write as you are

No matter what you’re here for, you’re here to learn one thing from me, and that’s to write as you are. 

And what the hell does that mean?

It means to tell the truth! And to be ok not knowing any! It means letting go of what you think you should be saying, or what you should sound like, or believe, whatever you’re pretending to be or like or want, or not like or want or be. There are so many ways we don’t tell the truth, we obscure it and deny it, and we hide it from others and ourselves. Not in our writing here. 

Writing as we are, we learn what we really want, out of writing, in our writing, in our work and lives. We learn about our goals and the values that support them; we adjust our goals. We learn more about the feelings associated with writing, the emotions under them and how far back they began to germinate, the stories of our writing and creative selves that need to be rewritten to better serve us now. 

We write as we are by arriving as we are. We acknowledge. Accept. Relax. Begin–you’ve begun already. We don’t pretend to be anything because writing is our practice that extends from the self, and extends the self so-doing. We show up as we are and we write from that present truth.

This kind of truth is what sets the voice free.