2. Writing in right relationship

If you’re dedicated to mastering the writing craft... you may be missing out on discovering your most powerful storytelling.

Before you object: No, this isn’t a pass on learning writing skills.

But powerful, transformative storytelling is more than craft mechanics like dialogue, structure, character arcs, or even themes. It’s more than a series of interlocking parts with the goal of making readers feel or think a certain thing.

Deep storytelling is a living relationship between you, your story, and your reader. And as writers, it’s our responsibility to cultivate right relationship at each of these points of the storytelling web, instead of simply pushing a reader’s buttons to get a predictable response.

In this episode, we’re exploring how “unlearning mastery” (and reclaiming our own connection to the page) can help us create work that fully calls forth each reader’s individual humanity.

That’s how the act of storytelling becomes a relationship—and an encounter your reader will remember long after your book cycles off their Kindle carousel.

(After you tune in, check out the follow-up tips below to start cultivating right relationship in the most important part of your writing practice.)

Writing praxis tips

Writing in right relationship may ultimately be about the way your work is received and the impact it has in the world. But it starts with your own experience—with how you encounter your story when you show up to the page.

At the end of the episode, I posed two core questions for myself and for you:

1. What’s the first thing you want to unlearn when it comes to your relationship with your storytelling self?
2. What’s a real action you could take to start unlearning that?

Maybe you have an immediate instinct on what to unlearn and how to begin shifting your writing experience. But if not, here’s a more concrete way to feel into it.