“…most of us try to write too carefully. We try to do it”right.” We try to sound smart. We try, period. Writing goes much better when we don’t work at it so much. When we give ourselves permission to just hang out on the page. For me, writing is like a good pair of pajamas—comfortable.”

This is true for all the things we do that we feel a little unsure about. All creative work, which (really) is all work. All the scary things, whatever we’re still learning, the stuff we do for fun but secretly take seriously, the expanding/opening things. They could be jumping-off-a-cliff things and sitting-quietly-in-bed things.

“The first trick, the one I am practicing now, is to just start where you are. It’s a luxury to be in the mood to write. It’s a blessing but it’s not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.”

The more we relax, the less we try to do it right, the more we just do it: the better it is. The more fun we have. Let’s give ourselves permission to “just hang out” with whatever is going on, in the moment. Whatever we’re doing or not doing, maybe we can just hang out with it, comfortable, okay with the newness or awkwardness or imperfection or mistakes.

The point is not to do it right: the point is to do it at all. The doing it is what matters.

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

If we eliminate the word “writer,” if we just go back to writing as an act of listening and naming what we hear, some of the rules disappear. There is an organic shape, a form-coming-into-form that is inherent in the thing we are observing, listening to, and trying to put on the page. It has rules of its own that it will reveal to us if we listen with attention. Shape does not need to be imposed. Shape is part of what we are listening to. When we just let ourselves write, we get it “right.”