Writing Toward Coherence
From word craft to consciousness work, and the reverse psychology of bad writing advice
Sometimes it feels like I am waiting for a breakthrough in our means of communication. A paradigm shift, aided by technology, collective consciousness expansion, or some combination thereof, that allows us to convey meaning more directly and in pure form. Body-implanted neurochips. Shared resonance fields. The extension of the post-egoic from psychedelic and meditative novelty into normative daily reality.
Will the possibility of telepathy and the ability to share subjective experiences on every level—from sensory-motor states to abstract mentalizations—lead to an increase in empathy and understanding? Part of me thinks: How could it not? The very idea evokes a vision of humanity finally softening toward itself, stepping out of misunderstanding and into shared presence. But another part of me knows how adept humans can be—clever, tenacious, stubbornly brilliant—at remaining divided.
Language, for all its nuance, is still a form of symbolic fracture. It breaks the wholeness of experience into categories. And once we divide something—name it, sort it, file it—we often start to align with one piece over another. The simple act of describing often introduces hierarchy, duality, polemics. And so, even as I long for richer modes of expression, I often hesitate. The imaginal rehearsal of diving into a group discussion, a blog post topic, or a story idea can lead me to choose silence instead. The anticipation of misinterpretation. The weariness of translating intuitive knowing into segmented, cautious words. The fear that doing so will schismatize the integrity of being.
And yet once all that internal weather passes, what remains are things still worth sharing. Because we are alive, and what is life if not sharing—from the internal to the external. Ideas. Worlds. Characters. Emotions. Not for validation, not even always for understanding, but because they have been conjured and they want to be known.
At this strange, exhilarating junction where I feel myself finally entering the creative rhythm I once only dreamed of, I also notice a fresh form of existential angst. Not about whether I can create. But about what it means to create now. In this cultural climate. In this fragmented, high-speed, attention-thinned society. A world where the sacred often seems exiled, considered naive or quaint.
For decades, I struggled to truly commit to my writing. I dabbled. Circled. Downward spiraled. Quit and returned. And yet, somewhere deep inside, I had a quiet premonition: I would come into full alignment with it in my fifties. That sense felt ancient and true—but I remember thirtysomething me did not like that answer at all.
Sure, part of me was willing to bide my time. To let life teach me its lessons, to allow the slow accrual of experience to distill into voice. But a much louder part of me, the one steeped in cultural ageism, recoiled. I had absorbed the insidious belief that creativity has an expiration date, that brilliance is youthful by nature. That by fifty, I'd be irrelevant. Or worse: invisible and/or desperate.
The truth? I’ve never felt more creatively alive than I do now.
But getting here meant peeling back the dense layers of self-limiting belief. Releasing the grip of perfectionism. Softening the inner voices that cried, “It’s too late!” or “Why bother?” Those weren’t just doubts; they were inherited cultural scripts, fear-based imprints dressed up as logic. I had to unlearn them.
And interestingly, a lot of mainstream writing advice didn’t help. In fact, it often reinforced the very blocks I was trying to clear.
As a psychotherapist, I’ve come to recognize how writing advice is often delivered from a place of anxiety, control, or unexamined scarcity. So much of it focuses on rules, routines, and the looming threat of creative loss: Write every day or you’re not a real writer. Jot it down or you’ll forget it forever. Don’t wait for inspiration—it won’t come back.
But fear rarely invites authentic flow.
What has helped immensely has been my training in hypnotherapy and psychology. It reminded me of the mind’s vast capacity to recall, retrieve, and reimagine. If something is truly resonant, it will return. The psyche stores it. The soul stores it. And sometimes, letting an idea simmer—unwritten, unnamed—allows it to ripen into something deeper and truer. I often tell clients: if it’s meant to, it will circle back. It’s true for thoughts, insights, and yes, writing ideas.
Some of my most well-formed passages arrived in after months, even years of “forgetting” them. Like a good stew, they needed time in the unconscious to marinate. That’s not laziness; it’s trust.
