For me, writing is first and foremost a practice of transformation. I’m committed to making artful literature, as best I’m able, but it seems to me that literature is only artful when it truthfully and effectively uplifts the human spirit, mine included, and that the way we writers offer our work to others should also follow this path. Surely I don’t have to lose my bearings to launch a novel!

I believe creative endeavors have their own life, and part of my responsibility as a writer is to serve that life in the world. Often, although not always, that means sharing it. Before I loved writing, I first loved reading, how I assumed I was reading a story when really the story was reading me, changing me, until on closing the covers I woke to the world made new. When my writing ushers readers through this remarkable phenomenon, the creative cycle reaches completion. My work arrives. I believe what is born in solitude reaches fulfillment in relationship. Just because the tasks required to send my work into the minds and hearts of readers go against my grain, I’m not absolved from finishing the labor of creation. It’s my responsibility to support the continuation of what I’ve made as it evolves into others’ hearts and imaginations.

So I posited these questions: Must I be fettered to the whims of my ego and the market economy as I share my work? Or can I continue to be generative and free? Is it possible to approach the period after finishing as an opportunity for continued creativity—perhaps even an integral part of the writing process? What might it look like to stay grounded—heck, even flourish—during this final stage? My answers have become this guidebook. Today, after I finish a project, I use the principles and exercises here to keep myself on a healthy path. . . .

I offer this guide to writers in hopes that we all might be spared some grief. The process I outline here, which I call “the release,” helps us form the habits of mind, heart, and body that support our project’s final flourishing and keep us creatively engaged. This practice isn’t for everyone, nor is it for every project. It’s for those so compelled that we write without guarantee of pay or audience. It’s for those who write in response to the demands of our hearts, who are open to the work of spiritual transformation and committed to serving the life of our creative projects, who want to thrive as we journey into publishing, or not publishing, or whatever transpires after the writing is done. It is for finished pieces whose inner flame still burns.