Naomi Rose can help you with: how to write a book, writing a book, short story writing, writing child book, tips on writing a book, steps to writing a book, writing your own book, writing a non fiction book, Book coaching, Book-writing guidance, Help writing your first book. Writing from the deeper self.

The Creating & Comfort Store

(Click on "Bookstore")

ABOUT

NAOMI ROSE

Naomi Rose is an award-winning writer,

with over 30 years' experience in the publications field

as a writer, editor, consultant, and book developer

and How

Writing from the Deeper Self

Came to Be Created

There is always a tendency, in a professionally oriented autobiographical sketch, to list one’s accomplishments and credentials in order to secure a sense of confidence in the reader that this person–to whom you are considering entrusting your time, money, and vulnerable confidence–can indeed do what she claims to do, and will help you to achieve your goals.

I have these accomplishments and credentials, and I will tell you about them, and it’s likely that they will impress you and soothe away your own fears and doubts about being able to begin and sustain and complete a book.

But before I do, I wish to begin not with the adult packaging that must be part of a presentation, but with what, essentially, is under it. After all, in writing your book, you will–in some form–be discovering and writing the story of your life, even if behind the scenes. So I’d like to begin by telling you who I am, apart from my credentials, and what brought me to be able to do the work I do with my clients–perhaps, at some point, with you.

Loving Books as a Child

As a child–like many children–I loved reading books. Books were my window on the world, my transportation into other realms, and a much-needed mirror of my inner experience that was largely absent from my everyday life. Books could tell me things about myself I knew to be true but had never had words or context for. Books could also show me things about myself I had never seen before, enlarging my sense of what was possible and who I might be. I felt these authors had some secret understanding of me that was missing in my outer life–that they connected me to people and worlds I had never actually met in a way that everyday reality did not even acknowledge.

The world inside books permeated me. They formed the pictures behind my half-closed eyelids that I took with me into my daytime world. I could climb into a book like a snail curled in its shell and live there for days at a time. Even at night, when I closed the covers of the book and lay beneath my own covers at night in bed, the world of the book still stayed with me and sometimes wove me into it. And on awakening, it colored my days with its potent atmosphere, offering alternatives to the life that seemed hard and severed somehow, vaguely incomplete.

Many children love to read, and are anchored in themselves through books. But my situation was unusual in that both my parents were writers, themselves. So not only did they approve of my bookishness–to them, it went without saying that a human being, including a child, would be like this. I read many of their voluminous books well before I could understand them. I simply inhaled them, breathing in their atmospheres, their energies, their cadences and patinas of color, their music. Had anyone asked me, "What was that book ‘about’?" I could not have said, at the time. But it had entered me as surely as a sunset by the edge of the water, the light glinting off each receding wave. So I knew things before I knew how to know what I knew. And I didn’t know I knew them.

Although my parents were writers, there seemed very little connection between the deep sensuous life that the books I read opened to me and what I observed happening with my parents when they were actually writing. Their faces contorted in what looked like great pain, or great concentration, as they sat at the typewriter, staring at the paper. There would be these periods of strained silence–then, suddenly, the Muse or something having struck, they would lean forward and begin to tip-tap on the typewriter as fast as their hunt-and-peck ways would permit, and a page, or several, would roll off the platen. Then they would stop in mid-move, rip out a page, ball it up, throw it away, angrily smoke a cigarette, and eventually go back to their labors.

Stories got written this way, radio scripts, plays. Some got published, some never did, some got stored in closets and stayed there like skeletons. Some even paid for our upkeep, at different points in our lives. But one thing was never in evidence. And that was that writing, itself, was a joy.

The "Family Business"

It was assumed by my parents that I would be a writer, something like inheriting the family business. Whether they saw this as a matter of nature or nurture, I could not have said. There was their inclination to turn life into stories–the "nature" part of the legacy. And there was their vast collection of books, all of which were available to me, as well as their tendency to "talk shop" at the dinner table–to discuss the characters of a novel as though they were equally as alive and present as the children–the "nurture" part. Everything seemed set in place for me to follow in their footsteps as a writer. Once, when I evidenced my doubts, my father went so far as to passionately declare, "Of course you’re a writer! You’re a Berton!" [my maiden name], as if that cinched it, irrespective of my desire or ability, or the kind of self-awareness that brings a writer’s inner life out of the woodwork and into distinct, articulated form.

