Feeling My Way Through My Writers Profile
Day 6/31: Blog Your Own Book Challenge
This is my sixth post for the Blog Your Own Book Challenge. In the previous post, I combined the results from two Writer Archetype quizzes to create a unified writer-profile. Here’s what I got.
This is the profile of someone, who as a Spiller, loves to be authentic in their writing. Authenticity is also their shining light. As a Teacher, this person enjoys sharing what they know. They are also well-read and brimming with ideas. Being a Model-Citizen makes them well organized in their research and writing process as well as in the way they present their articles. They like to fact check and back their work with proper research. They are capable of writing clear, concise, and to the point prose. The non-conforming side of this person inclines them to a rich inner life with a tendency towards humor and sarcasm.
I was able to create this profile with help from external sources — quizzes. I often learn a lot about myself through these quizzes but I have also realized that I need to validate this knowledge by feeling through it. I need to validate it by sitting with myself and feeling how my energy expands or contracts as I visualize myself going through these traits. I like to combine what I have learned externally or through the intellect with how it feels in my energy. I feel that it gives me a more accurate picture than either of these techniques would do individually.
So I opened my journal, wrote all the traits from my writer-profile with enough space between them to add comments, closed my eyes, and tried feeling it in my energy.
So, for example, I read the first point in my mind — “I love bringing being authentic in my writing. I prefer writing in an authentic tone as compared to a dry academic tone. I love bringing myself and my life to the table when I write.” It felt perfect. I could feel my energy expand at the thought of being authentic and bringing my life to the table. My energy contracted when I thought of dry academic writing. I knew I had hit the right note with this point.
I repeated this process for all the points from my combined writer-profile and felt my way through them. I felt my energy expand for most points but there were instances when I could feel that my energy contracted. There were times when I got a “good feeling” in my heart and times when I did not feel so good. Once, I also felt a pit in my stomach. Finally, I made a list of all the points that made my energy expand and felt good in my heart.
This is the part of my writer-profile that I want to move ahead with for now. My next goal is to take this list and brainstorm all the different genres of writing I can try out.
Try doing this process if you are confused about what and how to write. First, work with your head to create a writers-profile of yourself; then work with your energy and heart to validate it by feeling through each point.
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll talk about taking this list and brainstorming the possibilities of all the things I can write that give me a feeling of expansion while also playing to my strengths.
