My own sense … is that there is something deeply built into us that needs story itself. Story is such a source of nurture that we cannot become really true beings for ourselves and for each other without story – and without finding ways in which to tell it, create it, to encourage younger people create their own story.*
Vincent Harding

Being a writer is an act of perpetual self-authorisation.
No matter who you are
Only you can authorise yourself.
You do that by writing well, by constant discovery.**
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Story may be the most defining characteristic of what it means to be human,
For being different to other species –
How might we explore consciousness without story,
Able to change our lives, live with deep meaning, turning
failures into triumphs, connecting with one another?:
Both ordinary, day-to-day, errand-filled life and
special, value-drawn, making-a-difference life are comprised of story …
And if we fail to write our own, others will write some narrative or other for us –
Mistakenly thinking that’s what they’re here to do – another badly written story.

It’s perhaps worth noting that this year’s Eurovision Song Contest was won
by Nemo telling their story.

Only you can create your compelling and gratifying story,
The kind that will be helpful to others.

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
**Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing.

The action in a universe of possibility may be characterised as generative, or giving, in all sense of that word – producing new life, creating new ideas, consciously endowing with meaning, contributing, yielding to the power of contexts.  The relationship between people and environments is highlighted, not the people and things themselves.  Emotions that are relegated to the special category of spirituality or abundant hero: joy, grace, wholeness, passion and compassion.*
Ben Zander

*Benjamin And Rosamund Zander’s The Art of Possibility.

Cherish your curiosity. It is your questions that will shape you.*
David Delgado

Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.**
Maria Popova

Each of us possesses a destiny, contrived by our disposition
and our situation in life, beyond which lie freedom
and responsibility, enabled
and actualised by our curiosity
and questioning, which make it possible to be open to more
and for longer with no end
in sight:
her reality is a potentiality.
What she is, she is not yet, but ought to be
and should become.^

If you were only allowed to ask one question in your life,
Or you conceived your life as a question,
What would it be?

*Claudia Bedrick and Maria Popova’s A Velocity of Being;
**Maria Popova’s blog The Marginalian: 16 Life Learnings from 16 Years of The Marginalian;
^Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul; I thought to alter the gender of Frankl’s statement.

One of the best things about writing everyday (or doing your creative thing everyday) is that you teach yourself the ability to do it in the face of all the emotional and situational highs and lows of day to day life.  You teach yourself to be able to fire up creativity regardless of the circumstances.   And that way when you’re in a creative pinch and you need something … you’ve come up with something when you’ve felt like this before.*
Gabe Anderson

If you’re not willing to risk the unusual, you’ll have to settle for the ordinary.**
Jim Rohn

There’s nothing quite like setting up a practice to
do what you must do,
A place to turn up, no matter what, and even with
your pain –
Everything that is happening is put to work in
service of something that matters to you;
It is an unusual practice because
it is yours, and no one else’s,
As such, it is an expression of your special world of
superpowers, values, and passions;
At first it feels unfamiliar and even unnecessary, but,
As you patiently shape it through the frustrations, it alchemises
into a place of transcendence and transformation.

*Gabe Anderson’s blog: Keep Writing;
**Todd Sherman’s The Alter Ego Effect.

What seems like common sense to you may come as a
revelation to the reader.
The only true test of your ideas is whether they interest you
And arouse your own expectations –
The capacity for surprise that you discover as you
work.
Our purpose in writing – its essential purpose –
is to offer your testimony
About the character of existence at the moment.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Story – the self-narrative that we use to make sense of the world around us – is [an] interpretation. Story puts facts in context so we can understand their significance and what they mean to us.**
Lisa Cron

I have met many people who have thought that
everyone must be able to do what they can do – but
they are wrong;
Not only had they learnt the skills and played these into talents,
They were well on the way to developing these into strengths – superpowers:
And sowe must always lean into what interests us, that which produces
expectations and longing in us –
Then “sing it out.”

This is the positive story to make of
the same facts as the more negative story we began with;
Every one of us is capable of doing this – often with
more or less help from others:
There are no ordinary people.^

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Lisa Cron’s Story or Die;
^C. S. Lewis, from Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now.

