Have you ever pushed through to meet a writing or publishing goal, only to feel let down once you actually reached it? Or worse, only to find that the story you wrote wasn’t at all what you wanted to create, and you have no idea how that happened?
If you’re looking for more satisfaction and growth (and even success) in your writing life, it may be time for a new framework.
Write toward your values, not your goals.
There are two reasons defining and prioritizing your creative values is so key to a sustainable and transformative writing practice:
Tune in to learn how this framework can help you reclaim a creative life that supports you as a human, and isn’t just driven by “pushing through” or “doing the work.”
Plus, we’ll explore how to free our values (and ourselves) from the dogma of creativity-as-productivity – so we can become the storytellers we truly feel called to be.
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Extricating your values from the tangled ideal of “creativity” is a powerful place to start redefining your writing life. (Especially when you’re identifying how you really want your creative practices to feel.)
Here are some prompts to help you tease out what really matters to you as a storyteller – both in terms of the kinds of stories you want to create, and the way you want to create them.
It can feel difficult or even intimidating to come up with your values without a specific context – so looking for them within stories you love can make the process a lot more accessible. I find it helpful to consider both stories I’ve loved recently, and ones I still love from previous eras in my life.
First, make a list of 3-4 titles that have stuck with you from the past few years. For each story, start jotting down quick phrases that capture elements you particularly loved. (Try doing this by hand on a big sheet of paper if you can.)
Don’t overthink this stage too much; just get stuff down! Here are examples of the sort of quick list item you’re aiming for:
Once you have a list for each story, start looking for common threads. Do any of the items feel similar between different stories? Why? What common, core ideas are these story elements exploring, and what does the story have to say about those ideas?
Some common values may jump out at you right away; others may feel more opaque. That’s okay. Return to your list several times over the next few days and see what emerges as you have time to percolate.
Make a second set of lists for 3-4 books you’ve loved for a long time, and see how they compare to each other and to your first lists.
(And for a bonus: Create lists for some stories you loathe with a primal passion. Sometimes seeing what you don’t value can lead you toward what you do value.)
Don’t try to make your story values add up to some kind of overarching, coherent message or philosophy – some amount of complexity or even contradiction is okay. Exploring a range of values will give your storytelling more nuance, depth, and meaning.
To dig into what writing outside of productive creativity might look and feel like, I’ve got a single prompt for you:
What is a successful creative life?
Here’s the catch – you can’t use any output metrics in your response. None. No word counts or habit streaks, no publishing milestones, no completed novels or memoirs or essays. No specific reader responses.
Come back to this prompt at least a few times over the next month (or beyond). Try writing a single sentence, phrase, or word a day. Try free writing on the prompt for twenty minutes. Try tacking the prompt up on a wall and making a quick voice memo each time you see it. Try drawing a picture.
Let yourself have fun with this one prompt in a bunch of ways, and see what sorts of weird, exciting, unproductive things you come up with.
Throughline podcast: “No Bad Ideas?”
The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History, Samuel W. Franklin
History of the American writing workshop