Monday Master Class - Taking Down Walls: (Part 2)

Last week I talked about the walls we put up in our lives in order to protect ourselves and how they just get in the way and prevent us from authentic living. If you missed that post, you can find it here. This week I want to elaborate on how these walls also hinder our art as I am struggling with this in my writing.

I will give you a warning, this is a subject I am actively wrestling with, so this post will most likely be rambly in nature. ;-)

I have been a story teller as long as I can ever remember. I slowly turned that gift into writer over the years and have had some success with it. However, I find myself now trying to reach something I can't quite grasp and it was Dale a few weeks back that said to me it was because I had my walls up and the infuriating thing is, I can see where he's right.

I think I could be amazing at this writing thing, and perfectionist that I am, I want to be amazing at it, but unless I can tap into the raw honest part of my soul and allow the stories and the sex to well up from there, I don't think I'll ever truly be satisfied with anything I write. I'll always see where I was trying to get to and how I couldn't quite get there. My stories will always stop just short of that place where magic happens.

The question of course is how do I get passed this?
I know what I want to write, I want to go darker, bring in more spirituality and punctuate it with more erotic sex. Turning off my self editor is starting to become second nature most of the time, but at some point in every day that I sit down to write, I feel that wall, I feel the need to say "No, I'm not willing to be that vulnerable." But why?

I suppose there's a part of me that worries about showing so much of my soul on the page for anyone to read. I suppose there's some fear in actually succeeding at bearing it all and having people reject me. I suppose there's the possibility of embarrassing edits as my editor ridicules my inexperience as I have written something that is physically impossible or too weird or odd or... the list is endless. I suppose I could come up with a lot of reasonsnot to let down this wall and get to my core, but this last wall that keeps me from writing what I'm meant to write, is the same wall that prevents me from finding a mate for my soul. Because if I don't show my true soul, how would its mate, if it has one, recognize it?

I'm watching an old episode of Star Trek TNG as I type this post and its the one where Q has taken Picard back to a point in his life where he wanted to change a reckless mistake in his youth. Changing that one little thing changes Picard into a man who never takes chances, never does anything stellar, and never gets noticed. Riker and Troi tell him he's spent his life drifting, with lofty goals but no follow through. I feel like I am at a place in my life where its time to find out what I'm really made of. I have no husband, no recalcitrant children, no needy mother, no family trying to hold me back, no real responsibilities to anyone other than myself, so if I fail this time, its all on me. The stakes are so high I get dizzy thinking about it and I think I've scared myself right into being ineffective.


It's so hard to keep moving some days, and its so hard having to be my own cheering squad, but those are the cards I've been dealt and I'm not going to whine about it, I'm going to make this happen. I'm going to tap into something I used when I was acting. I don't know if it will work or not, but I'm going to do whatever it takes. I wish I was capable of handling all this without breaking a sweat, but the truth is, I'm struggling, but I can NOT fail at this.

I'm making anyone who has sat through this long ramble a promise... tomorrow I am shutting out the entire world and I am sitting down with Evan and Daphne (the characters in my latest novel) and I'm going to bring every ounce of raw passion I can find in the very depths of my soul onto the page. I don't know how successful I'll be, but I make a promise that tomorrow I will at least try. I will put my heart and soul exposed on the page. I will write a story of love, sex, and spirituality unlike anything I've done in the past, I don't think there is anything more I can do, but this wall will come down and if I'm embarrassed, ridiculed, or humiliated from my vulnerability, then I'll take the lessons learned and hopefully be a stronger woman, because at the end of the day, my journey here on this earth is about so much more than writing, or Florida, fame, money, or success and I am a woman who wants to find truth and wants to grow and become exactly what I was created to be, authentically and genuinely me.