SAVOR EVERY MOMENT

If life were a bowl of sweet, fresh-picked, wild August blueberries, I'd be shoveling great big handfuls in my pie hole and not worrying about my fingers, lips, or teeth getting stained.

 

If life were a swimming pool, I'd be floating on my back, a Styrofoam "noodle" under my knees, with shades on, just watching clouds roll by. I might even be humming.  Savoring Every Moment Is a Game Changer for Us

Were we to go to lunch or dinner together, I'd probably do my best to engage you in a conversation about self-connection--because that's what's on my mind of late. You know, the kind of connection where you really are where you are.

 

Try a little experiment before you begin writing next time...

• Set yourself up in front of your pad of paper or computer screen, as if you were going to begin right away. But don't.
• Plant your feet on the ground, resting your hands comfortably--there should be no strain on the body.
• Close your eyes.
• Sense your body seated there. What's going on for you?
• With a reminder word or phrase the equivalent of "I'm connecting NOW" simply get present to what is, no more and no less.
• Hold the reality of your body and your feelings lightly. It's not the goal right now to change them or even to understand their origins.
• Decide to remain connected and be genuine in what comes next.

You can do this awareness mini-practice at intervals, when you notice your focus waning, when you have reached a point of transition, such as a new paragraph or section, or if you feel any anxiety because you don't know the next "right thing" to include in your writing.

Try This Mini-Practice at Intervals, When You Reach a Point of Transition, or If You Don't Know the Next "Right Thing" to Include in Your Writing.

 

I was doing this during phone conversations with friends and clients today, as well as while editing a manuscript, and I not only did I feel more relaxed and happy, but I was able to quickly determine when I was pushing or being false. It didn't take me long to shift gears and drop down. All it took was a breath and subtle internal acknowledgment of sensing the connection slip.

 

Send me an email and tell me if you get any results with this mini-practice.

Are Your Writing Habits Sustainable?

Over the weekend I was in Washington, D.C., where my sister, Dad, step-mom, and nephew and I hung out with some cousins and visited the ultra-cool Spy Museum on F Street, as well as the Udvar-Hazy Museum at the Dulles Airport. The second of these institutions is devoted to aviation and space. If you've ever seen the movie The Transformers you might recognize the Boeing Hangar from one scene.

I've always exercised my imagination by indulging secret fantasies of being a spy or an astronaut. Having a good imagination is one of the keys to writing well. But after flying a combat mission in a flight simulator with my 16-year-old nephew Aidan, I'm feeling more contented about keeping my feet on the ground. ('Course, I wouldn't refuse an offer to orbit.)

Well, we aced our simulation. While he piloted, I shot down seven "enemy planes." Take that Red Baron! This from a classic tree-hugging peacenik!

The trip reinforced my belief that stepping away from the computer screen and my project load, as well as having fun doing non-writing-related activities and engaging in meaningful in-person relationships is essential to the lifestyle I want to lead. Every trip I take makes me a better writer. Every day off makes my days on more productive. Every human being I interact with enriches my spirit. Variety is the spice of my life, which ultimately seasons my words.

The writing lifestyle is a subject of some fascination to me. A lifestyle is more than simple behavior; it's behavior that's a reflection of your values and attitudes. Sometimes reflections are dictated by circumstances. When I first wrote, I wrote on an early version of a laptop that had a tiny screen and weighed 14 pounds. Everywhere I took that beast my neck got cramped from peering down in a locked position. My shoulders ached from the burden of the strap.

The key element was the desire for freedom of movement. This is an attitude shared by many writers and it has spawned a generation of bloggers sitting in coffee houses tapping away on tiny portable instruments of communication and interlinked community. I know I'm one of them--and also other things. The opportunity to express that value of freedom of movement came from innovation that enabled us to build lighter devices that responded to the desire.

The world bends around our values.

