Savannah Watson

As someone who has aspired to be a “professional” author my entire life, I have always seen writing with an air of severity. I’ve always taken the craft seriously, the same way a business person takes business seriously or an accountant takes finances seriously. Part of the seriousness is just my nature. Historically, I have always taken most things WAY too seriously – school, work, life. And in my mind, if writing was what I wanted to do, I had to take it seriously too.

I always wanted the things I put out to the world to mean something, to be powerful, to move people – I wanted my books to be to others what books had always been for me. I wanted the honor of moving the world with my words. What an enormous dream that is… and what enormous pressure that is. But that’s what I wanted, and if I’m being completely honest, that’s still what I want.

Unfortunately, this desire to create greatness meant I created a roadblock for myself. I took writing so seriously that for a long time, I missed out on some of the most important things about being a writer: the joy of the process, of the practice, of the failure, of the silliness, of the experimentation, of writing just for the sake of writing. I rarely allowed myself these luxuries. And interestingly, I now believe that this desire also hindered me from finishing most of my projects – I would write THOUSANDS of words and then suddenly realize that this random story was either not good enough (historically, self-confidence has also been lacking) or didn’t have the potential to matter to any audience.

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Over the last two or three years, I have learned and worked not to take myself and my life so seriously – to enjoy and grow through the beautiful, joyous, fun, sometimes rocky, journey, rather than just seeking out the destination at the end of the rainbow. And this has translated into my feelings towards writing in some ways, and in some ways, my attitude has remained unchanged.

Over the past few years, I have been focusing my energy on “professional” creative writing. What I mean by this is writing for the sake of growing my writing career – such as only working on one writing project for publication and writing for this blog as a means of building an audience. I have still been taking writing and being an author seriously.

On the other side, I have given myself more permission to write just for the sake of writing – no pressure, no end goals, no self-judgment – just an opportunity to practice the one thing I love more than anything. And I truly believe that this freedom to practice and experiment and grow will ultimately help me along to my goal of creating a work that moves people’s minds and hearts.

Above all else, however, learning not to be so serious about writing has helped me shift my mindset about writing. While I allowed myself to write a novel series that probably wouldn’t change people’s fundamental views of themselves or life itself, I did create a series that I am incredibly proud of, that was a true passion project, and that was so insanely personal to me. I have also come to accept that while I may never write the next Earth-shattering piece of literature, if I were to impact just one person… that would be more than enough for me. Because that one person needed my words, felt them on the deepest level, and found absolute comfort in them – as the words of so many others impacted me in my best and worst times. To give that to just one person would be an immeasurable gift to me.

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Taking writing less seriously doesn’t mean I am any less serious about writing; it just means I am making an effort to remove some of the self-imposed pressures and just allow myself to create a little more freely.

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