Do you know who you are as a writer?Do you have a vision for your writing?
Do you have a vision for the project you’re working on? For the project you have barely begun to conceive?
Connecting with and holding a vision for yourself as a writer and for your work can help you more easily move into writing and hold the energy of your creation through the entire process of conception, creation, revision and release.
One way to hold that vision is by creating a writing invocation or vision statement that propels you into the energy of your day’s writing. It can be as brief as a sentence or as long as a page. It can speak in general terms about your role as a writer or in specific terms about a particular book, poem, article, song or story — whether you already know what it is or just that you’re called to write it.
I used a vision statement for Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir (too long to reproduce here), which helped me continue to write through and past my initial resistance to the project. My Director's Statement for The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies (The MoonQuest/The StarQuest/The SunQuest) is also a form of vision statement for my visual-storytelling work on the films:
"This story has always been bigger than me — from the moment it insisted itself onto the page as first a series of novels, then as a series of screenplays and now as its director. It’s a story that has so long been such a part of my life that it’s as though it lives deep within my cells. I am every one of its characters, villain and hero, and have lived each of their joys, triumphs, disappointments and disasters. For decades, I have watched its themes play out in the world around me...just as I have experienced them play out in my own life. In the end, I am as much the story as its storyteller, as directed by it as I am its director."
For The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, I crafted both an invocation and a vision statement; together they formed part of the ritual that awakened me to my Muse, activated my inner writing space and ensured that all I wrote hewed as closely as possible to the book’s true essence.Invocations and vision statements are not fixed in stone. As The Voice of the Muse progressed, as I matured through the writing of it, I continued to refine both my invocation and vision statement.
Here's my vision statement for The Voice of the Muse:
The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write is about freedom — freedom to grow, freedom to create, freedom to write. Through a dynamic blend of motivational essays, inspiring meditations and practical exercises, it nourishes, nurtures and reassures its readers, inspiring them to open their hearts, expand their minds and experience, with ease, a full, creative life.
To read my writing invocation, turn to page 172 of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.To help you create your own vision statement and/or writing invocation, follow the Vision Quest meditation that starts on page 174 of the book, or listen to track 9 of The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.
Regardless, awaken your passion, energize your vision...and write!!
You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my website, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," sign up for my mailing list and read/hear free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.• Do you have a vision for your writing? Feel free to share it here.
Photos: Avenue of the Giants, Garberville and Fortuna, California; Sunset, Albuquerque, New Mexico (c) Mark David Gerson
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