I’ve also had to walk away from some well-meaning but ultimately toxic writing spaces. I remember a workshop in Berkeley about twenty years ago where the instructor sneered, “Just because you’ve had an interesting life doesn’t mean you’re a good writer.” The class laughed, and I sat there humiliated, wondering what I was even doing there.
Another time, I joined a peer-led critique group where the leader had a strange, almost cult-like hold on the members. The power dynamics were palpable. When I interrupted him (once), people gasped. Then I missed a session. When I returned, the group went icy. No one commented on my submission. They sat in silence, arms crossed, as if I’d broken some unspoken rule. My work—my vulnerable offerings, my creative babies—felt suddenly unsafe. Like the knives were out. So I left.
At the time, I internalized those experiences as personal failures. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I wasn’t good enough.
But later, I re-contextualized them through the lens of power and projection. My presence, my voice, even my mere participation, had disturbed something in the group’s fragile ecosystem. Maybe I wasn’t failing. Maybe I was simply refusing to defer. And that refusal read as threat. Moreover, maybe it meant that my writing was powerful enough to trigger others’ defenses; which in turn reinforced that there was something there worth fighting for.
I began to see how much of modern literary culture is infected by the same zero-sum logic that permeates capitalism: If you rise, I fall. If you shine, I’m eclipsed. But true creativity doesn’t operate that way. Light begets light. And when someone is deeply anchored in their own path, they can cheer others on without fear.
Which is exactly what I found when I worked with Lori Kusatzsky, an editor at a major publishing house. I found her freelancing on Reedsy and hired her for my memoir Adrift in Adulting, and the experience was deeply healing. She was warm, focused, thoughtful—and clearly loved literature. Her success didn’t make her condescending; it made her generous.
This surprised me. I had assumed mainstream editors would be snobbish or dismissive. Ironically, the most dismissive feedback I ever received came from someone in the self-publishing world, who spent our consultation talking mostly about herself and made it clear that she didn’t think someone like me—a "nobody"—should bother publishing a memoir. That encounter stung. But it also clarified something.
Many editors are also writers. And if they haven’t resolved their own creative insecurities, they may (even unconsciously) sabotage others. Especially if your voice is strong. Especially if your story dares to matter.
So now, my rule is this: work with people who are already living in the creative frequency you aspire to. People who’ve made peace with their own path and aren’t triggered by yours. Read writing guides by those who love the process—not those who monetize your doubt. Stephen King’s On Writing. Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write. These are guides written from love, not fear.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I’m coming to see writing not just as craft, but as consciousness work. For me, writing is part of a larger integration—an act of making inner truth external. It mirrors the therapeutic process: nonlinear, symbolic, deeply somatic. When I write, I often feel myself slip into the same trance-space that arises during guided imagery or dreamwork with clients. The imagination becomes a field of emergence, not invention.
And my current speculative fiction projects are an extension of that. These are stories I have returned to year after year, decade after decade. Now it’s time to release them into the wider world. And might I say, the timing feels just right—at this nexus point in our outer sphere. They explore trauma, identity, memory, and liminality. They ask: What happens when reality becomes liquid? When memory becomes code? When communication becomes nonverbal, sensory, direct?
In other words: they ask the same questions that led me to write this post.
So all that as a segue, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be releasing a series of speculative fiction short stories starting at the end of this month. The stories live in a shared universe—one I call the Glitchfall Continuum—where consciousness, technology, and transformation intersect. I’ll be posting more details soon, including excerpts and reflections on the creative process.
The balance between receptivity and action is still a dance. I’m learning to wait without fear, and to move without urgency. To trust that the stories arrive exactly when they’re ready.
Thank you for being here. Let’s keep exploring what it means to speak from the soul in a world that often rewards the fast and flashy. Let’s do more than be fish chasing lures. Let’s keep creating and manifesting toward greater and greater coherence.