Reality & Groundedness

In this day and age, anyone can throw up a blog and call themselves anything they like. They can create an entire work history, persona, and “credentials” without anyone knowing for sure if they’re being completely truthful or not.

In my previous professional life, I found this to be true – even folks I had known and worked with for years. Honesty and transparency are subjective ideas for some – especially when we’re talking about people you never meet. If you take advice from another writer you’ve never met, how do you know they are who they say they are, that they’ve done what they said they’ve done? You don’t.

This is a thought that’s been brewing on my mind over the last few days. Honesty and integrity are big things with me, as anyone who knows me (the real me – the one who eats, sleeps, wakes up with bad breath, and has more bad hair days than not) can attest. I am a freak about honesty and integrity.

Honesty doesn’t mean tell-all

That doesn’t mean telling all to everyone. They call it a private life for a reason. It doesn’t mean your telling of a story has to agree 100% with everyone else. We all have different perspectives and we all see things a different way.

It does, however, mean being the real you – who you really are as a person. Warts and all. Failures, successes, fears, accomplishments, all those things that make you a human being.

Fitting that yesterday’s topic for The Prosperous Writer was “groundedness.” Christina talked about how difficult it is to write when you’re uncomfortable in your own skin – when you aren’t honest about how you feel – good, bad, or indifferent. She discussed having lofty goals as a writer, but keeping yourself firmly planted in reality – even if that reality means laundry, gardening, household chores, the kids’ homework, and trying to find time to write in between.

I could so relate when she mentioned her garden inviting her to hurry up and come dig in the dirt. My “garden” calls to me all the time – all 8 acres of it. Which is why I’ve started writing and shopping a few pieces around that have more to do with the earthy side of me. There’s a connection for me between digging in the dirt on this old farm and writing. They both speak to me on some inner level, bringing me a kind of peace that nothing else does. They both feel more like the real me.

Funny how thinking about something brings more of it to you

Given my own thoughts about honesty, integrity, and authenticity lately, Christina’s newsletter just gave me more to chew on. Perhaps more impetus to keep being the real me here on The Blue Inkwell – even if some folks do have issues with the occasional BULLSHIT! being thrown in now & again. (I’ve wondered if I should keep my posts G-rated to keep from being offensive to anyone, but I think I’ll keep the occasional bullshit reference - some things warrant it.)

And just to be sure I’m being the real, grounded in reality me? The front lawn is screaming at me to stop tapping away on this keyboard and finish cutting the grass. But before I do that? I’m going to jump up and down a bit & celebrate.

Pause to celebrate a little reality

I’ve had pieces published – lots of pieces. Don’t bother to ask me how many, as I’ve never tracked it. Some I had published as a ghostwriter, so I don’t get to claim them as “mine.” Some under pseudonyms, so still – my name isn’t there. Some I’ve written for free, so my name was there, but no pay. Some had both my name AND pay attached, but they were through business contacts, employers, or folks I “knew.”

Yesterday marked a special occasion in my writing career. Last month, for the first time, I got published under my own name, for pay, with no prior business contacts or associations to help get my foot in the door. I didn’t do it for free. It wasn’t a work-made-for-hire. It wasn’t ghostwritten. It wasn’t written under a male pseudonym. This particular piece didn’t have any of the “yeah, but” excuses I’ve always attached to prior pieces.

“Yeah, but my name’s not on it.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t get paid for it.”

“Yeah, but it only got published because I know so-and-so.”

“Yeah, but…”

This piece had absolutely no “yeah, but’s.” And yesterday, the check arrived in the mail. Not a huge one in terms of dollar amounts, but huge to me in the milestone it represents. (It’s also the first piece I’ve had published since I officially “came out” and called myself a writer in the professional sense.)

I’ve found I like “yeah, but”-free pieces. I can’t even think of one “yeah, but” for this piece. I didn’t even submit a query or pursue the publisher. They asked me. Kinda cool to realize that even though I’ve made my living solely as a writer since I retired from my VA practice (and actually, even before) there are still little accomplishments here and there that can really set my feet to tappin’. It keeps me grounded both as a writer and as a person. (Even if reality means I now have to go cut the grass in the front yard…all 2.5 acres of it.)

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