How you interact with yourself from morning to night matters when it comes to producing quality books. It behooves you to give some consideration to your values. Among other things, how you sleep, how you exercise, and how you eat are foundations of health you should pay attention to. Gone are the days of the alcoholic wordsmith, the Ernest Hemingway, the Hunter S. Thompson. I know clones of those guys are out there, but I pay little attention because they don't share my lifestyle. I'm more of the intellectual wine-drinking for relaxation and artistic foodism writer. I prefer meditation to medication.

Developing your mind is also vital to your success. There is no substitute for meditation for improving the ability to focus and think clearly and make steady progress. I'm therefore at home amidst the community of health and self-improvement lifestyle writers. I love hard science, too. I'm fascinated by intersections of one field and another. I like to think of them as combustible zones of innovative thought. By that I mean energetic thought focused on the edge.

The edge is not for dilettantes and sissies.

Soulful qualities, like kindness, can make a difference, too, in this lifestyle I am articulating and building around me. Finding reliable ways of overcoming my doubts and programming my brain for increasing success. Seeing if I can tap into my higher purpose in being a writer. Those are goals of my current value system. My attitude is to move towards rather than away from.

Although on the surface writing seems an exclusively intellectual pursuit, writing really is like any other physical activity that we do repeatedly. If you live as a producing writer, practicing your craft day in-day out puts significant strain on your body, strain we really should not ignore. To remain healthy, I take MELT and restorative yoga classes. I take walks more and more often.

To keep writing long-term, writing well, healthfully, and happily, we've got to adhere to sustainable ways to live the writing life in our homes and offices.

August Is Self-Expression Month: Ready to Express!

The more you write, the better you'll like your writing.

Want to be relaxed and happy when you're working on your book or blog? Who wouldn't!

It's Monday in the second week of August. This is a great time to set your intention for the week. Mine is to begin using my natural voice more. Already it's fun.

There is no secret formula for being yourself. For, as the awakened sage Nisargadatta Maharaj might have said, "You are that."

So could you let yourself write as if you were who you already are? (It's not a trick question.)

OK, I'm messing with your head a little--or trying to. But what I'm really doing is laughing at myself. You see, when I want to create I naturally begin writing unless I get some other agenda stuck in my head (Example, "get rich quick" or "impress someone"). Then I stop being me.

When I get confused like that, I stop writing.

Daily writing should be a matter of sitting and thinking about what we want to say--and saying it. We should be able to sit down in a chair in front of a computer screen and compose our thoughts on paper without feeling ashamed or anxious, without feeling envious or inadequate--and WITH the joy that comes from spontaneous play, curiosity, and experimentation.

Sure, I've got clients with ADD who say this isn't easy. If that's a particular issue for you, then remember to design a calm writing space for yourself that's free of distractions.

If it's not, then remember to create a calm writing space for yourself that's free of distractions.

Did you see how witty I'm being? teeheeheeheeee.

I don't know about you, but the funny thing is that if I have permission to fail miserably, to fall on my face, to be/do the worst at something, then I feel kind of liberated just to do whatever it is I'm doing. A good 80% of the time that works out fairly decently for me.

I enjoy doing things for the heck of it... simply to see what's going to happen. Don't you?

Here's my proposition for the day. Let's foster a revolution for the rest of this month, where we vow to find one new way to be self-expressed every single day. Even if it's not pure writing, we can hope our fresh creative juices will spill over into our writing. We are multifaceted people, so it's likely to happen--and experience has proven to me that it DOES happen this way.

Here are six ways to get more out of your writing this month.

• Before writing raise your energy by dancing to the "Body Parts" track from the 5 Rhythms album ENDLESS WAVE, VOLUME ONE (by the late, great Gabrielle Roth). Or some other piece of lively, percussive music that increases your body awareness.
• Speed write on paper by longhand all the key points of what you're about to write--and you're not allowed to censor your thoughts. You have 60 seconds... GO!
• Tell another human being the reason why you're writing what you're writing. The REAL REASON.
• Tell another human being your secret fear about writing. Admit it, and then deal with it.
• Put a picture of someone who is your ideal reader above your desk. If you can see this face while you write, from time to time a glance will solidify your intention.
• When you're blocked feed your soul with some culture (go to a museum, for instance).