We are strong, difficult creatures who long for both freedom and belonging at the same time, and often run a mile when the real thing appears. That is the frontier on which we dwell.*
David Whyte

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions; a conservative tendency … and an expansive tendency … We need both of these programmes.^^
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Here they are again,
The two inclinations necessary for life:
Freedom and belonging,
Exploration and self-preservation,
Playfulness and seriousness,
Dynamic and static,
Imagination and reality,
Infinite and finite,
Future and past,
Special and ordinary –
Such a life – if we could make it work –
Would be worth everything.

*David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
**Mihaly Csikszenntmihalyi’s Creativity.

We are kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.*
Robert Brault

The Enemy is a force creating inner conflict and stopping you from showing up as your Heroic Self.**
Todd Sherman

The Enemy, the Dictator, the Resistance –
It’s you;
We’ll have to get used to this, as
Robert McKee says:
Story is a metaphor for life,
and to be alive is to be in perpetual conflict.^

In my university work with
students and staff members, I often found
the Dictator would use anxiety and trauma, and
sometimes imposter syndrome to derail a person,
Todd Sherman adds tribal narratives – such as,
People like me don’t get to do things like this.

Here’s a simple skill to try out
for the next time one of these thoughts comes along,
Being your curious self:
Write down an unhelpful thought and allow yourself to feel the discomfort for a moment;
Write it out again, but insert before the words:
“I am having the thought …
Notice if anything has changed;
Write this longer sentence out again, but insert the words:
“I am noticing that I am having the thought …
And again notice if anything has changed, however small.

It is likely that you will feel that you have some distance from the thought.

You may also want to think about who is the noticing self –
A Self that has highly developed talents and abilities,
Motivating values and deep passions.

*Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**Todd Sherman’s The Alter Ego Effect;
^Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The World According to Writers.

Flow tends to occur when the activity one engages in contains a clear set of goals. These goals seem to add direction and purpose to behaviour.*
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A myth cannot be correctly understood without a transformative ritual, which brings it into the lives and hearts of generations of worshippers.**
Karen Armstrong

We need some way of getting from here to there,
Goals can sometimes be enough, but sometimes we need
a little more help to boost this …
Enters myth and ritual;
These belong to a special world,
The place we go beyond the ordinary to
explore and expand
the understanding we have of who we are, what we have, and
what we can do –
It’s not make-believe, but a place where
we can see things more clearly and focus on what matters and begin to
imagine and practise possibilities:
Where is your special world – walking alone, journaling, a certain person … , and
what your your special world practices?

*Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now;
**Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.

But genres are merely outlines by another name.
Better to be discovering what’s worth discovering.
Noticing what you notice …*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

It’s an attempt to open our minds to possibilities other than the ones we remember, and the ones we already know we like. Something has to be done to get us free of our memories and choices.**
John Cage

There is more to discover –
About yourself, others, the world, and how these can meld into
something new for you, but
firstly, you may have to forget what you know, prefer, enjoy,
Else you may hold back and never know
what might be.

As those memories and choices come to you,
Try writing them into a book or journal, and then
close it firmly (try this whenever a memory causes you to
avoid something new or different) –
Consider these things forgotten
for now, so that you may stumble upon more –
A book, a person, an idea, a journey, an experience …

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting.

You’ll never run out of noticings …
You need a place where you can practice noticing and
making sentences …
What you get in return for this gathering and releasing
Is habit, ease, trust, and a sense of abundance that sustains
your writing.
And your mind never relinquishes what really matters.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

You never know what you might end up getting good at. Because getting good begets getting good.**
Gabe Anderson

You are of the prime species on this planet
for noticing, and you have no idea in this moment
where you will end up if you
notice your noticings, not in some
tight-fisted way, holding on firmly to whatever you come upon,
But keeping moving in an aimlessly noticing way –
It’s not that you have to do this all the time, only that
some time will provide unexpected rewards.

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Gabe Anderson’s blog: Getting Good.