Four Promises to Make to Your Writing at Solstice

It is helpful to think of your writing as a living thing—a breathing, thinking being with a life outside of yours. You don’t have to adopt a mystical mindset to imagine your writing as alive. It is a metaphor that will deepen and enrich your writing life. Most of us feel like our writing has a mind of its own. It can seem stubborn at times, generous at others, shy when we don’t want it to be—even cruel on occasion.

I often communicate with my writing, asking it what it needs of me, telling it what I am trying to do, sharing my feelings. Solstice is the perfect time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new. At this time of year, we can make promises to our writing that will carry us through the months ahead.

Here are four promises to make to your writing. Write them out, post them where you can see them, say them aloud, repeat them each morning. Or simply hold them in your heart.

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1. I promise to give you my full attention. Facebook and text messages may be calling. I may feel hurried and busy with 100 things on my mind. But when I sit down to write, I will quiet my thoughts and bring my focus to the page. I will write with mindfulness and clear awareness.

2. I promise to bring everything to the table. I will hold nothing back. Along with the joy, the hopes, the excitement, I will bring the fears, the shame, the sadness, even the little jealousies and malice. All of it belongs to you. I will lay it out before you and let you do what you will with it.

3. I promise to complete what I begin. The half-finished stories will not languish in notebooks and  harddrives. The fragments and outlines, abandoned and undeveloped works will wait no longer. When I sit down to write, I will do so with a commitment to finish.

4. I promise to return. When I power down my computer or put down my pen at the end of the day, I do so with full intention to write again as soon as I can. Not a week or month later. Not the next time I feel “inspired,” but regularly and on schedule. I won’t leave my writing waiting as I get distracted with busy-ness. I will not procrastinate. I promise faithfully to come back.

As the year draws to a close and the darkness and cold of the season call us into ourselves, what promises are you making to your writing?