Following My True North Compass
On my year-long solo trip I lost things, I gained things. I witnessed things, I failed to witness things. This trip gave me stories to write, and the courage to do something with them.
It had been some six months already, travelling solo. I had stories banked up like chapters of a book – and yet, I’d had my laptop stolen, and my guitar stolen. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a writer, after all. Look at all the SIGNS, you idiot. Losing your laptop? Just give up, already.
So I did. There I was, spinning like a top across towns and countries with boys and girls who just wanted to party their days and nights away. I gave up, alright.
Tears rolled like a ritual down my cheeks. Of course it’s not easy to deny your heart’s calling. My heart’s compass arrow was pinging all over the place, trying to redirect my course.
My tears, the sacred jewels of awareness, slowed me down.
One day I pulled out my notebook while nestled under a tree in the Sacred Valley of Peru. I was tired. Lonely. My tears, the sacred jewels of awareness, slowed me down and drew me back to my notebook.
I wrote the madness and friendship and love and memories and tears out of me. A feeling of euphoria rushed through my veins. This feeling of writing is everything.
After my writing session, I looked around me and saw the majestic mountains that surrounded each face of the town. My crumpled heart was now ripped wide open and I wanted to remember this feeling of pain and joy and humble awakening, forever. It felt good to feel so much, and to write, and to heal from these precious words on the page.
I still have the photo of my tear-stained face on that day in the Sacred Valley, at my human rock bottom, on the cusp of my spiritual and creative awakening. I realised that my heart had been calling me for a very long time. I just wasn’t ready yet to listen, until this precious moment, full of poetry and power, where it felt like God was shouting a message at me, from my very own heart.
One week later, the crux of my future novel came to me while travelling on a bus to Lima – or perhaps it was to Huaraz? Not sure exactly. All I remember is having a vision and grabbing my notebook and pen. The words drifted magically to my fingertips into a cauldron of voices, faces, words, the song of story. I still have those pages.
Since that magical day in Peru I’ve become passionate about writing the words without fear. I’ve also become passionate about listening to my heart, because now I know it always leads me in exactly the right direction.
Learning is empowering
I’ve also become passionate about learning. Because learning empowered me to improve my writing – which empowered me to feel confident about my writing – which allowed me to get a job in publishing.
Listening to my heart required me to drop all the other bypassing distractions that were getting in the way, so that I could see the best path forward.
My heart is my true writer’s compass.
My little beating heart, filled with 40,000 neurons and a inbuilt life GPS, always knows what’s up. My heart had led me to embark on this awe-inspiring and wildly dangerous trip in the first place – a trip that encouraged me to face danger and get creative on a daily basis.
My heart had then taken me to the quietest and most sacred town on the planet and sat me down and said: “Slow down. Just listen. Stop partying, stop bypassing, stop with the excuses. Shut the hell up and sit down and listen. All the gifts and words and potential are inside you.
And once I was open to listen, the story and the words came.
And so I returned home, and my visions became very clear. I kept listening to my heart. I moved across Australia to study my master’s degree in creative writing.
[Fun fact: most people write master’s with no apostrophe (masters), when in fact, it needs one, just like editor’s letter needs an apostrophe. Correct: master’s degree. Or Master of Arts degree.]
Feel the fear and write anyway
And here we are. I work with people every day, teaching my craft, editing others’ crafts, and writing books for myself and others. But mostly my job is to challenge people to defy their fears and dance with their creative destiny.
People are drawn here, desperate to write, too tangled up in their heads and ‘what ifs’ with barely any belief in themselves to take the next step.
A checklist for aspiring writers
Where is the fear about pursuing writing actually coming from? Did you hear negative comments about artists when you were young?
Would you expect to become a dancer, or a rockclimber, or a scientist, without any training?
Have you actually sat down, like really sat down, to learn how to become a writer, with a teacher? A mentor?
Have you experienced the long uncomfortable stretches of sitting with the page, while learning and applying all the techniques? Because it’s not always fun. And that’s not a bad thing.
Learning complements the heart’s calling
For some reason we think that writing is magic, limited to the gifted few, and that no training is required. Maybe a few YouTube lessons is enough. And because of this we feel ashamed when we don’t get anywhere, and terrified of failure. We sabotage ourselves before we’ve even learned the basics.
For me, I ran across the edges of the world to escape from my equal amounts of longing and shame for a career that felt so far from reach.
But I could never really outrun my heart, or my longing for learning.
Language is your toolbox
Language is an intricate toolbox, and the more tools you have in your toolbox, the more you can make an impact with your words.
There are thousands of writing tools and techniques out there which have been used and analysed for centuries by scholars, philosophers, writers, poets, linguists.
Even if you believe, like me, that the majority of your writing comes from Spirit, you are hugely empowered to express those spiritual words when you can wield the message powerfully through language techniques that have proven impact on humans throughout the ages.
And after all, you are creating a text for humans to read.
What do you think?
Have you been tinkering in the dark with your methods, hoping something sticks, or have you done a few courses to sharpen your skills? Tell me more in the comments. I want to hear your story.
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