Gratitude For This Writer's Life
Inspired by a writing prompt that I received from my friend and writing coach, Kim Marsh of The Open Book Co., here are my reflections about my this little writer's life of mine.
Kim, The Open Book Co, 10:11AM
Subject line: writing gratitude (& early bird last call!)
During yesterday's Open Book Writing Circle, we talked a little about gratitude.
It may seem a bit cliche, but taking a moment to find gratitude for your writing can be a powerful act.
Maybe you're grateful for something you've created, or the time you have in your schedule to write.
Maybe you're grateful for your writing process, writing community or what writing has brought to your life.
Maybe you're grateful for the child-like feeling you get when you pick up a brand new pen, excited for what's next.
Perhaps you're simply grateful for your desire to keep coming back to the page.
When it comes to your craft, process or experience with writing, where can you find gratitude?
I'd love to hear your moments of writing gratitude this weekend.
Hit reply and let me know.
Kim*
me, 11:16AM
I love this. I’m in a space of being deeply grateful for this writers life that I have. I choose to identify as a writer and I feel like I’m living the exact kind of writers life that I’ve always wanted to live. I travel when I want, and I write. I stay still at my casita, and I write.
I have two publications waiting for pieces from me.
I’ve been invited to submit an essay for a seasonal digital magazine.
I’m moody and dramatic and high most of the time (when I want to be), and I sometimes take in lovers, and sometimes I don’t and instead find myself romanced by the sun and seduced by the moon. My mornings with my cats are slow and quiet and cute. I only have enough money to survive like this for another 3-6 months unless something happens. Something always does. Do I start another national movement? Or do I write the next queer Black feminist, dystopian, Afro futuristic, apocalyptic series? Octavia Butler style? These are writers lives questions.
I’m hosting my monthly writing circle with 5 other writers at this very moment.
I’m working on my next newsletter that I’ve been sending out to my subscribers since 2019, a list that has grown to 700+.
My book that was published last year has inspired a play that will be performed next month in Philly.
I wrote that book from Jamaica and Costa Rica, where I live right now.
One of my next big writing projects is writing a chapter for the Open Book anthology about my ex-wife grief, something I’ve been waiting for years to finally write about.
And I’m hosting a writer’s retreat in Brooklyn in a few weeks.
But also, I’m writing this right now from New Orleans, where I arrived unexpectedly almost 3 weeks ago, divinely directed, to help care for and support my aunt and my cousins with recent health issues. And because I live this writers life, I can write even in this place too. I can write wherever I find myself.
I think it’s pretty incredible that I made about $50k on my book (including recording my own audiobook), and got to buy passports for a few Black women, and support myself for more than a year while I spent long Montego Bay days and nights and weeks of fun and indulgence and pleasure.
I haven’t broken into anything ‘big’ yet as far as best sellers, fat royalty checks or literary awards. But I also can’t honestly say I ever really wanted that crazy big writing success, not in this lifetime anyway. I see myself writing for a time not yet come. I hope people are still reading and talking about what I’ve written in the new, liberated world, the next one, whatever comes after this.
I hope my name is mentioned some day next to other Black writing royalty/legacy…James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and the like.
I’m still chasing after my favorite writers who go on book tours and are keynote speakers at conferences.
Maybe I’ll get there.
Maybe not.
But I must declare that right/write here, right/write now, right/write where I am…
This is the writers life I’ve always dreamed of. The little girl writer in me is so proud of the writer I turned out to be.
Thank you for sharing this moment of gratitude for this writers life that I have created and that I love so deeply.
*To subscribe to Kim’s email list to receive all kinds of ongoing, great writer’s content such as the “Writer’s Tips” emails as included at the beginning of this post, visit her website at www.theopenbookco.com
**Anselm Keifer, German, born 1945, Ptolemais, 2019, Cast bronze with white patina and metal