Links to wonderful sites and people
who are relevant to
various aspects of Writing from the Deeper Self
On Creativity:
Creativity Portal
www.creativity-portal.com
A wonderful site filled with articles and ideas for creating, whether writing, visual art, or the life of your dreams. I am a featured author there and have a column on "Writing the Book of Your Heart." The other authors listed are very valuable, too. (For example, Shelley Klammer, listed below under "Some of my clients..." is a featured author there too.)
Creative Juices Arts
www.creativejuicesarts.com
Chris Zydel
Chris offers a very freeing approach to painting and visual arts, which can be a very valuable adjunct to writing. Especially as Writing from the Deeper Self comes into the writing through largely nonverbal levels at first, including inner imagery, allowing yourself to work freely with visual images can free up your writing as well.
Collage for Self-Discovery
www.collageforself-discovery.com.
Shelley Klammer
Shelley offers creativity classes and workshops that explore intuition, inner wisdom and healing in Vancouver, Canada. She also journals the intuitive process of her life through art-making on her weblog intuitivecreativity.typepad.com.
On Inspiration:
The teachings and sayings of Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan. Available by subcribing to daily newsletter, "A Bowl of Saki." Go to http://wahiduddin.net/saki/sub.htm. Sample inspiration:
"Purity of mind is the principal thing upon which the health of both body and mind depend. The process of purifying the mind is not much different from the process of cleaning or washing any object. Water poured upon any object washes it, and if there is a spot which cannot be washed away by the water, some substance which can take that spot is applied, to wash it thoroughly. The water which washes the heart is the continual running of the love-stream. When that stream is stopped, when its way is blocked by some object which closes the heart, and when the love-stream is no longer running, then the mind cannot keep pure. ... True happiness is in love, which is the stream that springs from one's soul. He who will allow this stream to run continually in all conditions of life, in all situations, however difficult, will have a happiness which truly belongs to him."
There is a relatively new magazine called Pure
Inspiration, whose focus is just that. To read excerpts, even
submission guidelines (if you're so called), go to http://www.pureinspirationmag.com.
Adam Milgram has a consulting service called "Education for Being." Since the ability to write from the deeper Self is all about Being, you might find his monthly essays heartful and stimulating. Topics have included "Aging Is a Myth," "The Broken Heart of Humanity," "The Balance of Life," "It's All About Love," and many more. To receive Adam's essay of the month, go to http://www.educationforbeing.com/Essays.htm and subscribe.
Writers Giving Their Gifts: A Sampling of My Clients:
Katayoon Zandvakili
www.katayoon.net
Kat Zandvakili, born in Tehran and now living in Oakland, California, first brought to my awareness a memoir she had been working on for about ten years, about her brief marriage to a man who posed as a doctor, a wealthy man, a poet, and a person of impeccable dignity, none of which turned out to be true. I was immediately struck by the exquisite beauty of her writing, and her quest to understand the context of her own upbringing that made it possible for such a thing to have happened to her. When she first brought me the memoir draft, I could see that a profound search into the roots of authenticity was behind it, despite the fact that the subject could easily have been the focus of a "20/20" expose. The resulting book, In the Lap of the Gods: My 8-1/2-Month Marriage to an Impostor, is a powerful and beautifully written story about the very human process of becoming one's true self and trusting one's own experience despite the powerful influences of family.
Kat is also a published writer, whose collection of poetry, Deer Table Legs , won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series prize in 1998. The book's title poem won a Pushcart Prize in 2000. Her work has been published in journals such as Lumina, caesura, Five Fingers Review, Rattapallax, and anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation, Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and the 2007 Norton's Anthology: Contemporary Eastern Voices. An excerpt from In the Lap of the Gods, titled "The Arrest," can be read on her website.
Shelley Klammer
Collage for Self-Discovery (Also see "Creativity" section, above)
The Creativity
of the Moment
Looking back a year in my journal it said, "I rarely
let my mind relax." Mmmm. Often these days I have to right myself. I am
becoming more aware of when I am pushing myself and creating stress in my body
and my mind and when I am relaxing and trusting a higher intelligence to operate
in my life.
This morning nothing
seemed to go right. I already had a full day's agenda listed in my head and
somehow my joyful commitments to myself have become an enforced discipline.
I have a collage commission to complete; I need to plan an art class. I have
so much to “accomplish”. When I am in this state even my creative/spiritual
practices become another task to strike off my list. When I start skating along
the surface of my life, I feel like I must do more to be more.
My daughter has a friend
over and they want to go swimming. I am writing at the computer so I say no.
Then they want to go for a walk. There is a black bear wandering the neighborhood
so I say no. They want to make popcorn and watch a movie. I say ok. There is
a brief quiet in the house. They bore of this quickly and shut off the TV when
the popcorn is all eaten. This is all before 10 in the morning. "Mom, can
we go in the pool?"
I set aside all the doing
I think I should be doing and head poolside with my journal. As I write, I relax.
My legs stick out in the sun and I rest my head in the shade of a blackberry
bush. A monarch butterfly flutters over my journal. Transformation. A hummingbird
buzzes near my ear. Joy. As I look to the sky, my life feels larger.
Under such a wide expanse of
infinite blue I question much of my doing and its undertone of needing to advance.
There is a hunger in me that ignores the creativity of the moment. There is
a wanting that says, “Now is not enough.” Meanwhile the nourishment
that life offers goes on with or without my noticing it. It speaks to me in
symbol and subtlety and in butterflies and hummingbirds. The light dances on
the pool and suddenly I understand that it is not what I do and accomplish but
my attention to the creativity of the moment that moves and transforms my life.
On Getting Published:
[More to come on this. Meanwhile, please go to the "Getting Published" page on this website for insight and information.]
On Self-Publishing:
A very helpful all-around book for self-publishers, Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living gives a soup-to-nuts account of everything you'd need to know (aside from how to actually write the book ~ that's why I'm here) to self-publish. Bowerman has actually made a decent living from his book (paid his bills, taken some vacations), and suggests that if you follow his plan, you can, too. $19.95, available from www.wellfedsp.com.
The “guru” of self-publishing seems to be Dan Poynter, who has a free newsletter you can subscribe to. (He of course offers items for sale, there.) He lists many tips, pieces of valuable information, information on editors, designers, printers, marketing, and much more. http://ParaPpublishing.com, email at DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.
Gigabooks: Info and products for binding paperback books by hand. If, like me, you are a lover of the hands-on process, once your book is ready to be printed, you can actually bind it yourself. I found a wonderful, inexpensive book-binding machine from Gigabooks, and owner Chet Novicki is wonderfully helpful and encouraging. If you have an original printout of your book (words and illustrations), and a cover with a spine, too, you can use photocopy machines to make your copies and bind them with the Gigabooks binding machine. There's a book to teach you how. www.gigabooks.net. Email: chet300@comcast.net.
On Book Promotion:
Francine Silverman’s “Book Promotion Newsletter” (www.bookpromotionnewsletter.com, email: franalive@optonline.net) is primarily contributed to by real authors with real stories about their book-promotion. (Other contributors include consultants, occasionally agents.) It has some very good, innovative ideas. An annual subscription costs under $10.