The irony was that, although I was surrounded by the best of stories, and by parents and a culture that was highly, passionately articulate, most of my own ability to express myself through words was a borrowed art, at best. Up until my mid-teens, I retained that pre-analytical direct experience of atmospheres and energies that lives within young children (and mystics, though in a much more consciously aware state). In today’s language, we might say that my right brain was more developed than my left. In those days, however, there was no such awareness. I felt myself to be a person with a rich inner life who could barely communicate its actuality to others in words–only in nonverbal ways, between the lines. Inside, I perceived as an artist, fascinated by color, slope, shape, grain, the balance of elements one with the other; none of the exacting, defining, seemingly limiting skills that being verbally adept suggested. And while, internally, this was exceedingly evocative, it bore almost no relation to the highly intellectual and conceptual conversations–all fueled by a great storehouse of words–going on all around me.

There was another reason why I questioned whether I could, or would, fulfill my parents’ assumption that I would of course take on the mantle of writer. And that was that the older I became as a young person, the more my inner emotional conflicts seemed to mitigate against verbal expression. A great unsaid silence screamed inside me. Words could be brought to bear, but they were imported appendages at best, not extensions of what was inside.

At the age of sixteen, feeling dwarfed by my highly intellectual surroundings at school as well as home, I concluded that if I did not become articulate in self-defense, I would not be able to survive. I would be passed over, humiliated, made invisible–and be doomed to watch it happening. With a desperation born of the will to survive, I determinedly taught myself to speak eloquently, absorbing language and phrases like droughted plants suck in water. Though it was not a labor of love but of despair, its fruits were soon evident. I was holding trickily philosophical conversations with my peers late into the night, I was writing papers in school that garnered "A"s and comments from the teachers about the eloquence and persuasiveness of my writing. But what no one but me knew was that these words were attached to me no more solidly than a string to a kite. They were outside me; they did not come from me. I became a victim of my own success, caught in the gap between the outer show of prowess–that I, too, might be taken seriously–and the inner knowledge of the empty place where all those words came from, the sense of void at the core.

And so, at some point, this souffle, this well-designed and -fortified puff piece, had to cave in.

What Is So Casually Referred to as "Writer’s Block"

It was when I was in my thirties, and my parents recently passed on, that I began to suffer the anguish of what is so casually referred to as "writer’s block." I carried within me my parents’ admonition to write–to carry on the family "business," legacy, art–but I was empty inside. Or, more accurately, I was so full of unconscious, conflicted emotion, with no one–least of all myself–to tell it to that the very overwhelming presence of unsorted feeling stopped up the expression (whether as a trickle, a stream, a gush, a flood) of whatever was inside me.

For eight years I struggled to write, or make peace with not having "what it took" to be a writer. Neither pole offered respite. I read books on overcoming writer’s block, all of which seemed focused exclusively on external techniques that felt impossibly remote to me. Hope appeared when I read a lovely, human, breathing book about writing by one Brenda Ueland, whose unpatented ways and suggestions were alive and fresh and charming. But halfway into the book, I read her conviction that if one doesn’t have the discipline to get up early every day and write, one cannot be said to be truly a writer. Dashed, I closed the book and didn’t open it again. I didn’t have the discipline to get up early every day and write (and what would I have written?), and therefore, according to her, I couldn’t consider myself a writer; and if I couldn’t, and if I wasn’t, then–born and bred to be a writer–what was I?

In a different variant of the same desperation, I did something new. I went to a psychic–two psychics, actually, though not of the fortune-telling kind, but people who were said to be intuitive and wise. I asked the first one, in a stiff, quavering voice, "Do you see writing in my future?" For if not, then what was all that past about? And what amorphous future could there be for me? She looked at me steadily, for a long, unnerving time. Finally she declared, "No. No, I don’t see anything there."

I was crushed. She knew the unknowable truth, didn’t she? But when a chance came up to consult a second person, said to be even more intuitive and wiser than the first, I took it. In a voice more terrified than the first time, I asked him, "Do I have it in me to write?"

He did not say "No." Instead, he said, quite obliquely, "Make yourself into a person so interesting that your writing will be almost as interesting as you." Did this mean I did have it in me to write? I wasn’t sure I understood. But while I was pondering, he added an offer that lit me up: "Send me what you write, and I will respond."

I envisioned a correspondence, a shaping of my inner being, a caring tutorial. Through my writing, I would become "an interesting person," alive. This was what I had been missing: interest, encouragement, nurturance as a writer–as me. I felt seen into existence. I glowed with possibility. I hummed with hope.

