Make Strong Offers

I have been working with writers for a long time now, helping them get motivated to write, helping them determine what to write about, helping them build a sustainable writing practice, helping them fall in love with language, helping them know they already have a voice and that their voice is powerful. Helping them finish and form and create. And everything in between.

I watch people start, be inspired, and then fall out of the practice, unsure of themselves. I watch people catch fire again and sail on the winds of those little black marks on the page that equal language and meaning and a story they feel compelled to tell. I see the fear in the eyes of people who have never had anyone else read their writing before, who have never read their work aloud to a group of people before, who have never said, “I am a writer.” The fear comes largely from waiting for the approval of someone else outside ourselves. What if we reclaimed that power and refused to give it away to someone else who can never care as much about our work as we do?

I write and talk a lot about making strong offers. This is at the core of what I teach. The other stuff is process and practice – and important – but the capacity that we all have to make strong offers is what I most want to help people see and develop. Especially those who would never call themselves a writer or an artist.

​What is a strong offer? A strong offer is an offer of your voice, your talent, your passion, your art in the world, without attachment to the outcome. Without attachment to what anyone else says about it. Without attachment to comparisons. Without attachment to a story about it. And oh, the stories we tell ourselves: it’s not good, it’s not as good as _____, it’s too vulnerable, it’s not vulnerable enough, I’m not a real writer, nobody cares about my story, it’s all been done before, I don’t have a voice. We have so many stories we tell ourselves daily, don’t we?, each of which keeps us from doing the thing we long to do.

My job, in all my work, is to make strong offers myself and to create environments that encourage others to make their own strong offers.

If you are a writer, an artist, an activist–a human being of any kind–you have it in you to make fantastically strong offers with your art and your life. You are a powerful creator. Still, you can only do it if you give up caring what others think, if you stop comparing your art (whatever it is) to others’ work, if you stop telling yourself those negative stories that diminish you, and if you work from a single intention, not a split intention.

You have a voice. Now use it. What do you long to say? Say it.