From Writing Alone to Writing with Friends
In the summer of 2024, I published my first young adult novel—the first in a trilogy. That book had taken me seven years to write and publish. I firmly believe it took so long because, for the first four years, I wrote alone—I did not have a creative writing community to encourage and motivate me when things got tough. I did not have mentors and guides who could answer questions and help me troubleshoot problems. When I finally hired coaches and editors, it took three years to get my manuscript ready for publication.
That autumn, I was excited about my recent book publication but also nervous about finishing the trilogy. I knew that if it was up to me alone, each new book might take another seven years to write and publish—and that timeline would take me into the next decade. I knew my weaknesses when I worked alone; it was easy for me to get distracted and disheartened with a long-term project. If I wanted to complete the trilogy sooner rather than later, I would have to find ways to motivate myself to write more often.
Despite loving to write, I was surprisingly bad at keeping appointments with myself to sit down and play with words. I discussed many of the things that prevented me from writing in “Afraid to Write.” I always came up with more important things to do like laundry, dishes, or an afternoon nap. These were convenient distractions—easy excuses to keep me from my writing projects. I needed to find a way to dedicate time to write my books. I thought through my life and tried to remember times when I had overcome the same kind of resistance.
In university, I had been good at scheduling homework sessions in small slots of time between classes and planning study groups to get through difficult material. During National Novel Writing Month in November (NaNoWriMo), I was more successful meeting my goals when I wrote side by side with friends. Thinking back on my college days and my NaNoWriMo experiences, I began to see a pattern. This helped me formulate a plan. I needed to create a co-writing space where people could work on their projects together. But would that alone be enough?
Setting a time, date, and place to write with friends would surely help—but how would I get over myself and put my ego aside so I could simply start writing?
I thought back to another time in my life when I was required to write a great deal of material on a short deadline—my graduate coursework. During this period, I often used prayer, music, and meditation to break through the anxiety of the high-demand academic work required of master’s and doctoral students. I used spiritual skills to steady my emotions long enough to complete an assignment. When my ego quieted, my fear of failure went silent too, so writing came much easier. By neutralizing my emotional feelings about a project, I could more quickly engage my logic to write the papers without overly worrying about my grades. Once the work was done, I was better able to handle the rest of my emotions.
These were my two realizations. I wrote far more consistently when I wrote in community than when I wrote alone. And, I wrote more freely when I was in a meditative state that set my ego aside. This is how Inspiration to Write was created.
I invited friends to join me every Friday online for a thirty-minute writing session. We started with a short prayerful meditation and then quietly wrote on our individual projects for the rest of the time. Thirty minutes was a short enough time that someone could join on break from work, but it was long enough that we could write a few pages and feel like we accomplished something.
Since October 2024, I have hosted Inspiration to Write almost every week. Though we may have taken a week off here and there for holidays, we have met regularly ever since. Sometimes there are only two of us on Zoom for the co-writing time, but usually half a dozen or more participants join regularly. The members have worked tirelessly on books, articles, poems, and journals. Each of us is dedicated to making the world a little better through our literary pursuits.
If you would like to create your own version of Inspiration to Write in your community, here is the simple formula that I use each week.
Here are the components that make the space productive:
- Schedule the same time to meet every week. It could be online or in person.
- Commit to a minimum of thirty minutes, but you could meet for longer.
- Start with a prayer or meditation to clear the mind and put aside the ego. I suggest three to five minutes for every twenty-five minutes of writing.
- Quietly write for twenty-five minutes.
- At the end of the session, say goodbye. Many members will want to continue writing longer, so let them keep going while they have momentum.
- If you want some time for socialization, schedule it before the prayers when you first meet and greet each other, or schedule another time for this altogether.
To help you get started, here is a curated list of some of my favorite prayers and meditations that I have used for Inspiration to Write during the last year.
Please let me know if you set up your own Inspiration to Write session for your writing friends. I would love to hear how it goes. Writing with friends helps all of us reach our creative goals.
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