Your Life's Checklist
Author: Irette Patterson

Some writers go through a final checklist before feeling that the piece they are working on is complete. The checklist might include items such as correct spelling, proper grammar and marketability. Usually, whether or not the marketability item is checked determines if the writer finishes the work.

What's the point of writing something if you can't make a buck off it?

I've taken several classes, read umpteenth books, attended two conferences and belonged to three groups concerning writing. In all that, the most useful information I've found on the subject has been found in the book If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland. Ueland celebrates the most important item on any writer's or artist's checklist - authenticity.

Some may say leading with your heart is a sentimental approach to a serious business. The science fiction writer Piers Anthony doesn't write a book unless it's first sold by proposal. Romance writers know their writer's guidelines backwards and forwards and dare not stray. Go to any bookstore and you'll find over half the books in the writing section concern publication.

Writing strictly for publication is so common that there's even a name for a truly authentic book - the book of your heart. The book of your heart is the one that's aborted before the writer scrawls even an outline on a napkin because the thought pops into their mind, "Who's going to publish it?"

You may not be a writer, but I'm sure there's something in your own life that you've been avoiding because the only payoff in sight is your joy in creating.

After all, we've been taught to look to the external world for approval. When we were little, we judged ourselves against the grades given in school. As we became older, our self worth changed with our salary or the bottom line at our business.

Being internally motivated may be healthier, but it sure doesn't help when someone asks if you've been published or have you sold a painting or how that small business you started is going.

I could go into the tangible examples of what happens from following your heart, but that's not what this is about. You create whatever you're meant to create because that's who you are.

Do you want to look back at your life's work and not recognize it as your own? Or do you want to pick up a poem, listen to a song, view a play and see exactly who you were at that instant?

What you don't create now is lost. Your life could change with a phone call a moment from now. Tomorrow, you could be a different person. Next year you could be unrecognizable from the person you are at this instant.

We've been told that living in the real world is about survival. And that's exactly what I'm talking about here - survival. True survival. This is looking at your work and saying it's good enough, my dreams are good enough and so am I no matter what the external world says.

So while you're going down the items on the checklists in your own life, make sure you're checking off the most important item - authenticity. If you check off that item, maybe the others won't matter as much.






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Irette Patterson is an author, speaker and coach committed to helping creative folks love their lives, live their dreams and use every advantage they've got. To subscribe to her semimonthly newsletter, send a blank email to: spiritatplaybookreviews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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