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The Hero’s Journey of Writing

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The writing process and storytelling both parallel the Hero’s Journey, a process we all go through in life and one that was discussed in depth by famous writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero’s Journey. He discusses several steps on the journey that I’ve modified for writers. Here are the steps:

  1. Call to Purpose
  2. Stepping Through the Threshold
  3. Confronting Your Fears
  4. Finding Tools and Allies
  5. Reaching your Destination
  6. Journey Home
  7. Teach and Share Your Experience

The first step is your Call to Purpose. You’ve had that call from your soul; it nudged you to get your attention. And soon it becomes a calling for something bigger than where you currently are in life. You can sense a need for a new destination — your destiny or purpose. You can no longer ignore it.

The call to purpose can be for your life, and it can be for your book. Often, the purpose is the same for both. You have a purpose, and you need to share with others what message you have around that purpose.

So at this point, you might be asking yourself, “Why am I writing a book?” You might know, but you might also be having a calling and not even know what the topic of the book will be. That’s okay. You’ll figure that out during your writing.

The second step on the hero’s journey is to Cross the Threshold. That means you are stepping onto your path of learning. You are leaving what you know — your comfort zone. You are ready to set out on the adventure, to discover a new place to be. In searching for and finding this website, you have heard the calling and crossed the threshold. You have struck out on the adventure of writing your book.

You don’t know what is in front of you, but you are willing to find out because where you are is no longer comfortable to stay. You have either grown out of it, it no longer serves you to stay where you are, or there is a more significant calling that compels you to move toward it.

Along the way, you will find new perspectives, clarity, and transformation. And you’ll also experience the third step on the journey: Facing all the demons and obstacles, fears, and masks to conspire to hold you back from moving forward.

As you face these challenges and blocks, you will experience the fourth step: Finding your allies, necessary tools, and methods to help you break through fears and blocks. Introspection, mastery, and healing are some of the ways you find your true abilities and step into your power.

And after overcoming your fears and finding a way through your obstacles, you reach your destination — your destiny — your authentic self; this is the fifth step of the journey.

You have persevered, gained wisdom and insights, and now are in a place of gratitude and abundance. The sixth step is your return home. On the return, you take the final step… sharing in your learning. When you finally come home, you are never the same because of the experience you’ve had on the journey.

In the hero’s journey, what you are searching for is your true self. And that’s what you’ll find in the writing process as well. Whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, memoir, or personal development, the struggles, tools, allies, and learning you find along the way will mirror those same things in your life.

It’s happened every time I’ve worked with someone… the fears they have in their writing are the same fears they have in life and business. (For more about the fears writers face, read my post, The 6 Fears of Writing – Facing Your Dragons.) The aha’s they write become the aha’s of their life. The healing they have while writing their book reflects the healing they experience in their life. One hundred percent of the time, your writing process will parallel your life experience.

So, start your Hero’s Journey of Writing. Take inspired action, and begin!

The 6 Fears of Writing – Facing Your Dragons

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As a writing coach, one of the major areas I work on with my clients is fear and how to overcome it in order to write with ease and flow. There are six significant fears that I’ve encountered working with writers, and when I share these with a new client, he or she nearly always resonates with at least one, and many times several; occasionally, I have a client who has all of the fears.

As the writing develops, what is fascinating to observe is that whatever fears raise their dragon heads when a writer faces that blank page is the same fear that is holding them back in their life or business.

Unearth and move through your writing fear, and you’ll see a parallel movement in your life. It’s happened 100 percent of the time in my experience when working with authors.

What are those 6 significant fears?

