On Leaving the Baggage Behind
How to get back your writing joy and write something new today
“The past has no power to stop you from being present now,” Lao Tzu wrote. “Only your grievance about the past can do that. What is grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.”
Maybe you’re carrying around a lot of doubt and baggage. Maybe you wrote a book that no one wanted to publish, or started a book you didn’t finish, or spent a lot of time and love on a piece of writing that disappeared without fanfare.
If so, you’re not alone. We’ve all started stories, essays, or books that we never finished. We have all faced rejection. We’ve all thought we could have done better at some point in our writing lives. And we’ve all poured our heart into a piece of writing that seemed to fizzle out of the gate.
That’s the past.
The past has no power to stop you from being present in your writing at this moment.
The past has no power to keep you from writing.
Let go of the baggage—the disappointment over “failed” writing projects, the frustration over books or stories that didn’t get written, the hurt over manuscripts that were rejected by agents and publishers.
That baggage has no place in your writing life today. You wouldn’t take a suitcase you packed five years ago on vacation today, would you? Nor should you take that suitcase of fear, frustration, self-blame, and disappointment on your new writing journey.
Leave it behind. Start anew. Write something today or this week that isn’t tied to what you’ve written in the past. Write something without fear of failure or rejection in the back of your mind. Write something you can feel happy to have written, even if no one sees it or responds to it.
Return to the feeling of writing. The writing for the sake of writing itself. The flow. The joy of getting the words on the page.
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Excellent post and great writing advice. Maybe the true joy of writing is like the sun behind the clouds. The sun hasn't completely disappeared. You just have to find it again. This is from a sign out in front of a famous restaurant in Texas named Arroyo. It talks about hope. But it could also be about the true joy of writing. Thanks for another great post.
This is so refeshing. Emancipating yourself from your past can be painful, but it’s necessary — and liberating. If there’s too much baggage, there’s no room for anything new.