Theirs or mine?

About how I can enjoy the process

I’m looking at the shelves with all the books about creativity and writing I’ve accumulated and ask myself if they’re really helpful. Is something there that can push me forward, that can make me move in the right direction?

I loved some of them when I’ve read them and in some cases re-read them too. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, Still Writing by Dani Shapiro and Write It All Down by Cathy Rentzenbrink gave me so much enthusiasm when I was reading them that I thought that I would just write and write and write after finishing them.

I’m sorry to say that it was not the case. I know that these books did a lot of good to many people and they did a lot of good to me too, but they didn’t push me as I was expecting them to do. I know it’s me and not them. I’m just not very susceptible to any sort of self-help, I think. And as much as I know that there’s a lot to get out of self-help books, I just don’t seem to absorb it.

Lately I’ve brought Atomic Habits from the library and it has spent quite a long time on my dining table before I’ve opened it, read a few sentences and decided to bring it back to the library without reading. I just couldn’t take the tone of it. There’s nothing wrong with it, really, but I think that self-help books have this writing voice that makes me feel rebellious and wanting to refuse everything that’s in it.

I don’t really know why, I’m not sure if I even want to know why. I may just accept that in order to be doing something, the will to do it has to come from within me, not from someone else’s instructions.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing prescriptive in the three books mentioned above. That’s also the reason why I loved them so much and why I will never get rid of them. And still, I just treat them like nice way to look into other people’s ways (and I love a peak into other people’s working rooms and lives), without making myself to emulate them.

You know how some people say that you should stop staring at the goal and start enjoying the process? Well, I think that in order to enjoy the process, I need to make it completely mine. Even if it means that I will have to reinvent the wheel again and again.

Maybe it’s not about following in someone else’s footsteps and finding an easy way, but about being able to be myself and finding my own path.