Write Naked
I ghost write, I coach writers, I teach writing, and I write. The very best advice I can give anyone who wants to write and have their work make a profound impact on other people is this: write naked. I don’t mean physically naked. You can keep your clothes on if you like. I mean emotionally and spiritually naked.
We all tend to be careful around other people. We don’t want to be rejected. We don’t want to get our feelings hurt, or to hurt other people’s feelings. We don’t want to be offended, and we don’t want to offend.
The Masks We Wear
However, that caution results in us creating these invisible masks that we hide behind in order to protect ourselves from pain. Those masks muffle our voices and make it hard to distinguish what we’re trying to communicate from every other bit of noise our readers are hearing. The more layers there are between us and our reader, the less intimate our writing will be and the less connected the reader will feel to us.
Open Up and Let Them In
If you want your writing to be able to reach inside of them and penetrate their barriers, you have to be the first one to get naked. You must open up completely and let them deep inside you. You must take the risk of being hurt or rejected or misunderstood and allow them to touch the deepest, darkest parts of you. Parts you may be embarrassed or ashamed to admit exist. You must let them see your scars and then share with them not only how you got those but what you learned from the experience.
When you can write naked like that, your words become arms that wrap your readers in a warm embrace and create a safe, comfortable space for them to unburden themselves of the things they’ve been hiding out of shame, fear, guilt, or worry that nobody else would understand them or that they would be condemned or hated for it. You let them see that no matter how dark their darkness may be, and we all have dark parts of ourselves, you can handle it. You can not only handle it, but you can embrace it. You give them permission to accept that part of themselves by accepting that part of yourself.
You Are Not For Everyone
Not everyone who reads your work will appreciate it. It’s not for everyone. That’s okay. Some people will read it and deliberately misunderstand, not because they didn’t find it touching them, but because it hit a spot that hadn’t healed yet and this is how they mentally defend themselves from the truth they didn’t want to see. Some people just won’t get it. They’ve never been there. They don’t have the experience to appreciate what you’re communicating. That’s okay, too.
However, sharing in this way for those who do need your words, who do need that loving embrace, will be the greatest gift you can give them. You will change their whole lives and your message will stay with them long after they stop reading your words. You may never know them. You may never know the impact you’ve had on them. But rest assured, that impact will be there.
Be Bold and Be Real
So, yes, write naked. Let people see your raw, unfiltered loveliness. Don’t hide the scars or the grey or the bulges you’ve acquired. Instead, open up about them. Open up about how you got those and what they taught you or what you’re able to do today that you weren’t able to do yesterday because they are there. Or open up and admit that you aren’t entirely comfortable with them and you haven’t learned to love that part of you yet.
Be Loved
The truth is that you can’t be loved for who you are, where you are, exactly as you are until you are ready to allow yourself to be seen for who you are, where you are, exactly as you are. Let your readers love you. Let yourself be seen.