If you feel like sharing what you decide to do, send me a tweet that includes the hashtag #ExpressiveAugust and I'll retweet it to my entire contingent of 26,000 followers. 

XOXO

Is It True? Does EVERYONE Have a Book in Them?

"I am of the firm belief that everybody

could write books and I never understand

why they don’t. After all, everyone speaks.

Once the grammar has been learnt it

is simply talking on paper and in time

learning what not to say."

— B e r y l B a i n b r i d g e

Every Writer Has a Story of the First Book: What's Yours Going to Be?

Yesterday I was thinking back to how I wrote the very first book I wrote, a ghostwriting job for a woman in Maryland who ran a catering business for dog owners. That first book was special.

Two years earlier, I’d left my job as a senior editor in-house at Delacorte Press, emotionally and psychically burned out from conflicting with my boss. I’d hung on by my fingernails to hit the two-year mark that would vest me in my 401(K) plan. I would roll it over and then withdraw it in order to gain a grace period to think.

Exhausted by coping with recent experiences, I’d done as little freelance editorial work as possible—instead choosing to spend my time (and the money I’d walked out of my job with) going to near-daily acting, voice, and movement classes, rehearsing with scene partners, going to auditions, and performing at night for the type of crowds who turn up at small black-box theaters in Manhattan.

I'd shot a small film that was circulating the festivals.

Then one day, the phone rang and it was Peter Guzzardi, the publisher of Three Rivers Press, an imprint at Crown, asking if I would be interested in a smallish writing project. The pay was decent, but not lavish. He knew I had the skills for it—my reputation preceded me—so it only rested on my desire. I said yes.

That was how I came to ghostwrite a book called Barker’sGrub, on how to cook your own dog food, which came out in August 2001.
 

I finished drafting the last page of the manuscript at 9:30 PM on December 31, 1999, the eve of Y2K, the international computer clock crisis that never happened (remember that?). One millennium I was an actor, and the next I was a professional writer.

Every writer has a story about how his or her career began. This is mine. It's got parts that are typical and parts that are atypical.

Usually there is a recognizable impulse, perhaps waiting dormant ever since childhood, which raises its hand in the mind periodically like a shy kid waiting on the sidelines at the school gym to be picked for a dodge ball team. “Pick me, please pick me!” it says. “Don’t reject me or shame me or disown me. Don’t leave me for last.”

Sometimes the urge to write a book comes on like a rocket blast. It’s accidental, but on purpose, too.  The time just comes when the message wants to come out. The writers are there and this energy is going to erupt from them. If they are willing, the lava flows. Nature will create through them or someone else. Ideas belong to the world not to the individual people in it. Ideas are unstoppable.

Later, writers become more deliberate. But before they do, they’re often tentative. I can’t tell you how many people I meet tell me that they’ve been asked by their friends and colleagues for years, “When are you going to write a book?”

Sometimes ego gets in the way of actually doing it. Sometimes they are undisciplined in their thinking or have true learning disabilities. Or they are just lazy-assed suckers. Many wannabes have put a book on the calendar in January year after year, and get a chapter done, only to stick the project in a drawer by March or April, because they’ve gone back to tending to other priorities in their lives.

The impulses to write make my heart expand.

Hesitation makes it contract.

If you are just now contemplating writing your first book, there’s really no way to exactly prepare you for the experience other than to encourage you to stay with it. There are rewards to sticking with a manuscript through to the end that go far beyond earning money from copies sold. You ought to understand your motivations going in—and your expectations. Then it’s good to toss those out the window and live with your book, letting it take you over.

Surrendering to the needs of the project (whatever they are), is the success strategy I advocate. Educate yourself if you need to learn. Interview the people you need to interview. Conduct the research you need to conduct. Think. Read. Then write and write some more. The absolute, spectacular beauty of writing is you can measure your accomplishment in words on the page. More is not better, but more ultimately gets you closer to better, or at least closer to done.

