The One Thing All Writing Seasons Need
Plus an exciting announcement and a tweak to Ask an Editor to more fully support your writing
This week I answered 11 questions for Jane Ratcliffe’s The Body, Brain, and Books. I was honored to be included among so many wonderful people (my profile picture is right above
’s …pinch me!). I warmly invite you to read my answers and dive into more of Jane’s work where she’s interviewed the likes of Cheryl Strayed, Hamish McKenzie and Katherine May. (Jane is a prolific wordsmith, too, and recently shared a clip from her upcoming novel, which centers on England’s peace movement during WII.)
As I tried making my most recent Writing Seasons framework both open and tangible, I kept feeling like something was missing. Like I was supposed to go another step further.
Yes, the seasons of musing, tending, craft and rest are all as they should be. But there's something that feeds these seasons that I want to share today. I keep coming back to this idea that in every season, there is one thing we all need when we're trying to nurture a writing life: self-trust.
From a young age, I was taught that we were not inherently reliable creatures—that to trust ourselves was to be prideful, to think you know more than God, your parents or the pastor. It has taken a long time for me to reimagine the religion of my youth and find my way to a resting spot.
Messages of self abandonment are everywhere
The curious part about this journey is that it wasn’t just my childhood religion that played a part in my lack of self-trust. It was also in how I heard and saw the women in my life treat their bodies. Here, I was taught that my body was an enemy and a bargaining chip—that my body was powerful but I also was not in charge of it, what I fed it or how much it weighed. My self-trust was eroded watching people handle money as a currency for social inclusion (or exclusion).
My lack of self-trust was cemented even further when, as a young adult, all the prevailing financial advice was rooted in shame, control and narrow, elitist definitions of success. I dodged any opportunity to speak up until I was in my late 20s because creativity had been positioned as a dangerous thing … much too unpredictable. And of course this tangled web only further tangled me up because I knew that the highest value for belonging was to align with the family’s politics (or religion), and taking others’ feelings into account was considered a mastermind of left-wing political operatives.
Everything about my inner life answered to someone else except me. And so I spent the better part of my 20s and early 30s trying to change that. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time—I just thought I was a person destined to feel lost, confused and like a failure forever.
The journey to try to belong to my inner life started at age 19 when I stepped down from leadership at my college church—which then had a domino effect, being ostracized and losing my entire network overnight. It continued as I nervously began reading non-Christian writers at the used book store. I tried dating everyone under the sun regardless of their religion; I changed my job every 18 months; I moved to Colorado on my own when I was 27—and even though all those moments of transition were some combination of tiring and traumatic, I can look back now and see: Oh, I was practicing how to trust myself.
After about a year of giving some focused effort to a meditation practice, somewhere around 2014, I realized that I had been primed from a young age to see my mind as a foe. That the way to get through the world was to suppress my instincts and instead rely on someone smarter, more religious, more powerful, more successful. I only ever had shame, doubt and dissociated effort to fuel my writing practice. I had no way to know there could be a gentler way to live! No one had ever shown me that I was gentle and trustworthy.
Once that door began to open for me, I could start inching my way forward. And along the way, I have met countless people in writing circles, body-inclusive forums, religious settings and casual conversations—and it seems that in some way or another, we are all primed and rewarded for not trusting our own thoughts and desires. So why should any of us be surprised that our efforts sometimes turn in on themselves?
An experiment: trust-falling into myself and my instincts
As a writing guide and someone with a writing practice, my relationship with self-trust is always a work in progress. I think the biggest “ah ha” moment for me was realizing that the world at large does not want me or you to have a place deep inside ourselves that is our own. Some people call this “inner knowing,” but the phrase I like is what the mystics call the “cave of the heart.” When I’m living my life closely to the cave of the heart, I am in touch with a place where I have dominion over myself, my spirit and my personhood. It’s a place no one can belittle. It is otherly and hard to describe even now, but I know when I’m moving through my life with the energy that only comes from there.
Once I began falling with full trust into myself, that same trust began to show up on the page in my writing life. Not to say it’s resplendent or transcending human limits, but it is more deeply, more authentically, me. (And that’s a big hurdle for someone with dissociative identity disorder.) It’s not an easy path, I will say that. It seems everywhere I turn, there is a guru, consultant, teacher or fellow writer who elevates their way above all others and I fall into a dark pit of despair. The difference is now instead of the dark pit lasting for six to 12 months, it lasts for about 36 to 48 hours. Nearly every time I can trace that pit back to a message that was subtly suggesting that I shouldn’t trust myself. (Beware the “expert” who speaks in absolutes, guarantees and rigidity!)
