Hi reader!

I really really wanted to go to Tofino this weekend. And surf. 

I have these Live2Surf passes to rent board and gear that expire soon (#groupon), and I’ve been wanting to go for months. It hasn’t worked out since last September. Wah. If you’re a surfing addict, you know how painful this is. Geez, I live only 4 hours away. 

Anyway, I’m pining for Tofino but need to save money.

So I decide to stay home and work on my book all weekend. No other must-do's. The only thing almost as appealing. A different kind of flow, but a flow state nonetheless.

This is an unedited shot of a Tofino beach at sunset. It's not the worst there. I took this in December 2014.

It’s exciting to think about working on a book, but it’s a solo activity. For much of it, anyway. Sure, there’s the interviews, the conversations that spark great thoughts, but a lot of it is sitting down alone. 

Sometimes that’s deliciously quiet and lovely and introverted and solo.

Sometimes it’s isolating and lonely. 

So I’m going to write about writing as I’m writing to stave off the latter. (And hopefully it’ll also be useful to you in this moment, my creative reader who also has an important project to work on and finds it hard to get to it.) 

The thing is, I’m writing this book for you. I’m writing for my readers, real living breathing human creatures.

I read all the time. I have shelves and shelves of books. I’ve been reading since just after toddler-hood (mum, do you remember when I started reading?).

And when I read the words of someone else, it’s a kind of friendship, of connection. They give me this amazing gift. I just read The Size of the World by Joan Silber, and it leapt me into a different time, a different continent.

Sometimes I know these very random facts about the world. I know it as certainly as if I had grown up in a British boarding school or in Halifax. It’s because of books. I’ve lived a thousand lives through books.

SO,

when I think about writing, I need to tell my Saboteurs, Inner Critics, or what Brene Brown calls Gremlins to F the F off. They like to say things like, “who do you think you are?” and “do you seriously think anyone will read what YOU have to say? You’re so incredibly arrogant and naive!” or, the final threat, “it’s all already been said. Why bother?” These are the main messages that would thwart my writing, or at least my completion of the writing and getting it out to the world.

I have to look at my own life. The things I’ve read – well, someone sat down for hours and hours to write those words, and then fought to find a publisher to share them. I am touched. Sometimes I finish a book or a chapter or a line in a book and I just say “thank you God for Henri Nouwen, for his labour of writing, of love, for his commitment to finishing this when a kajillion other things called on his time.” Nouwen is dead. But I love him. He is one of my top spiritual mentors. Though dead, he still speaks.

And then I need to tell myself:

Corr, this is labour, but it’s a labour of love. You love to encourage people. It’s one of your greatest gifts. And you get gifts to give them away –win-win. But when you collect all these thoughts from all these experiences you’ve had and things you’ve heard, and you organize them, and jot them down in a clear way, and pop in your ridiculous humour, and weave it all together until it’s done, you will encourage people you care about now, people you’ve never met, people you’ll never meet, and people who’ll be born after you die.”

Oh baby.

See, I – maybe you too --- hate wasting time. Sitting down for hours, months, to work on a single project? It doesn’t seem like good use of time. It ain’t a quick turnover, that’s for sure. I need some reminders of why I’m doing this. 

Why are you doing what you’re doing? Or what you’re not doing, but know you need to be doing in order to live your real life?