by Beth Ann Erickson
Intuition is the deep knowingness inside yourself. It’s that place within you where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you’re doing is right or wrong for you at the moment.
Living intuitively, life is a joy, your work a pleasure. When you don’t listen to your intuition, you’ll stumble, life will be difficult. Everything you do will feel like swimming up stream.
You find yourself self sabotaging yourself. You may forget to answer e-mails. You won’t return calls. You’ll find yourself doing anything except tend to the task at hand.
In a similar vein, when you follow another person’s path (which is exactly what you’re doing when you’re not following your intuition), the same thing will happen. You will self sabotage the project. You won’t feel joy. You will have an inner sense of panic.
So it’s imperative to follow your intuition because your path will always be unique… never quite the same as other writers.
Where one writer will share a trick to do “this” and another writer will share a trick to do “that,” these techniques may or may not work in your situation.
It’s important to take into account your personality whenever you’re evaluating marketing techniques.
I’d darn near die (literally) if I had to cold call editors. I have no problem contacting people if we have a prior relationship, but to call out of the blue? No way.
That’s just the way I’m wired. I accept it and work around that inability.
Some people may dislike writing queries and sales letters. Then cold call. Send e-mails. Do what works for you.
This is why it’s so important to follow your hunches no matter how far off the beaten path it may be.
Your activities may make no sense to the person watching your life, it may look bizarre to others, in fact, your hunches may not make sense to you either.
But in your spirit, in your soul, all will make perfect sense. And that’s what matters.
How to Know You’re on the Right Track…
When you’re on the right track, career-wise, you’ll experience love. You will experience joy. You will find yourself in a high-powered creative zone.
Ah, but what about money? How will I make a living doing something far off the beaten path?
Or worse yet, how will I understand how my writing career will unfold without knowing the end result of my actions?
To that I say, your first goal should not be to rake in the big bucks.
Your first impulse should always be joy.
It’s been my experience that money flows towards joy.
This is because when you’re writing in a state of joy, you won’t self sabotage yourself. You won’t feel anchors beneath your feet. You will feel incredible peace while clients, customers, buyers will be drawn to that same incredible peace.
Your first and foremost plan should not be gaining wealth. However, on the other hand, if your grand plan, if your Polaris is to accumulate great wealth as a writer, if that is your joy, you just may find yourself in a very hollow situation later on.
This is because accumulating wealth isn’t in and of itself a negative thing.
However, making wealth your sole purpose in a writing career seems to stem the ebb and flow of creativity. And ironically you may find yourself without a message, without anything to share with your reader.
What a bummer, eh?
I know far too many copywriters (those who write advertising) who entered the biz for the promise of high pay. Many have gone on and done quite well.
Thing is, most are avid “swipers.” Some border on plagiarism.
This means that alone in a room, without their swipe file, they probably couldn’t come up with an elegant, solid sales piece more than flap their arms and fly to the moon.
They may be making the big bucks, but they also get to contend with the continually niggling feeling of inadequacy wondering if and when they’ll ever develop the chops to build their own message from the ground up.
It’s tough to do when you’ve short circuited intuition.
Mark my words, these non-writers will not enjoy long lasting writing careers. They simply can’t. They don’t know how to write.
But I’m off track. Back to it.
If your first path is joy, and if you’re committed to spreading that same joy, the money will make its way towards you and you will live a full, happy, and beautiful life.
Truth be told, the only path to joy leads through the door of intuition.
* * *
This article written by Beth Erickson is one that every writer, aspiring or seasoned, should take seriously. When you write with intuition and joy, your readers can sense it and will come back to it again and again. Without joy, your writing will be as flat as the paper it is written on.
