Aligning Yourself in Writing Your Book

Align Yourself in Writing Your Book

and Feel Like Yourself through and through

The practice of writing, as with any art, is not only about getting better at it and producing more of it until the project feels done.

It’s also about practicing how you are with yourself along the way, your ability to recover from a wrong note and to recognize the glint of gold in your pan and go further with it (mixed metaphors and all).

Coming into Rhythm

It’s really too bad that, so often, when we want to bring forth something wonderful in writing a book,

all these niggly, unkind, self-doubting thoughts and feelings rise up — as if their authority is actually based on something —

and keep us from moving into the beauty of what we’re capable of in light of who we really are.

It would be so much better if we could take some deep breaths, feel the steady rhythm of our heartbeat, let go of impossible agendas for ourselves, and just . . . listen inside —

“What’s that? What’s that you’re saying?” (or maybe whispering). “You’re suggesting I write about this experience to start things off? You want me to settle into a deeper strata and bring forth whatever I find there?”

— and then do it. Pick up our pen, or place our hands on the keyboard, and enter the wisdom, the possibility, the range of what our deeper Self suggests. Without second-guessing. Without dismissing its worth.

**Learning to Align Yourself in Writing Your Book —**

a clearer, kinder way

This is called alignment. It’s when you are in tune with yourself, and can hear a glimmer of what wants to be known, to be said, and let that music out.

A wrong note? No matter. If you can recognize it as a wrong note, you can quickly get your bearings — as professional musicians do — and play one that sounds more right. Once you’re back “in the groove,” you can keep going without incident, because you are right there with it.

Later on, after the writing has cooled and you are ready to return to it and actually read it, you can let yourself receive what’s there simply to see what speaks to you.

Not to critique what you’ve done, but to pan for gold, so to speak: to put a container of good wishes into the stream of what you’ve done so far and lift it to the surface, see what comes along with it.

You can always return the pebbles to the stream; but the gold, you can not only keep but also exult in, be inspired by. Where there’s a smattering of gold, you’re bound to find a lode nearby.

Practice Is Part of the Process

The practice of writing, as with any art, is not only about getting better at it and producing more of it until the project feels done. It’s also about practicing how you are with yourself along the way, your ability to recover from a wrong note and to recognize the glint of gold in your pan and go further with it. (Yes, I realize that I am mixing metaphors, here.)

So you’re practicing listening to yourself, and writing what comes, and then going back into it a bit later on to receive what you have done. There’s a huge difference between telling yourself, “That’s no good, I’m on a wrong track, what makes me think I can even do this, anyway?” and being able to detect what — in what you’ve put onto the paper or screen — has aliveness and interest, and training yourself to keep sniffing that out and letting the rest go.

That’s what you need and want in book writing — writing the book (or shorter work) of your heart: to recognize the gold and what you did to uncover it, and let the rest go.

When you have this inner relationship with yourself, you don’t tend to go in for so much self-criticism — or at least, you can recognize it when it rears its head and let it go by, like a burst of smelly car exhaust. This relationship with self is the foundation for your having a beautiful experience of writing, no matter what the subject or coloration of the writing.

Bright sunlight shining through trees in a forested area.

My conviction is that it needs to be intentional, conscious, and part of the rewards you hope for through writing. When you’re cultivating a beautiful, trusting relationship with your inner being through book writing, you learn to come out glistening every bit as much as what you’ve written.

I wish you good alignment with your book, and with all of life.