The Creating & Comfort Store
(Click on "Bookstore")
Writing from the Deeper Self
"Bringing Your Treasures into the World . . ."
Book Development
with Naomi Rose
"Writing from the Deeper Self" Newsletter
Taking out the mystery
about what it takes to write a book
anand making room for the Mystery
that's at the heart of the process.
January 2008 issue:
1. Feature: "A Beautiful Inner Atmosphere"
2. Reminder: "Working with a Book Developer Can Make Your Book Real"
3. Encouragement for the Journey: Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by Attending to What's Inside You"
A Beautiful Inner Atmosphere:
A New Year, A New Chapter of Your Book, A New Chapter of Your Life
I have maintained, for just
about as long as "Writing from the Deeper Self" has existed
(over 20 years, now) that when you write from a deep place, you are actually
rewriting your life. There is something about dipping into the depths
of what presents itself from within, rather than straining to make something
happen on paper from outside, that partakes of the very energetic substance
of life itself, and that has the power to actually change what happens
from there on in. If you have ever allowed yourself to write about something
that has resided in you for a long time ~ even as a vignette, even as
an evocative journal entry ~ bringing it to consciousness and giving it
life through your sensed and felt words, you know what I am speaking of,
here. (And if you have not, you might be intrigued enough to let that
happen.)
In all the marketplace pressure to write a book and publish it and have
it do well commercially (all of which has its place), something sacred
can get lost sight of: consciousness has creative ability. What we focus
on, what we give ourselves to, how deeply and even nonverbally we go within
ourselves and draw that out (the meaning of "evoke," even "educate"
is "to draw out what is in there"), all this has a creative
power, the power to create a lived reality. Our schooling may have given
us the idea that "creative writing" means making something up,
plotting a story and inventing characters and outcomes; but writing that
comes from the deeper Self creates reality in a palpable, energetic, sometimes
even magical way. For what else could you call it when you make room to
give voice to what's in you, and then ~ in so doing ~ you discover that
your life takes a different direction from that point on? You could even
call it an alchemical process.
We think of writing as words. Coming up with words, manipulating words,
using words for effect, and so on. But what is beneath the words? What
is it like to experience an inner atmosphere, beyond words, and then to
express that in words that form the closest equivalent to that inner atmosphere?
This is what it is to truly move a reader, to translate from that deep
and initially wordless place inside you what you experience and are inspired
by. To make yourself available to that inner atmosphere, then, is not
only the way to reach your reader; it is also a way to reach the divine
in yourself.
Opening to newness ~ a new year, a new chapter in your book, a new chapter
of your life ~ makes you receptive to the inner atmosphere. No longer
burdened by the expectations of the past, or the conviction that you know
where things are leading, you stand ready to receive what comes with an
open, interested heart. This availability, this receptivity, is the key
to authoring your life (and your book), based on what is Real. This receptivity
moves you out of the position of actor and into the position of creator.
And once you know what it is like to truly create, you can do this in
any domain. Creating a book that changes a life,creating a life that goes
on a different track from what came before ~ all this comes from the same
place inside you.
When I was a child, one of the things I most loved to do was watch artists
create. My father was an artist in his spare time, and I recall the total
magic of sitting with him at the kitchen table while he wound flour-and-water-soaked
pieces of newspaper around a cardboard cylinder, and slowly ~ in front
of my eyes ~ built up the shape of an emerging head, then added a nose,
eyebrows, lips, hair: and puppets danced in front of me, moving because
of his fingers. In my young and adoring mind, my father had done what
God does: taken lifeless "clay" and turned it into animated
life.
I loved, too, a drawing show on TV (this was many years ago), where an
artist named Jon Nagy sketched lifelife-looking landscapes. He began with
a blank piece of paper, and then made a line here and an arc there, and
slowly, slowly, before my eyes, a shore began to appear, a grassy bank,
and a river touching its rim, and another bank on the other side, and
~ brick by brick, coming out of nowhere and at some point forming something
recognizable ~ an arching bridge linking the two shores. Decades later,
and I can still recall the total, breath-stopping thrill of seeing something
being formed out of nothing.
To be present at these creations, in the act of creation, was as close
as I could then get to what God does. My family had no religion, nor were
things of the spirit discussed. But art had claimed them, and so I got
to watch, with an absorbing passion, how it was that "something"
could come out of nothing. Many years later, the earlier ones full of
self-doubt and straining and despair, I have come to believe that this
very process of creation is one way that we bring God into the world ~
by making ourselves available to what does not yet have form, and through
our receptivity, our yearning, our love, bringing that energetic potential
into realization, into manifest form.
If you begin to look at writing a book in this way, everything changes.
