My friend Lisa writes today’s guest post really well. Which isn’t surprising, because she is one of those people that does lots of things well. She used to work for me, but she got wise to that pretty fast and moved on to bigger and better things. She’s still wise, though. Very wise. Miss you, LP.
Sometimes I write. The stars align and the right music plays and it’s just quiet enough. Then I hide it in my journal or on my hard drive for a possible revisit or in the best-case scenario to show my husband or a close friend who already professes to be a fan of my writing. To write gives me life. To hide it is an act of self-preservation.
I ultimately don’t share what I write with people because I’m afraid of what people think of me. I am afraid that I won’t be great at it. If I keep it to myself then I can continue to bow down to the possibility of being a writer. If my writing is rejected in any form then the possibility is dissipated.
The opportunity recently presented itself for me to join a writers group. My first time meeting them was in response to a sense of obligation. Upon meeting them, though they possessed ample amounts of charm and grace, I was even more terrified of showing any of my writing to a group of actual writers. I willed myself to make a commitment to the group and knew I had five weeks until I had to show them some of my work. In the weeks leading up to my turn to share I found them to be a very intelligent bunch, well read, prolific writers. They often integrated obscure literary terms into their critiques of each other’s work and referenced the styles of famous writers I often had no familiarity with. To say that emailing them documents of my writing to read and then talk through with me was a dreaded task would be an understatement.
Identifying that I was afraid was a big step. Before this, withholding my writing seemed like a strength I possessed. I saw myself as a writer, but only in my private life. It was almost a fantasyland of an ideal person I saw myself as but wasn’t willing to take any kind of risk to actually become that person. Once I realized that it was fear that kept me from sharing my writing I could ask myself what I was afraid of. Admitting my fear released me from the power it had over me. I actually told someone else that I was afraid to share my writing because I cared too much about what people thought about me and I didn’t want to fail. That thought is a lot less powerful out on the table than it is in my mind. I reframed my thinking. I owned up to what I was afraid of instead of keeping it a secret.
Lots of people love this website that also generated a book called Post Secret. The book version is a coffee table book with pictures of note cards people anonymously send in with dark secrets they have about themselves. The moment a person lets go of that postcard with a secret they’ve been carrying around they get a glimpse of the relief they would feel if they fully owned up to that thing they’re so afraid of letting into the light.
I don’t like that book anymore.
Those people are still afraid of those secrets and that fear gives the secret power over them. We like reading that book because it makes our secrets seem momentarily less powerful. This is really just a concern about how others perceive us, and in turn the way we see ourselves.
After sending my work to the group for the first time I didn’t have an experience of realizing I was a brilliant writer that had been in hiding for all this time. It was the act of pressing send that was the most notable achievement for me. Then I started to see my love for writing creatively in a more accurate light. It’s a craft I need to work at. It’s a resource (however meager) that I can invest into my small corner of the world. It’s not a gold coin I bury and adoringly dig up every so often when I’m alone. My writing isn’t always so great; it’s not necessarily profound or perfectly beautiful. But I can share it with people. Despite its imperfection, at least I’m pressing send, showing up and investing my creativity rather than burying it. And I’m experiencing a return on my investment.
The most significant return on investing my desire to be a creative person is how it has shaped my identity. At a time in life when new motherhood was consuming me and when I often felt lonely and at the same time maxed out on my capacity for friendships I found myself in a place of new and unexpected alliances. Sharing my writing made me more of a writer, not because my ability changed, but because the way I identified myself started to change. That couldn’t have happened outside of relationship and the relationships couldn’t have happened under the weight of my fear dictating my choices. I needed to allow those new friends to have access to the writer in me and in so doing I became more of a writer.
Lisa Phillips Armour is originally from California but now make her home in Portland Oregon with her husband and baby, Bear. Summer is Lisa’s favorite time of year, if only because summer vacations don’t seem to happen without it. If her heart could whisper a message to yours, it would say, Life is brief. Pay attention, because you don’t want to miss a thing.
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