What Does Interiority Have to Do with The Author’s Compass?

How Understanding Our Inner World Helps Us Navigate an Authorship Career

The Authorship Chart serves as a map that lays out the landscape of an author’s career.

I created The Author’s Compass when I realized I used the authorship chart as a guide.

The map helps me know where I am in my career. The Author’s Compass helps me see which direction to take. I’m excited to know it will help other authors too.

Within this compass are three major parts:

·       Writing

·       Interiority

·       Business

In the last post, I discussed The Author’s Compass and the subsection about writing. The Author’s Compass doesn’t teach you the craft of writing because others, such as Clennell Anthony, my coauthor for Keep Creating!, are far more skilled than I am.

Instead, it guides you to acknowledge the various aspects of writing and an authorship career. It helps you see where you spend your time.

And then there’s the personal growth we go through while juggling life and our careers. I call this interiority.

In this post, I explore this concept because it makes up one-third of the author’s compass.

Interiority

Interiority is what happens inside us—our thoughts and feelings. It’s what makes those juicy characters in your favourite novel. Without feelings and thoughts to flesh them out, characters are wooden, flat, and uninteresting.

As humans, we’re full of interiority because we know what we’re thinking, even though our subconscious often runs the show. Yes, the subconscious has a bearing. Some call the subconscious our shadow self.

The aspects of interiority include:

·       Accountability partner

·       Learn

·       Mindset/Mind traps

·       Collaborate

·       Connect

·       Organize

All of these start with us, but they include others because unless you are a hermit living on your own, with zero contact with any other living being, you will interact with others. How well you interact and how you interact starts with you.

So, let’s delve into each of these in more detail.

 Accountability partners

Yes, we can have an accountability partner, but first we decide that we want one, and then we may be an accountability partner in return. We also need to agree on how we want our accountability partner to hold us accountable, and vice versa.

 Learning

Converting information into knowledge involves many things.

For the author, it includes the craft of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing.

This category also covers understanding yourself, how your mindset influences you, and which mind traps block or restrict your progress. It’s all interior work.

To keep the overwhelm at bay, check out the authorship map, and learn bit by bit as needed. The author’s compass guides you to which bit is best to learn when.

Over time, you’ll put your knowledge to work and in turn pick up experience.

 Mindset and Mind Traps

The three parts of The Author’s Compass—writing, inner life, and author business—are shaped by mindset and mind traps.

They also play a large role in how we navigate life. My focus is on how they influence authors and their careers.

 Mindset and mind traps aren’t always easy figure out because many remain hidden in our subconscious. Once you are aware of them, you’re better able to choose what to do with those thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Mindset: a can-do attitude/can learn what I need to—or-—I can’t do that/I can’t learn; for example, I can learn what I need to write a book and create an authorship career.

Mind traps: everything you tell yourself and your feelings about who you are in the world. They include thoughts, feelings, and emotions about these mind traps. For example, whether or not you accomplish your goals, fear of writing the book you’ve always wanted to write and worry about how others will receive it.

Collaboration

Successful creatives team up with fellow artists, editors, publishers, and others in their creative circle. This collaboration is valuable for the second set of eyes. In turn it creates a stronger piece of work than when you work in isolation.

To collaborate, you need to examine your mindset and mind traps because they will either help you or hinder you when you collaborate.

 Connection

Connect to your readers and fans. After all, they are why you create the work you do. When you connect, you create community.

 Organization

Organize your words, stanzas, and paragraphs. That’s only one aspect of what organizing means to the creative person.

There’s your schedule, your publication, your office, and your life. There are various ways to organize to accomplish what you set out to do. Without it, we’d get nothing done.

You are the CEO of your business and your life. You get to design how it looks and is.

 Summary

To sum up, the interiority topics I discussed are accountability partner, learning, mindset/mind traps, collaboration, connection, and organization.

I’ve placed interiority front and centre in the author’s map, The Author’s Compass, and interiority itself.

Mindset and mind traps are at the heart of who we are. Our internal state often dictates our actions.