The Power of Gratitude for Your Writing

Give your work some love

The Story Writer’s Path

Give your work some love

Photo by Sheri Hooley on Unsplash

In the United States, today is Thanksgiving.

It’s a day devoted to eating turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pies. Lots of pies. And it is also a day devoted to giving thanks.

Cue the gratitude posts.

If you’re a blogger or influencer or do anything online, it’s practically a law that you have to write a post about gratitude. And, actually, I think that’s a good thing. Because gratitude is a good thing. Scratch that. It’s an excellent thing.

Grateful for the usual suspects

Sometimes at my house (back when I used to cook Thanksgiving dinner for large groups of people; I’ve wised up and don’t do that anymore), we’d go around the table and tell what we were grateful for. Tops on the list was family, then friends, then our homes, and so on. It got so that we had to say “no repeats” because everyone was naming the same things.

Not that that’s bad! I’m so grateful for my family and friends and my warm house (though I’ll be more grateful when our addition is finished) and all the usual things. So, so grateful.

But wait, what about your writing?

But beyond that, I’m most grateful for my writing. For so many aspects of it.

I’m grateful that I have a practice that consumes me. And by that, I mean a practice that never bores me, that always calls me back when I wander away, a practice that keeps my mind lively and always teaches me new things.

I’m grateful for my in-person writing community — all the people I teach and connect with around the country and the world, and my local writing buddies, who I count among my best friends.

I’m grateful for my online writing community — all of you wonderful people who read my newsletter, dip into my Medium articles, leave comments, send me emails and keep me on my toes.

I’m grateful because so much of my life centers around writing and related activities and if I hadn’t followed my passion years ago, I wouldn’t have any of this.

I’m grateful that I get to rise every morning, go to my computer, and throw words at the page. I love doing it. Love, love, love it.

Send your writing gratitude

And so I send my writing my gratitude. I bless it. Not in a religious way, but in a way that indicates my approval for all that it has brought me. And I think you should do the same. Because what we bless comes back to us.

I know. Woo-woo. But true.

What we diss and judge doesn’t want to hang around. Would you? If you’re constantly doing this, you run the risk of your desire to spend time doing it shriveling up and dying.

You are probably doing this judging and comparing out of fear — that you work isn’t good enough, that you’ll never reach your lofty goals, that your work will never make it off your computer.

But your writing doesn’t know that. All it knows is that you’re dissing and judging.

So knock it off. Bless your writing instead. Tell it how happy it makes you, how nourishing it is to your life. Give it some gratitude, people!

And, meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the states! And happy Thursday to everyone else!