Everything is an Experience

I want to welcome you to a different perspective about writing.

Writing is a flow. Writing is an experience.

Yes, writing is a way of making things. Words and sentences add up and before you know it, there’s a book.

The book is the end point. The end point matters. I want you to finish your book.

More importantly, I want to suggest to you that the journey isn’t over after you finish this book. When you finish it, is it possible you will want to get started on the next one?

Something in our social conditioning seems to emphasize that one day when we finish our work, we can relax.

The bricklayer waits for the end of his workday.

So, at the end of the day, the bricklayer relaxes.

Then he experiences another work day. And repeats the cycle.

If all we do is hope for the end of our labors, we’re wishing for life to be static in a way that it just isn’t. Things are not fixed.

I think just maybe there is the opportunity to be immensely grateful of this.

Things aren’t fixed! You can be more than what you are now. You can grow and move toward what you want.

Past the challenge, past the constraints and blocks, beyond all limits. On and on.

Growth. Transformation. Awakening. Wildness. Will.

Seeking, then finding, and seeking even more.

The experience of writing the book matters. Technique also matters.

The invitation here is not only to address the concerns of your reader, to produce something that is good, beautiful, and true, but to experience the process as a writer who has mastery over efficiency, clarity, and structure. For its own sake, as elements that make creation more fulfilling.

We don’t want to puddle around endlessly. Ideally we want to get better and not just see the same imaginative terrain every day. Not struggling with the same problems.

We want new problems. Different and better problems.

Problems and challenges won’t go away.

That means letting go of the same blocks and the same expectations — including the expectations for completion — and opening to new, potentially much more difficult hurdles.

New terrain to conquer.

You write a masterpiece. You finish the book. The book shows up in bookstores. The book finds its way into the hands of your adoring readers.

These are beautiful achievements.

But it’s not about the physical book or the specific milestone. Not for long.

It’s about what’s next.

Who have you become and what challenge do you seek next?

We remain in the flow of experience regardless of whether we meet our goals or not. Winning at authorship doesn’t remove us from the chain of causation.

And achievements are not static things. Even an achievement is an experience.

For me I think of the vacations I have taken. It was not about a stamp on the passport, but about how I felt. About the unforgettable sunset, how my life was never again the same.

It’s an experience, so how much can you really be in the experience?

How much of you is really here doing the experiencing?

You’re here right now in a physical body on this amazing planet. So really get into your body. No judgment to block the experience. Feel what your body wants. Be apologetically embodied as you write.

Let the mind learn the body’s wisdom.

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