The Main Things Writers Need to Succeed

(Spoiler: You’ve had it all along.)

I’ve been a writer my entire life. When I was a child, I’d sit at our Apple IGS computer and type stories. I was probably 7. I can still remember what some of them were about, which is not necessarily a good thing because children are incredibly literal, and what I remember still makes me blush. But still, the writing was there—and so was the underlying insecurity that would drive me both crazy and to succeed over the ensuing years once I returned to writing in college. (My mom put me in dance, and that eventually became something I both loved and sought to gain my mother’s love, attention, and approval by doing—though, that was subconscious. Consciously, since I’d done it since I was 2, I just assumed dance was a part of me as much as my left-handedness.)

If you go way back, you can see your purpose and the things that might hold you back from achieving that purpose with massive clarity. For me, those things were desperation for love and approval underpinned by my core abandonment wound (most of us either have an abandonment or a rejection wound as the core wound we spend our lives nurturing and responding to or exacerbating, depending on how we show up), and they were raging insecurity over the quality and content of my writing. Even as a child, stories about relationships and how people interacted were most interesting to me. I liked the complexity and messiness of people’s lives, and I liked stories where people who did the right thing and were good people eventually found love and support. At the time, of course, I wasn’t awakened to the fact that I liked stories about this kind of thing because I craved this type of thing.

I still gravitate toward themes involving a sort of moral justice. Even the psychological thrillers I read, I gravitate toward ones where the outcome is going to vindicate a morally upstanding character. So, that was there as well.

In college, I was aggressively insecure having been both enmeshed and told I was insecure throughout my life. I had few friends because of the overwhelming amount of time I spent with my mom, and while I danced throughout my entire life, I only formed a handful of very close friendships when I did dance, and I look back now, my mom was also very present then, too. Not to say we didn’t do things on our own, but suffice to say, I didn’t feel like I had any authority over my life. I had raging imposter syndrome and I really didn’t know how to do anything. I was in a class with what felt like adults and this rakish man with shoulder-length white hair who would pop us with questions like, “Tell us something interesting,” and I was terrified because there wasn’t anything interesting about me. I went to high school. I had an eating disorder—which at the time was just thriving, and I took dance. I had one interesting experience—performing at the Olympic Village in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but otherwise, that was literally it as far as I knew. There wasn’t anything that at the time I could think of to write home about. I was so average.

Now, what I want you to discern from this is the absolute massive amount of negative self-talk I was engaging. I was looking at my entire life to that point and finding the whole thing lacking. What my problem was—haha, and this is exactly what I’d done as a child—this is how I’d learned to show up—was to think of what they would find interesting. I at no point and literally not until just now considered the question was to share what I found interesting to share. I had loads of interests. Loads of thoughts. Loads of things that others would’ve found interesting. I’d already been doing research on disordered eating. I was still a virgin—like that alone, I would later find out when I worked at Olive Garden, was extremely interesting because by age 20, many people had already lost theirs. But I had no esteem, no sense of self, and I was so insecure.

Everything I did was shrouded in the need to be perfect, so that I could gain approval and validation and be the “potential” I’d constantly felt I fell short of any time I disappointed my parents. Security was elusive and temporary and only gained when I was doing something other people found interesting, worthwhile, or good. Oh God, you guys—it was exhausting.

Because of this, I skated around my true passion—fiction. I did everything but. Now, part of this was figuring out the type of writer that I was. My first book—still unpublished, was a children’s book that I illustrated, queried, and got some decent response on. I feel like with some reworking, it could still be a decent little thing, but I really want to expand it should I ever get the urge to revisit it. I still think about it quite often.

In 2008, I picked up David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy, a poignant and informative memoir about the professional writer’s son’s descent into methamphetamine addiction and the ambiguity of the future given the nature of addiction. (I’ll add that Nic is still sober and is a successful author and writer. He’s written a memoir, Tweak, and I think may still contribute to the addiction platform The Fix, and has written for Netflix shows among many other things. I don’t know these people, but I’m so happy for them because not many people get to have a hell of a come back story from addiction.) That book turned me onto memoir and creative nonfiction and in that, I found my genre.

I did a memoir project for my thesis—I decided to be open and vulnerable about my eating disorder. There’s a lot of good in that book, too, though, I’d want to review it closely as I wrote it from the perspective of a 25-year-old who didn’t really understand the why of her eating disorder. I also stupidly didn’t go to therapy, but to be fair, it wasn’t really offered, but I’m sure if I had insisted, I could’ve, but at the same time, my biggest fear was gaining weight, so of course I wasn’t going to get help. I was also so ashamed. I knew that my bulimia was wrong. I would frequently more or less pass out in my bed quickly after a binge / purge from electrolyte imbalances. I was legitimately afraid of dying, but I also discovered that in—after 8 years of anorexia and bulimia, writing about it and sharing it—and acting like it was a thing of the past, I released something. It was magical. I realized that telling the truth and shedding light on shame-filled shadows by exposing them and being vulnerable and honest about them healed me in a way that nothing before had—not all of my attempts at discipline, nothing. I’d later learn that there’s a form of therapy that involves memoir writing, and there are countless books out there on how to do it. Note that a therapeutic memoir isn’t necessarily going to be something you publish, though, it could serve as a the bones for something you work into a publishable manuscript.

