Your book feels like it’s dying on the vine. You still have four months left to write, but the book has gone quiet, and you think maybe you made a mistake: maybe you’re not a writer after all. You can’t find the energy to keep going.

This is what I see is happening: you either have to let go of control and write like a drunk, not knowing what you will do or say next, or continue on, committed to finish, but writing a book that feels like it lost its vitality. Or, of course, you could quit, cook quiches instead of writing every day.

I don’t drink much, maybe not at all anymore, and I certainly never drink when I write because I’m already working with confused senses: to disorient a disoriented person is a recipe for a nervous breakdown, not a book. Many writers, Hemingway, Didion, Bukowski, are often photographed with a drink in hand. So it’s not that drinking and writing don’t work, but they don’t work for me, and I would suggest if you have to drink in order to write, you need help. If you can’t access a voice that feels true and real and sustainable when sober, why not go to AA and deal with that stuff so you can find out who you really are and get that person on paper?

I didn’t set out to write about sobriety today. I set out to write about surrender. Will can take you pretty far when you are writing a book. You can push and push and push, but at a certain point, often, the book has a life of its own and it wants you to hand over the wheel and let it drive. This can be so scary! People don’t routinely jump out of planes or blindfold themselves and walk to the store for good reasons! They could die! 

The good news is that very few people have died (I don’t know if anyone has, but I’ll put it this way just in case there have been writers who surrendered to their book and then died from it) from letting the book take control, from letting the words tell you what comes next. This is called creation. This is when you learn, perhaps, that you are not here alone, that you do not create alone, and that when you open up and let go, there is a whole support system there with you. You are part of big mind! Why write entirely with small mind when big mind is there, waiting? Big mind is your connection to everyone, everything. It’s your god nature. Big mind knows; big mind asks amazing questions.

How do you know you are in big mind? You sit down to write your book, and you take a deep breath, and you orient yourself into where you are in the narrative, where you are in the story, and you ask yourself, “What is it I want to tell the reader here?” and then you sit back and you drop that question into the ocean of big mind, and you let it tell you. You are now a note-taker. Big mind speaks to you from your entire body, not just your prefrontal cortex. Big mind is you talking to you. You’ll know. You know big mind. It’s interesting.

You say that big mind doesn’t talk to you? You are mistaken. That’s like saying everyone else has skin except for you (if this is in fact the case and you have a medical condition I am not aware of, I am so sorry for my insensitivity). You ARE big mind. Big mind is you without your small agenda (write a book, sell a million copies, get famous). Big mind is life. 

 Rely on the phrase What I really want to tell you is. This is what will keep you tethered to your storyline when you are simutaniously plugged into big mind. You are a drunk with a seeing eye dog.  

Why plug into big mind? So you can write something that surprises you. So you can learn even more what it’s like to be a human being. So you can write a story that feels bigger than what you thought you could. So you can keep yourself and others entertained. So you aren’t predictable. So you are real. 

Some people, like Coleridge, use drugs to access big mind. This is risky! Kubla Khan is a fragment because someone came to the door and interrupted Coleridge and he couldn’t find the same state when he was done with his socializing. Big mind does not cost money or require needles. Big mind is the universe’s gift to you. Why not accept it? 

Big mind does not fuck with you. Big mind just asks that you relax enough to hear. Big mind is like childbirth without the mess. Big mind is forgetting you have a body. Big mind might tell you that you don’t want to be married any more, and so big mind can be frightening. People stay constricted to avoid hearing the truths they carry in their bodies. But this is like tightening around a splinter. It’s only going to get worse.

Dear Sweet Writers who have been working on their books/projects since January: Let go. Think about all you have written, ask yourself, “What is it I want to tell you?” and then go take a nap. On your way to sleep, listen to big mind. You’ll know you have the answer when it feels as if someone turned a light on in the room or you want to get up or you feel sick to your stomach. Oh no, I have to say that? 

Big mind is merciful but not easy. Big mind is you at your very best. 

Big mind asks you to show up as your truest, most listening self.

So many people are terrified of big mind, and they are the ones who don’t write books or who write books that feel small. 

Writing a book, especially a book you are calling memoir, comes from a relationship between you and the listening ear. The listening is circular: you listen to big mind, and big mind listens to you. The others, the chatter, is small mind. You can have that if you want. 

But why have dry toast for breakfast when you can have it all? 

I found big mind two weeks into what was supposed to be a three-week trip where I was going to write my book on the trip I called Write or Die. I’d been in New York City for a week, Martha’s Vineyard for a week, and small mind had taken me as far as it was going to. I was writing in increasingly small circles, focusing on the placement of commas and periods. All my adult life, this is how writing had gone for me: I’d have bursts of creativity that somehow tightened into stories that hit walls. For thirty years I wrote like this—big mind shrinking into small mind because I was afraid.

The small mind was about control. It was about me trying to tell a story without revealing too much about myself or taking risks. I wanted to write, but I also wanted to be approved of and loved. I didn’t want to write wrong. What if I put my heart and soul into a book and people hated it? That would mean they hated me. That would mean I put my whole self out there and it was deemed not worthy of attention, praise, or love. 

Jeeeeeeesus. 

Better to stay small.

 But that’s like staying in a cocoon your whole life. The tricky bit is that in order to really live, you HAVE to bust out of that shell and unfurl your wings. You JUST WON’T KNOW WHAT THE WINGS LOOK OR FEEL LIKE UNTIL YOU DO THIS. And this is TERRIFYING. You want BLUE WINGS that are medium sized and have yellow dots. ANY OTHER WINGS WILL BE WRONG AND YOU WILL WANT TO DIE.

This is complete bullshit. What you want is a form of craziness. Life isn’t about what you want. It’s about what you receive.

You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. 

Unfurl your wings. You do you. I’m so sorry you don’t have full control of your life, of the color of your wings, of the content of your book. 

I’m not sorry.

I’m gleeful.