This summer I’ve been thinking long and hard about changes I want and need to make in my writing. Last weekend, after putting together a list of reader recommended books on craft and the writing life, I began reading Steven Pressfield’s Turning Pro. The book is not on the list, but his book The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles is, and when I was checking that the links were current, I found Turning Pro.

Turning Pro isn’t about whether we earn money. It’s about mindset. Attitude. Commitment. Real change—the kind of change that marks a difference between before and after. It’s about living the life we know we should regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Like The War of Art, Turning Pro is a short book but one that took several days to read because I found myself stopping after sections like this:

“Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar. Its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.”

And this:

“In the shadow life … [we] pursue callings that take us nowhere and permit ourselves to be controlled by compulsions that we cannot understand (and are not aware of) and whose outcomes serve only to keep us caged, unconscious and going nowhere.”

And this:

“Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.”

And this:

“What happens when we turn pro is, we finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads. At last we find the courage to identify the secret dream or love or bliss that we have known all along was our passion, our calling, our destiny.”

In the past week, I haven’t blogged here in part because every time I began, I kept thinking about Pressfield’s concept of shadow. Blogging is, for me, right now, a shadow activity. It hasn’t always been, but at this point in my life it is. I get ideas for shadow activities all the time. A couple of weeks ago, for example, it occurred to me to build on this summer series and put together a short ebook to offer to subscribers, something often recommended as a way to build email lists. I went so far as to think of a title and imagine the layout. Yes, I would enjoy the process, both the writing and the technical aspects. Yes, it would be a good way to attract more readers. But is it a good idea for me, right now? Unequivocally NO.

The inner journey I’ve taken this summer has led to an unexpected but perhaps inevitable conclusion: I keep finding ways to turn my back on my own ambitions. My ambitions aren’t about being on the best-seller list (as nice as that would be, it’s not what drives me) or getting a certain number of social media followers (if anything, I’m leaning more and more away from social media) or being known by other people as a certain kind of writer. Instead, they have to do with how I think of myself as a writer, the kinds of writing I devote myself to, and what I choose to feed my mind and heart every day. The “still, small voice” in my head identifies with clarity what I should be doing, what I should be writing. It paints for me a vivid picture of how to spend my days and emotion and energy. It’s time for me to listen.

To the readers who followed along this summer and offered your own experiences and ideas, thank you. I remain a devoted blog fan and reader and will continue to follow and support other writers’ posts. In no way do I want to imply that blogging is a shadow activity for everyone. When I first started blogging in 2010, it was very useful for me at the time, and has been at other points, as well. And, of course, for many writers, blogging is an integral part of their writing ambition or even their main writing calling or so much fun that it’s worth it.

I know I am stopping this series in the middle, but it has served its purpose and come to its end, and I’m very excited to move on to the next phase. (And, yes, a little scared, but that’s a good sign, right?)

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Harriet “Hattie” Whitcher was a writer, although I’m not sure she thought of herself as one. Many of her entries are written in the kind of shorthand one uses when writing only for oneself, but she never failed to notice and record details that most people miss. One of the touching aspects of the following entries is that they show how the active and wide community that she loved in the first years of her marriage slowly changed as she and her husband, Will, aged (they did not raise any children of their own), so that, by the end of Hattie’s life, she often missed the companionship of traveling with neighbors to races and ball games, horse shows and picnics.

All of the photos below and in the video above are from the July 4th, 1933 celebration at O’Kreek, South Dakota, and were most probably taken by Maggie Gehlsen, who was a live-in helper to Hattie at the time.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Enjoy.

July 4, 1933: Barbecue, Program, Clowns, Music by Orchestra, Indian dances, ball game, O’Kreek vs. Wood and O’Kreek won, races, Kitten-ball, dance in evening with orchestra (The Four Aces or Bailey’s) and a wonderful crowd. I saw Mrs. Charles Sinclair (Edith Brownfield) and boys of Winner as they were at the Celebration with Carl Anderson’s. We ate only sandwiches from the stand and ice cream and pop in the evening.

July 4, 1939: Bright, hot, and south wind real strong, clouded in S.W. and a regular dust storm for awhile in afternoon. Le Moyne chored and went home horseback on Gold Dust, and came back at 3 p.m., and he said there was a real dust storm here, and Will and I went to Abbotts at 11 a.m. They got ready and filled our car with gas from their barrel, so we all went to White River, via O’Kreek and Mission, and was a real dust storm there, could scarcely see horse racing, calf roping, and no ball game until as we were leaving grounds, Murdo and Wood started to play.

We got home at 6:30 p.m. and all clouds were gone to the east, no rain here, but a beautiful evening. A large crowd of people at White River to a Free Celebration of the 4th of July.

July 4, 1934: This is the Glorious Fourth of July. North wind, dusty but bright until I p.m., was cloudy during Hidden Timber ball-game between part of Longview and Hidden Timber, rest substitutes, and a few sprinkles of rain then clear eve.

After morning work Elmer took Maggie to Armbusters, and she and Rita went in Carl Gehlsen’s Car to Sell’s, and Elmer, Carl, Mary and Josephine Armbuster went to Valentine Celebration. Harry and Louise and family came and the men made ice-cream. We ate dinner and went to Hidden Timber Celebration, back in evening and Ed, Rena and Yvonne were here butchering an E. R. A. calf gotten at Boarding School. Harry got a quarter, also we did, all went home.

