Like It or Not, You Are a Writer. Congrats!
Your resolution to write more in ‘26 is a gift to the gift within you.
I haven’t sent a newsletter in months. This was not at all my plan, but it was for good reason. I took a temporary job this fall, on top of teaching at UCLA Extension and running creative writing workshops in my home, which kept me busy from sunrise to well beyond sunset. I found real joy in being busy doing work that genuinely fulfilled me, except for one big issue: I wasn’t writing.
No matter how engaged, purposeful, or alive I felt, one thought followed me everywhere: I’m not writing. I wasn’t practicing the very thing I teach and believe in.
I’ve worked with many writers who find themselves in this exact place, acutely aware that they’re not writing. Sometimes the reasons are temporary: a new job, a move, illness. Other times they’re long-term: a new baby, elder care, activist work, displacement or trauma, including the fires here in Los Angeles. Add to that psychological overwhelm from the state of the world, plus our own self-doubt, and it’s no wonder the page goes quiet.
When we carry this thought, I’m not writing, for too long, we may decide we no longer want to lug it around. It makes us feel badly, as though we’ve failed ourselves. Eventually, the question arises: Should I just stop trying to be a writer?
The bad news is I don’t think you can. What I’ve learned, from my clients and from myself, is that writers have to write. Not to publish. Not to produce. Not to prove anything. But because the desire doesn’t go away. If we ignore it for too long, it eats at us. Not because it’s a flaw or a disease to cure, but because it’s intrinsic to who we are. The desire to write is a good part of us. To nourish it, we only have to feed it every now and then.
This fall, when my novel-in-progress languished untouched on my computer and I sent no newsletter to this community, I still wrote for twenty minutes once a week. For me, big picture, that’s not enough. But it was something, and something is always better than nothing.
My creative writing workshops begin with a twenty-minute free write, and man, did I need it. Those twenty minutes kept me connected to my voice, to the page, and to my thoughts. They gave me space to process my life and make discoveries. Most importantly, they reminded me that I was still a writer.
As a writer, you may have made a resolution to write more in the new year. Same. I can help you stick to that resolution, through private work or by joining my weekly in-person workshop, but I also encourage a small shift in how you approach your desire to write.
Don’t make your resolution punitive. Toss out the idea that I’m failing myself if I’m not writing. Instead, embrace this gift that’s part of your creative makeup. Tell yourself, I get to be a writer. All you need to nurture that part of you, a part that isn’t going anywhere, is a pen, a piece of paper, and five minutes. If you carve out more time than that, wonderful. But resist an all-or-nothing mindset.
Remember: You’re a writer. You get to write.