Keepin' It Real

Staying true to yourself in a world of creative comparison

Hey there, I’m Edward Holmes, a hope-filled writer, publisher, poet and podcaster here to share stories and poetry with you and for you. Take a moment to like this post so that others, like you, can find lines of life in their creative journey. If my words bring you hope, consider subscribing for free. It’ll make me pretty happy.

Creative Lens

Everyone has a creative muse. Someone wrote something that spoke life into you, and to this day, fragments of their voice live within the walls of your creative life. This is a good thing, and often these voices help us to find our own, the more we write.

The key here is realizing that other creatives can serve as a framework, but you have a unique work to produce on your own.

If we’re not careful, we’ll invest so much time observing everyone else, that we’ll lose sight of who we are.

“Get In Where You Fit In”

In the summer of 2019, I released my first full-length poetry collection to the world, and every day leading up to its release, I did what any self-published author would do: check every library, bookstore and online rating to see what made a best seller… sell. Jenae Cecelia, Atticus, Courtney Peppernell, and Rupi Kaur broke bookshelves with their genre-jostling books.

Two lines from Atticus would shatter the early algorithm, while Andrea Gibson’s new album would make you cry alone in the bathtub, and there I sat with a 150 page manuscript on hope, healing and Jesus.

I couldn’t put my finger on the “secret sauce,” but poetry was back in black, and everyone was reading it. But would I be enough? I began to worry about my own collection and its reception among readers as a new author.

“What do I have to offer that hasn’t been said?”

“Who wants to read what I’ve written?”

“My poetry has too many stanzas. Short is in, long is out.”

Comparison crept in, and with it came the edits. Dozens of poems were clipped from my upcoming collection, and for good reason! They weren’t raw or dark enough. They were too bright and too hopeful! There weren’t nearly enough poems on romance or trauma for it to sell well, at least that was the narrative social media analytics told.

With a few weeks left till launch, and a now chaotic manuscript, I began to loathe the consumer culture in our digital age of soulless haiku and micro-poetry.

Two F’s

Comparison will cause us to either freeze or forsake. To elaborate, when we don’t spend enough time familiarizing ourselves with how talented we truly are, we’ll find ourselves in a cycle of either inaction or self-abandonment. I had spent so much time surveying what content “sells” or who “made it” that I stopped writing altogether. I was stuck. Furthermore, I had begun to forsake who I was as a creative writer in order to carve a way into the literary world.

Comparison is a thief, and a deadly one.

Keep It Weird

Let’s face it. Your “normal” is someone else’s “weird,” so why invest time worrying about what’s cool? The words you speak might be absolutely vital to your future readers, so instead of doom-scrolling yourself into submission, give the world what you’ve got! If we’re not careful, we’ll fall into a paralyzing mindset of either completely forsaking ourselves or cease creating all together.

Share your work. Share the weird stuff and the awkward moments.

Get a couple of rejection letters and get your feelings hurt, but hit submit!

Improve your writing and share it again, but never stop creating.

The rest of the story? Well, I did go on to release my book, and I decided to keep everything in just as it should be. No, Bravery & Brevity never sold incredibly well, and looking back, it’s not my best work, but it’s a book that holds a very special place in my life to this day because I chose to be authentic to myself…

Before we part ways, I’ll share with you a poem from it’s pages. Let me know what you think.

It’s a disease, and I know that it’s killing you.
Been here for years, and I see that it’s still in you, stealing you,
stuck in you,
stifled, still
instilling your stagger.
The dagger
of family betrayal
they know, left you unstable.

Still trippin’

over the memories you were told to put at ease.
You’re older,
a little bolder like a pebble but colder.

Shoulders numb
from the burden of being bitter.
She was a quitter,
he was a hitter,
split your

security jaggedly down the middle. “It’ll be okay,”
they say, “Time heals all wounds.”
but some decay takes decades
or more to restore.

Healing is coming,
running to overtake the bitter
and our strength will rise,
so let her lead you down that corridor
once more for grace and mercy unlock the door and forgiveness soothe that heart of yours, it’s true.

Behold.

Be held.

Be healed &

press through.

- Topical time treatment

📷Instagram / ✉️edwardlholmes@yahoo.com /📺 YouTube / 🎙️Poetry Podcast