Start Now, Love
The book I didn't publish & a message for you — a creative, beautiful human being
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I was thinking about the creative process this morning as we get ready to open the fall cohort of Sit & Write, and I started to chatting about it here if you like a creative pep talk on your worth and insurmountable value as a creative human being, simply because you are here to create.
You know the first mini-book I wrote, the one I signed a contract for still lives inside its composition book. Rebirth was published instead — and thank goodness. It is the book that needed to be written and the stories that needed to be shared. I think for storytellers part of the craft is knowing what story needs to be told at what time.
I started writing Start Now, Love as a three-part mini book, to live in the side-pocket of your work bag or backpack, to serve as an inspirational palette cleanser for when doubt got overrode your drive. Or for the freelancer working in the coffeeshop (I’m serious), I wanted them to be able to pop the book open, remember their mission or their focus, and get going.
You want to read a little of it? I played with color and it really freed me to write in a more intimate style, and in a more personal way, breaking apart the rigidity of the “right voice”. I was also really into
and blackout poetry and Steal Like an Artist. That book gave me permission from being the unachievable perceived best, and drop down into my personal best — are achievable, a bit more scary, and deeply more fulfilling. Instead on never writing (or finishing) because it wasn’t good enough, I gave myself permission to write the story that needed to be written today. What did Inspiration say?Here’s a snippet of what was moving through me then, about eight years ago:
The starting is fun. The now can be evasive and the love can definitely be the most difficult. Carving spaces to stay committed to the thing you said you were going to do, forging against the emotions and patterns that say no are why we must start now. Of course the Voice says:
No.
No you cannot.
No one will care.
But that voice is only the threshold you are bound to move past, as soon as you begin.
It’s a Sunday, I’ll let you get back to taking it easy, sipping your tea, reading your book, asking August not to give way to September, and hopefully listening to the beating of your heart that happens amidst the busy-ness, and the confusion, and may you remember that the same force that created you, awaits you and your direction.
More soon.
Go create something great this week!
Kate
P.S.
Why didn’t I publish Start now, love? I’ll tell you more soon. Promise.