Love Your Writing

It's Christmas time and I could talk about Christmas traditions, Christmas magic, Christmas spirit. The season offers a lot of opportunity for reflection.

But what I'm going to discuss is a Christmas book, The Littlest Angel, and its impact on me years ago.

According to the front page of the book, The Littlest Angel was written in 1939 at the request of Screen Guild producers, who asked Charles Tazwell to "write something" as a backup plan if one of the guild's productions fell through. The crisis that it was created to avert never happened but the story aired on a Christmas radio show. In 1946, the book was released by Childrens Press of Chicago. The story was presented in various forms over the years, from radio, to book, to magazine, to record, to a Hallmark Hall of Fame production in 1969.

A brief summary of the story:

Many, many years ago, a four-year-old boy entered heaven. From his first step into paradise he upset the heavenly peace with his behavior and fairly unangelic antics, though he tried to do what was expected of him. But mostly he missed the things on earth he had enjoyed – trees to climb, streams to fish, and caves to play in – and he longed for the sun and the rain and dark of night and light of dawn.

When he learned of the homesickness the littlest angel was suffering, the Understanding Angel sent a messenger to procure a box of the littlest angel's treasures from earth, and from then on the boy was a happy and angelic angel.

As the birth of baby Jesus approached, the heavens were excited and all angels gathered to place gifts for the holy infant at the feet of God. Even the littlest angel had found a suitable gift and placed it lovingly in the pile of gifts. But when he saw his unsightly box among the other glorious gifts, he felt embarrassed and wanted to take it back and hide it.

When God's hand moved over the selection of gifts, he stopped at the box from the littlest angel. The littlest angel was so afraid as the box was opened and everyone including God saw the gift he offered. It was nothing, he thought. It was simply a butterfly with golden wings, a sky-blue egg, two white stones, and a tooth-marked collar once worn by his dog. He was miserable. To think he'd believed these simple things would be fitting gifts for Jesus.

But God singled out his gifts as the gift that pleased Him most. And the rough, unsightly gift began to glow, rise, and shine brilliantly over the stable where the baby Jesus was born. And all men called it the shining star of Bethlehem.

The message of this book gave me a confidence boost when I was young. It came back to me as an adult, still powerful, and reminded me to be myself and not judge my writing so harshly. We writers give from our hearts and hope others enjoy the stories we create as much as we enjoy writing them. It's important to love our own stories.

I wish you all the blessing of self-actualization, free from harsh self-judgment, this holiday season. May you see the beauty in your gift.

What books have not only entertained you but given you useful insights?

Don't Think You Can, Know You Can

Here I go again, talking about opportunities to believe in yourself. But it's what's on my mind since rewatching the Matrix trilogy and seeing metaphors about outer vs. inner authority.

In one scene, Neo, a new recruit in the human cause, is jacked into the matrix, practice fighting Morpheus. Remember the line: "Don't think you can. Know you can." Morpheus is asking Neo to define himself in expanded terms, not let old thinking he's learned hold him back from his potential. Expose the limitations for what they are: limited thinking that suppresses his abilities, and embrace greater possibilities.

It spoke to me because I so easily frame my experiences within a context of outer approval, seeking confirmation from others that I'm talented and skilled enough to be a writer. Of course, we writers put our work out there and essentially ask others to like it. Not everyone does. As writer Shawn St. Jean wrote on his blog Clotho's Loom, writers stand naked on the rocks, exposing everything, including imperfections, and sometimes people throw stones.

"But inasmuch as other artists all must run their gauntlets, it falls to writers to strip themselves naked and stand on the rocks and in the sun, where all gazes, deserving and otherwise, may fall. They know they've done the reps, reformed their diets, put in the sweat and the time, and done their best. And yet, they also know that the extra pounds from drink or age, the stretch marks, the tattoos and scars of youth, the genetic abnormalities, or simple, forgivable imperfections may still glare out. And any writer sensitive to the human condition cannot hide behind the mirror forever: the plain fact is, some folks will not only not praise what they see, they'll be positively repelled by it for their own reasons, and they will spit out toxin," he wrote.

But sometimes the stones, the toxins, the negativity belongs to me. My inner editor is Smith, and he tells me I can't write a book, I'm not authorized to write a book, and I need to submit to the rules – not follow my dreams or believe in myself. Although I could trace those naysayer voices to my past, I realized with amazement fairly recently that no one is telling me these negative things anymore, I am. I learned the negative thought patterns, sure, but the power to disempower them is within me. Say with a smile, "Thank you for your input, but I think I'll do it anyway. I like what I’m doing."

There are many beliefs that carry the weight of truth, but they're just beliefs. I get to say what's right for me and I authorize myself. So when a reviewer rates my book as less than fantabulous, I have to give it no power to stop me or make me feel low enough to trigger self-doubt. I have to see the truth; it's just an opinion not a global truth about my ability. Owning my inner authority takes the sting out and reduces the angst. Like at the end of the Matrix, the first movie in the trilogy, as Neo comes into his own inner authority, he stands in front of bullets coming at him and they mean nothing.