Some writers are born to write. From an early age, writing emerges as a passion that life seems incomplete without. Being a writer is a calling and feels as natural as breathing.
Yet many great writers don’t experience this ultimate sense of vocation. The joy of writing may arrive at a much later stage and be mixed with an array of anxieties and the requirement to navigate many internal thresholds on the way to feeling like “a writer”.
A mix of these polarities is also very common.
Wherever you are in this range of possibilities, what really counts is cultivating a writer’s mindset. Thinking and feeling like a writer helps you write your book because it enables you to:
1. Take yourself and your writing seriously.
If you want to write a book, there comes a point when you need to raise the bar and shift writing from an optional pastime to an essential part of your life. If you haven’t passed this point yet, take a leap of faith today.
2. Show up to write…
Because that’s what writers do – they write! There’s no point just thinking, daydreaming or talking about writing. You need to feel the reality enough to turn up on a regular basis and write.
3. Be open to new possibilities.
Writers are also explorers – of ideas, of imaginary worlds, of new ways of being. Understanding this aspect of the writer’s mindset connects you to the joy of following your creative flow.
4. Believe in yourself and the value of your work.
Thinking and feeling like a writer encourages you to develop and strengthen beliefs that will support instead of stifle your creative contribution. Believe it before you see the evidence.
5. Feel an underlying sense of confidence.
True confidence has little to do with your everyday self. It comes from a much deeper quality of truth within you – your true self. Connecting this with a writer’s mindset creates a “can do” attitude that is an open door through which your writing pours.
6. Prioritize your writing.
Writers make writing enough of a priority for it to happen on a regular basis and find a way to fit their writing in to the same 24 hours we all have each day. Writers make conscious choices to write.
7. Make a commitment and see it through to completion – and beyond!
Writing a book involves a huge commitment of time and energy that ebbs and flows but is usually sustained over an extended period of time. Having the mindset of a writer encourages you to commit to your craft, sometimes against the odds yet always in the direction of fulfilling your creative potential.
Thinking and feeling like a writer opens the way for you to write the book(s) you are here to write and enjoy the sense of purpose and creative fulfillment that comes from doing so.
Question for You: What are your views about the importance of mindset in relation to your creative writing? Share your reaction to this article and your own experience with your fellow writers in the comments below.
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