The fight between desire and resistance in writing

Описание: If somewhere deep down, you know, you want to write your story, but you haven't started yet—or maybe you've started and stopped and started and stopped and you just can't get yourself to commit—I want to hear from you.

Not because I want to sell you on writing your story; that's a very deep and personal choice. I want to understand something more about your desire and your resistance.

Here's how it works for me:

I think of a story that I am excited to explore, but just as quickly,I also think of some part of it that I'm ashamed of, or I think of someone that I don't want to know this part of me, and I clam up.

I've been through this cycle enough times to know that the antidote is always to get more present.

When I just stay present with the story and I keep writing, the shame and the fear fall away—as though my sense of presence is bigger than that, and I don't need them anymore.

The thing that's both exciting to me about writing my story and causes resistance is that being present with it requires me to let go of control.

When the shame and the fear drop away and I'm just in it writing, the story often takes me to places that I didn't expect to go because my fear and my shame are not trying to steer the way. Sometimes that's emotionally difficult, and I feel pain and grief and anger and all these things that are not easy to feel on a Monday morning at 9am when I'm trying to get to work.

But what drives me back again and again is that the presence that happens in my writing often leads to acceptance. It leads to accepting the parts of my story that I wasn't looking at, the emotions that I was struggling to feel, and the past version of myself that I judge and feel shame around.

I think some deep part of me knows that that's how it all works, and that's why my desire and my resistance kind of fight each other: because they both know how deep it's going to go.

That's what it's like for me—but I don't know if that's what it's like for everyone else. And I would love to hear what resonates with you or where your experience is different.

What do your desire and your resistance look like in writing?