Though I knew the release that comes with exposing darkness to light, it would still be a long time before I could cut myself wide open to share all of my shame, and there would be yet still more shame to unpack as I would go on to do radically wild things when I was thrashing around in the straitjacket that is C-PTSD, complex grief, and unresolved trauma. So. Fun. But that half-decade dark night of the freaking soul also set me free. Freaking finally. Creatively. Spiritually. Emotionally.

I emerged with a true sense of self when I got through all of the trauma and reparented and just let go of all of those stupid limiting beliefs and all of that conditioning and the constructs. People made up the way the world works. If you’re neurodivergent AF like I am, that may not work for you. Let it go. Stop caring about what people think.

And that’s the reality—become aware when you’re acting out of a place where you’re concerned about how something will be received. Stop worrying if people won’t like it. Guess what—they won’t! But those aren’t your readers anyway, so literally—who cares? The right audience will find your work. Manifest that—believe that your writing has a bigger purpose than just you telling a story or writing down an idea. Believe in what you’re doing. Jen Sincero’s You Are a Badass is a great book for anyone who needs to really remember that you have a unique and magical purpose in the world. Mine, I discovered in the struggles I underwent after my husband died, is to alleviate the world of needless suffering.

Both my last relationship and those of my adolescence were shadowed by cover narcissistic behaviors and emotional avoidance. It was tremendously painful, but in my suffering because of the unresolved suffering in the hearts and minds of others, of the people who should’ve been my biggest support, not my biggest barrier to my dreams. (My former SO was critical of what I wrote, though he never read what I wrote and would get angry when I asked him to read something. My parents told me I was a talented writer, but overall, I felt that they saw writing as a sort of hobby, not as a career of any merit. This is largely, I feel sure, due to pragmatic things like retirement plans, but you know, it will work out. There are plenty of financial options that I leverage for future planning. And also, the universe has my back. I’m good. But still, it was hurtful and invalidating, and it made me feel unsupported).

As someone who feels called to a life of peace, I find solace in the tenets of Buddhism, of ancient spiritual belief systems and practices and unite mind, body, and spirit and that inform that love, compassion, and forgiveness are the ways to show up in the world. I believe we co-create our reality as a collective of souls. The unification of the collective is what we call God, and so in this we are all children of light, children of God. We are all equal beings, but we are born into different circumstances and each of our births is an assignment to both ourselves—our own soul line—and to those we are interacting with. My soul self has an assignment with my human self. My connecting mind, body, and spirit, I’ve been able to achieve a stabilization and a balance that someone with lifelong undiagnosed borderline personality disorder probably doesn’t typically find.

Because I have a sense of purpose in sharing my writing—to help, to heal, to love, to give, I no longer feel the inhibitions that once plagued my writing, that would stop me short and cold—I felt too exposed, too raw, too naked regardless of what I was writing. I fretted over everything, so needlessly, as (1) it wasn’t like the millions I hoped would read my writing actually were reading it, and (2) I probably wasn’t even going to publish it. I spent over a decade dabbling in other genres of writing—travel, content marketing, grant writing, technical writing, and teaching and editing to avoid what I wanted more than anything because it felt so big in my head—I was terrified of it.

Writers, we have to get out of our heads. Our minds will drive us crazy and will kill our creativity. By changing our minds and feelings around our own worth and our writing, we can literally have everything we’ve ever wanted as artists. Trust me when I say these five changes to my mind and my emotions literally opened up the entire world for me.

1. Develop a true sense of esteem. Discover who you truly are at your core and know that person is enough. That person is here for a special and specific purpose with a specific message that only they can share, however that is. The Commune App has a great Hypnotherapy meditation practice that really did—and I’m sure the timing of my practicing with it was part of this—improve my self esteem, and I’ve been shedding inhibitions like a rockstar ever since. I highly recommend that.

2. Know your true purpose. A sense of purpose higher than just becoming Liane Moriarty or Gillian Flynn is very helpful. I was in the shower one morning when I realized I didn’t care if I ever published a single bestseller or even a book. If I just get my writing out there on Substack and I’m still able to make a living as a human butterfly (not literally—but I feel so detached from what everyone else is doing that it looks like I do nothing, though, I know I’m doing many things), then I’m the greatest success I’ll ever be because (1) I’m helping and showing up for others with my stories—those who need them find them and those who won’t be receptive or kind don’t, and (2) I’m using my art to create for a purpose greater than myself. This line of self-awareness actually has blossomed into the awareness that I’m not just a writer—I’m an entertainer, and this is true as I am the most ridiculous MC in my creative nonfiction. There’s a meme out there that says something about being a writer is just watching your characters do stupid shit and you just write up the incident report—that’s me. I am the character doing stupid shit. I don’t mean to—I’m just really neurodivergent and it’s like baby’s day out when I leave the house.

