Heartbeat of Creation

maintaining joy in long-term goals and projects

Working on my current book has been a completely different experience than writing my first. I can’t even explain how much this book has helped me grow as a person and as a writer. It is teaching me patience. It is teaching me to surrender. It is teaching me how powerful I am and how powerful words can be. It is teaching me to be selfish and self-serving with my writing and how wonderfully positive that is for everyone who will eventually get to read it.

I picture this book as a beating heart. I pour out my story and thoughts on a page and I let myself feel the emotion of it. The wordcount expands with every writing session like this and it amazes me every time I do it. This can last for twenty minutes or it can last for weeks. The first round of this, lasted for about five months.

By the end of each session I feel the wonderful release in my body and the resulting clarity and I know with certainty why letting myself to go there emotionally and why writing it, matters for me personally. It is how I heal, how I know what I need, and what to do next.

There have been no less than fifty times now, where I feel I am done with that first draft/ purge/ therapeutic style writing in relation to this book and this divorce story. I get so excited about the next phase and go into a deeply focused editing session. I love these sessions and it feels so satisfying to combine and organize it into some sort of form and then to whittle it into something easy to read and useful for those who do. I am overjoyed to know it is becoming more potent and concise and powerful. I start telling my friends and posting on social media about how it’s almost done and I can feel their excitement adding to mine.

Inevitably, there comes a time where I start writing more again though, and the book expands again. There are a mix of feelings about each new expansion. It feels exciting all over again and I know for certain that the book would not be a complete thing without these new realizations and story pieces. It also feels frustrating. I want it to be finished. I want others to enjoy it. I want to do the focused, logical work of editing. I want to hold it in my hands and be proud of it. I don’t necessarily want to do the painful, uncertain, emotional work of first draft writing or digging deeper into old stories to uncover what really went on there. There can also be anxiety, as I start feeling like I’m moving away from whatever deadline I imagined during the editing phase. I start to worry if I’m just trying to put off the eventuality of people reading it or if I’m being too particular about it. It can easily turn from a wonderful, positive, expansive thing into a stressful, dreaded thing.

I have been in a deep editing phase for quite a while and it’s felt so amazing to see it come together. There can be some frustration there too though. I sometimes take out entire five page discussions on a topic, and replace it with a few sentences. I have to remind myself that what I wrote originally had another purpose and it’s ok to let it go. Editing is a much more enjoyable process when I know this. Not everything I wrote or experienced, needs to be in the final book and that’s perfect. All the lessons will be in there.

The last couple days I have been back in an expansion phase and those same frustrations still come up. I caught myself being really annoyed to revisit the first chapters to add in more information, when they were already ‘done.’ Noticing myself do this, is what prompted me to share my process and what goes on internally during it.

Managing my inner dialogue around this expanding and shrinking wordcount has been work and it’s also brought me all of those wonderful lessons about patience and surrender. Every time I talk myself away from anxiety about getting it done and towards joy in the process, I am better for it. I grow into a more healthy human with every heart beat. There is joy to be had for me in both phases of the process for this book… when I let there be.

Then there’s the inner dialogue that happens when I’m not actively working on the book at all. I can view it as a giving up, frustrated, never going to be done thing. Or I can view it as necessary time to let ideas integrate and percolate. It can be time to let the muck settle and for things to become more clear. I can view it as time to expand myself in other directions and therefore creating new realizations and perspectives that add to the story. I can view it as time to do other paid work so that my life doesn’t fall in ruin while I’m working on it. Perspective is everything. I’ve also decided to completely disregard the idea that small progress daily is the way to do it. My brain works best in big dumps and big focused blocks of time. I have come to accept my process and the rest time that happens in between work on it.

I feel like the lessons from book-writing can be applied to a lot of long-term projects. I see similar frustrations in myself and others around work, family, fitness, finances – the list is endless. Progress towards any long-term, meaningful goal is going to see ebbs and flows in ‘progress.’ I have to remind myself often that progress isn’t only in editing. First draft writing is progress and adds to the value of the book, even when I don’t know how yet and even when I’m frustrated that I might need to rearrange or change a lot of previous work to include it. Laying the book down to go live my life is also progress as it gives me a renewed energy for the project. It is all valuable.

How we manage our thoughts and emotions over those ebbs and flows can be the determining factor in if we keep moving toward the desired outcome at all, as well as how we feel on our way there. It’s no small thing.

I’ve been seeing myself do it with my tax work too. I’ve been working to streamline my processes and make them more efficient. I’ve been checking off my to-do list, but it feels like every task I complete, I think of three others that need to be added. It is the same shrinking and expanding idea. I can be frustrated about my to-do list expansion and about not being ‘done’ or I can be excited about how each thing added will improve my efficiency and therefore create more profit. Again, perspective is everything.

It’s really interesting to me the contrast from this book to my first. Love, Sex and Codependence happened so quickly that there wasn’t really this heartbeat method of completing it. The title and all the themes came to me in a flash, and within three months it was a fully formed, published thing. I hardly even stopped working on it once I started. It was an entirely different experience and it was wonderful in its own way. Life and art are just like that. Sometimes things come quickly and effortlessly, and other times we really have to dig deep to create what we intend and it takes a lot of time. Both are completely valid ways of getting to the end. The latter method doesn’t need to involve terrible struggle either and it’s normal if you do struggle too. Struggle is probably more about the thoughts about the process and outcome, than it is about ability or the goal.

Happy creating!

Dawn

What area of your life do you think would feel better for embracing a little more surrender and joy by letting go a little more resistance to the process and focus on the outcome? We have the power to turn any goal into a joyful, expansive experience. We can also turn it into a dreadful, shameful one. It is all in our hands.

As always, If you enjoyed this, feel free to tell a friend!