A new happiness has come into my world over the past few months. At long last, I’m taking my writing full circle. I’ve started a submission practice and I’m receiving responses: No, Yes, Maybe, Try Us Again, Oops (a No changed to a Yes), and several choruses of crickets.

 

This energy is wonderful and I can’t believe I let it slide for five, six, seven years, with nary a submission. “It’s too much work,” I told writer friends and clients. “It’s boring and tedious,” I went on. And I told myself, “It doesn’t matter anyway—what counts is that I write, for myself.”

 

Ah, but I have to be honest: the real reason for hanging onto my stuff isn’t laziness, or needing more time, or disliking the submitting process. The root reason is fear. I hate No! What if I only get No?

 

I’m taking cues from the sea turtle, which lays up to 200 eggs, nine times a season. As a writer I am slow to finish a book—just look at me floundering on that sand, it’s painful. But when I count ‘em up, I have hundreds of eggs, and when I let them go into the world, I’ve completed my mission. I never saw it before—sub-mission is part of my mission. Most of a sea turtle’s eggs will be destroyed by the elements or devoured by crabs or seabirds. The sea turtle is undaunted, even so, because it was born to make more turtles, and there are more eggs to come.

 

Mission leads to plenitude, and this keeps me from reacting to rejection. I submerge in hope and trust.

I become a sharer, not a hoarder. As Brenda Ueland said, "Writing is not a performance but a generosity." (From If You Want to Write, published in 1936).

 

Holding onto our work, perfecting it forever, not taking time to submit, immersing in other tasks—these are all subterfuge for fear. The cure is to share, to be generous, to give yourself away a thousand times, even if there's risk and disappointment.

 

I’m adding another dimension to my coaching. You can choose Writing Development, Creative Companionship, or Publishing Support. If you’d like to cultivate the good feelings of sharing who you are and fulfilling your earth mission, let me know and we’ll make an individualized plan.

Good news: live meetings are available again!

 

Join a brand new Wildfire Writing class via Zoom, Clark College, September 22.

And join my in-person Clark College workshop of movement, nature, and writing on September 25!