New ways to connect for all writers at The Editing Spectrum
In the spirit of being a place that continues to nourish writers’ self trust and writing seasons, I’ve got a few changes to announce at The Editing Spectrum.
1. I’m launching a new interview series!
Called Cave of the Heart: 5 questions on self-trust and nurturing boundless creativity, this series will be for all readers of The Editing Spectrum. It’s an invitation to all of us to examine our relationship with self-trust. Where is it established, how is it thwarted and what surprising ways can it be nurtured or influenced?
In my journey with self trust, I’ve also learned that I need to consistently surround myself with writers who also want to create from a place of “inner knowing.” It doesn’t mean they always get it right, but they do return to that centering place of mutual confidence in themselves and in others. And they also know how to take in wisdom and guidance from resources. And I’m hoping that as you read how other writers relate with self trust that you’ll be able to uncover new and powerful ways to also trust and exercise your instincts. The series is an invitation to examine our own relationships with self-trust and will ask questions like:
What do you think about the concept of a “creative spark”? Is it something we all have access to?
Given a choice, were you the child who would run through the woods barefoot or rest inside reading?
What does your writing life look like today, and can you compare/contrast it to 10 years ago?
2. Ask an Editor is now focusing on one Writing Season at a time
The next thing I’m excited to share with you is that Ask an Editor will now have a standard prompt for three months at a time. Starting tomorrow, Ask an Editor will be focused on First Paragraphs.
With “First Paragraphs” the discussion thread is focused on your next work-in-progress essay. In a come-and-go format for the whole day, I share my instincts as a developmental editor, sketch out any questions I have, and share a sample of how to make your writing more succinct, surprising or engaging. This theme has been fun and exciting and we’ve had readers sharing their writing samples from all genres, including fiction, personal essay, medical research, memoir and more.
The next three months of Ask an Editor are designed to help writers who are in a Season of Craft. The plan right now is to let Ask an Editor cycle through all the writing seasons over the next year, so I hope you’ll start chiming in.
Did you know? Ask an Editor is modeled after how I work one-on-one with writers, but it’s offered for paid readers of my newsletter as part of the monthly subscription cost. Click here to upgrade today if you want to get an editor’s eyes on your writing before you share it with readers.
My own essays will continue to explore all the Writing Seasons and self trust in an organic way—while, of course, weaving in some work around how neurodiversity fits into this whole “being human” task. A few questions I have percolating for future essays include:
How can writers make the most of Substack during a Season of Tending?
What if a Season of Rest shows up without my permission?
How do we find work that most supports us during a Season of Musing?
I have some exciting things in store, and I’m so glad you’ll be here with the rest of us! In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you below.
How do you relate to self-trust? Can you tell when it’s being fed versus starved?
Is there a writer who embodies self trust and offers messages that inspire you to keep creating and trusting yourself? If so, tell us about them!
Have you had a chance to dive into Writing Seasons? Which one are you in? Use these emojis at the beginning of your comment so we can more easily see where everyone’s at!
💻 AND 📝 I love this Amanda! Staying true to yourself as an artist is one of the hardest parts I think. Especially now we live in the world of the algorithm. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. Because it (the algorithm) shows you things you already know and are already looking at, it suffocates any chance to grow. It holds you back. As a visual artist, I find this really hard, not just the algorithm, but social media. So being here on Substack is partly a way of trying to escape that over on Instagram. Which is why I am in a tending AND crafting place. Because part of me is tending the part of me that wants to be authentic, and it feels like this is a place I can do that. So I am tending my Substack garden, figuring out all the settings, working out my rhythm for posting free/paid etc. at the same time, I am working on my craft, and trying to trust myself that my writing is ok, even if I don’t know all the grammar rules. I feel like I am emerging out of a cocoon I was hiding in, and exploring writing in a way I never have before, it’s pretty exciting and enjoyable! Can’t wait for all the new seasons. They sound brill!
Yes to self-trust. I have read quite a few guru, mentor, coach things, and I cherrypick from the advice. What works this week for me, doesn't work for every week. But I think there is value in having a lot of variety in my self help toolbox, because there is no one way that works all the time.