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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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.

Meryl Streep photo from Pictures of Famous Actors and Actresses. Meryl Streep quote from Inside Inside by James Lipton.

New Rhythms, New Routines

Because so much of my writing history at the time I created The MoonQuest was linked to desks, deadlines and other people’s projects, the only way I could banish old associations that felt anything but free-flowing was to break all the patterns of my previous writing life.

First I abandoned the computer, composing The MoonQuest’s early drafts with pen and paper. Next, I abandoned my desk, bound as it was to the soul-numbing words that had so recently comprised my livelihood.

Mornings, with a pad balanced on my knee, just before or after breakfast, I allowed The MoonQuest’s scenes to pour from my pen onto the blank page.

Evenings, I input the day’s jottings into the computer.

Some days I needed a more dramatic break from the old to connect with my nascent story.

On those days, I often drove over North Mountain to Baxters Harbour on the Bay of Fundy. There, as the Atlantic surf crashed on the rocky Nova Scotia shore, I sat in the car or on a boulder and let the ocean tell me what to write next.

A one-day change of habit and venue was all it took to put me back on track.

When you feel blocked in your writing, one way to get unblocked is to break the pattern of your normal creative routine.

• If you tend to write on the computer, switch to pen and paper.
• Write in the morning instead of the afternoon or evening, or vice versa.
• If you generally write at your desk, move away from the perceived pressures of your “work” environment.
• Go for a walk to clear your mind.
• Take pad and pen and curl up in a comfortable chair.
• Sit out in nature.
• Move to a favorite café.
• Drive to some place quiet...different...inspirational.

And feel the creative power of your new rhythm.

When you feel blocked in your life, the same principles apply. Break your routine. Get of your rut. Take a risk. Step out of the cocoon of your comfort zone. And discover the new light and life of your infinite potential.

What can you do today to break the patterns that are keeping you rutted in routine? Whatever it is, do it. Now.

For more tips on how to move through writer's block and live your creativity, read The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, winner of a 2009 IPPY Silver Medal as one of the top writings books of the year.

Photo of Baxters Harbour from www.baxtersharbour.com

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 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.

Meryl Streep photo from Pictures of Famous Actors and Actresses. Meryl Streep quote from Inside Inside by James Lipton.

Trust. Let Go. Leap.

I'm fond of saying that there's no difference between creativity and life, that the precepts of one apply equally to the other, that the first rule of both is that there are no rules.

Yet I've discovered that once you commit to the highest possible path and purpose, there's a trinity of principles that's always at play:

1) Trust
2) Let Go
3) Leap

First, you trust the voice of your deepest heart, which is also the voice of your divinity, your god-self, your muse, your highest imperative. Next, you let go of all resistance, all clinging and all clutching (which doesn't mean you're not afraid). Finally, you leap into the void -- just like the Fool in the tarot.

Legendary sci-fi author Ray Bradbury says about writing that you must leap off cliffs and trust that you'll sprout wings on the way down.

Not only do I do my best to write that way, I do my best to live that way. It's scary, but ultimately satisfying. And even though it means living and writing without a net, those wings Bradbury talks about have never failed to appear.

Of course, I'm not always without resistance. "You want me to do what!?" I have been known to exclaim when presented with my next step.

That's what happened 11 months ago, when an inner voice interrupted my on-the-road reveries and urged me to refresh, revise and overhaul my modest Voice of the Muse eBook into an expanded and published form.

Yet once the initial shock dissipated (my novel, The MoonQuest, had been out barely a month at that point), I surrendered to the higher imperative.

I trusted, let go and leapt...and watched all the requisite resources begin to fall into place, often miraculously.

Now, not only have my wings sprouted, they're lifting me higher and higher and higher. The Voice of the Muse is selling well (and helping to sell The MoonQuest), and the book and its companion meditation CD have received great reviews and hyper-enthusiastic reader testimonials.

Trust. Let Go. Leap. It's a chapter in The Voice of the Muse. It's the only way I know how to live.

In writing as in life, it always works.

Read "13 Rules for Birthing Your Book" from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Order your Amazon copy of The Voice of the Muse book and/or CD . For a signed copy, order directly from the publisher.

Image of The Fool card from the Osho Zen Tarot, published by St. Martin's Press. Illustrated by Ma Deva Padma.

Birthing a Book

I didn’t know anything about a book called The MoonQuest when its words began to flow through me.

I didn’t know The Voice of the Muse was a book when its words began pouring from me.

All I knew in both instances was that my Muse was calling me and that the only way to answer its call was to write.

As I wrote, the books took care of themselves.

One day’s writing led to the next. One draft led to the next. One book led to the next.

Each day, draft and book drove my pen. My pen, in turn, drove me.

My only job was to release all attachment to form, structure, content and outcome. My only job was to write and let the words go where they chose and create what was theirs to create.

As it turned out, what was theirs to create were books. They could have been short stories, articles, journal entries or exercises. They could have been anything at all.

My job wasn't to try to figure that out. My job was to write, to surrender to the imperative of my Muse -- a wiser soul in all things creative than I could ever pretend to be.

Life can be like that too. When God or our higher self or our intuition or our gut guides us in a particular direction, our responsibility is to surrender -- using our discernment, of course...a discernment that gets sharpened and honed with each experience.

We can no more figure out the bigger life picture with its infinite possibility than we can the bigger creative picture with its. In both cases, the full potential lies so far beyond our imagining that, truly, surrender is the only viable option.

What can you surrender to today? In your writing? In your life?