“All I can tell you is that if this were a riddle, the answer would be that the game is life, and that while we do not make all the rules ourselves, the one who awards or takes points is always you.”
— Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky (hpmor.com)
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Sometimes I forget that my “worth” as a writer is not measured by external things, such as number of blog subscribers or published books. It’s intrinsic.
This is what I need to remind myself in these times—and I’m sharing it here in case it someone else needs to hear it too:
✨ You are the one whose life this is; so when it comes to what you do and make, you are the only one whose opinion ultimately matters.
✨ Don’t try to write what you think other people want to read. It’s not their life that you’re living.
✨ Value yourself enough to write and express what you are interested in. Besides, if others aren’t already interested in it, they might become interested in it, if you show them the awesomeness you see!
✨ Share what excites you, what upsets you, and what amazes you, especially when you feel like “Why isn’t everyone saying this?”
Maybe that would be a good writing prompt, actually: what comes to your mind when you hear the question, “Why isn’t everyone saying this?”
Here’s one thing that comes to my mind: the awesomeness of the essay “Self-reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. (I’ve quoted from it a lot on this blog, especially in this post: “Emerson on Authenticity.”) I suppose one does have to wade through his old and flowery prose, plus some passages where he stretches his points rather too far. But to me, it’s worth it for the gems of pure power! (They are like antidotes to the poison-dogma I learned growing up in high-control religion!) Here are a few of them:
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”
“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
“[People] imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.”
“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”
“Every great [person] is a unique…Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.”
“Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life; obey thy heart.”
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So: you lovely, unique person reading this, what is something you wonder why everyone’s not talking about? Maybe that will point you to your own “utterance brave and grand.” ✨
