Friday, September 13, 2013

It's Time To Live the Dream

“You just have to keep your dream. If you lose it and get cynical, you die.”
~ Meryl Streep

"Where there is no vision, the people perish."
~ Proverbs 29:18

What's your dream for your writing? For your life?

Know that whatever it is, however improbable it may seem in this moment, it's not impossible. Nearly every success story begins with an "impossible" dream. Nearly every "overnight success" was years in the making.

Have you begun the book or screenplay you've always dreamt of writing? Now is the time to put your dream into action. It doesn't matter whether you can give it five minutes a day or five hours. It doesn't even matter if you know what it's about.

Every journey begins with a single step. Every piece of writing begins with a single word. Any word.

Write it. Now.

What about your dreams for your life? Have you abandoned them? Stuffed them in the back of a drawer because they seem so unreachable?

Open that drawer. Reach your hand in. Gently. Touch it. Reconnect with it. Reconnect with yourself.

Open your heart again. Open your heart to the vision. Open your heart to your life.

• Adapted from my book Writer's Block Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing & Creative Flow
Get your copy today in in the Kindle, Nook, iBook and Kobo stores for your e-reader, tablet, computer and smartphone.

Meryl Streep quote from Inside Inside by James Lipton.


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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

"Oh, My God! It's a Girl!" -- A Happier 9/11 Story

While much of America will mark September 11 with sadness, I carry a happier memory of that date, as I share in this excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir...

"It was just past 11pm on September 10, 1999. My wife and I were asleep. The night outside our rainforest home in Captain Cook was still. Inside, too. Even the giant flying cockroaches, ubiquitous on the Big Island and seemingly unextinguishable, were, unusually, not rattling around our front room, itself now dominated by a large, circular birthing tank. In our bedroom, jammed between our bed and the window was a crib outfitted with baby-boy blue fittings — blue because, with no evidence to the contrary, we were convinced that we were having a boy.

"Suddenly, Q’nta jostled me awake. 'I think my water just broke.'

"I leapt out of bed, called our midwife, Roxanne, began to fill the birthing tank and banged on our neighbor Kathy Sue's door. Q’nta went into labor, while Kathy Sue fussed and attended to both of us. She mopped the sweat from Q’nta’s forehead and poured over-sweetened black coffee into me. Initially out of reach on another birth, Roxanne and her assistant showed up near dawn and, soon after, directed us both into the birthing tank. Q’nta leaned back against me, breathing and pushing according to Roxanne’s direction, and I held her, too high on caffeine, sugar, adrenalin and wonder to do anything else. Fortunately, there was nothing else for me to do. As much as we always did most things together, only Q’nta could do this one.

"When the final push came and Roxanne held up the new baby for us to see, I was astounded, and not only by the miracle of birth. 'Oh, my God!' I exclaimed. 'It’s a girl!'

"The baby boy of all our intuitive sensings was not a boy after all.

"I quickly glanced up at the clock. It was 9:11am on September 11. Our daughter had arrived with Virgo-like punctuality, right on her due date. A tsunami of emotion washed through me, a supercharged blend of awe, humility and love. I had never expected to be a father, never thought I wanted to be a father. And now... Now this tiny creature was my child. Forever."

• Find out why “forever did not play out as expected" for me in my Acts of Surrender memoir. Get your copy today in the Kindle, iBook, Nook or Kobo store for your e-reader, tablet, computer and smartphone.

Photo: Father and daughter in 2005




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