“Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one way — go into yourself.
Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.
This above all — ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?
Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple ‘I must,’ then build your life according to this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.
Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1903)
My two all-time favourites, Rilke and Bukowski, both say, don’t do it unless it comes bursting out of your My two all-time favorites, Rilke and Bukowski, both say, don’t do it unless it’s bursting out of your soul. What I say: don’t wait for the muse. She doesn’t exist. You are the muse.soul. What I say: don’t wait for the muse. She doesn’t exist. You are the muse.
If there’s a topic you want to write about, don’t sit around waiting for inspiration to hit: immerse yourself in the feeling. Ecstatically, physically, through music, scent, heat, cold, flood every sense and cell, and invite or revisit every memory that matches the emotion you’re about to name.
If there’s something you want to write about, don’t wait for inspiration to strike like lightning from outside. Don’t sit around waiting for the perfect moment or mood. Dive into the feeling. Become the feeling. Become the story, and then write from that place. Let the words flow not from your mind, but from your body, not from your thoughts, but from your experience pulsing through you. Don’t think your way into the story; live your way into it. Use music, scent, cold or heat, memory, breath—anything that harmonizes your body with the emotion you’re about to name.
You have to build the frequency inside you. You have to become the experience, not just describe it. Let it flood your senses, let it take over your breath, your posture, your skin. Let your cells remember. Let the story move through you as if it’s happening now, because in some part of you, it still is.
Most people struggle with writing because they’re trying not to feel too much. But the most beautiful things ever created were born in fire, in the agony of truth that no one else wanted to name, and that the writer refused to escape.
So suffer, mercilessly. Let it hurt. Let it wreck you. Let the pain tear through your body and pour itself into your words. Because the more your words burn with your truth, the more they will find the ones who are burning too, but hiding from the flames.
Your words become a mirror, just for a moment, and in that moment, someone sees themselves. They stop running. The moment they stop running, they start feeling. They remember. And for those few minutes, they are free- because you dared to go first.
This is the core of what I teach in the Somatic Writing Method: how to stop writing from your mind and start writing from your body. How to let the story emerge naturally through the very tissue of your being. How to move from concept to lived experience.
You know, I believe that words that change people’s lives doesn’t have to be clever, but they have to be felt, and for them to be felt, they must come from that very place of the burning hell of the bottom of your soul.
How exactly do you do this? This lies at the core of my Somatic Writing Method: learning to become the vessel for what’s most alive in you and expressing it in words that break down walls. It’s about letting your body speak in a language older than thought and crafting stories that are truer than anything your mind could ever produce. Experience it HERE.
