Healing Your Subconscious will Make you a Better Writer

I need to improve my writing - it's so flat

I've been writing regularly for about a year now. I don't publish everything I write but I do write a lot of words every day. About  1000 to 2000 words at least.

Despite daily practice, I've felt the presence of a glass wall that was blocking certain aspects of my writing. It felt impossible to expand beyond the confines of that wall. The problem is - I find my writing to be very flat. I find it hard to really bring my true self into my writing. I find it equally hard to write in a way that engages with the readers. I know it's not just my inner critic because I participate in literary review exchange communities and I've received similar feedback from there as well. I struggled to get past this barrier for a long time but without much luck. I was honestly confused. I knew what was wrong but I did not know how to make it right.

When I read articles written by other authors I can feel how their writing interacted with me; how they connect with me; how the author animates the writing through their own personality. 

That's where I want to be, skill-wise, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't get past that glass wall.

An 'aha moment' helped me see the root of my problem

Today morning, I was reading something about Carl Jung and his thoughts on how subconscious processes impact our day-to-day life through seemingly unseen forces.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. — Carl Jung

The contents of the subconscious mind have a tangible impact on how we see ourselves, how we see the world, how we show up in our own lives, and how we interact with people.

Here's when I had the aha-moment.

After having suffered for being too emotionally open and vulnerable, I unconsciously locked up all my vulnerable emotions in a corner of my subconscious mind and locked the door. As a result, I changed in a way where I became very guarded in my day-to-day conversations with people. I stopped showing my true self to avoid any sort of friction or conflict with people.

I realized that how I interacted with people in the real world was also how I wrote.

What's blocking me are all the subconscious processes that have been set in motion by my life experiences. These processes don't show themselves directly. Rather their cues are a personality that does not feel authentic, patterns of self-sabotage, self-deprecation, my own behaviors that confuse me, a feeling of inner numbness, inability to truly connect with people, a certain heaviness of emotion, and many other patterns.

Two solutions

Once I understood the problem, I realized that trying to up my writing skills by working harder wasn't going to yield any results. I had already seen that so it did not take a lot of convincing. I had two thoughts about improving my writing:

1. I needed to take a step back and heal as well as transform these subconscious processes to change the way I interacted with the world in day-to-day interactions as well as how I wrote.
2. Along with the previous solution, which was more of an extension to healing the emotions, I had another thought. Could changing my writing style, even through imitation if needs be, transform my subconscious processes?

Maybe, I could do both: heal my subconscious mind directly to have an impact on my writing and also to deliberately change my writing by imitating writers who are able to be more authentic and heal my subconscious processes.

It seems like a good plan. The former is a tried and tested way; the latter - I don't know. I'm going to experiment with it.

Further resources

As I searched the net, I found two books that I plan to read and work with. I'm sharing the books with the disclaimer that I have not read them as yet but am planning to do so soon.

(Both these links are affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase by following them, it will help me earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!)

1. Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A. Johnson
2. Writing Toward Wholeness: Lessons Inspired by C.G. Jung by Susan M Tiberghien

I'm not a qualified psychologist. I'm only sharing the inner work I am planning to do myself. If you plan to go on a similar journey then I suggest that you first discuss it with a qualified therapist before starting.

Thank you for reading. I wish you good luck, healing, and more expressive writing!!!