Valentine’s Day may not be everyone’s favorite holiday, but—for many of us—the sight of all those hearts make it hard not to think about love. So I’m leaning in for this month’s theme and chose the word DEVOTION to guide us as we look toward deepening our writing practices and moving a step further into 2021.
I adore this word: it’s fervent and filled with longing and depth and it has an edge too—I’ve never known devotion of any kind without a bit of grit thrown in.
As a writer, your significant other is your work, whether you are partnered or not.
You dream of it, you can’t wait to be with it, you sometimes LOATHE it but keep coming back for more. You fight. You make up. You sometimes settle on a policy of detente. But you are MFEO (Ahem: Made For Each Other), and both of you know it.
But what do you do when you and your writing are in dire need of couples therapy? Or at least a better way of communicating with each other. Forget Mars and Venus: sometimes, it can feel like you’re on opposite sides of the universe.
This month, we’re getting into the messy beauty of you love affair with writing, and working on tools to have a healthy, lifelong relationship. I’m rooting for you two to die in your sleep together at the ripe old age of 150.
There is so much I can’t wait to explore with you in this month’s Well Gathering - these (free) second Sunday workshops are becoming an anchor for me already. I love preparing for them, getting under the hood of a word and seeing how it can help us grow in our craft, in our art, in the way we live our lives as writers.
I’d be lying if I didn’t mention how DEVOTION dovetails nicely with a personal devotion I’ve had to my upcoming biography of WWII spy, Virginia Hall. Many of you have heard me talk about how tough it was to write this book—this was the deep end of the writing pool for me and it was only by being utterly committed to telling her story, and to the way I wanted to tell it, that kept me going. It was painfully difficult, but I’m glad I didn’t give up and I’m thrilled with how it turned out.
This is a more obvious reward for devotion—an actual book on actual shelves, but it doesn’t always look that way.
More often than not, devotion happens in the wings, not with the world watching and golf-clapping, but in the quiet, private spaces of our lives.
That’s where the good writing happens too.
What does being devoted to your writing look like for you?
There have been many times when I felt like I’d lost my way with a book or was simply so discouraged by the odds and by publishing that the only thing that got me through was my deep love of writing and reading and stories. Far too often, I see writers whose joy is snuffed out by comparison, self-doubt, hopelessness. To this day, I find bookstores are no longer the safe havens they once were: here’s my best illustration of why it’s tough to go to them once you’re a published writer (and how mindfulness is the ace up your writer sleeve Every. Damn. Day.)
Writing can be an enchanted garden full of wonders, to be sure, but that’s not why writers come to me. They come when it’s midnight in the garden of good and evil. One of the first things we look at in our work is the writer’s relationship to their writing.
Did you know you’re in a committed, lifelong relationship with your writing? Are you a good partner, or are you and your writing in a bit of a bad romance?
When you shift your perspective and think about your writing like a relationship, suddenly you begin to realize, wait, am I bad partner? Am I not listening, am I not present, am I just penciling my writing in? OH MY GOD DOES MY WRITING WANT A DIVORCE?
Breathe.
It’s going to be fine. You two are MFEO, remember?
Love Languages For Writers
If you don’t already know what your love language is, find out here. It’s a free quiz based on the work of Gary Chapman, who wrote the book on this concept. I've found the results to be accurate and - not gonna lie - it's been really helpful in understanding my relationship to and with others--including my relationship with my writing. The 5 Love Languages are:
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Physical Touch
Below will give you a cheeky sense of what this looks like IRL:
Meme: The Secret Nerd Base
I learned that my love language is heavy on Acts of Service, with Receiving Gifts coming in a distant second. Quality Time and Physical Touch were way down on the list for me.
Acts of Service is the primary way I both like to give and receive love (consider this newsletter an act of love). The way I show my devotion to my writing, then, is to serve it through my attention, my discipline, my commitment. I make a lot of sacrifices for my writing. I often put it first and go WAY out of my comfort zone if that is what a book demands of me. It tells me to jump and I ask how high.
I give the gift of my presence to my writing because its primary love language is Quality Time. This means that in order for my writing to feel the love, I need to hang out for as long as it takes my story to come alive under my fingers. No rushing. No pushing. And certainly not checking my phone or allowing other people - via social media or texts - to hang out with us.
When I look at my writing as a relationship instead of a transaction for my benefit alone, I find that there's an invitation for more expansiveness, gentleness, and pleasure in the process. It allows me to focus on process, rather than outcome. This shows up on the page with writing that has more soul, because it's imbued with the fruits of this mutual devotion.
Applying Your Love Language To Your Writing Practice
Another connection I made when thinking about my writing in terms of the love language is how, for me, it's really important that my writing is an act of service to my readers. I want it to be a light in the darkness and a vehicle through which my readers can better understand themselves and their place in the universe. (If you haven't written a writer's artist statement, then this would be another good exercise, especially through the lens of love languages). Having this clarity of purpose helps me in a million ways, from which stories I choose to write to how I show up as a writer.
If you're struggling right now and, for example, learn that your love language is Physical Touch, how about trying to write by hand for a bit and see what that opens up? If Receiving Gifts is your love language, consider how you can see your writing time as a gift you give yourself - or maybe buy a pretty new notebook to write all your ideas in. These are just a few of the ways you can apply your love language to your writing practice. And - don't forget - your writing's love language is most likely Quality Time (but feel into it - maybe it's not!), so it will feel loved when you give it the gift of your devoted attention.
Devotion to your writing is a two-way street: if you love it, it will love you back.
Sue Monk Kidd wrote, “Practice until you make it a song that sings you.”
You and your writing—one flesh. The song that sings you.
Here’s to making music together.
