Write For Yourself. Nothing Else Matters

Time To Blow Your Own Mind

What do you want to write?

If you ever ask this question, try asking a second one:

What do you want to read?

What do you want to read that you simply cannot find anywhere else?

Once you know the answer, write it. Write the shit that you want to read.

Actually no, not that.

Write the shit you are hungry to read, desperate to read, the shit that you cannot find on the internet, in the depths of your countless books, even in your own journals.

As long and hard as you look, there is that one area that is just barren, empty, and it happens to be the one place your soul wants to go.

To discover.

To create.

So — go there! Write your way to its edges and dive in!

Find the hole in your universe and fill it with the flame of your passion and longing.

Find the desert and tend it until you have a blossoming garden.

As a writer, you must become your own most devoted and faithful reader. Your own biggest fan.

In the words of Jack Kerouac, “write only what kicks you and keeps you awake at night with sheer mad joy.”

Write that which you will read again and again, which will echo in your mind for days and return to you in dreams and at the most unexpected moments.

Write that which will enchant your world and enrich your soul.

Write that which will rewrite your entire reality in the image of the world you want to live in. Because then that world will be in the process of being born — through you and your imagination — and your writing.

It is the authenticity, integrity, the honesty of this kind of writing that will make it effortless, joyful, cathartic, ecstatic, addictive, enthralling. And all for you. That is an incredible gift to yourself.

And if your writing has this effect on you, it is likely that it will have the same effect on someone else. But crucially, the “someone else” is secondary. The words have done their work, for they have transformed you and you will never be the same. Sharing it, then, is a bonus — a gift and an offering, so that others might share a similar benefit.

There is no attachment to results this way — no concern about whether even a single person enjoys or benefits from your writing — because the benefit you have derived from it makes it already, one-hundred-percent eternally worth it.

This way you will never be compromised or hand over your integrity as a writer. You will be both original and faithful to yourself, to your own vision and curiosity.

You will be empowered, autonomous and self-determining. You will likely be envied, misunderstood, ostracised, and even mocked by some — and you will not care in the slightest, because you have tasted something they will never taste — your soul, your true self, and you know it to be good and proper and totally, totally justified.

Never again will you seek external validation or approval. Never again will you care for the voice of the critic, or be hounded by the imaginary ones in your head that snigger at every line you type. They will fade and die, and you will be alive.

For a long time, my writing was driven by the motivational thought, “if just one person reads this and gains some insight, some drop of beauty is transformed in even the slightest way, it will be worth it.” Then I realized: I am that person.

This isn’t self-indulgence but rather an essential thread in the process of self-realization and self-reflection that culminates in creative freedom. For many of us, writing is an indispensable tool in that process.

Realize that you are the writer and the audience. Then — give the audience what they want! Only you know what that is; the juiciest and most delicious unravellings of the topics which light you up and keep you up at night trawling the web and poring over obscure books by lamplight.

What does keep you up at night? Write about it and don’t stop. Soon it will open up a gateway to the infinities of the imagination, and your writing will have become a vehicle for your joyous and ecstatic awakening.

If you follow this path, your writing will become your mirror — and reflected in it will be the images of your life — yourself, your world, your path, and your creations. Then you will see that by changing the mirror, you can change the images. Here is the opportunity to rewrite the myths of your life, to rework and rescript your entire reality. Because the reality is made from myth. The world is made from images and symbols and the narratives they comprise.

So play with them! Explore. Self-author in a million different ways. Can you sense the freedom in this? It is the freedom of adventure. Your writing is the stage for an infinite play of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction.

Cast off your imaginary limitations and go for it!

Inspire yourself! Be your own muse!

Is this making sense?

Write for you. Not for me.

Not for him, her, or them.

You.

Why, who do you think I wrote this for? You? Sorry to disappoint. I have crafted this one for moi. And I have to say, I’m rather pleased with it. It has helped me not give a single fuck about whether anyone ever reads this or benefits from it. By writing this piece I have convinced myself of its arguments — and now I don’t have to worry what any of you think. Ha! Freedom, baby. Ain’t it delicious?

Hungry for more?

Me too.

Maybe I’ll write about it.