Birthdays can be hard for many people, but they’re usually hardest on writers. Why? Because a birthday is a personal milestone that indicates another year has passed in your life—you’re one year closer to leaving this earth—and you still haven’t accomplished your writing dreams.
Maybe your writing dream is to finish your novel, or to write a self-help book based on your own life experiences that you know could really help people. Maybe you just want to finish a story—any story—because even though you’ve had a million ideas, you’ve never finished anything. So, when the day of your birthday rolls around, yet again, it only causes you pain, because it highlights just exactly how far away you still are from ever achieving these dreams.
The fear of dying with our stories still inside us is a very real thing for writers, and it’s scarier for us than facing death itself. The thought of us living out our whole lives and never making our writing the priority it needs to be, never finding the time to devote to it, and never sharing it with anyone outside of ourselves causes a deep, aching pain in the pit of our soul. So, we try to push it away and avoid it, because if we look directly at it, we start to panic. Time is running out and it seems impossible that we could ever cross the distance from where we are right now to a life in which we’ve become the writer we know we were born to be.
There is only one solution to this pain that so many writers experience, one thing only that can make it go away, and that’s making a big change in our lives. The old excuses have to go. The constant cycle where we put someone or something else ahead of our writing every time has to cease. If we’re serious about releasing our stories out into the world before we die, it’s time to make a serious commitment.
I talk more about this in the video below:
I’m teaching a new online class this October called Write Now, and it’s for all the writers out there who know that the time is now or never. Together, as a class and a writing community, we’re going to be taking steps toward our writing dreams. We’re going to be showing up to learn everything we can about writing, and to spend time together actually writing.
If this is speaking to your heart and you’re getting a big YES from your soul on this, make sure you sign up for my newsletter HERE to get all the videos on the class and announcements about registration. And if you have any questions in the meantime, you can send them my way here.
I’ll be sending out the next video in this series—detailing the 3 biggest self-sabotage traps writers fall into time and time again—in just a couple of days, so keep your eye out for that second video and I’ll see you then!
Lauren Sapala is the author of The INFJ Writer and The INFJ Revolution. She is also currently offering a free copy of her book on creative marketing for INFJ and INFP writers to anyone who signs up for her newsletter. SIGN UP HERE to get your free copy of Firefly Magic: Heart Powered Marketing for Highly Sensitive Writers.