It's no longer an arduous thing, it's no longer only an individual thing,
it's no longer a career move (though it can help with that too). It's
your sacred gift to yourself and to the world. It's your opportunity to
become so much larger than you thought possible, to be an instrument of
the divine and in the process experience such exquisite music. So in this
way, too, writing a book can rewrite your life: not only in terms of the
content, but also in terms of the relationship to the unformed place from
which your yearnings, inspirations, and perhaps even struggles come.
Writing a book is not everyone's calling. It asks things of us: commitment,
perspective, willingness to grow, an intimate relationship with the deepest
place within. It asks us to recognize and move through our fears of self-expression,
of criticism (our own even more than others'), of "what do I have
to say?" Perhaps most of all, writing a book from the deeper Self
asks us to take for real that what touches us most deeply is universal;
that our version of the human story, whatever the designated subject we
are writing about, is actually THE human story, and that the heart-lens
we offer to people we don't even know who will read what we write will
help to penetrate the veils around their hearts, will have a beneficial
effect in their being, will literally help to heal the world.
This hope, this promise, takes courage to envision and to hold onto as
the writing is taking place. The only thing, in my experience, that makes
this possible (other than an adept and deeply supportive book developer!),
is the moment-to-moment connection with the deeper Self. When that is
happening, God is present, and all other concerns fade into the background.
It is enough just to be with that presence, breathing it in and remembering
who you really are. That a book also gets to come out of this process
and be shared with other people, bringing them into the inner atmosphere
you got to experience when deeply with the presence, is a bonus; something,
like a beloved child, that comes from you and goes beyond you, but whose
presence in your life was the gift, itself.
Happy new year. May the book of your life enjoy a beautiful new chapter.
Working with a Book Developer Can Make Your Book Real
Often, it helps a budding or
even advanced book writer to have external guidance along the way, in
the form of a person who has both book experience and deep inner-listening
gifts.
When I work with clients, whether in person (if they are local to the
San Francisco Bay Area) or by phone and email, they get to become clear
on the true desires of their heart, on how to listen to them without letting
the noise of their critical mind interfere, how to honor their own unique
creative pathways, and how to cherish the inestimable gift of their being.This
kind of sacred attention can make the difference between a book that truly
is of your heart ~ and gets to come out into the world ~ and a book that
remains just a wish.
To find out more about who I am and how I work with aspiring book writers,
please click on the menu to your left and read to your heart's content.
And if actual sessions seem beyond you right now, working with my book,
Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by Attending
to What's Inside You (see below), will surely put you on your path.
Encouragement for the Journey: Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by Attending to What's Inside You
If you harbor a dream of writing a book but wonder how to begin,this book is for you (because YOU are the subject)!
Writing a book can be a source of joy, discovery, compassion, and connection
with the divine. But to get to that point, you have to begin.
"But how do I start?" This is the question most of my Book Development
clients come in with, at a loss for a point of entry ~ as if writing a
book were a formula they needed to learn (or learn to crack), rather than
an organic growth that can only come out of them.
Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Challenge of the Blank
Page by Attending to What's Inside You, by Naomi Rose, is my answer,
and my gift, to those of you who seek a way into not only the book- writing
process but your own deepest Self. Once you have the "Aha!"
about this connection, starting your book can actually be fun. Exploring
your own unique creative pathways, how to get through the inevitable fears,
making friends with your "Artistic Brain" as well as your "Linear
Brain," and many more wonderful discoveries await you from right
inside yourself. The gift of this book is that it opens the door so you
can find the treasures already within you, and bring them out into a world
hungry for exactly what you have to offer.
Readers Write:
"I've read your amazing book and have marveled
at your insights and wisdom and warmth. Reading your book was like receiving
a comforting hug of encouragement.
"I love everything about your book ~ the way you've organized it;
the crisp, succinct words of advice that don't hit you over the head;
and the gentle, thought- provoking exercises. The connection of writing
and the heart ~ of the practice of writing as a way to get in touch with
the divinity in ourselves ~ how true! How could this elude us ~ ever?
"Once you have this treasure in your being, you realize how clear
it all is ~ why we write, why it matters. What is interesting to me, too,
is that I have been arriving at this in my own journey ~ and many of these
sentiments are part of my book that I've been working on. But you crystallized
some of this for me." ~ Jane Falla, Literary Associate, The
Lisa Ekus Group, LLC
"I have been reading a little everyday and
have been very comforted by your words. Your advice to force nothing and
push nothing has brought the feelings I have been struggling with home
to me and I feel a blessed permission to regroup and connect within again.
I am understanding how important it is to connect more deeply to myself
and my own life in order to write in a 'connected' way.
"I really enjoyed how you shared the writing process of the very
book I was reading. You include so much of your humanness in it. I do
understand that the writing needs to be a transmission and I thank you
for putting that into words for me." ~ Shelley Klammer, author,
The Art of Self-Discovery
Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by
Attending to What's Inside You, by Naomi Rose. $17 print,
$12 e-book. For purchase details, excerpt, and reviews, please click on
"The Creating & Comfort Store."