Writing
In an online seminar I was attending with Cathy Heller she talked about how the desires we have, the things we are passionate about, were put inside us for a reason. We are meant to express those desires, to use them to create and contribute to our world.
I’ve always wanted to write. I remember reading a biography about Judy Blume when I was a child. It told about how she had kept a journal and how important that was for writing so that you can use your own experiences as inspiration when you write. I felt disheartened because while reading and writing were passions of mine, the idea of creating fictional stories from my experiences seemed like it would be wildly hard. I had a great imagination, but it was for my own amusement and not something I used to create art, written or otherwise.
For some reason, it never occurred to me that I could be a writer without making up stories. It never occurred to me that I could use writing to communicate my thoughts and experiences just as they had been and that anyone might have any interest. I never thought about non-fiction as an option. Non-fiction was usually boring…accept when it was about something I was really interested in, like Judy Blume.
Going through middle and high school I discovered I really got a lot of joy out of a good research paper. I didn’t share this with anyone. It was weird, not the kind of thing you share. I enjoyed researching a topic, pulling out the important information, and then putting it into my own words, finding a way to express it that was my own. It still didn’t occur to me that maybe I was meant to be some kind of writer. I still thought of fiction when I thought of career authors.
When I became a young adult, writing was no longer anywhere on my radar. I was busy just trying to survive. Reading fiction helped me to escape a lot of the unpleasantness of my life. When I researched anything, it was out of necessity, and I didn’t write anything down. In my late 20’s though, I went back to school and remembered how much I enjoyed learning and research papers. I was good at, and I had fun doing it. And still, it didn’t occur to me that this could be a path to explore. It was just a means to an end. A necessary, albeit for me enjoyable, part of fulfilling my educational requirements.
A few years ago, I started my own healing business, offering Distance Reiki. How do you get distance clients? You have to build an audience with a blog. I suddenly had a reason to write outside of a school setting. I had a reason to share the information I was learning about. I had a reason to express all of my education and experience in my own words for other people. This made me happy. People seemed to like my writing and my audience started to grow.
Some of my articles were bought and published by another Reiki website. I wrote some digital learning material for Reiki masters to use to teach children because there wasn’t any other material for kids out there and it was just a matter of researching training and then expressing it in a simplified, child friendly way in my own words. Even after making over $4,000 off my writing, I didn’t even realize I had become a writer. I was a Reiki Master sharing information.
This week, I put my digital material for teaching kids Reiki into one nice, neat manuscript and I sent it to a potential publisher. It honestly was not until I was writing my query letter to the publisher and trying to describe my qualification that it hit me. I AM a writer. I AM an author. Non-fiction is a real literary category in which I have been actively, and rather successfully for someone who didn’t even realize what they were doing, working as a writer for 3 years without realizing I am an author. It makes me feel silly to admit how clueless I had been about what I do for a living.
When Cathy Heller made a statement about our desires, the things we want to do, being there for a reason I realized fully that writing is where I am meant to create and share and connect. Writing is how Spirit has chosen to create through me. My unique expression of the things I have learned and continue to learn are needed. My unique expression is one that someone, somewhere is needing to hear before it will click for them.
Writing is how I am meant to serve. I am certain that my desire to share the information I learn is in line with Good and so nothing can be against me, and everything is for me. I will succeed. This is where I am meant to put out my energy so that I can receive abundance.