Inspirational Writing

Lesson 1: Never Fear, Inspiration's Here!

"It takes only one story to...inspire a song, create a bond, alter a path, heal a heart, mend a rift, rescue a soul, transform a relationship, re-affirm a marriage, save a life. One story can change the world." -- Patty Hansen and Joy Pieterse, excerpted from Chicken Soup for the Soul Website

Feeling positive through a sense of purpose means each time you write, you have the satisfaction of knowing it is being done for a grander good. The "grander good" often involves two aspects:

• Conquering an obstacle
• Easing a fear

When writing about conquering an obstacle or fear, content must be preventive. "Preventive" means the content should stop a bad situation from happening: you have overcome your pitfalls, so you are able to write about each one and how others might avoid them. The idea is to aid readers in attaining your wisdom without their having to go through the same tumultuous situation.

By revealing circumstances that turned you yellow and their corresponding solutions, you will have produced some very helpful material.

Or better yet -- you will have inspired a song, created a bond, altered a path, healed a heart, mended a rift, rescued a soul, transformed a relationship, re-affirmed a marriage or saved a life.

In short, using trials and tribulations as focuses for your writing should serve to keep others and you bravely inspired.

Flagpole Underwear

If ever there was a trial-and-tribulation example writing would be it as it ranks high on the Fear, or "Flagpole Underwear," factor:

When a writer submits work for judgment it is like hanging their underwear on a flagpole for a critical audience to check it for cleanliness -- the whole time, the writer is praying their work doesn't stink! If the consensus is it does, the writer can only learn from indicated mistakes.

I am the sort of writer who suffers from Is-My-Underwear-Good-Enough-Syndrome. When a company accepts me for a new project, syndrome "side effects" include worry over my contribution's initially crude qualities and pride over its genuine ones.

As an inspirational writer you must learn to center your own energies on your writing's genuine, humane qualities while accepting the crude ones -- the flaws -- as inevitable errors open to correction via word processing programs or dictionaries.

It will be your overall attitude of allowing human fear and flaw their places in your writing that will give others reason to call attention to their own Underoos.

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