If it’s still in your mind, it is worth taking the risk

Monday musings

Here’s your mantra for this first week of the year <3 This week’s card is from my Cards for Creative Courage oracle deck. You can get it here or here.

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Happy new year, and welcome to Illuminate!

On this Monday, aside from sharing my mantra for the week with you, I’m reposting an article I wrote just over a year ago for the book tour of my second gratitude journal.

This article, or a version of it rather, was first published on Sandra’s Book Club, on 21 November 2022.  

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The quote that inspired me to create whatever I want to

I’ve always told stories, even before I was taught how to write. Back then, what others thought of my stories didn’t seem that relevant to me: I simply shared whatever my imagination conjured up.

Years later, when I became more serious about writing and began to entertain the thought that I might want to become a writer, what others thought felt more relevant. It had me wondering whether there was ever going to be an audience for what I was writing, whether anyone was waiting to hear what I had to say.

Obviously, such worries aren’t exactly conducive to creative flow. It limited me, as I’m sure they’ve limited others, and had me abandon projects before I’d properly started them just because I convinced myself no one would want to read them anyway.

It didn’t help that I tend towards writing what doesn’t exist yet. A lot of my inspiration comes from the gaps I sense in or between other work. Considering that Toni Morrison once said ‘If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it’, I’m sure I’m not the only writer whose inspiration springs from what could be ;)

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However, when you’re writing the books that you feel are missing, you can’t look at what others are doing to verify that your work will be welcomed into the world. It takes a lot of trust and perseverance to write anything; just imagine how much more of that you’re going to need when you find yourself off the beaten path.

For the longest time, this was one of my main writing struggles. It kept me from committing to numerous ideas, even if they kept nagging me from the far corners of my brain that I had banished them to.

And then I came across this quote by Paulo Coelho:

If it’s still in your mind, it is worth taking the risk.

Not only did it make my heart skip a few beats, it brought all those ideas that had been vying for my attention over the years to the forefront of my mind. With a vengeance. And now they knew I knew about Coelho’s words, they refused to go anywhere else.

These ideas had always known it was worth taking the risk. That’s why they stayed in my mind for so long. But now I knew it too.

And that’s when I surrendered. These days, if an idea keeps poking at me for long enough, I’ll give it a go. That’s right, I don’t just entertain any idea that pops up in my head. On the contrary, Paulo Coelho’s words allowed me to create a sort of litmus test to separate worthy ideas from mere distractions.

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This is how that litmus test works in practice for me:

Part of one of the walls in my office is dedicated to ‘New ideas’. Whenever an intriguing idea comes along, I write it down on a sticky note and put it up on that bit of wall. I then walk away from it and continue working on whatever I’d been occupied with before the idea decided to distract me.

If the idea keeps popping up in my head over the next couple of weeks or months, I’ll give it some serious thought. I’ll grab a notebook, make myself some tea, and give it my undivided attention for a while to see if it turns into something more concrete, something I actually feel like creating.

If not, if I check my wall with sticky notes and find ideas on there I haven’t given a single thought since putting them up, I pull them down and throw them out. Most probably, they’d just shown up to distract me from my work. And if that’s not why they came to me, if I actually do need to pursue them, I trust they’ll pop up in my head again when the timing is better.

Because of this test, I no longer ask myself what the world might want to hear from me. I simply focus on what’s still in my mind and trust that it’ll be worth it.

It might not work for everyone, but it definitely helped me get out of my own way and create numerous books I wouldn’t have put out there otherwise.

This Paulo Coelho’s quote being one of my all-time favourite quotes, it can’t come as a surprise that I’ve used it in more than one of my books. Below, I’ve gathered some graphics I’ve made over the years as complements to these books.

Poster (click here to download the PDF) (originally part of my first Kickstarter campaign)

Desktop wallpaper (click here to download the PNG) (originally part of my third Kickstarter campaign)

Phone screensaver (click here to download the PNG) (originally part of my third Kickstarter campaign)

If you use any of these anywhere, I’d love to see a picture!

Happy creating this week <3

Mariëlle

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