July 4, 1942: I put things, quilts, pillows, a stool, some lunch and dishes and clothes in suitcase. Washed all dishes. We left for O’Kreek, got tire fixed that went flat on Will coming from Valentine, went to Gregory S.D., saw the Ft. Meade, S.D. Soldiers Parade, then left for White Horse Ranch, south and east of Naper, Nebraska, about 6 miles southwest of The Point between the rivers, but first we crossed Niobrara Bridge south of Naper.

Folks were eating lunches or had finished, we came in from the west side of the place, was a large pasture and white horses in it, and an arena built northeast of trees, and large trees around the buildings. After trained white horses, cow and bull and dog performed by 5 girls and 4 boys, ages about 9 to 17 years old. They had a rodeo, but we went to the ranch buildings, then to Point, Butte, Spencer, then our old home, 1 mile down railroad track from Spencer.

July 4, 1943: Sun shone bright and nice in general until evening, then there was a real rain at Mission and east to north of Antelope Creek, for we got stuck in Charles Merchen’s yard, and Bob had to pull us out with their tractor to the highway east 1/2 mile, and Wm Van Epps, Floyd and Margie and Dean Totten, Wm Abbott, Mrs. Cora Ann, Billie, Delores and Mrs. Anderson (Rika), Mrs. Abbott’s mother, were behind us. They went off the road towards the ditch, but got out.

We started to have trouble in mud north of Sazamas. A bunch of young men pushed us up the hill. I think it was Sazamas. Then at Carl Andersons, Van Epps, Totten and Abbott pushed, south of River. Need never bothered. We got home from Boarding School Show, Road to Morocco, starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour. Was a good show all in all. [Film clip below from Road to Morocco]

July 4, 1950: Rained and rained this forenoon, and it kind of quit in p.m. Sun was shining brightly when I got up from a nap at 4 p.m. Will lay down also as he has heart pains, so we had to stay home this late p.m. in such a beautiful part of the day, and I had such a lonesome feeling, felt as if we were entirely out of the world.

July 4, 1954: Bright, hot day but cool in Valentine Park. Lunch all fixed and in the car. Got ready, went to Rosebud, no one at Ball Park, so went on to Rosebud and looked around some, on to Valentine to Park to eat dinner, was nice, water from spring so cool. To Rodeo. Had supper at park. Up town to wait for drive-in, first to Fish Hatchery. Never saw anyone we know.

“[N]otice what you noticed. No, go further: tell yourself the audacious thing that because you noticed, it matters.” ~ Linda LaPlante

Back when I was a classroom teacher, I overheard a conversation during those minutes before class when students wait with varying degrees of patience for the clock to signal the time to begin.

“I think parts of my brain are missing.” This came from a tousle-haired, thoughtful young man in the second row. I said something about that being more true for me all the time, thinking he was talking about poor memory or lack of attention.

“I don’t feel envy. Not ever. I don’t think I ever have. That’s not normal.”

This was not what I expected to hear. The students in front of him were silent, as was I.

“You’re lucky,” another student told him. “It’s not a good feeling.”

The second hand struck twelve.

Why did those 30 seconds or so stay with me to the point that I’ve remembered the scene and the words and the faces long after I’ve forgotten the topic of the class that day or even the names of the students involved?

Alice LaPlante offers an answer in The Making of a Story:

“[C]reative work comes from noticing. You are being given a warning, an intimation of something, and that something is the creative urge, sometimes buried quite deep in your subconscious, telling you that something matters, there’s information and intelligence there to be considered, material to uncover there, memories and associations to explore.” (p. 36).

This is why many successful writers keep notebooks, to record those intimations, to write ourselves a reminder of what we’ve noticed. LaPlante tells us that, as writers, we’ve “always noticed”:

“There have always been things that caught your attention, piqued your interest, or otherwise caused you to pay closer attention to something than perhaps someone else would. Indeed, the very individual nature of noticing is your greatest strength as a writer.” (p. 35, emphasis added)

Do you ever find that you can’t explain to others why a conversation or an event or even the look in the eyes of the person crossing the street in front of you is interesting, memorable, even important? When you try to share the import of what you notice, do others look at you as though you are speaking in Klingon?

What if your drive to notice is a strength, not something that’s weird, and, what if instead of trying to talk about it, you write it down?

Perhaps one of the best, small changes we can make during a self-styled writing retreat is to begin to keep a notebook of what we notice.

This summer I’ll be posting here about ways to turn the summer into a DIY writing retreat: three months of prioritizing our writing life without the travel or expense or disruption of formal seclusion. My goals are not only to finish some writing projects by the end of August, but, more important, to gain and strengthen habits of thought and action that I can take with me into the fall.

To that end, I will be posting every day during June, July, and August—some pieces will be short, others longer, with a few updated posts from years past. Main topics, because they are what I am most interested in at the moment, will be these:

• Writing Practice
• Writing Mindset
• Reading as a Writer
• Goals and Organization
• Digital Life and Social Media

Please join me and share your own experiences, goals, and successes along the way! There is no sign-up required, no fee or commitment. Just a willingness to try new approaches and mindsets, to be honest with ourselves about what really keeps us from our best writing selves, and to put writing front and center each day in whatever ways we can, regardless of how busy or crazy the rest of our lives (or the world) feels. Throughout the series, my guiding purpose is that when we are writing well—meaning writing regularly and with purpose—a writing life really is its own reward.

Tomorrow’s Post: The Deep Work of Writing