  1. What will people think of what I write? (Content)
  2. What will people think of how I write? (Style)
  3. Who am I to write a book? (Lack of Credentials)
  4. How will writing this book affect me financially? (Scarcity)
  5. What will I have to give up in my schedule? (Perceived Lack of Time)
  6. What if I’m successful? (Fear of Change)

Writing is the topic of the list above, but what if you replace writing with something you are experiencing in your life? For example…

  1. What will people think of who I am? (Content)
  2. What will people think of how I look? (Style)
  3. Who am I to tell someone what they need to do? (Lack of Credentials)
  4. How will doing what I love affect me financially? (Scarcity)

Fear #5 and #6 come up for us in nearly every significant undertaking: “Time is already full; how can I add in one more thing?” and “Success means losing relationships, the parts of my current life I want to keep, moving to a new place, etc.”

The Creative and Manifesting Brain

To understand how fears work in the creative process, we first have to know how the different parts of our brain work. In simple terms, the right brain is the creative source, while the left brain systemizes the way ideas will manifest, applying order and stability to inspiration to manifest it into reality. Lacking a vision or inspiration from the right brain, the left brain will activate and amplify any little fear that you have in its march toward constancy.

Our schools teach a very left-brain approach to writing: linear and structured, with an emphasis on starting with an outline. From that part of the brain, writing is an arduous struggle. I know from my editing that when someone is writing from their left brain, there are rivers of red marks on the page. But when a writer is writing from their right brain and telling stories, using creativity to make their writing come alive, there are very few edits; everything flows, and writing becomes fun.

Unfortunately, our society’s insistence on left-brain structure also impacts everything else related to creativity in our life. We are repeatedly told that a person can’t make money being creative. And yet, everything in our lives outside of nature has manifested because someone had a creative thought they brought to life! And much of the time, creating those “things” has brought the person some form of compensation.

Forget the Outline and Play in the Sandbox of Creativity

The process I use in my coaching puts what we learned in school on its head. I say forget about starting with an outline. The structure will develop in time. Instead, I want you to play in the sandbox of creativity first!

My method encourages stream of consciousness or direct writing, not just to get started, but whenever you are developing ideas. What that means is to write everything you are thinking with no stopping to edit. Wherever your thought goes, go with it. Write down everything, even if the voice is saying, “this method doesn’t work”. The voice of resistance you hear is your fear talking. So, write those fears down! Then write about where they might originate.

I once had a writing retreat participant who was so resistant to writing without an outline, that when I gave her the stream of consciousness writing instructions, she only wrote a few sentences, and those were things that I can’t print here. (At least she followed my instructions to write everything down!) Knowing that her resistance was from fear, I asked her what was stopping her from writing with no structure.

She told me she had written in several anthologies using her structured approach, and no one had ever given her positive feedback. When I asked her how that way of writing was working for her, she had a stunned look. I then shared the six types of fears and asked which of those she could relate to in her life. And then I saw a look of revelation. The week before the writing retreat, she had filed for bankruptcy for her business, and at the same time, her partner asked to end a long-term relationship. She shared that her fear of what people would think of how she appeared in the world had also affected her relationship and her business (see fears #1 and #2).

That day, she had a breakthrough and later returned with several pages of writing. By the end of the three days, she had filled her notebook. On our call a week later, she told me she didn’t want to stop writing because she was having so much fun. The writing she sent for me to review was remarkable, utterly different than what she’d ever written. She has since published three books, rebuilt her business, travels the world speaking, and is in a very happy, long-term relationship.

Creating the Structure (Refining your Writing)

What you write in stream of consciousness is not necessarily going to make sense all the time, but the more you do it, the more you start to see patterns of thought develop, critical beliefs emerge, statements of impact you want to share, and stories you can tell that make your thoughts come alive. All of those things begin to reveal your structure. Soon, you will start to see your writing make sense as you put a frame around your seemingly wild thoughts.

The refining process (rereading and editing) then moves to a left brain and right brain process, shifting fluidly between the left saying “this needs fixing” and the right saying “here’s how to fix it”. Get those parts to dance in your writing, and you’ll see your life become a fluid and balanced movement as well.

So, write. Don’t think about it; pick up your pen and begin. The more you do, the easier you’ll move through your fears. As you learn to face and write through the dragons of your resistances and fears in writing, you’ll begin to see how your writing and life become beautiful fairy tales!