept and love themselves as they are, are the most prolific and resilient. That’s what I mean by nourishing the inner weirdo. It’s probably the toughest thing to “teach" (and one for which I am an eternal student), but that’s what I look forward to the most for these sessions. If I can help a student love themselves just a sprinkle, a smidgeon more, then I would feel I had done a good job. Because it’s something they can take with them beyond just the skill of writing.
But the art of teaching is giving student “pit stop skills” that can get them by and show them visible progress, while they develop acceptance and love. Here’s what I consider the most important practical factors:
Creative outlets with varying quality expectations. Whether by coincidence or by choice, prolific writers have several outlets that allowed for different degrees of polish (e.g. tweets, newsletters, essays, books, in roughly that order.) This means they don't get as easily paralyzed. Even if there are psychological barriers, something will be produced. This strategy paired with hard deadlines creates consistent practice and output.
Genuine friendship with other writers is the other secret to writing consistently and getting quality feedback.
A mission mindset, instead of one based solely on building a personal monopoly, will take one farther down the writing path.
I will discuss writing friendship in an upcoming essay for the Write of Passage blog, and I had expounded personal mission in a YouTube video. These parallel explorations support the importance of the first point. Without doing so in a conscious, directed way, I had accumulated insights to help new writers just through plodding along.
The craft now is compressing learnings gained over a year into three hours of material! I look forward testing whether these hypotheses are correct and teachable.
What's the best tip you have ever received about writing consistently, and/or writing well?
Warm Wishes,
Christin
P.S. if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, please feel free to check it out! It's coming at Buddhism from "lifestyle" angle through discussions of extreme minimalism. The latest video is about untangling possessions from the need for a sense of safety:
Nourish Our Inner Weirdos
> The Big Hypothesis is that writers who accept and love themselves as they are, are the most prolific and resilient
i really, really, really like this.
Reason: I think a lot of my mental block (doesn't matter if it's writing. as long as it's anythign that risks being wrong in public eyes, like sales, marketing, etc) is when I don't accept myself as I am. I will probably use this as inspiration for a newsletter issue of mine as well.
Thanks for writing this!
My inner weirdo salutes to yours!
And the best piece of advice I got for writing consistently is to capture all my feels in PKM (Kendrick Lamar), then transfer that to the page to let the feelings marinate and eventually give form to a piece.