Question of the Day #643

At WriteOnCon, Molly O’Neill, an associate editor with Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, wrote a post on Giving Yourself Permission. This is not her whole list - just some things she suggested writers give themselves permission for that really resonate with me. She wrote, “Give yourself:

• Permission to collect sparks of inspiration from even the unlikeliest of encounters.
• Permission to start writing something new—totally, gloriously new—even if the thought terrifies you. Especially if the thought terrifies you.
• Permission to keep writing, even if it feels like you may never “get there.”
• Permission to let a character become someone totally different than you originally expected him/her to be.
• Permission to kill a character. (And to cry a little when you do so.)
• Permission to hire a babysitter, or to blow off some homework, or to order dinner in, or whatever it takes, to give yourself a little more space in your life for writing.
• Permission to write a scene or story that might make certain people who love you shocked and surprised.
• Permission to fail, maybe more than once. (Because you can’t fail unless you’ve tried.)
• Permission to feel things deeply as a writer—disappointment, grief, doubt, jealousy. But then to balance those negative emotions with more positive ones: ambition, determination, persistence, hope.
• Permission to be where you are in your path as a writer. Right now. Even if you think you should be farther along.
• Permission to write in the oddest of places—on the back of kleenex boxes and receipts; at ballet lessons or soccer practice or with a car full of groceries going warm; on napkins in restaurants; in the bathroom of a friend or relative’s house when you’ve gone to visit—in order to capture an idea, or images, or words that flash into your mind, already strung perfectly together.
• Permission to ignore all the conflicting pieces of advice, and simply to write the story within you that wants to be told.
• Permission to do what you need to protect yourself as a writer—to turn off the internet, or to stop reading blogs for awhile, or to avoid Twitter—and enable yourself to do that thing which writers must do—TO WRITE.
• Permission to think of your characters as real people (and to perhaps actually like them better than some real-life people you know).”

What do you need to give yourself permission for?

xoxo,
Suzanne