{"id":2952,"date":"2015-04-09T07:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T14:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=2952"},"modified":"2015-04-09T07:13:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T14:13:16","slug":"why-to-keep-writing-when-no-one-is-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/why-to-keep-writing-when-no-one-is-listening\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Keep Writing When No One Is Listening"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogger Brooke Warner writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most powerful things an author has ever said to me was a comment by Mark Nepo<\/a>, reflecting on his personal journey over the past three years, which, due to the support of Oprah, has been pretty meteoric in nature. He told me, \u201cI\u2019m just so glad that I kept writing back when no one was listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

This reverberated in me, perhaps most profoundly because of the number of clients I work with every year who reach a crisis point, led by the voices of their inner critics that say things like, \u201cWhy are you bothering?\u201d \u201cNo one is going to want to read this.\u201d \u201cWho cares?!\u201d<\/p>\n

In my work as a writing coach, I\u2019m pretty hard-pressed to think of a single client who hasn’t struggled with messages like this at some point in their process\u2014some more than others of course.<\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s simple statement spoke to me for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You never know when people are going to find your work.<\/strong> Oprah found Mark\u2019s book, The Book of Awakening,<\/em> ten years after its first publication. The fact that he had so much work already out in the world is undoubtedly what\u2019s allowed him to soar. You can get a big break like an endorsement from Oprah, but even with a big break, you have to have done (and continue to do) the hard work and discipline of writing.<\/li>\n
  2. If you let the critical voices get the best of you, you\u2019re accepting defeat on someone else\u2019s terms.<\/strong> Your inner critic is a bastard, so let\u2019s just get that out of the way. It does not want you to succeed. It wants to keep you small. I\u2019ve witnessed a lot of writers allow the inner critic to talk them out of pursuing their creative dreams. It\u2019s the single most widespread creative tragedy I know of.<\/li>\n
  3. It\u2019s important to find your own grounding in your work.<\/strong> This one is big. So many writers want to be heard, but they\u2019re looking for outside validation to tell them that they\u2019re good enough, or they\u2019re only measuring success based on who else cares about their work. Writing whether or not anyone is listening means that you are writing for your own expression, desire, creativity, gifts\u2014and people finding it, and\/or finding it important, is secondary.<\/li>\n
  4. The only way to be successful as a writer is to publish.<\/strong> This is obvious in terms of how we measure success, but so many writers are just sitting on their work\u2014waiting for what? Mark published lots of works on very small houses over the years. He\u2019s incredibly prolific, and he writes to publish, as well as to process, to teach, to connect, to commune. But in this mix must be publishing because this is the only way to gain readers (listeners). Be consistent about getting content out into the world. (And it\u2019s good that social media, blogging, guest posting, or digital only strategies be a part of this\u2014content is content!)<\/li>\n
  5. You have to be your own best listener.<\/strong> If and when no one is listening, and whether it\u2019s true or not that no one is, you need to feel the way your message affects you. If you know the feeling of flow, then you know the feeling of connection and resonance with your own words. It\u2019s powerful stuff. Addictive even. Feed on this rather than the words of your inner critic.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Of course, the number of people who are listening is going to shift as you grow. Part of your growth will come from practice; part of it is gaining confidence that what we say matters; part of it is owning that we want to be successful and that\u2019s okay. You may start with ten listeners and grow to a few hundred and then to a few thousand and then much more. Even the most famous and widely published authors started with a first piece of writing and a first published book.<\/p>\n

    \"Brooke<\/a>Brooke Warner<\/a> is publisher of She Writes Press, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of What’s Your Book? <\/em>and How to Sell Your Memoir, <\/em>and the co-author of Breaking Ground on Your Memoir<\/em>. Brooke\u2019s expertise is in traditional and new publishing, and she is an equal advocate for publishing with a traditional house and self-publishing. She sits on the board of the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Bay Area Book Festival, and the National Association of Memoir Writers.\u00a0 Her website<\/a> was selected by The Write Life as one of the Top 100 Best Websites for Writers in 2014 and 2015. She lives and works in Berkeley, California.<\/p>\n

    Brooke will be a presenter at Writers Forum<\/a> in Petaluma, California on April 16, 2015<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Guest Blogger Brooke Warner writes: One of the most powerful things an author has ever said to me was a comment by Mark Nepo, reflecting on his personal journey over the past three years, which, due to the support of Oprah, has been pretty meteoric in nature. He told me, \u201cI\u2019m just so glad that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[674,673,316],"class_list":["post-2952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-brooke-warner","tag-mark-nepo","tag-writers-forum-of-petaluma"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-LC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2952"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3038,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952\/revisions\/3038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}