Your Writing Matters – Book Excerpt

Hello friend! Today I am chatting with Keiko O’Leary, author of Your Writing Matters: 34 Quick Essays to Get Unstuck and Stay Inspired. Keiko helps writers see the big picture while taking meaningful action today. She is a writer, editor, artist, and speaker. A leader in San José, California’s literary community, Keiko teaches workshops and organizes the long-standing writing group Write to the End. She writes short pieces, including poetry, flash fiction, and essays.

Let’s welcome Keiko and learn more about the book. You will also find a book excerpt after the interview. 🙂

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Get to know the author: Keiko O’Leary

Welcome to Armed with A Book, Keiko! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hi Kriti, and hi readers! It’s great to be here. 

I love helping writers get their work into the world, whether through the workshops I teach, as an editor and publisher, or through my own writing. It’s always my goal to inspire people to answer the call to create. I hope I can inspire you today.

What inspired you to write this book?

I’m inspired to help people answer the call to create. It’s so easy to get stuck, or to think you can’t do it even though other people can, to think there’s something special about them that you don’t have. Your projects need to exist; there are people who need them desperately, and you’re the only one who can make them happen. I wrote Your Writing Matters to help you get past the stuck parts, to help you stay inspired so that you can create what’s in you to create.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

The earliest essay in Your Writing Matters is from 2011, so about 11 years. Of course I worked on many other things during those years, including giving birth to my second child and raising my two kids.

What makes your book unique?

Whenever you’re feeling stuck, you can open this book to any essay and find inspiration. I’ve tried to be the reader’s friend, to take the journey with them, to walk by their side as a fellow writer and talk about the challenges and difficulties we all face, and to hold the perspective that helps people get work done: your writing matters.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

I wrote Your Writing Matters for anyone who wants to write, whether or not they feel comfortable calling themselves a writer. Who else might enjoy it? People who love books, stories, poetry, or art in any form, as well as anyone who wants to create something that springs from their true self.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

Your work matters. My message is not just for writers, but for anyone who feels called to make something new in the world. What you want to create can make a difference in someone’s life, so please create it and release it. 

Do you have a favourite quote or chapter in the book that you find yourself going back to?

“You deserve to create what’s in you to create.” 

If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!

What is the most useful answer I can give to this question? Someone who a reader can actually seek out and get help from. Here’s my advice: seek out other writers, in person if you can, but online in real time works too. Join organizations that resonate with you. Meet people who will encourage you; make friends with other writers. Find community. 

I do have a specific recommendation: ProlificWriters.Life. It’s a supportive and professional online writing community with live classes and live writing sessions (Yes, you get to sit and write with other humans. It’s wonderful.). I hope to see you there!

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Book Excerpt from
Your Writing Matters

You Don’t Have to Be Special, You Just Have to Stick Around

I always think the authors I love are magic, that they are somehow different from me, and that’s why they are successful (famous, published, whatever). But that’s not true.

What does Galway Kinnell have that you don’t have? What does Mary Oliver have? Nothing! (Or nothing that you can do anything about.) The only difference is that they kept at it. For years. And years. You can’t control things you can’t control, like luck or inborn talent (if there is such a thing). But here are three practices that you can control. They will make a difference:

• Practice Persistence—keep going! Usually this means taking some sort of action: writing, revising. Some days it might seem like you’re not going anywhere, but even if you’ve lost all hope and can’t take any action today, if you say to yourself, “I’m still here,” that’s persistence.
• Build Skill—most of what people think of as talent is actually skill. If you want to get good at something, you can. All you have to do is study. My definition of study has three parts:

1. find people who are good at what you want to do,
2. see what they do to get better, and
3. do that.

• Seek Community—connect with people in your field. Meet other writers, editors, anyone who does something related to what you do. Write charming notes to authors you admire. Go to events. Make your own events. Join organizations. Make friends with people who understand what you’re trying to do and who want to help you succeed.

The reason community is so important is that it helps you do the other practices. Keep going? Much easier if your friends are doing it too. Improve your skills? Hey, let’s take a class together. Humans are social animals. Other people are a huge biological influence on your behavior. You can use that to your advantage instead of letting it bring you down.

There’s a fourth practice that you probably need. It’s totally fine to write just for yourself, and that’s enough for many people. But if you’re reading this, it’s probably not enough for you. If writing is your art, you need to release your work. The pile-up-great-work-in-a-drawer method pretty much only ever worked for Emily Dickinson (and, by the way, she actually did submit her poems). You don’t have to show people right away; you don’t have to show everything; and you definitely don’t have to show it to everyone. But the basic message is this: do the above three things, and be willing to let your work make its way into the world by whatever means makes sense at the time, and you give your work its best chance to make a difference.

You deserve to create what’s in you to create.

So please, stick around. Control the things you can control: keep going, improve your skills, seek out community, and release your work. Give yourself the chance to succeed.

Footnotes:

 ¹ Please read Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.

² For more about charming notes, read Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life.

³ See “Don’t Show Your Work to Your Friends” in Your Writing Matters: 34 Quick Essays to Get Unstuck and Stay Inspired.

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Interested?

Find this book on Goodreads, Storygraph, and Amazon. I will be back with a review as soon as I can!

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Learn more about Keiko on her website KeikoOLeary.com and connect with her on Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter and Amazon. She is also a publisher and you can send her your work. She works with Betsy Miller at Thinking Ink Press.

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