The secret to writing books

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The secret to writing books is to give yourself a ridiculous expanse of luxurious empty time and space to dream, play, and not do anything that taxes the mind with external cares.

Is this true? Well, I’ve found it to be true.

It means you might not do much else with your day, your hours. You might cook dinner. You might go for a walk, or a run. You might see a friend. You might do a puzzle. You might scroll through Netflix watching the intros to thirty shows as entertainment before bed.

I struggle justifying how much time is spent on staring out the window. Or writing things that don’t turn out, writing draft after draft after draft. So many words assembled tenderly, hopefully, excitedly, only to be discarded.

If this is what it takes to write books, is it worth it? Who am I serving? Just myself?

Well, what if the answer is yes? Yes, I’m serving my writing, at the expense of many other things I could be doing with this one precious life.


What makes you feel purposeful, as you go about your day? What tells you, gut-deep: you are worthy? I don’t know. I’m asking.

It’s a funny thing to be a human, to want to be purposeful, to want to make decisions independently, freely, but to be inextricably embedded in a culture, context, generation, family structure, biology, language(s), place.

I notice that I easily accept the value of tasks or actions that measurably help someone else, like donating blood; concrete chores also have value, and doing them feels valuable, like laundry and cooking; it’s also easy to measure worth by monetary reward, doing X and receiving Y in return. In my experience, writing is generally untethered from any of these logical measurements. But I don’t believe anyone’s worth rests on external evaluation; or on evaluation, period.

You are worthy because you are fighting it out here on planet earth.


You are worthy because you are worthy.

I drew that cartoon a few days ago. I keep returning to look at it. There’s something there that’s whispering to me: peace, and calm, and acceptance, and worthiness. I’ve been drawing daily cartoons again, as a way of journaling. I draw a moment I want to remember, and on this particular day, the moment I wanted to remember was being asleep and dreaming about my new book, which has a tree on its cover — the dream vibe was contentment.

xo, Carrie

Five good things, right now
Five good things, right now

6 Comments

  1. Juliet in Paris

    Awesome artwork (your book cover.)

    Nice post, very thoughtful.

    I too have a book coming out this year.

    Good luck.

    Reply
    • Carrie Snyder

      Congratulations, Juliet! Please tell me more!

      Reply
  2. Ellisha

    Thank you Carrie for sharing. I so appreciate your musings.

    Reply
    • Carrie Snyder

      Thank you for reading, Ellisha!

      Reply

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