After writing numerous bestsellers over\u00a0decades and becoming a writing coach, I\u2019ve come to believe that there is no\u00a0such thing as good or bad writing. I don’t think I can teach a person to write.\u00a0All I can do is help them find the courage to remove the obstacles to their
creativity so they can find their authenticity and put it on the page.<\/p>\n
That sounds simple but it isn\u2019t.\u00a0Being authentic on the page takes as much determination as being authentic in\u00a0life and one feeds into the other. When I was writing my memoir, I remember\u00a0having a talk with myself. I\u2019d lived through some experiences that had caused\u00a0me shame and others that made me proud. The question was, how much would I
tell? Parts of it or all of it? How vulnerable was I willing to be? How would I\u00a0talk about my failures without feeling humiliated? How would I talk about my\u00a0accomplishments without sounding arrogant?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty obvious that writing\u00a0about my failures would be difficult but I was surprised to find that writing about\u00a0my successes made me so uncomfortable. I didn’t expect that, but when I look\u00a0back, I can see the programming. \u201cDon\u2019t be vain,\u201d my mother admonished me any
time I looked in the mirror when I was young. I wasn\u2019t supposed to publicly\u00a0celebrate my beauty or my achievements and I certainly wasn\u2019t supposed to admit\u00a0to my failures. I needed to be stoic like my mother was. I watched her give\u00a0compliments \u201cthe wrist,\u201d and hide her embarrassment when she made a mistake.\u00a0Either way, she usually looked uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I was recently watching a documentary\u00a0called \u201cMission Joy,\u201d about the exquisite friendship between the Dalai Lama and\u00a0Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They called finding joy a mission because they both\u00a0believed that it\u2019s a choice, a mental discipline about how you look at life and
where you focus your attention. These two men came from extraordinarily\u00a0different backgrounds. Archbishop was raised in poverty and the Dalai Lama was\u00a0raised in privilege. He was a Buddhist and \u201cArch\u201d was a Christian, but their\u00a0lives had been similar. They had each achieved greatness and they had witnessed\u00a0terrible suffering but when they got together, they held hands and laughed like\u00a0children. They discussed their years of service, both their accomplishments and
their regrets and failures. It seemed that they were joyous, not about what had\u00a0brought about desired results, not about what had worked and what didn\u2019t, but\u00a0rather about the journey itself, about being alive, being human and having the\u00a0opportunity to learn and grow.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s it, I thought. Telling\u00a0the truth was crucial in the writing process. There was no way people could\u00a0connect with me if I didn’t admit to what I regretted and take pride in the\u00a0brave person I had become. As I sat down to write, I didn’t shy away from revealing\u00a0the truth about my life journey in all of its difficulties and rewards. When my\u00a0memoir got published, I was invited to a friend\u2019s book club to talk about my
book when someone asked me, \u201cHow could you be so honest about that failed\u00a0relationship? How could you write about the abuse and your lack of courage to\u00a0walk away?\u201d<\/p>\n
thought for a moment and I said,\u00a0\u201cHow could I not? It was one of the mistakes that shaped me, that taught me\u00a0compassion and helped me become the person that I am today.\u201d I met eyes with\u00a0the other women. \u201cWho in this room hasn’t been in a relationship that they
regret?\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone looked down. It appeared that\u00a0they had all gone through something similar or were going through it right\u00a0then. I believe that a writer\u2019s responsibility is to speak about things that\u00a0other people think but are afraid to say out loud. This is what encouraged me
to be authentic on the page. That and my fear of being boring. What’s worse for\u00a0a writer than making people yawn, close your book and pick up another one?<\/p>\n
Back in the 1980s when I wrote my\u00a0very first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer Within,\u201d about my experiences with the\u00a0Philippine faith healers, I knew that very few Americans had seen what I had\u00a0and I wanted to share my knowledge. I started to define faith healing, where\u00a0and how it had started and how it was progressing, but when I read back my
first ten pages, it was so boring, I tossed it. If it was boring for me, how
would it be for other people? I started again, describing my journey, my initial\u00a0disbelief about what I saw, how it had affected me emotionally and finally how\u00a0it had all turned around in my head. I felt so much better. I suffered from\u00a0rejection after rejection, but at least I felt pleased with what I\u2019d written\u00a0and eventually it got published.<\/p>\n
There are things we don\u2019t like about\u00a0ourselves \u2013 the way we look, the way we act, the way we feel, but we have to\u00a0accept them, even if we don’t want to. No one is perfect and we never will be. \u201cHave\u00a0no fear of perfection,\u201d said Salvador Dali, \u201cyou\u2019ll never reach it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While perfection means different\u00a0things to different people, whatever it means, it\u2019s not within our grasp as\u00a0human beings. But telling the truth is, if we can tolerate the vulnerability that\u2019s\u00a0required. Just like the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu, if we speak kindly and have\u00a0compassion for ourselves and others, we have a chance to unburden our hearts,
feel free and find some joy. God knows it isn’t easy these days, but it\u2019s
available if we\u2019re willing to do the work.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After writing numerous bestsellers over\u00a0decades and becoming a writing coach, I\u2019ve come to believe that there is no\u00a0such thing as good or bad writing. I don’t think I can teach a person to write.\u00a0All I can do is help them find the courage to remove the obstacles to theircreativity so they can find their authenticity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}