3. Stop comparing. Oh, this one got me bad. If you’re comparing yourself to another writer’s career or success or even their writing prowess, you’re killing your esteem. You’re tricking yourself into thinking that you’re always going to fall short. Listen, published works have been—especially mainstream bestsellers—written and rewritten and edited and edited and produced and have had multiple hands on them to make them what they are. As an editor, I assure you that there are books that have changed so much you wouldn’t hardly recognize them. Writers put things into books and characters and such that need to be tweaked. Do not compare your writing, your style, your voice to anywhere. Where you are right now is where you’re supposed to be. Be grateful for whatever you have going for you and put that out there. Your style, content, and voice will mature and develop in richness and uniqueness as you persevere, but if you keep comparing, you’re at a very real risk of getting totally stuck. I have been totally stuck before because of this way of thinking.

4. Stop taking it all so seriously. Yes, your writing is important. Yes, perhaps you want it more than anything—I relate. But here’s the thing—if you over-identify with this tangible dream—like, becoming the best of the best-sellers for the sake of proving your worth (that’s a low value place to strive from because it’s fear-driven), you’re going to either go insane from the stress or you’ll go into total shutdown. I also did that. I was terrified of putting a bad book out there. Like, you hear people talk about writers who have one great book and then it’s like, oh—mediocre, mediocre, well that other one was okay…and it does get in your head. But here’s the deal—who cares what they say and think. If you have to, treat it like a break up with someone who you’re in a trauma bond with—keep a list of the reasons you absolutely should not listen to them when they try to tell you that you suck—most people read at an 8th grade level or lower. Most people don’t read at all. Most people base their thoughts, opinions, experiences, and ideas off what they’ve been told and what they’ve experienced in a minuscule part of the world. Your writing is the culmination of your experience, your thoughts, and your ideas, and all of those things are precious and have immense value. If you have a strong sense of esteem, you’ll know this and you’ll not feel the urge to compare, and when it does arise, you’ll be able to tamp it down and push it out of your mind because you’ll recognize it as fear attempting to manipulate your thoughts.

5. Change your mind and get out of your mind. I know this sounds like a bit of a shock, but you can control your thoughts. As writers, we need our creative minds to produce ideas to flow through us, but that’s where our thinking brains need to be stopped. It’s when our minds start making us doubt the words we are choosing or backtracking or makes us think of our audience and how they’ll react and oh, it can just go on. So, when those thoughts arise, I look at them and say, “Oh, where did you come from?” And if I can discern it, I acknowledge it and reprogram the limiting belief that allowed it to bubble up and then I just kindly show it the door and push it out. Like an annoying house guest.

My point is that as a writer, I’ve found that being healthy mentally and emotionally have been the absolute biggest game-changers for me in transforming my writing and my ability to write what I want. Yes, I still have residual anxieties and insecurities, but I understand where they come from, and that conscious awareness enables me to push those things aside, so I can respond to the call for creative communication and expression. With a strong sense of purpose, I’m able to create without inhibition or anxiety, and that has been such a game-changer for me. Having been writing since I was a child and having written multiple articles on creating writing habits and doing all of these discipline-driven things to get the book written and all of that stuff, I find that the real secret sauce isn’t when you make yourself sit down to write—it’s when you realize that you’re meant to write, and you get so deeply behind your core purpose that you believe with all of your heart that goddess herself knocked on your door and breathed that purpose right into your soul. You write with the conviction that you’re on a mission from God. Grab that and embed it in you. Make it the Rosetta Stone of your creative core. Like, stand aside, peasants, you have a core purpose.

I know I mentioned Jen Sincero’s book You Are a Badass, but I would be remiss not to mention Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. Every artist, but certainly every writer, needs to read this book. It’s a gift to the creative world as this book is the only one I’ve read that I felt I was being given permission to release those inhibitions listed above with my art. I thought the rules were different and more rigid, and I was coming at it with a lack mindset that didn’t have space for me unless I was exceptional. I now know that’s absolutely not true. We live in an abundant world and trust me when I say—there is space at the table at the top for every single one of us. It’s not comparative. It’s not a race. It’s just a question of whether or not you’ll put down the mental and emotional burdens holding you back and have the clarity and the energy to make it to your much-deserved seat. I hope you make it. I’m getting there, and let’s agree—when we do make it, we’ll save each other a seat—and share tips for how we got there because giving is a huge part of this bliss that I’ve found.

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