One of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Hoyt, writes about her “gift” and how she almost killed it. https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/08/23/how-to-almost-kill-your-writing-thing/ She distinguishes between her craft and her gift. The gift is the source of her stories while her craft is how the stories are presented. She cares about her gift and describes it well even though she does not know where it comes from.
She writes, “Sarah, how do you write characters? Well, they are in my head, and they talk to me. Not that I hear them, physically (Oh, dear Lord, trust me, this might make me a rarity among … for lack of a better term “gateway writers.”) but I feel them there. I know who they are. I know what they do in their scenes that aren’t in the novel. I know what matters to them, what’s in their heads when they wake up. I know them, either as close friends or as the guys down the street. They’re themselves.”
If you take the time to read her article, you SRT* users will see that she appreciates her gift even if she does not know the source of her gifts is her spiritual companions. She even describes her gift this way:
“Look, think of the gift as fire you are given. It is just fire — and if you let it run wild, it will consume you, and leave nothing to show for it, but ash — and there’s nothing amazing in it. Except that you have it, without knowing how to make it.” Sarah does recognize, “There are many ways of killing the fire, the life in your fiction, the passion, the strength of your writing thing… Forcing the gift to do something it does not want to do left me sore and tired and wondering if it would ever come back.”
Those of you who recognize and appreciate the spirits who accompany you through life and help you with your creativity know that if you ignore your helpful spirits or invalidate them by not recognizing their contributions you will cause them to abandon you or just stop helping. Treating spirits as some sort of natural phenomena does not recognize their worth and they will stop communicating with you.
Sarah Hoyt, for all of her talent, and she has far more writing skill than I do, is not making full use of the spirits who surround her and inspire her. I, with far less talent, have an inexhaustible well of inspiration to draw on and will not be able to run it dry if I live another decade. I recognize the source of my inspiration and acknowledge my spiritual companions every day in everything I write.
I can think of a subject and I will invoke spirits with information to share about that subject. It takes very little time before enough of them have joined in to discuss how to present the information they have. My job is essentially refereeing them to shape the story for the most effective presentation and they will jockey back and forth putting the story together. When I sit down at the computer, I just type away with the ideas being presented to me by my spiritual companions in one long rush. Occasionally, we will stop in the middle of the article as we spot a paragraph that should be used to lead off the article and we insert it at the appropriate spot for maximum impact.
Sarah honors her gift, but not recognizing it as a living spirit means that she runs the risk of invalidating the gift her career depends on. She writes about magic and many other subjects but until she recognizes the real magic that is hers to tap at will, she will suffer needless worry about her “Writing Thing”.
Those of you who have learned to communicate and work with spirits have an infinite supply of ideas and suggestions to draw upon. Just remember that caring communication and acknowledgment will go a long way to ensuring you never run out of ideas to work with.
*Spiritual Rescue Technology