I began to write, to overflow with perceptions. Nothing was too small to notice, to bring my awareness and sense of lost wonder to. I wrote of my first airplane ride, of seeing all the down-to-earth details of the ground lose their randomness and form geometric patterns of streets and grids and blue rectangular swimming pools; of the magic of rising up through the insubstantial, shifting clouds to where the sun, astonishingly, never stopped shining. I wrote of childhood memories, holding my mother’s warm grainy hand, rolling down green forested hills and shrieking with laughter. I became larger and deeper and wider through my writing, through having all this within me to pull out of my forgotten store and share it with a reader, a listener, someone who could see and could mirror and could care.

I mailed the psychic my first batch of writings in a large manila envelope. He never responded.

I stopped writing.

Once, I watched a documentary on a famous pianist–Vladimir Horowitz, I believe. He was shown at home, with his proud wife, and on tour, at the piano, intent and passionate at the keys. He was greeted in cities around the world with warmth and love and gratitude. He seemed to have a rich and talented, loved life. But there came a point in the documentary when his wife confided, as they sat at home, the grand piano clearly visible, that for twelve years her husband had not been able to play. She looked drawn and sad as she said this, as if some terrible mystery had taken over, some agony of self-doubt, some depression, some lock on the life force. Vladimir Horowitz had eventually–it was not said how–been able to return to playing; but those twelve years of barrenness had had their impact on his wife. "Twelve years," she repeated, shaking her head less from bafflement, it seemed, than from compassion.

By now, I no longer knew if I was "supposed" to be a writer. I knew only that it was drummed into me that I should, and that despite the "should," it seemed there actually was something in me trying to get out. But there were no forms in evidence or threads through a labyrinth or sudden, lightning-bolt breakthroughs to bring out whatever was inside. In my life, I had experienced two, seemingly mutually exclusive, poles: the scarcely verbal side, full of evocative, indescribable detail; and the overly verbal side, full of linguistic pyrotechnics unattached to feeling and inner knowing. What else was there? What could make me whole?

The Healing Journey

It was not any literary techniques or training that eventually allowed me to write in a genuine, open, and transformative way. It was the healing work I did on myself.

This was not an overnight thing. To shed the weight one has carried for years—the confusion, guilt, and overweening loss—was hard, and I resisted it. If I let go of all the things that blocked me from becoming known to myself in an intimate way, what would remain of me? Much as I longed to reconnect with the innocent being I once had been, I feared the emptiness I would find at my core, which my writer’s block, though painful, had kept me from facing.

Still, something of value called me. I followed the glimpses of nourishment, allowing myself trickles from their streams. I took classes in psychology and spirituality. I discovered the safe place of my body for the first time in decades, through healing touch and movement. I listened to stories told aloud, in a sacred way and setting. I opened to the spiritual ways of my ancestors, after having pushed them out of reach most of my life.

Again and again, with interruptions and fallings down, the same thing kept coming to my awareness: There were actions to take, but nothing to prove. I could write without knowing everything ahead of time, just by being present and feeling my way. What was in me was good, just as it was. I only had to find out what it was—the baby I had long ago thrown out with the bathwater—and take it into my heart. To look into the unlookable, and love it. To see myself with clear-hearted eyes, and let those eyes gaze outward at the increasingly welcomed world.

Over time, the paralysis of writer’s block began to soften. The rock and the hard place I had felt caught between yielded to something more flowing, less harsh. Being present began to supplant the need to "be a great writer." Being present, while writing, became its own touchstone and joy.

Gradually, I let go of the image of being a writer, and engaged with what was in me from my heart and body as well as mind. This let me sense the difference between trying to make something happen and creating from the offerings of the deeper Self. Pushing resulted in frustration and rigid physical symptoms, including a held-in breath. Creating from and with the deeper Self gave to me even as I gave to it—gave me images, a rich wealth of impressions seeking to come into articulated form, subtle and genuine feelings, even an increase in oxygen through expanded, subtle breath. This way of writing was not a formula—it didn’t mean that every time I sat down to write, something stupendous emerged—but it did mean that if I made the space to listen inside, and to trust what came, something real and beautiful and transformative would come.

When it was clear to me that this really was a way—not a fluke, not a technique, but an entry point into essential being, which could then be shared with others because its words transmitted that state of being from which the words came—I was moved to share this way of creating writing with others, because I knew first-hand how painful it was not to be able to contact that deeper place, and how fulfilling it was to find a way to make that contact. I started to teach, tentatively at first, and found that this approach (which as yet had no name) worked for other people, too. One day in the mid-1980s, while walking down the street and thinking about how healing, not literary skills alone, had opened the path of deep writing to me, a voice from deep within said, "Writing from the Deeper Self." And so the way was named. I experienced this as a gift rather than a personal invention; yet I have been privileged to bring all my early exposure to deep writing, and all my later immersion and training in bringing it about, to bear on my own writings and those of my clients. And to encourage a deep sense of cooperation among writers towards one another, since the deeper Self unites us and needs all of our stories and perspectives.

