World of Words #17: “Writing Our TRUTH!”
Happy New Year fellow writers!
This is our first post of 2020 and what better way to kick it off than to talk about telling the truth! I truly believe that one of the worst things we can do as writers, story-tellers, content creators, etc., is to lie…to our audiences and ourselves. No matter the intent, it is never acceptable to lie to yourself or to your audience. It’s hard enough to build trust. Trust within yourself as well as trust with your audience. So makes no sense to destroy that trust by failing to write our truth.
What do I mean by “writing our truth?” It means to write what’s in our hearts. It means setting aside doubts and fears of pubic perception and remaining true to our voices and our visions. No matter what that truth is, write it. Everyone won’t get it. Everyone won’t like it or want to read it and that’s ok because as we all know, we can’t please everyone. However, if we remain true to ourselves and our voices, then we are laying the foundation to make our writing great and something that readers will want to devour.
On the other hand, failure to write our truth is one of the most counterproductive things we can do because if we aren’t being true to our writer’s voice and we are writing simply to try and please people, how long can we really maintain that lie? This also directly impacts to our readers because failure to write our truth will inevitably show up in our writing. We may be able to pull it off for a while, but at some point, our writing will come off as shallow and insincere. Even worse, we will build an audience based off that lie, which may seem great at first, but what happens to that audience when we finally decide to write our truth? That’s why it’s best to write our truth from the very beginning.
We can’t allow ourselves to get caught up in worrying about who will like our writing, who will understand it, how will they judge us, etc. We owe it to ourselves and our readers to write our truth to the best of our ability and then allow the chips fall where they will fall. Anything less is unacceptable.
It’s a new year, which means new opportunities right? So, let’s block out the noise, stick to telling our truths and let’s make 2020 a great storytelling year!
Until the next time, write on!
