Lisa Fugard - 21 Days to Awaken the Writer Within: Find Joy in Creative Writing and Discover Your Unique Voice

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Published in the United Kingdom by:
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Text Lisa Fugard, 2012, 2023

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-78817-904-1
E-book ISBN: 978-1-78180-046-1
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-78817-859-4

Research has shown that establishing a habit requires 21 days practice. Thats why Hay House has decided to adapt the work of some of its most prestigious authors into these short, 21-day courses, designed specifically to develop new mastery of subjects such as creative writing.

Other titles that will help you to further explore the concepts featured in the 21-day program are listed at the beginning of this book.

I remember the morning when I sat down at the kitchen table in my basement apartment in Brooklyn, New York, with an antiquated word processor and thought to myself, Yes, Im going to take my writing seriously. Im not just going to talk about itIm going to do it. I have stories to tell. My table was a wooden hatch-cover from a ship that Id bought at a flea market. The dimly lit word processor only showed three lines of text at a time and from my chair I could see the feet and the lower legs of passers by on Henry Street. I could hear dogs yapping in the grooming parlor next door. The story I was working on was called A Little Piece of Black, and back then my handwriting was quite legible.

Days later, a kind of panic seized me as I stared at the half-legs on the street. Who will read it and what will I say? What if I cant do it? And the worst one of all: How dare I do it? That last statement arose from the fact that I come from a family of writers and I was struggling to claim my own voice.

What I didnt know then was that I was embarking on an extraordinary journey of discovery: of characters; of my ideas and what I thought about the world; of my past and my childhood; of what I cared most deeply for. As the French writer Anas Nin said, We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

I played with the myriad ways one can tell a story, and learned to trust my own process as a writer. Those discoveries continue each time I sit down with my pen or my laptop, and most days there is a quiet and abiding joy to be found. My wish for you is that you, too, experience that joy as we embark on these 21 days together.

Today were going to get started by taking a look at why people write.

In the early months, when I was working on a short story, I read an interview with a writer who said that people should only write if they have to, if they cant imagine not doing it. This unsettled me. I didnt know if I emphatically had to. And if I didnt, should I even try to? I felt that I was just out of the starting gate and I was already excluded. So lets get rid of that popular belief and look at some other reasons why we should write.

The desire to tell stories is universal. Whether they are highly imaginative tales or stories about your passions and beliefs; stories from your life or ones that arrive unbidden: its in your nature to tell them. So write because you want to. Perhaps its as simple as that. Its the reason youre doing this 21-day course, isnt it? Maybe you are already brimming over with ideas and are looking for encouragement and support.

Write because its a secret passageway, a door that swings open to reveal unexplored worlds. Its a companion and a balm. It will challenge you and provoke you in all the right ways. There is an essential, private relationship between you and the world that is revealed when you sit down with a blank page.

Write because its an experience full of time travel and adventure. I once had a writing teacher who compared writers to explorers. Our job, he said, was to make trips to the frontiersepic trips, sometimes arduous onesand send back dispatches on what we found there. How do you interpret those frontiers? For me they are the far reaches of my experience married with my imagination. The riskier, the better, I say. For some of us those frontiers are mysterious places of heightened emotion. Make the journey and send back news.

Write because when you have fashioned that essay or that short story, tightened your prose, weeded out all that is superfluous, used your craft to the best of your ability to delight or provoke or challenge or entertain your readers, then you can step back and take pleasure in your accomplishment.

Above all, write because it gives you joy.

As you make this journey through the 21 days, this commitment to establishing the habit of writing, you will probably at times experience a whole range of emotions. Youll feel in turn elated, doubtful, curious, frustrated, and deeply content. Youll also probably consider at some point (one of my favorites): Oh heck, who am I to even think of doing this? I feel naked and raw and far too exposed. Youre not alone. This is a place of vulnerability that all the writers I know have visited. There are riches awaiting you if you make a space for that vulnerability. When you give up all of your plans for success, when you simply settle into that place of humility, of not knowing, when you take the pressure off of yourself, the writing that unfolds will be honest and not bound up in your ego. You will taste a quiet and private joy that can bring you back to the page again and again.