Introduction

Why do I write? Writing helps me listen, expands my sense of what’s possible, transforms me from the inside out. I believe I’m writing a story when, really, the story is writing me. I love writing because the act loves me into being.

What do I dislike about writing? The stage after I’m done when I have to figure out what to do with my manuscript, then do it. The looming moment when I come face-to-face with an audience. The consequent exhaustion, overwhelm, disappointment, rejection, straining, striving, jealousy, shame, feeling unseen, despair, and self-doubt. Sure, there are joyful moments when I find a publisher, celebrate a release, or receive a reader’s praise, but having traversed this period post-completion often, I’m also wary of these successes because they occasionally knock me off of an otherwise healthy path. For years I treated the work of seeking and navigating publication like scrubbing the toilet. Much as I disliked the chore, doing it regularly I considered good writing hygiene.

Then, a few years ago, I took a few blithe publishing missteps that quickly plunged me into trouble. I made choices (about how I communicated my novel’s focus to my agent, what I agreed upon with my publisher, and how I marketed the book) that made me feel dirty. I wound up at the doctor’s office for heart palpitations and on the therapist’s couch for anxiety and addictive behaviors. Once I cleaned up the mess, I swore never, ever, to lose myself like that again.

My mistake was not that I’d chosen to publish. Sharing creative work can be tremendous—a chance to connect with others, to grow, to widen our world. No, I stumbled when I’d allowed my own values to be subsumed by the market’s. Once I stepped off a life-giving path, the consequences avalanched. I hadn’t realized publishing could jeopardize my integrity.

Afterward I swore I’d never make that mistake again. For me, writing is first and foremost a practice of transformation. I’m committed to making artful literature, as best I’m able, but it seems to me that literature is only artful when it truthfully and effectively uplifts the human spirit, mine included, and that the way we writers offer our work to others should also follow this path. Surely I don’t have to lose my bearings to launch a novel!

I believe creative endeavors have their own life, and part of my responsibility as a writer is to serve that life in the world. Often, although not always, that means sharing it. Before I loved writing I first loved reading, how I assumed I was reading a story when really the story was reading me, changing me, until on closing the covers I woke to a new world. When my writing ushers readers through this remarkable phenomenon, the creative cycle reaches completion. My work arrives. I believe what is born in solitude reaches fulfillment in relationship. Just because the tasks required to send my work into the minds and hearts of readers go against my grain, I’m not absolved from finishing the labor of creation. It’s my responsibility to support the continuation of what I’ve made as it evolves into others’ hearts and imaginations.

So I posited these questions: Must I be fettered to the whims of my ego and the market economy as I share my work? Or can I continue to be generative and free? Is it possible to approach the period after finishing as an opportunity for continued creativity—perhaps even an integral part of the writing process? What might it look like to stay grounded—heck, even flourish—during this final stage? My answers have become this guidebook. Today, after I finish a project, I use the principles and exercises here to keep myself on a healthy path.

I’m not alone in this struggle. While writers are taught to believe that publication is the happily-ever-after ending to our efforts, this fairy tale almost never comes true. I know many people who can’t even begin writing or lose steam mid-draft because they dread the hard work of reaching an audience, or because they perceive not publishing as failure. When I asked a dear friend why she wasn’t writing, she answered, “But what would I do with it?” With no reliable, productive outcome, she aborted the entire process. I know writers who deny their desire to publish out of spiritual pretense or crushing fear. I’ve watched exceptional writers who dearly want to publish permanently shelve complete manuscripts after getting stymied by self-doubt or bogged down in the submission process. I’ve seen writers compromise themselves or their projects to get their work in print. And I’ve seen many writers successfully publish only to then self-destruct. Depression, anxiety, insecurity—these are common but rarely expressed responses to publication.

A great many manuscripts are rushed into the marketplace to satisfy the writer’s ego needs or the publisher’s profit wants. Writers who choose deliberately, with clarity and grace, not to publish are rare; most unpublished manuscripts are accompanied by disappointment, anger, and self-deprecation. Published writers who navigate the industry with integrity, staying faithful to the source of their inspiration and serving the essence of their stories, who understand revising, editing, and marketing as arenas for personal transformation or as acts of service—they exist, but their fierce interior conviction is quiet. Good models are hard to find. The public arena is crowded with attention-grabbers.

No matter which direction we choose, the terrain post-completion is riddled with landmines.

So I offer this guide to writers in hopes that we all might be spared some grief. The process I outline here, which I call “the release,” helps us form the habits of mind, heart, and body that support our project’s final flourishing and keep us creatively engaged. This practice isn’t for everyone, nor is it for every piece. It’s for those of us so compelled that we write without guarantee of pay or audience. It’s for those who write in response to the demands of our hearts, who are open to the work of spiritual transformation and committed to serving the life of our creative projects, who want to thrive as we journey into publishing, or not publishing, or whatever transpires after the writing is done. It is for writers of finished pieces whose inner flame still burns.

We writers want to see quantifiable results from our efforts. We seek evidence that our art matters, that we matter. Yet how we imagine these “results” and define “mattering” are influenced by a product-oriented culture, dominated by privileged white men, discriminatory toward other genders and people of color, benefiting rationalism and consumerism, driven by scarcity, fiercely competitive. I hope the guidance here lifts our heads out of the sandbox this culture insists we fight in and offers an alternative way to play. The perspectives I turn to for support are Indigenous, women-centered, queer, process-oriented, and informed by evolutionary theory and quantum physics. I lean heavily on research about and first-hand experiences of traditional gift economies, especially how they apply to artists, and on Christianity’s mystical lineage, which posits receiving and giving as mutual gestures in a holy, relational dance. From these sources, and continuing the work I’ve done in Writing the Sacred Journey and Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, I trace how a life-affirming creative practice can continue through the decisions and tasks we undertake once the writing is finished. Anyone—amateurs and professionals alike, those who intend to publish and those who do not, those with book length manuscripts and those with haiku written on the backs of envelopes—can do this practice. I address writers who have fully developed work in hand; however, those who have not yet begun or are mid-draft will find that an introduction to this practice shifts how they think about the end-stage, which then affects how they write. If we change the ship’s destination, we have to trim the sails.

While writers are the artists I know best, I believe the principles of this practice apply to all art -making. The terms “writing” and “story” I conceive of broadly to signify any artist and creation in hopes that these pages accommodate makers of all stripes. When we create with sincerity and affection, we swim in a transformational current that began long before we started and will continue far beyond completion. This guidebook is for anyone who wants to release their work with love.

Those of us who relish how the creative process brings us alive commonly assume that, when we’re done, the glorious experience of co-creative emergence is over. Our pages are a final “product,” without agency until they meet a reader. I posit here that, quite to the contrary, the life-force pulsing within completed work is more influential than we assume and can move into ever-wider spheres regardless of publication. Not only that; we writers can also know unexpected, energizing, and wildly influential creativity post-completion. We can be free from the burden of seeking validation and measuring worth. We can make conscious choices that support our wellbeing, serve readers, tend our communities, and nourish the planet. I share these pages in hopes that the love we’ve given our creative work might be amplified by its release.