Your creation is your cause

April 8th, 2021: I used to think of myself as a journalist. I still do. I still am. But I’m now also an author. My first novel hasn’t been published yet, but it has been written. Actually, written multiple times through various drafts. Nowadays, I’m on a mission to integrate a third adjective in my mind—an activist. I got the idea recently from a podcast about overcoming fear. As creators—writers, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, anyone creating (when you get to the essence of it, we’re all creators, aren’t we? Certainly creators of our life stories and narratives), we often look for permission or sanction to build the things we want to. There’s the nagging inner critic that questions who we are to create, what’s special about our stories, the inevitable fear of judgment, of putting ourselves out there. Does anyone really care, we might ask. There are so many books and so many outstanding writers. And it’s true—they are. In a Tik-Tokking world, attention span is a fossil. But you write because you are compelled to. You write because a story, a moment, a question, a character trait, a scene, a landscape, pulls at you. Patterns call to be woven and unwoven between your fingers, tapestries that your writer’s mind needs to understand, misunderstand, break into pieces and build up again. That is why you write. And yes, this is also a job and a business. You need to sell your writing too, make a career of it. I’m coming to understand that there’s a better chance of all that if you become an activist for your own cause. You wouldn’t be shy if you were trying to save koala habitat, would you? Or to highlight a racial injustice? You’d stretch that extra mile—ask for help, discover new resources, find allies, keep on working. Because the cause is important, it matters. Your creation is your cause. Love it, treat it well, polish it as best as you can, bring it out when it feels right, advocate for it, stand by it when the criticism arrives, or when no one seems to care. Learn, read, rewrite, network, immerse yourself in the subconscious realms where all your stories come from and keep going. Don’t be shy. And then do it all over again. I plan to and I’ll be blogging about my adventures on the road to publication, whatever form that takes.