Each time I sit down to write I don’t know what to expect. Well, in general I do, but not in specific, because I am different every day in health, mood, energy, and state of mind. Writing is investigation. I like finding out what’s percolating in me, ready to emerge.

Mainly what I do is point myself in a direction, ask good questions, and then watch the white page get sprinkled with black letters, like I’m standing over an omelet skillet with a pepper shaker.

Stephanie Gunning is the creator of the Smart Indie Pub Club®, a monthly class for self-published writers at every level interested in best practices for print-on-demand and ebook publishing.

 

Do Writers Still Have Muses?

 

"O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention."

 

William Shakespeare

 

 

The reason I chose to lead my book of quotations on writing and the literary life with Will Shakespeare (I call him Will as we're old friends) is that his plays and poems broke the mold in his era in history.

 

Also, I appreciate the invocation.

 

Rx: Repeat each morning thrice with full-throated zeal before striking one's finger upon the keys of one's computer. Then, commence.

 

No writer faces the blank page without wondering what comes next. Will it be wonderful? Will it be awful? Is it going to flow smoothly? Or splutter and stall? While there is nothing like the "heaven of invention," there's also nothing like the hell of sameness and banality, for that matter.

 

To become a self-mastered wordsmith or master craftsperson (to be distinguished from a masturbatory wordsperson), one must learn how to incubate the Muse of one's own invention.

 

Good luck to you, my friend, in your writing today!

 

See The Writer's Book of Inspiration: Quotes on Writing & the Literary Life page 7.



October Is Women in Small Business Month

The first businesswoman I knew was my mother. She had a store on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, where she and her business partner, who happened to be the mom of one of my best friends as a kid, sold children's clothing and toys.

Not surprisingly, today my childhood friend owns her own store in Maine, and I am a publishing entrepreneur with a growing business.

It came to my attention last night that this month is an opportunity to remind the women I know of how WONDERFUL you are. Happy Women in Small Business Month, my friends!

From the members of The Pinnacle, an entrepreneurial mastermind group where I teach my "Write a Short, Powerful Book Course," to the dozens and dozens of female authors whom I've been privileged to edit and co-write with over the years, the creative entrepreneurs I know who are women are REMARKABLE.

I salute you even as I salute myself. In fact, I highly recommend going to the mirror and smiling as you give yourself a High-5 and say, "Way to go, GIRL!"

Did you know that:

• There are 17 million solopreneurs in America?
• 1 million people start a business every year?
• One-third of these biz owners are WOMEN?
• Between 1997 and 2012, when the number of businesses in the United States increased by 37%,the number of women-owned firms increased by 54%--a rate 1½ times the national average.?
• Currently there are over 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., employing 7.7 million people and generating $1.3 trillion in revenues?
• Women now make up 41 percent of the individuals with a net worth of $500,000 or more?
• Women make or influence over 80 percent of all purchasing decisions?

Well, it's true. It also should be no secret by now that I believe a BOOK is the best advertising you could do for your business.

If you want to find out which sectors are increasing fastest and which states are home to the highest growth in women-owned businesses, Click Here and Get the Full Document of "State ofWomen-Owned Business Report" (American Express OPEN)

If you're an author, what does this have to do with you? Hey, hey, hey. Women, especially if you're feeling time-constrained by children and whatnot, writing and publishing in the new paradigm of turnkey online distribution systems can fit neatly into your schedule and responsibilities.

• You're motivated by a desire for financial freedom and security for your family.
• You are inspired to take charge of your destiny and contribute to your community.
• You love the feeling of achievement and the pleasure of self-expression.
• You're an expert and you have something to say.

Peekaboo, I see you. I respect you and honor you for putting your inspiration into action. You have ENRICHED my life.

I bet you know a woman you care about--your mother, your sister, your daughter, your wife, your co-worker, your friend--who's a business owner and/or a writer. Why don't you make it a point to tell this wonderful woman that she's incredible, and you admire her, and then give her a loving pat on the back this month?

I know she'll appreciate hearing those words from someone she knows, likes, and trusts.

Remember, you're my hero!