Where My Writing Comes From

Or: How I get my ideas and inspiration for my writing

As a reminder, all posts in May 2024 are free to all subscribers. This includes the Friday featured articles, like this one. Happy reading!

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For over 15 years, I have said, “I write from my soul to understand my humanity.” It’s a modification of something I once read by one of my favorite authors, Paulo Coelho. Famously, when asked about his writing, he once replied, “I write to understand my soul.” I loved that sentiment, and for a few years I really wanted it to be true about me, too. But it never fit. It wasn’t my truth.

I write because I want to understand things. Specifically, I want to explore what it means to be human. So I write to understand my humanity, as well as humanity in general, which may prompt the question: Where does my writing come from? 

When I’m writing, I have realized that I write from a place that can only be described as my soul—the “perceiver” aspect of my being. So the truth, for me, is that I write from my soul to understand my humanity and, ultimately, to understand what it means to be human. As humans, there is so much we are capable of—both good and bad—and I find myself always asking why and how. Why is one person prompted to save defenseless animals while another human can deliberately harm them? It baffles me. So I explore these kinds of dualities as I write from my three-pronged perspective of: Education, Experience, and Intuition.

Yes, my writing comes from three different places, and they are always interacting with each other as my fingers clickety-clack across the keyboard. Everything I write, regardless of how long, includes some aspect of each of these pieces.

• Education – Though this aspect could also be labeled Expertise, I think “education” is a bit more all-encompassing as it reflects the importance I have placed on studying and learning (both traditionally and progressively/alternatively), as well as the resulting expertise. 
  
  Interestingly, throughout my youth, I had a love/hate relationship with studying. I was of the belief that if I proved myself in class, I didn’t need to engage in the repetitive behavior of homework. This approach got me in trouble more times than I can count, but it’s something I stand by today. Life is short and our time is limited, and I have always wanted to use my time efficiently and wisely. I love learning, but I don’t love repetition. 
  
  I vastly prefer cumulative learning, which means that I allow one thing to lead to another, and another, and another (kind of like going down a rabbit hole on Wikipedia). It’s also why I have spent most of my adult life pursuing learning opportunities, which I then coalesce and distill down to usable information for others. So my pursuit of education has led to some significant expertise in certain areas, from which I write.

• Experience – Being human is a trip, isn’t it? We spend our lives gathering experiences, converting them into memories, and (hopefully) documenting them somewhere so that we can share them as stories. We are storytellers by nature. It’s how we forge connections and relationships. It’s also how we learn. If you look back through history, most learning occurs through the retelling of experiences.
  
  For me, my experiences—and my experience—inform every aspect of my writing. In some ways, they serve as both the filter through which words flow, as well as the words themselves. Experience is what allows me to sift through everything to find the nuggets of gold in the piles of pebbles and silt. I can then share this information in a way that others may find helpful without having to go mining themselves.
  
  Using real-life anecdotes always makes my writing more relatable and accessible. I believe in the power of experience and story to teach and inform. It also can make writing—and reading—a lot more fun! Pulling from my personal and professional experience has also led to some significant expertise in certain areas, from which I write.

• Intuition – If there’s one aspect of my writing that I can’t necessarily quantify, it’s this one: Intuition. I refer to it as “intuition,” but it’s more than the word tangibly implies. In the healing and wellness worlds, there are specific meanings behind different words, such as “intuition.” But for the purpose of understanding, I refer to my intuition in this regard as: The gifts I was born with and nurtured.
  
  We are all born with specific, intangible gifts, and we can all learn to use them if we choose. I believe that just because we can doesn’t mean that we are meant to. We each have our own paths and our own lifetimes to realize our potential in different ways. For me, this is the lifetime in which I am realizing my etheric gifts and their potential. As such, I can’t separate out something that is part of me when I’m writing—and I don’t want to.

• Before I sit down to write, I often have a phrase in my heart and mind that I invoke: Give me the words that need to be written, the words that need to be read. This is my way of aligning my gifts with what I’m writing. Aligning with my intuition has led to increased awareness and expertise in certain areas, from which I write.

Over the years, I’ve had many readers ask me where I get my ideas from and why I choose to write about certain things. I’ve also had people ask me how it’s possible to be a cross-genre writer, penning everything from children’s books, to poetry, to nonfiction and novels. I believe all this is possible because of the overarching approach I take to writing, and because I’ve taken the time to understand why and how I write. Sharing how I write as well as why I write is my way of inviting you into my mind a little bit, where I hope you enjoy my words and my world.

PS: Here’s a glimpse at just some of the topics for upcoming articles and posts:

• Letting go

• The importance of representation

• Littering

• Making time

• Grief and cancer

• The perils of comparison

• And… so much more!