I taught writing classes for the sheer joy of deep writing for a long time before turning specifically to Book Development. It was one of those evolutions, not a thought-out strategic plan. As an editor, I had primarily worked on books, and liked the long stretch of space allowed to develop a story or idea. Though I could, and had, helped clients write much shorter works, I tended to think in chapters, and liked that. I liked the symbolic parallel between the chapters of a book and the chapters of one’s life, and that they were distinct and yet continuous. And I felt that the depth and commitment of writing a book grew the human being who wrote it, as well as the book that got written, more deeply than a shorter work could.

I love this work. There is nothing like the magic of starting from the "nothing" of beginning, and gently coaxing what’s there in embryonic form to come out into a protected space, so that the inner memories and outer experiences that seek to support and flesh out that soul-conception can anchor themselves in the story of the writer as well as the story of the story.

PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS

I have been a professional, published writer since 1972 (although once Writing from the Deeper Self came along, both the process and the product changed for the better). My published writing spans non-fiction, creative non-fiction, and fiction, and has appeared in books, magazines, journals, and newsletters, including:

ON WRITING:

"Touching Writing," in Massage Magazine, Sept. – Oct. 2003.
"Healing the Writer’s Wounded Life," in Writer’s Connection, December 1986.
Portions written for Writing, 2^nd ed., by Elizabeth Cowan Neeld. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1986.
"Writing for Psychologists," in Association of Humanistic Psychology Journal, 1987.
"Listening Your Book into Being" and other articles featured in the online site, Creativity Portal (www.creativity-portal.com)
"Inspired Writing" in True Inspiration Magazine, 2007.

ON OTHER SUBJECTS:

"Minucha’s Hairs," in Jewish Currents, 2001.
"Hand-Me-Downs for the Only Child," in San Francisco Bay Guardian, vol. 10, no. 22, 1976.
"Surviving the Chaos of Something Extraordinary," in Shaman’s Drum, Oakland, CA: 1985.
In The New Holistic Health Handbook. "Some Positive Words about Negativity," "What I Miss About Being Sick," and sectional introductions: "Healing Systems from Around the World," "Tools for Keeping Healthy," and "Bodywork and Movement." New York: Stephen Greene Press, 1985.
"What Is Intuition?" in Intuition Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, plus frequent book reviews.
Laser-Eye Surgery. Daly City, CA: Krames Publications, 1987.
"Voice-Activated Computers," in At Your Fingertips: Making the Most of the Micro. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1986.
Newsletters for Pacific Gas & Electric, The Blind Babies Foundation of San Francisco, the Aquarian Minyan, and the Berkeley, CA Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union.
Money Troubles: How to Keep Your Head Above Water. Daly City, CA: Krames Publications, 1987.
"Beyond Just Finances: How Your Money Helps Your Neighbors, Creates Community, and Contributes to Our Collective Well Being," in Newsline: The newsletter of the Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union, September 2001.
MotherWealth: The Feminine Path to Money. Oakland: Writing from the Deeper Self, 1993, revised and expanded 2007.
The Portable Blessings Ledger: A Way to Keep Track of Your Finances and Bring Meaning & Heart to Your Dealings with Money. Oakland: Writing from the Deeper Self, 2005.

Education

M.A., English literature, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
B.A. cum laude, English literature, City College of New York, New York City
Academic degree specializing in fine arts, High School of Music and Art, New York City
Graduate study in clinical and transpersonal psychology, John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, CA

Other Credentials and Interests

Board of Directors, Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union, Berkeley, CA, 2000-2003
Core member, Institute for the Telling of Teaching Tales, Berkeley, CA
Singer with Voci Women’s Choral Ensemble, 1999-2001
Singer with San Francisco Choral Society, 2002-2003
Singer with Trinity Lyric Opera, "The Pilgrim's Progress," 2006
Music, visual art, harmony

HONORS/AWARDS

Recipient of Common Counsel Foundation two-week writing retreat at The Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes, California, 2007.

Listed in the following Who’s Who volumes for writing and editorial contributions:

Who’s Who of Emerging Leaders in America
Who’s Who of American Women
World’s Who’s Who of Women
Directory of Distinguished Americans