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Even though Thanksgiving is long over, I think New Year’s is a great time to review what our relationship with gratitude looks like. I’m not here to talk about whether or not you have an emphasis on gratitude in your everyday life, but I am interested in what your gratitude looks like during your writing practice.
It’s easy to become frustrated with writing, especially if we’re not published, and just generally not feeling successful in our work. Those are the times in which gratitude is even more important, however. We need to be grateful for writing and its presence in our life, whether it feels like we’re doing it “right” or not. How can we be grateful in the beautiful, successful, exciting moments if we can’t feel grateful for a boring, mundane writing day? More specifically, what if those beautiful, successful, exciting moments are few and far between? Does that mean we only feel gratitude once in a while?
Instead of just waiting for random moments that perhaps naturally fill you with gratitude, try to find places to work gratitude in on a regular basis. Gratitude is much more likely to become a habit in this case, and you are much more likely to find more and more reasons to feel gratitude in the first place. You can journal about it, reflect on it, consider it while meditating. However you choose to express your gratitude, there are so many things to be grateful for in your writing practice.
Feeling grateful for writing in general
What does writing bring you? What does writing fulfill for you? Really think about your own wellbeing after writing. Is it the creativity that fills you up? The discipline? The fun and enjoyment? Maybe you needed a hobby in your life, and writing has really fulfilled that need for you. Maybe you feel more at peace now that you have an outlet. Or does writing feel like an escape from other parts of your life that you perhaps don’t love as much? Whatever it is, feeling grateful for writing in general is a great start to noticing how writing impacts your life for the better.
Feeling grateful for other areas in your life that are impacted by writing
There are so many other areas of your life that can be impacted by your writing, and it’s good to feel gratitude for those things as well. Has writing made you better at your job? Perhaps it’s allowed you to reconnect with an old friend who is also a writer, or spend more time with your grandmother, who is an avid reader. Maybe sitting at your desk for long periods of time has allowed you to watch the seasons pass, or the birds outside your window. Perhaps you’ve explored new genres or made new friends from the neighborhood book club. What has writing brought you that’s not necessarily writing itself?
Feeling grateful for your writing community
If you’ve found yourself a writing community—whether one or two critique partners or a whole group of writers you meet with regularly—you should feel grateful for them! Hobbies often bring together people who otherwise likely would not have met, and that’s a beautiful thing. Your community might be in person or online, big or small, only about writing or a bit eclectic. It’s all great. Celebrate your new friends, critique partners, writing buddies, and mentors.
Feeling grateful for your writing space
People without a dedicated writing space might initially shake their heads at this one, but I think all writing spaces should bring about gratitude. If you have a dedicated space—an office that’s all yours, a shared workspace, or a living room couch that you like to sit on while you write—that totally counts! If you don’t have a dedicated space, think about all the places you find yourself writing. Maybe the coffee shop or a coworking space? Maybe on public transportation while you commute to work, or even the local fast-food joint while you eat lunch during the week. All of those spaces deserve some gratitude, even if they’re not quite what you had in mind. Try to be specific about what exactly you love about the space, and maybe even take a moment of gratitude for it each and every time you sit down to write.
Feeling grateful for progress
This one might not seem quite as obvious to everyone, but when you’re able to progress to the next step of the writing process, be grateful! Finished researching and plotting? Celebrate! Finished your first draft? Celebrate! Just sent your manuscript to an editor? Celebrate! Many authors struggle to move from one step to the next, and progress can be very difficult, so take the time to celebrate it. You’ve completed yet another difficult step, worked hard, and achieved so much! You should definitely feel grateful about it.
Feeling grateful for your failures
This might be the most difficult gratitude of all. It can be really hard to feel grateful when things don’t feel like they’re going well. Perhaps you got a negative review, or less-than-stellar feedback from an editor or beta reader. Maybe all those rejections from agents got you down. Find a way to spin them in order to find the positive. What lessons did you learn? What motivation can you pull from them? How will that feedback make your work even better? There’s always something to learn and be grateful for.
Feeling grateful for your successes
And finally, the easiest gratitude of them all. It likely feels most natural to be grateful for the easy, obvious positives in your life. And while these shouldn’t be the only things you’re grateful for, you absolutely should celebrate them! Be grateful for each positive review, each promising email from an agent, each sale of your new book—and your old ones too. If you’re not published yet, be grateful for each positive show of support from friends or family, each time you sit down to work, each milestone you complete, and each writing-related task you mark off your to-do list. These successes might feel fewer and farther between than some of your other gratitudes, but rest assured—they will come.
However you choose to show your gratitude, be sure to include writing or any of the many ways it makes your life better.