Be Yourself, But How?

The world is a contentious place at the moment.  Politics is the most glaring arena for this but there are loud voices wanting attention everywhere. And the writing world is no different, with some experts loudly proclaiming that their methods, and only their methods, work. And don’t even get me started on publishing. Many writers eschew anything but trad publishing while indie authors shudder at the thought.
 
Last week I wrote about various ways to plan for 2023. Over the past week I’ve read so many posts on Insta and elsewhere scorning the whole process. These same posts diss new year’s resolutions. But I’m unapologetic about loving to plan for the new year and making resolutions. My take is: how can you not want to move forward in life and make improvements in it? What many of these people complain about is making plans and doing resolutions from the standpoint of not being enough. That inherent in the process is the belief that you are bad, wrong, whatever, and need to change and be different to be good and better.
 
That’s not how I see it at all. To me, inherent in the process is loving myself enough that I want to develop myself more. I want to find ways to serve people more deeply, to put more of myself on the page, to get more books out into the world. And, funnily enough, I see a lot of writers go the opposite way from the anti-resolution crew, with elaborate plans for word counts and book releases.
 
But here’s the deal. Those loud voices will always clamor for our attention. (A student of mine is writing a book set partially in the McCarthy area. Talk about loud, contentious voices. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But we forget. Oh how we forget.) And our job as writers and creatives is to steer a path through them, following a creative map of our own making.
 
Of our own making are the operative words. The writers who are the most popular, whether of popular or literary or genre fiction, are those who are the most true to their own vision, who follow their own authentic path. (Here’s a pro tip based on brain science: those writers are calming the brain by leading it along a familiar path, such as following a tried and true formula or a genre structure, and then waking it up by doing something different—their own unique twist.) So authenticity is key.
 
Be yourself, then. But how?
 
 Ah, that is the question. And my first thought in how to answer is that I don't know. But that would get me a lot of rotten tomatoes tossed my way so I'll try to come up with something better. I think the key, especially when it comes to writing, is to read widely, consider lots of advice, and then come up with your own processes. Study yourself and how you best work. If you are a night owl do not attempt to get up early just because some writing expert always swans on about it. If you are a pantser, pants away. And if you like to outline go for it. But what you must do is pay attention. Pay attention to what works when you're writing, pay attention when you read somebody's newsletter, pay attention when you find yourself eager to get to the page. Analyze, absorb, emulate or reject. It's possible to like some of what somebody says and not all of it. 

I hate to even say this because it is so cliché but the truth is its all about being mindful. Which to my poor befuddled mind is the hardest and most desirable of all the goals. 

Here's to all of us being ourselves in 2023.

Note: This post is excerpted from my weekly newsletter, The Abundant Writer. If you’d like to receive these missives straight to your inbox, you can subscribe here. Thanks, and happy writing!